What do you think?
Rate this book
賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й屰� 丿乇 鬲乇亘蹖鬲 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 丕賳爻丕賳
丕賳爻丕賳賽 賲丿乇賳 丕夭 賳馗乇賽 卮蹖賱乇 丿爻鬲禺賵卮 丿賵倬丕乇诏蹖 賵 亘蹖诏丕賳诏蹖 亘丕 禺賵蹖卮 丕爻鬲貙 趩蹖夭蹖 讴賴 丿乇 賮毓丕賱蹖鬲鈥屬囏й� 賲鬲囟丕丿賽 芦丨爻禄 賵 芦毓賯賱禄 賲鬲噩賱蹖 賲蹖鈥屫促堌� 丿乇 鬲囟丕丿賽 丿賵賱鬲賽 丕囟胤乇丕乇 賵 丿賵賱鬲賽 毓賯賱丕賳蹖鈥屫ж勜з傐屫� 囟乇賵乇鬲 賵 丌夭丕丿蹖貙 賯丕賳賵賳賽 胤亘蹖毓鬲 賵 賯丕賳賵賳賽 丕禺賱丕賯貙 乇丕賳踿 賲丕丿蹖 賵 乇丕賳踿 氐賵乇鬲貙 賵 噩夭 丕蹖賳鈥屬囏�. 卮蹖賱乇貙 丿乇 讴賵卮卮 亘乇丕蹖 乇賮毓賽 丕蹖賳 鬲囟丕丿賴丕貙 亘乇 爻蹖丕爻鬲 賵 芦丿賵賱鬲賽 毓賯賱丕賳蹖禄 鬲兀讴蹖丿 賲蹖鈥屬堌必藏� 賵 芦鬲乇亘蹖鬲賽禄 賲賵乇丿賽 賳馗乇 丿乇 賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏� 賳蹖夭 鬲乇亘蹖鬲賽 丕賳爻丕賳 丕爻鬲 亘乇丕蹖 倬卮鬲賽 爻乇 賳賴丕丿賳賽 芦丿賵賱鬲賽 丕囟胤乇丕乇禄 賵 鬲兀爻蹖爻賽 丿賵賱鬲賽 毓賯賱丕賳蹖. 亘賳丕亘乇丕蹖賳貙 賲爻卅賱賴贁 丕氐賱蹖賽 賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏� 乇丕 賲爻卅賱賴鈥屫й� 爻蹖丕爻蹖 鬲卮讴蹖賱 賲蹖鈥屫囏� 讴賴 亘賴 鬲毓亘蹖乇賽 卮蹖賱乇 毓亘丕乇鬲 丕爻鬲 丕夭 芦亘乇爻丕禺鬲賳賽 丌夭丕丿蹖賽 爻蹖丕爻蹖賽 丨賯蹖賯蹖禄. 亘丕 賵噩賵丿賽 丕蹖賳貙 卮蹖賱乇 乇丕賴賽 丨賱賽 丕蹖賳 賲爻卅賱踿 爻蹖丕爻蹖 乇丕 賳賴 丿乇 禺賵丿賽 爻蹖丕爻鬲 亘賱讴賴 丿乇 芦夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж驰屄� 噩爻鬲鈥屬堌� 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀�. 丕夭 賳馗乇賽 卮蹖賱乇貙 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж驰� 賵爻蹖賱賴鈥屫й� 丕爻鬲 讴賴 賲蹖鈥屫堌з嗀� 賴賲踿 丌賳 丿賵倬丕乇诏蹖鈥屬囏ж� 鬲囟丕丿賴丕 賵 亘蹖诏丕賳诏蹖鈥屬囏� 乇丕 丕夭 賲蹖丕賳 亘乇丿丕乇丿 賵 丕賳爻丕賳 乇丕 亘丕 禺賵蹖卮貙 亘丕 丿蹖诏乇丕賳 賵 亘丕 胤亘蹖毓鬲 丿乇 賴賲丕賴賳诏蹖賽 讴丕賲賱 賯乇丕乇 丿賴丿.
賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й� 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 賳馗丕賲鈥屬呝嗀臂屬� 賵 賲賳爻噩賲鈥屫臂屬� 丕孬乇 丿乇 賲蹖丕賳賽 賴賲踿 丌孬丕乇賽 賮賱爻賮蹖賽 卮蹖賱乇 丕爻鬲. 卮蹖賱乇 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 爻乇丕賳噩丕賲 芦鬲丨賱蹖賱賽 丕賲乇賽 夭蹖亘丕禄 乇丕 讴賴 丿乇 芦賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й� 讴丕賱蹖丕爻禄 賳丕鬲賲丕賲 乇賴丕 讴乇丿賴 亘賵丿 亘賴 丿爻鬲 賲蹖鈥屫囏�. 亘丕夭 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丕賵 爻乇丕賳噩丕賲 倬蹖賵賳丿賽 賲蹖丕賳賽 丕禺賱丕賯 賵 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж驰� 乇丕貙 讴賴 丿乇 芦賲賱丕丨鬲 賵 賲賳夭賱鬲禄 丌賳鈥屬傌� 賲亘賴賲 亘丕賯蹖 诏匕丕卮鬲賴 亘賵丿貙 鬲亘蹖蹖賳 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀�. 賵 亘丕夭 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 丕爻鬲 讴賴 倬蹖诏蹖乇丕賳賴鈥屫臂屬� 丿賮丕賽毓 禺賵蹖卮 丕夭 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖 乇丕 亘賴 丕賳噩丕賲 賲蹖鈥屫必池з嗀� 賵 賴賲踿 丕爻鬲丿賱丕賱鈥屬囏й屰� 乇丕 讴賴 丿乇 賴賳乇賲賳丿丕賳 氐乇賮丕賸 亘賴鈥屫蒂堌必� 賲賳馗賵賲 亘丕賯蹖 诏匕丕卮鬲賴 亘賵丿 丿乇 丌乇丕蹖卮蹖 蹖诏丕賳賴 賲賳馗賲 賵 賲乇鬲亘 賲蹖鈥屫池ж藏�. 丿乇 禺氐賵氐賽 賴賲踿 丕蹖賳 賲爻丕卅賱貙 賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й� 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 賵丕倬爻蹖賳 賵氐蹖鬲 賵 讴賱丕賲賽 丌禺乇賽 丕賵爻鬲. 賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й� 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 鬲兀孬蹖乇诏匕丕乇鬲乇蹖賳 丕孬乇賽 卮蹖賱乇 賳蹖夭 亘賵丿. 亘乇賳丕賲踿 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 乇丕噩毓 亘賴 鬲乇亘蹖鬲賽 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 賲賳亘賽毓 丕賱賴丕賲賽 噩賳亘卮賽 乇賲丕賳鬲蹖讴賽 賲鬲賯丿賲 亘賵丿.
賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й� 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 賳馗丕賲鈥屬呝嗀臂屬� 賵 賲賳爻噩賲鈥屫臂屬� 丕孬乇 丿乇 賲蹖丕賳賽 賴賲踿 丌孬丕乇賽 賮賱爻賮蹖賽 卮蹖賱乇 丕爻鬲. 卮蹖賱乇 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 爻乇丕賳噩丕賲 芦鬲丨賱蹖賱賽 丕賲乇賽 夭蹖亘丕禄 乇丕 讴賴 丿乇 芦賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й� 讴丕賱蹖丕爻禄 賳丕鬲賲丕賲 乇賴丕 讴乇丿賴 亘賵丿 亘賴 丿爻鬲 賲蹖鈥屫囏�. 亘丕夭 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 丕爻鬲 讴賴 丕賵 爻乇丕賳噩丕賲 倬蹖賵賳丿賽 賲蹖丕賳賽 丕禺賱丕賯 賵 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж驰� 乇丕貙 讴賴 丿乇 芦賲賱丕丨鬲 賵 賲賳夭賱鬲禄 丌賳鈥屬傌� 賲亘賴賲 亘丕賯蹖 诏匕丕卮鬲賴 亘賵丿貙 鬲亘蹖蹖賳 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀�. 賵 亘丕夭 丿乇 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 丕爻鬲 讴賴 倬蹖诏蹖乇丕賳賴鈥屫臂屬� 丿賮丕賽毓 禺賵蹖卮 丕夭 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖 乇丕 亘賴 丕賳噩丕賲 賲蹖鈥屫必池з嗀� 賵 賴賲踿 丕爻鬲丿賱丕賱鈥屬囏й屰� 乇丕 讴賴 丿乇 賴賳乇賲賳丿丕賳 氐乇賮丕賸 亘賴鈥屫蒂堌必� 賲賳馗賵賲 亘丕賯蹖 诏匕丕卮鬲賴 亘賵丿 丿乇 丌乇丕蹖卮蹖 蹖诏丕賳賴 賲賳馗賲 賵 賲乇鬲亘 賲蹖鈥屫池ж藏�. 丿乇 禺氐賵氐賽 賴賲踿 丕蹖賳 賲爻丕卅賱貙 賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й� 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 賵丕倬爻蹖賳 賵氐蹖鬲 賵 讴賱丕賲賽 丌禺乇賽 丕賵爻鬲. 賳丕賲賴鈥屬囏й� 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 鬲兀孬蹖乇诏匕丕乇鬲乇蹖賳 丕孬乇賽 卮蹖賱乇 賳蹖夭 亘賵丿. 亘乇賳丕賲踿 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 乇丕噩毓 亘賴 鬲乇亘蹖鬲賽 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖鈥屫促嗀ж� 賲賳亘賽毓 丕賱賴丕賲賽 噩賳亘卮賽 乇賲丕賳鬲蹖讴賽 賲鬲賯丿賲 亘賵丿.
315 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1794
168 people are currently reading
5316 people want to read
About the author
Friedrich Schiller
5,078听books827听followersPeople best know long didactic poems and historical plays, such as
Don Carlos
(1787) and
William Tell
(1804), of leading romanticist German poet, dramatist, and historian Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.
This philosopher and dramatist struck up a productive if complicated friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe during the last eighteen years of his life and encouraged Goethe to finish works that he left merely as sketches; they greatly discussed issues concerning aesthetics and thus gave way to a period, now referred to as classicism of Weimar. They also worked together on Die Xenien ( The Xenies ), a collection of short but harsh satires that verbally attacked perceived enemies of their aesthetic agenda.
This philosopher and dramatist struck up a productive if complicated friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe during the last eighteen years of his life and encouraged Goethe to finish works that he left merely as sketches; they greatly discussed issues concerning aesthetics and thus gave way to a period, now referred to as classicism of Weimar. They also worked together on Die Xenien ( The Xenies ), a collection of short but harsh satires that verbally attacked perceived enemies of their aesthetic agenda.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews
April 13, 2017
Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy addressing beauty, taste, art and the sublime. After studying what philosophers have to say on this topic, it is refreshing to read the philosophical reflections on aesthetics by Friedrich Schiller (1769-1805), a man who was not only a first-rate thinker but a great poet and playwright. And Schiller tells us he is drawing his ideas from his life rather than from books and is pleading the cause of beauty before his very own heart that perceives beauty and exercises beauty's power.
Writing at the end of the 18th century, Schiller reflects on the bitter disappointment of the aftermath of the French Revolution where an entire society degenerated into violence. What can be done? As a true romantic, he sees beauty and art coming to the rescue.
Schiller writes how idealized human nature and character development is a harmonizing and balancing of polarities - on one side we have the rational, that is, contemplative thought, intelligence and moral constraint and on the other side we have the sensual, feeling, physical reality. Lacking this balance, harmony and character, Schiller perceives widespread disaster for both lower and higher social classes, that is, people of the lower classes living crude, coarse, lawless, brutal lives and people of the higher, civilized classes are even more repugnant, living lethargic, slothful, passive lives. Not a pretty picture, to say the least.
We might think scientists or hard working business people might stand a better chance at achieving balance, harmony and character. Sorry; the news is not good here either. Schiller writes, "But the predominance of the analytical faculty must necessarily deprive the fancy of its strength and its fire, and a restricted sphere of objects must diminish its wealth. Hence the abstract thinker very often has a cold heart, since he analyzes the impressions which really affect the soul only as a whole; the man of business has very often a narrow heart, because imagination, confined within the monotonous circle of his profession, cannot expand to unfamiliar modes of representation."
So, what must be done to restore a population's needed balance, harmony and character? Again, for Schiller, beauty and art to the rescue. One key idea in making beauty and art a central component of people's lives is what he terms `the play drive'. Schiller writes: "Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly man when he is playing" By play, Schiller doesn't mean frivolous games, like a mindless game of cards; rather, play for Schiller is about a spontaneous and creative interaction with the world.
To flesh out Schiller's meaning of play, let's look at a couple of examples. In the morning you consult your auto manual to fix a problem with the engine and then in the afternoon you examine a legal document to prepare to do battle in court. Since in both cases you are reading for a specific practical purpose or goal, according to Schiller, you are not at play. In the evening you read Shakespeare. You enjoy the beauty of the language and gain penetrating insights into human nature. Since your reading is not bound to any practical aim, you are free to let your imagination take flight and explore all the creative dimensions of the literary work. According to Schiller, you are "at play" and by such playing in the fields of art and beauty, you are free.
And where does such play and spontaneous creativity ultimately lead? Schiller's philosophy is not art-for-art's sake, but art for the sake of morality and freedom and truth. If Schiller could wave a magic wand, everybody in society would receive an education in beauty by way of art, literature and music. And such education would ultimately nurture a population of men and women with highly developed aesthetic and moral sensibilities who could experience the full breathe and depth of what it means to be alive. Or, to put it another way, with a restored balance, harmony and character, people would no longer be slaves to the little world of their gut or the restricted world of their head, but would open their hearts and directly experience the fullness of life. And experiencing the fullness of life, for Schiller, is true freedom.
