Coleridge was an essential conduit of philosophical thinking for Emerson and American Transcendentalism. Emerson admired Coleridge's vast reading which encompassed a wide spectrum of sources, including the empiricism of Bacon, the mysticism of Böhme and Swedenborg, the Naturphilosophie of Steffens and Oken, and the idealism of Plato, Plotinus, and Kant, as well as the post-Kantians such as Schelling and Fichte. None of these sources alone was satisfactory for Coleridge or Emerson to solve the “Riddle of the World,” namely the interrelation of nature and spirit. Coleridge referred to a “dynamic philosophy” and Emerson to a “first philosophy” that could potentially explain how the Romantic triad of humanity, the natural world, and the divine were interrelated. Although neither fully articulated these hypothetical systems, the drive to find such a philosophy was central to their literary productions. At a pivotal moment in his intellectual maturation, Emerson was inspired by Coleridge to envision a “first philosophy” of his own, enabling him to philosophize holistically about the Romantic triad in an ongoing process of intellectual inquiry as opposed to system-building. This new mode of thinking established a vital link in the intellectual history of Transatlantic Transcendentalism.

The merit of Coleridge's philosophical endeavors (and Emerson's, for that matter) has been contested. There is no question that both made serious errors in interpreting key figures like Kant, and the issue of unacknowledged borrowings haunts their major works. Yet to dismiss their philosophizing because of errors and failed system-building is to neglect their profound, indeed insatiable, appetite for ever more comprehensive views of the Romantic triad.