How realistic is Schiller's educational program as a way of transforming society? Perhaps being realistic is not exactly the issue. After all, Frederick Schiller was an idealist. He desired to see a society of men and women appreciating art and beauty and having their aesthetic appreciation color everyday behavior, so much so that their dealings and activity in the world would serve as a model of noble, moral conduct for all ages. Not a bad vision.
October 22, 2021
This is not the poetic celebration of Art one expects from the title, but rather a dense and quit theoretical essay in politics and ethics with heavy references of Kant鈥檚 transcendental philosophy and Rousseau鈥檚 human nature and social contract ideas. It is important to have been introduced to these authors in order to understand the questions Schiller is trying to answer. This is also a text which is a reflection of the historical epoch in which it was written, with all the intellectual turbulence and the political upheaval the western world was going through. At the height of the age of Enlightenment, old systems of government, old paradigms and old metaphysics were all toppled down and new ideas of Right, Freedom and Progress emerged, yet the reality of the leading European nations taking this new path was one of total chaos, violence and anarchy. Schiller, with a firm belief in Enlightenment ideals, tries to explain this failure, to defend what was achieved due to rational thinking and point at which step the problem occurred and find a way to cure it, and it is in Art, where he finds the solution.
In order to have a diagnosis of the situation in Europe of the XVIII century, Schiller uses the new paradigms which were newly introduced by his time. Mainly ideas about the transition of Man from the state of Nature and the state of Reason. Man in the state of Nature is a slave to necessity and causality of the senses, basic needs hunt him and savage impulses are repressed only by an all-powerful state, while the state of Reason is one of choice, of free subordination to the laws of reason in the Kantian sense. Both states do not fully represent Man. If the state of Nature is one where Man is tormented by an endless stream of sensory stimuli, with no meaning or structure, the state of Reason is one where he restlessly seek unity, cause, reduces all the diversity of Nature to a system, impoverishing it. These two impulses tear apart Man and prevent him from getting the bigger picture, the totality of what he is.
In parallel with the dualism of Nature and Reason, Schiller introduces other dualism which are logical consequences of the first one. On the political dimension, the state is an abstract construction which aims at unity and uniformity, in contrast to the individual who represents diversity and needs freedom. On the metaphysical level, we find what Schiller calls the Person, by which he means the unchangeable substratum of man which remains the same independently of time and situation, in opposition to what he call the Condition, which are the variety of responses man exhibits in every moment. The intellectual part of man is always looking to get out of Time, to exist in the realm of the Infinite, while the natural part is always finite and dependent on Time in an endless cycle of change. Finally, on the social level, we have the lower classes, who live in perpetual servitude to sensory needs and impulses unable to experience and respond to the laws of the intellect, in opposition to the upper classes, who although free from natural necessity and sufficiently versed in the working of the intellect are stuck in a state of moral lethargy and besieged by their own systems and ideals which hardly reach reality.
The dualism in the working of human faculties is not considered a fault by Schiller. It is a necessary division through which every faculty can reach its ultimate perfection. It is true that the dualism can blind an individual, but it is extremely beneficial to the species. Some individuals are carried away by the intellectual impulse into making ideals, while others are swept away by their senses and dependence on matter. To overcome these dualism and achieve a harmonious Totality which is the true manifestation of Man, Schiller introduces what he calls the playful impulse. Its role is to reconcile between the material impulse and the intellectual one, giving form to matter, and thus keeping an equal distance from the intellect and its laws, and Nature and its necessity, making it the true realm of human freedom.
The playful impulse is what pushes man to experience and seek beauty. Its appearance in the History of humanity marks a shifting from the state of dependence on Nature, on utility, on profit. The desire to ornament is the first step of Man outside of the realm of necessity towards that of reason and morals, it is his first experience of freedom, which combines both the elements from his material impulse and intellectual one. For Schiller, the artist lives in his age, he is the child of his historical epoch and social parameters, but it does not stop him from travelling across time to bring his material from another era, in order to respond to the needs of his fellow citizens. He exists in and outside of his time, he gives form, an intellectual shape to a matter, a tangible reality.
Beauty and Art can thus combine between the two fundamental faculties of man and create a balance between their opposite forces. To those who are overwhelmed by their senses Schiller offers what he calls an energizing beauty, which will help them give form to the formless mass of images with which their perception constantly bombards them with, and thus restore order to their souls. For those who went higher into their ivory tower of intellectual pursuit, he offers liquefying beauty, which will pull them back to matter and experience, and save them from the chimerical creations of their own minds. The cultivation of taste and the exposure to culture are the middle way between two excesses that Schiller identifies as the source of the calamities of his age.
In order to have a diagnosis of the situation in Europe of the XVIII century, Schiller uses the new paradigms which were newly introduced by his time. Mainly ideas about the transition of Man from the state of Nature and the state of Reason. Man in the state of Nature is a slave to necessity and causality of the senses, basic needs hunt him and savage impulses are repressed only by an all-powerful state, while the state of Reason is one of choice, of free subordination to the laws of reason in the Kantian sense. Both states do not fully represent Man. If the state of Nature is one where Man is tormented by an endless stream of sensory stimuli, with no meaning or structure, the state of Reason is one where he restlessly seek unity, cause, reduces all the diversity of Nature to a system, impoverishing it. These two impulses tear apart Man and prevent him from getting the bigger picture, the totality of what he is.
In parallel with the dualism of Nature and Reason, Schiller introduces other dualism which are logical consequences of the first one. On the political dimension, the state is an abstract construction which aims at unity and uniformity, in contrast to the individual who represents diversity and needs freedom. On the metaphysical level, we find what Schiller calls the Person, by which he means the unchangeable substratum of man which remains the same independently of time and situation, in opposition to what he call the Condition, which are the variety of responses man exhibits in every moment. The intellectual part of man is always looking to get out of Time, to exist in the realm of the Infinite, while the natural part is always finite and dependent on Time in an endless cycle of change. Finally, on the social level, we have the lower classes, who live in perpetual servitude to sensory needs and impulses unable to experience and respond to the laws of the intellect, in opposition to the upper classes, who although free from natural necessity and sufficiently versed in the working of the intellect are stuck in a state of moral lethargy and besieged by their own systems and ideals which hardly reach reality.
The dualism in the working of human faculties is not considered a fault by Schiller. It is a necessary division through which every faculty can reach its ultimate perfection. It is true that the dualism can blind an individual, but it is extremely beneficial to the species. Some individuals are carried away by the intellectual impulse into making ideals, while others are swept away by their senses and dependence on matter. To overcome these dualism and achieve a harmonious Totality which is the true manifestation of Man, Schiller introduces what he calls the playful impulse. Its role is to reconcile between the material impulse and the intellectual one, giving form to matter, and thus keeping an equal distance from the intellect and its laws, and Nature and its necessity, making it the true realm of human freedom.
The playful impulse is what pushes man to experience and seek beauty. Its appearance in the History of humanity marks a shifting from the state of dependence on Nature, on utility, on profit. The desire to ornament is the first step of Man outside of the realm of necessity towards that of reason and morals, it is his first experience of freedom, which combines both the elements from his material impulse and intellectual one. For Schiller, the artist lives in his age, he is the child of his historical epoch and social parameters, but it does not stop him from travelling across time to bring his material from another era, in order to respond to the needs of his fellow citizens. He exists in and outside of his time, he gives form, an intellectual shape to a matter, a tangible reality.
Beauty and Art can thus combine between the two fundamental faculties of man and create a balance between their opposite forces. To those who are overwhelmed by their senses Schiller offers what he calls an energizing beauty, which will help them give form to the formless mass of images with which their perception constantly bombards them with, and thus restore order to their souls. For those who went higher into their ivory tower of intellectual pursuit, he offers liquefying beauty, which will pull them back to matter and experience, and save them from the chimerical creations of their own minds. The cultivation of taste and the exposure to culture are the middle way between two excesses that Schiller identifies as the source of the calamities of his age.
Read
April 7, 2023Having only read this once, I鈥檒l have to reread it before saying anything conclusive in terms of whether I think it succeeds in its thesis or not. I have the main sweep of his ideas, but I don鈥檛 have a confident grasp on the articulation.
What we do know is that this is a fragment of what was supposed to be a much larger project, so the 鈥渆nding鈥� is inevitably ambiguous. It is also a work of dialectical philosophy specifically on the branch concerned with aesthetics鈥攖aste and beauty.
Schiller defines two main impulses in man: physical and formal. Physical: life, existence, temporal, etc. Formal: form, absolute, etc. There is sensual man and rational man. There is man driven by the appetite for sensuous pleasure and man driven by intellectual pleasure. But either direction leads from a phantom promise of liberty to violence. Excess.
Schiller鈥檚 concern, exacerbated by the violence of the French Revolution and the suffocation of imagination at the hands of scientific progress, is to find a way to set individual man free in such a way as to achieve civil liberty in society.
A lofty task for sure.
Three philosophical predecessors come into play: Aristotle and his Golden Mean; Descartes and his mind-body dualism; and Kant and his transcendental idealism.
Thus the concept of a third impulse in man, one that can be cultivated through an aesthetic education (i.e. the fine arts)鈥攖he 鈥減layful鈥� impulse.
The playful impulse is the moderation between physical and formal, between sensuous and intellectual, between imaginative and rational. At times this reminded me of points in Freud鈥檚 essay 鈥淐reative Writers and Daydreaming.鈥� Through conditioning of the aesthetic education, man can achieve the infinite within the finite, he can absorb the world instead of becoming lost in the vastness of the world.
Schiller does not give any practical direction in the letters that we have, and this may be a sticking point for some, even if materialists humor his dualism and empiricists humor his idealism.
Definitely want to read this one again soon to fill in the gaps. There were many times when I felt the emergence of a complex and novel idea but I failed to grasp it in such a way that I could explain it in my own terms.
What we do know is that this is a fragment of what was supposed to be a much larger project, so the 鈥渆nding鈥� is inevitably ambiguous. It is also a work of dialectical philosophy specifically on the branch concerned with aesthetics鈥攖aste and beauty.
Schiller defines two main impulses in man: physical and formal. Physical: life, existence, temporal, etc. Formal: form, absolute, etc. There is sensual man and rational man. There is man driven by the appetite for sensuous pleasure and man driven by intellectual pleasure. But either direction leads from a phantom promise of liberty to violence. Excess.
Schiller鈥檚 concern, exacerbated by the violence of the French Revolution and the suffocation of imagination at the hands of scientific progress, is to find a way to set individual man free in such a way as to achieve civil liberty in society.
A lofty task for sure.
Three philosophical predecessors come into play: Aristotle and his Golden Mean; Descartes and his mind-body dualism; and Kant and his transcendental idealism.
Thus the concept of a third impulse in man, one that can be cultivated through an aesthetic education (i.e. the fine arts)鈥攖he 鈥減layful鈥� impulse.
The playful impulse is the moderation between physical and formal, between sensuous and intellectual, between imaginative and rational. At times this reminded me of points in Freud鈥檚 essay 鈥淐reative Writers and Daydreaming.鈥� Through conditioning of the aesthetic education, man can achieve the infinite within the finite, he can absorb the world instead of becoming lost in the vastness of the world.
Schiller does not give any practical direction in the letters that we have, and this may be a sticking point for some, even if materialists humor his dualism and empiricists humor his idealism.
Definitely want to read this one again soon to fill in the gaps. There were many times when I felt the emergence of a complex and novel idea but I failed to grasp it in such a way that I could explain it in my own terms.
February 3, 2009
If only we could be as free or as mentally beautiful as Schiller envisioned. Best read before you turn 20, at which point the world he railed loudly against takes over.
Schiller is a much overlooked intellectual scholar outside of Germany. Along with Lessing, Goethe, and some lesser influential renaissance men, Schiller embodies Aufklarung humanism like few others. His plays are too preachy and his poems can never be found translated by decent individuals, but in the essays, his optimism is almost transforming.
Also check out his essays "On the Sublime", "On the Tragic", and his lengthy history of the Thirty Years War.
Schiller is a much overlooked intellectual scholar outside of Germany. Along with Lessing, Goethe, and some lesser influential renaissance men, Schiller embodies Aufklarung humanism like few others. His plays are too preachy and his poems can never be found translated by decent individuals, but in the essays, his optimism is almost transforming.
Also check out his essays "On the Sublime", "On the Tragic", and his lengthy history of the Thirty Years War.
November 25, 2022
Very interesting collection of letters by Friedrich Schiller on the function of art in educating humanity. He wrote these letters to a Danish Prince, Von Augustenburg, in which he tried to set out his theories on Beauty and art.
According to Schiller, humanity needs art and beauty to raise itself from the state of natural, physical necessity to a higher place in which moral and logical laws guide its individual behaviour as well as its collective life. For most human beings this leap is impossible, hence the use of art to put us into an esthetic state in which we learn to reflect on the world and to see a world outside ourselves.
In other words: beauty is able to bridge the gap between physical perception and moral-logical reasoning, and offer a fertile middle ground from which human beings can jump to the eternal laws of morality and logic. These laws, supposedly, will result in a state of freedom both for the individual and society as a whole, but cannot be forced 'top-down' from their own position. One has to reach this ground 'bottom-up' from the foundation of individual freedom. Art is instrumental in educating the people to wrestle their freedom from their physical necessities and to use it as a force for good.
In outlining his theories and his ideas for a future ideal state, Schiller draws heavily from the epistemological, moral and esthetic theories of Immanuel Kant. So without any prior knowledge of Kant's main theories, reading this collection of letters is sheer impossible. Also, by using Kant, Schiller forces modern day readers to adapt to the archaic philosophical jargon of Kantianism, which can make this book a hurdle as well.
But if one is able to overcome both these challenges, one is in for a very enjoyable ride with lots of pleasurable sights to see and interesting spots to explore. Schiller's letters are dense and rife with interesting ideas and his view on the use of art to enlighten humanity (the letters were written during 1794 - when the French Revolution was still in full swing) is highly original. Definitely a recommendation!
According to Schiller, humanity needs art and beauty to raise itself from the state of natural, physical necessity to a higher place in which moral and logical laws guide its individual behaviour as well as its collective life. For most human beings this leap is impossible, hence the use of art to put us into an esthetic state in which we learn to reflect on the world and to see a world outside ourselves.
In other words: beauty is able to bridge the gap between physical perception and moral-logical reasoning, and offer a fertile middle ground from which human beings can jump to the eternal laws of morality and logic. These laws, supposedly, will result in a state of freedom both for the individual and society as a whole, but cannot be forced 'top-down' from their own position. One has to reach this ground 'bottom-up' from the foundation of individual freedom. Art is instrumental in educating the people to wrestle their freedom from their physical necessities and to use it as a force for good.
In outlining his theories and his ideas for a future ideal state, Schiller draws heavily from the epistemological, moral and esthetic theories of Immanuel Kant. So without any prior knowledge of Kant's main theories, reading this collection of letters is sheer impossible. Also, by using Kant, Schiller forces modern day readers to adapt to the archaic philosophical jargon of Kantianism, which can make this book a hurdle as well.
But if one is able to overcome both these challenges, one is in for a very enjoyable ride with lots of pleasurable sights to see and interesting spots to explore. Schiller's letters are dense and rife with interesting ideas and his view on the use of art to enlighten humanity (the letters were written during 1794 - when the French Revolution was still in full swing) is highly original. Definitely a recommendation!
June 27, 2022
讴鬲丕亘 亘丕 夭亘丕賳 丕賱讴賳 賵 诏乇賮鬲賴鈥屫й� 賲蹖鈥屫堌ж� 亘诏賴 讴賴 夭蹖亘丕蹖蹖 丕賳爻丕賳 乇賵 亘賴 鬲毓丕丿賱 賲蹖鈥屫必迟堎嗁囏� 丌丿賲鈥屬囏й� 丨爻蹖 乇賵 亘賴 丕賳丿蹖卮蹖丿賳 賴丿丕蹖鬲 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗁� 賵 丕賳爻丕賳蹖 讴賴 鬲賲丕賲丕賸 丿乇 賲丨丕氐乇賴鈥屰� 毓賯賱 賵 賮賴賲賴 乇賵 亘賴 丿賳蹖丕蹖 丨爻蹖 亘乇賲蹖鈥屭必堎嗁囏� 賵 睾丕蹖鬲蹖 亘乇丕蹖 鬲讴丕賲賱 丕賳爻丕賳賴. 鬲賵蹖 賴乇 亘禺卮 賯丿賲 讴賵鬲丕賴蹖 亘賴 噩賱賵 亘乇賲蹖鈥屫ж辟� 丿乇丨丕賱蹖鈥屭┵� 賲爻蹖乇卮 鬲丕 丌禺乇 乇丕賴 倬蹖丿丕爻鬲 賵 賴賲蹖賳 讴賲蹖 丌丿賲 乇賵 禺爻鬲賴 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗁囏� 丕賲丕 亘禺卮蹖 讴賴 賲鬲乇噩賲 丕亘鬲丿丕蹖 讴鬲丕亘 賵 鬲丨鬲 毓賳賵丕賳 賲賯丿賲賴 丌賵乇丿賴貙 趩讴蹖丿賴鈥屰� 讴丕賲賱蹖 丕夭 趩蹖夭蹖賴 讴賴 賯乇丕乇賴 诏賮鬲賴 亘卮賴 賵 亘賴鈥屬嗁堌观� 丌卮賳丕蹖蹖 亘丕 倬蹖趩蹖丿诏蹖鈥屬囏й� 匕賴賳 卮蹖賱乇 亘賴 夭亘丕賳 爻丕丿賴鈥屫池� 賵 讴賲讴 禺蹖賱蹖 夭蹖丕丿蹖 亘賴 賮賴賲 賲鬲賳 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗁�. 亘賴鈥屫焚堌� 讴賱蹖 丕賲丕 讴鬲丕亘 爻禺鬲鈥屫堌з嗃屬� 賵 鬲乇噩蹖丨 賲蹖鈥屫ж� 噩夭賵 讴鬲丕亘鈥屬囏й屰� 亘賵丿 讴賴 丕夭 讴鬲丕亘禺賵賳賴 賯乇囟 賲蹖鈥屭辟佖� 鬲丕 丕蹖賳讴賴 鬲賵蹖 賯賮爻賴鈥屰� 禺賵丿賲 亘丕卮賴.
February 16, 2024
This essay in 27 letters represents the author's primary philosophical statement, and an entire generation of post-Kantian idealists and early Romantics were heavily influenced by its arguments establishing the cultural, psychological, and, if I may say, soteriological function of art. It is also essential reading for students of Hegel, whose Phenomenology was profoundly influenced by its ideas, method, and terminology.
It is also an awkward and inelegant work, one which shows Schiller to have a poor command of philosophical argumentation. Brilliant insights and calls to action are crowded side-by-side with long, wearying passages that attempt to systematize his thoughts in a way their provisional character cannot support. His ideas are brilliant but underdeveloped, and I think even the most sympathetic modern reader will hesitate to agree that beauty can perform the heavy lifting Schiller requires of it. This is an important aspect of the work that is seldom acknowledged by its critics, and I will return to it later.
In his outstanding study Natural Supernaturalism, M. H. Abrams interprets this essay as belonging to a genre of works presenting a general history of the evolution of humanity's moral, cultural, and intellectual capacities, which also includes Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of History of Mankind and Kant's Conjectural Origin of the History of Man.
Abrams argues that the primary task of the age in which Schiller wrote was to recover the core insights of the religious and spiritual legacy of European thought and to naturalize it - to recast its mystical and supernatural elements in psychological and philosophical terms. He sees Schiller's core argument as essentially recapitulating the Christian concept of the felix culpa or fortunate fall in secular form. This refers to the idea that humanity's fall in the Garden should be viewed as a blessing, since it prepared the way for our redemption by Christ, which brought us nearer to God. Similarly, Schiller will argue that our fall from innocence will be ultimately redeemed through a higher synthesis of faculties that he interprets as aesthetic in character.
Schiller sees man's original state of nature in explicitly prelapsarian terms. Like Rousseau, he believes that before culture divides humanity's consciousness into differentiated powers that may be developed in different degrees, we existed in a naive and simple state of unity, living unreflectively as a part of nature and compelled to act according to our instincts and natural impulses. Once we developed our intellectual capacities, we were "expelled from the Garden" as it were, alienated from that pre-reflective simplicity. This alienation caused a kind of psychic wound rooted ultimately in the differentiation of our conscious life into different, disjunct domains, such as nature versus culture. In his analysis of this essay, Carl Jung compares this state of fragmentation to the wound of the grail king Amfortas, which cannot be healed by anything less than divine grace.
Schiller divides human experience into two complementary domains: the timeless domain of form and idea, and the temporal world of the finite, transitory objects of sensual experience. I would call this a form of the more general distinction between synchronic and diachronic modes of experience. Or, in Abram's frame, we might characterize this as a secularization of the ancient divide between the material and the spiritual, between body and soul.
In Schiller's view, the human being is likewise divided into a timeless dimension that he calls our personality, which he regards as ensuring the persistence of our character over time, and a temporal dimension that he calls our condition [Zustand], which includes all changing aspects of the self that belong to the temporal world. He awkwardly attempts to link this underdeveloped division to various ideas developed by Kant and Fichte, such as by arguing that our capacity to generate moral laws comes from the strictly timeless dimension of the personality, in obvious deference to Kant's deontology.
Schiller argues that the two aspects of our experience have a corresponding "drive": the "material drive" [Sachtrieb], by which we sensuously engage with the material world, and the "form drive" [Formtrieb] by which we seek to impose a static, lawful regularity on the dynamic flux of our experience. He sees this as a fundamental disjunction in the human psyche occasioned by the rise of abstract reflection, which creates an unbridgeable gulf between these two modes, thereby alienating the rational person from their sensual side.
In a manner that obviously attracted the attention of young Hegel, Schiller argued that there must be a third faculty by which these two disjunct tendencies can be synthesized. He even uses the term "aufheben," or sublimation, to describe the process by which these dichotomous terms can be simultaneously negated and preserved as the system moves up to a higher logical level. This concept became a core part of Hegel's dialectical terminology.
Later in the work, he attempts to reconstruct the general structure of humanity's historical evolution through various modalities of experience. In this context, he introduces another term that will become central in Hegel鈥檚 Phenomenology: the idea of moments [Momente] of cultural evolution. This term emphasizes the ambiguity between chronological and logical priority. For example, when he says that the rational mode is a moment that necessarily precede the aesthetic mode, it is intentionally ambiguous if he means that there is a literal historical sequence that must be followed, or if rationality as such is necessarily prior to the aesthetic mode in a logical sense, and is somehow subsumed by it. This is an interesting and suggestive flattening of ideas, but it does not exactly serve the cause of clarity.
The synthesizing drive that Schiller believes unites the other two is the play drive [Spieltrieb], and in what becomes one of the most famous aspects of this essay, Schiller sets about to rehabilitate our notion of play. He understands the idea in its most expansive sense, as a immediately-gratifying condition of life resulting from excess and overflow, in which individuals are free to create, not mechanically compelled by instinct or by formal law, as we would in the state of nature or in a mode of mere rational reflection, but in a higher mode that encompasses both states of being.
Each of these drives has a corresponding object: the object of the Sachtrieb is life, the object of the Formtrieb is the abstract concept or law, and the object of the Spieltrieb is beauty.
Beauty, in conjunction with the human capacity to play, becomes a synthesizing (i.e., redemptive) power that reunites the shards of our being in a way that elevates our nature. It becomes a force by which we are positively motivated by the attractive power of beauty and move toward it according to our will, not compelled by our appetites or the force of a moral command. In this sense, Schiller binds the idea of beauty to the idea of freedom, and concludes the work by arguing that truly free modes of human interaction are made possible by beauty and play:
"The aesthetic formative impulse establishes insensibly a third joyous empire of play and of appearance, between the formidable realm of powers and the sacred realm of law 鈥� an empire wherein man is released from the binds of circumstance, and is freed, both physically and morally, from all that can be called constraint."
On one level, this essay is a social argument for the values of beauty and play, seeking to establish their importance in the grand scheme of human endeavor. In one of its most frequently-cited lines, Schiller tells us that man is always most nearly himself when he plays.
Beauty should generally be understood as a powerful response to a beautiful work of fine art or person. For Schiller, a deep experience of beauty is a profound and transformative experience that would seem to be modeled on the beatific vision. it is a moment when time and space seems to fall away, when ultimate value is directly communicated to the receptive psyche. Drawing from James Joyce, Joseph Campbell called this kind of experience as one of "aesthetic arrest."
In this sense, it's easy to tie Schiller's core argument to Abrams's reading of the work as essentially a secularization of various millennialist and soteriological arguments that are ready-to-hand. Both the individual divided consciousness and the temporal world are redeemed by the aesthetic insight, and art becomes the new vehicle of salvation. This argument was profoundly influential on the Romantics and indeed, on all of nineteenth-century German thought. Schiller was not the first or only person to characterize art as the new sacrament, as the new and primary sphere of ultimate value for humanity, but he was certainly one of the most important and influential.
And, for Hegel and a generation of early Romantics, Schiller's association of all this with a political concept of freedom inspired by Rousseau and by the early promise of the French Revolution would be no less influential. Schiller's personal concern for freedom stems from his experience growing up in the hereditary duchy of W眉rttemberg, where the duke wielded absolute power. He spent long, miserable years in an oppressive military academy and then served as an army doctor and, after the dramatic success of his first play Die R盲uber, he was imprisoned by the duke and forbidden to write further plays. He eventually illegally fled the duchy and resettled in Jena, near Weimar.
So it must be remembered that for Schiller, 鈥渇reedom鈥� was not a romantic notion or a mere political slogan, and one can easily understand why he associated it with both an overflowing abundance of life and with artistic creativity.
When you lay out the argument like this, it is easy to see why it was so influential and important. However, as I alluded to above, this work is terribly written. Goethe himself complained to Eckermann that "The more [the Germans] give themselves up to certain philosophical schools, the worse they write ... in this sense, Schiller's style is at its most magnificent and effective whenever he doesn't philosophize...."
["Je n盲her [die Deutschen] sich gewissen philosophischen Schulen hingegeben, desto schlechter schreiben sie.... So ist Schillers Styl am pr盲chtigsten und wirksamsten, sobald er nicht philosophiert...."]
As a philosopher, Schiller was strictly an amateur, and he probably would have been well advised to present his ideas as a philosophical essay in the manner of Herder rather than attempting to ape the systematicity of Kant and Fichte. We can accept the general idea of dividing human experience into a temporal and atemporal dimension, for example, without believing that there is really something "eternal" that shapes human personality, or worse, that such a notion is necessary to account for the persistence of the human personality over time. This argument is based on Fichte's Ich-philosophy but receives no explanation or support, and in Schiller's hands it reads like something a sophomore philosophy major would claim. Does the table also possess an eternal personality, since it remains a table?
As a simplified construction, there is nothing wrong with speaking in this way, but again and again, Schiller treats these constructs like they can be rigorously elaborated, and it does nothing more than emphasize their inadequacy. The essay is crowded with many such arguments, passages that I came to call "garbage talk" in my marginal notes, such as the following example from the twenty-fifth letter:
"In our satisfaction at cognitions we distinguish without trouble the passage from activity to passivity, and actually observe that the first is over, when the latter appears. On the contrary, in our delight at beauty no such succession between activity and passivity can be distinguished, and reflection is here so thoroughly blended with feeling, that we think the form is directly perceivable. Beauty then is indeed object for us, since reflection is the condition by which we perceive it; but at the same time it is a condition of our subject, because feeling is the condition by which we have a conception of it."
This is simply a word salad of vague and underdetermined concepts.
Most secondary summaries of this text suggest it possesses a strength of argument that it altogether lacks. I believe some commentators don't wish to call out its inadequacies because they fear it is their own lack of familiarity with philosophy that makes it so difficult. But the problem is Schiller, not them, and anyone who compares five pages of this essay with five pages from Schopenhauer will immediately see what I mean.
So let it be said, this text is badly written. It is overly florid and verbose, and the argument is segmented and scattered in ways that make it laborious to track. M. H. Abrams charitably called it "surprisingly intricate." It is also an extremely important work in the history of ideas, and an absolutely key reference for understanding early Romantic and Hegelian philosophy.
Note: I completely rewrote this review in 2024 after a close re-reading.
It is also an awkward and inelegant work, one which shows Schiller to have a poor command of philosophical argumentation. Brilliant insights and calls to action are crowded side-by-side with long, wearying passages that attempt to systematize his thoughts in a way their provisional character cannot support. His ideas are brilliant but underdeveloped, and I think even the most sympathetic modern reader will hesitate to agree that beauty can perform the heavy lifting Schiller requires of it. This is an important aspect of the work that is seldom acknowledged by its critics, and I will return to it later.
In his outstanding study Natural Supernaturalism, M. H. Abrams interprets this essay as belonging to a genre of works presenting a general history of the evolution of humanity's moral, cultural, and intellectual capacities, which also includes Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of History of Mankind and Kant's Conjectural Origin of the History of Man.
Abrams argues that the primary task of the age in which Schiller wrote was to recover the core insights of the religious and spiritual legacy of European thought and to naturalize it - to recast its mystical and supernatural elements in psychological and philosophical terms. He sees Schiller's core argument as essentially recapitulating the Christian concept of the felix culpa or fortunate fall in secular form. This refers to the idea that humanity's fall in the Garden should be viewed as a blessing, since it prepared the way for our redemption by Christ, which brought us nearer to God. Similarly, Schiller will argue that our fall from innocence will be ultimately redeemed through a higher synthesis of faculties that he interprets as aesthetic in character.
Schiller sees man's original state of nature in explicitly prelapsarian terms. Like Rousseau, he believes that before culture divides humanity's consciousness into differentiated powers that may be developed in different degrees, we existed in a naive and simple state of unity, living unreflectively as a part of nature and compelled to act according to our instincts and natural impulses. Once we developed our intellectual capacities, we were "expelled from the Garden" as it were, alienated from that pre-reflective simplicity. This alienation caused a kind of psychic wound rooted ultimately in the differentiation of our conscious life into different, disjunct domains, such as nature versus culture. In his analysis of this essay, Carl Jung compares this state of fragmentation to the wound of the grail king Amfortas, which cannot be healed by anything less than divine grace.
Schiller divides human experience into two complementary domains: the timeless domain of form and idea, and the temporal world of the finite, transitory objects of sensual experience. I would call this a form of the more general distinction between synchronic and diachronic modes of experience. Or, in Abram's frame, we might characterize this as a secularization of the ancient divide between the material and the spiritual, between body and soul.
In Schiller's view, the human being is likewise divided into a timeless dimension that he calls our personality, which he regards as ensuring the persistence of our character over time, and a temporal dimension that he calls our condition [Zustand], which includes all changing aspects of the self that belong to the temporal world. He awkwardly attempts to link this underdeveloped division to various ideas developed by Kant and Fichte, such as by arguing that our capacity to generate moral laws comes from the strictly timeless dimension of the personality, in obvious deference to Kant's deontology.
Schiller argues that the two aspects of our experience have a corresponding "drive": the "material drive" [Sachtrieb], by which we sensuously engage with the material world, and the "form drive" [Formtrieb] by which we seek to impose a static, lawful regularity on the dynamic flux of our experience. He sees this as a fundamental disjunction in the human psyche occasioned by the rise of abstract reflection, which creates an unbridgeable gulf between these two modes, thereby alienating the rational person from their sensual side.
In a manner that obviously attracted the attention of young Hegel, Schiller argued that there must be a third faculty by which these two disjunct tendencies can be synthesized. He even uses the term "aufheben," or sublimation, to describe the process by which these dichotomous terms can be simultaneously negated and preserved as the system moves up to a higher logical level. This concept became a core part of Hegel's dialectical terminology.
Later in the work, he attempts to reconstruct the general structure of humanity's historical evolution through various modalities of experience. In this context, he introduces another term that will become central in Hegel鈥檚 Phenomenology: the idea of moments [Momente] of cultural evolution. This term emphasizes the ambiguity between chronological and logical priority. For example, when he says that the rational mode is a moment that necessarily precede the aesthetic mode, it is intentionally ambiguous if he means that there is a literal historical sequence that must be followed, or if rationality as such is necessarily prior to the aesthetic mode in a logical sense, and is somehow subsumed by it. This is an interesting and suggestive flattening of ideas, but it does not exactly serve the cause of clarity.
The synthesizing drive that Schiller believes unites the other two is the play drive [Spieltrieb], and in what becomes one of the most famous aspects of this essay, Schiller sets about to rehabilitate our notion of play. He understands the idea in its most expansive sense, as a immediately-gratifying condition of life resulting from excess and overflow, in which individuals are free to create, not mechanically compelled by instinct or by formal law, as we would in the state of nature or in a mode of mere rational reflection, but in a higher mode that encompasses both states of being.
Each of these drives has a corresponding object: the object of the Sachtrieb is life, the object of the Formtrieb is the abstract concept or law, and the object of the Spieltrieb is beauty.
Beauty, in conjunction with the human capacity to play, becomes a synthesizing (i.e., redemptive) power that reunites the shards of our being in a way that elevates our nature. It becomes a force by which we are positively motivated by the attractive power of beauty and move toward it according to our will, not compelled by our appetites or the force of a moral command. In this sense, Schiller binds the idea of beauty to the idea of freedom, and concludes the work by arguing that truly free modes of human interaction are made possible by beauty and play:
"The aesthetic formative impulse establishes insensibly a third joyous empire of play and of appearance, between the formidable realm of powers and the sacred realm of law 鈥� an empire wherein man is released from the binds of circumstance, and is freed, both physically and morally, from all that can be called constraint."
On one level, this essay is a social argument for the values of beauty and play, seeking to establish their importance in the grand scheme of human endeavor. In one of its most frequently-cited lines, Schiller tells us that man is always most nearly himself when he plays.
Beauty should generally be understood as a powerful response to a beautiful work of fine art or person. For Schiller, a deep experience of beauty is a profound and transformative experience that would seem to be modeled on the beatific vision. it is a moment when time and space seems to fall away, when ultimate value is directly communicated to the receptive psyche. Drawing from James Joyce, Joseph Campbell called this kind of experience as one of "aesthetic arrest."
In this sense, it's easy to tie Schiller's core argument to Abrams's reading of the work as essentially a secularization of various millennialist and soteriological arguments that are ready-to-hand. Both the individual divided consciousness and the temporal world are redeemed by the aesthetic insight, and art becomes the new vehicle of salvation. This argument was profoundly influential on the Romantics and indeed, on all of nineteenth-century German thought. Schiller was not the first or only person to characterize art as the new sacrament, as the new and primary sphere of ultimate value for humanity, but he was certainly one of the most important and influential.
And, for Hegel and a generation of early Romantics, Schiller's association of all this with a political concept of freedom inspired by Rousseau and by the early promise of the French Revolution would be no less influential. Schiller's personal concern for freedom stems from his experience growing up in the hereditary duchy of W眉rttemberg, where the duke wielded absolute power. He spent long, miserable years in an oppressive military academy and then served as an army doctor and, after the dramatic success of his first play Die R盲uber, he was imprisoned by the duke and forbidden to write further plays. He eventually illegally fled the duchy and resettled in Jena, near Weimar.
So it must be remembered that for Schiller, 鈥渇reedom鈥� was not a romantic notion or a mere political slogan, and one can easily understand why he associated it with both an overflowing abundance of life and with artistic creativity.
When you lay out the argument like this, it is easy to see why it was so influential and important. However, as I alluded to above, this work is terribly written. Goethe himself complained to Eckermann that "The more [the Germans] give themselves up to certain philosophical schools, the worse they write ... in this sense, Schiller's style is at its most magnificent and effective whenever he doesn't philosophize...."
["Je n盲her [die Deutschen] sich gewissen philosophischen Schulen hingegeben, desto schlechter schreiben sie.... So ist Schillers Styl am pr盲chtigsten und wirksamsten, sobald er nicht philosophiert...."]
As a philosopher, Schiller was strictly an amateur, and he probably would have been well advised to present his ideas as a philosophical essay in the manner of Herder rather than attempting to ape the systematicity of Kant and Fichte. We can accept the general idea of dividing human experience into a temporal and atemporal dimension, for example, without believing that there is really something "eternal" that shapes human personality, or worse, that such a notion is necessary to account for the persistence of the human personality over time. This argument is based on Fichte's Ich-philosophy but receives no explanation or support, and in Schiller's hands it reads like something a sophomore philosophy major would claim. Does the table also possess an eternal personality, since it remains a table?
As a simplified construction, there is nothing wrong with speaking in this way, but again and again, Schiller treats these constructs like they can be rigorously elaborated, and it does nothing more than emphasize their inadequacy. The essay is crowded with many such arguments, passages that I came to call "garbage talk" in my marginal notes, such as the following example from the twenty-fifth letter:
"In our satisfaction at cognitions we distinguish without trouble the passage from activity to passivity, and actually observe that the first is over, when the latter appears. On the contrary, in our delight at beauty no such succession between activity and passivity can be distinguished, and reflection is here so thoroughly blended with feeling, that we think the form is directly perceivable. Beauty then is indeed object for us, since reflection is the condition by which we perceive it; but at the same time it is a condition of our subject, because feeling is the condition by which we have a conception of it."
This is simply a word salad of vague and underdetermined concepts.
Most secondary summaries of this text suggest it possesses a strength of argument that it altogether lacks. I believe some commentators don't wish to call out its inadequacies because they fear it is their own lack of familiarity with philosophy that makes it so difficult. But the problem is Schiller, not them, and anyone who compares five pages of this essay with five pages from Schopenhauer will immediately see what I mean.
So let it be said, this text is badly written. It is overly florid and verbose, and the argument is segmented and scattered in ways that make it laborious to track. M. H. Abrams charitably called it "surprisingly intricate." It is also an extremely important work in the history of ideas, and an absolutely key reference for understanding early Romantic and Hegelian philosophy.
Note: I completely rewrote this review in 2024 after a close re-reading.
December 20, 2020
Friedrich Schiller wrote Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man in 1793 for his friend the Danish Prince Friedrich Christian who had provided him with a stipend to help him through an illness. In 1795 the letters were published and the provide a worthwhile consideration of the nature of Aesthetics for us still today. The collection of twenty seven letters is not an easy read but it is worth persevereing to gain the insights of this great poet and playwright, friend of Goethe and inspiration for Beethoven and many artists, particularly in the Romantic era.
The book touches upon a broad range of topics, some of which you do not normally associate with aesthetics. However the letters do consider the nature of Beauty and its relationship to art and man. For Schiller beauty seems to arise as a synthesis between opposing principles "whose highest ideal is to be sought in the most perfect possible union and equilibrium of reality and form"(Letter XVI, p 81). Schiller also discusses the nature of the ideal man and how the impulse for play interacts with man's nature, especially his rational and sensuous aspects which form a juxtaposition within him. This juxtaposition is discussed at length with a synthesis described in terms that suggest a transcendence that culminates in our very humanity (Letters 18-20). Man and his nature is important to Schiller as his reason, but "The first appearance of reason in Man is not yet the beginning of his humanity. The latter is not decided until he is free," (Letter XXIV, p 115).
Through discussion of the work of art and the fine arts Schiller brings us closer to a conception of what art means to man and how important "Homo Ludens" is as a conception of man. Schiller admired classical Greece and its art and saw the role of history and freedom important in the discussion of the nature of art. Above all both as a poet and a thinker Schiller held the ideal of freedom to be sacrosanct. According to Schiller, freedom is attained when the sensual and rational in man are fully integrated but his aesthetic disposition is seen as coming from Nature. These letters provide a rich vein of ideas from which the thoughtful and attentive reader may find inspiration in consideration of the aesthetics and the nature of the work of art.
The book touches upon a broad range of topics, some of which you do not normally associate with aesthetics. However the letters do consider the nature of Beauty and its relationship to art and man. For Schiller beauty seems to arise as a synthesis between opposing principles "whose highest ideal is to be sought in the most perfect possible union and equilibrium of reality and form"(Letter XVI, p 81). Schiller also discusses the nature of the ideal man and how the impulse for play interacts with man's nature, especially his rational and sensuous aspects which form a juxtaposition within him. This juxtaposition is discussed at length with a synthesis described in terms that suggest a transcendence that culminates in our very humanity (Letters 18-20). Man and his nature is important to Schiller as his reason, but "The first appearance of reason in Man is not yet the beginning of his humanity. The latter is not decided until he is free," (Letter XXIV, p 115).
Through discussion of the work of art and the fine arts Schiller brings us closer to a conception of what art means to man and how important "Homo Ludens" is as a conception of man. Schiller admired classical Greece and its art and saw the role of history and freedom important in the discussion of the nature of art. Above all both as a poet and a thinker Schiller held the ideal of freedom to be sacrosanct. According to Schiller, freedom is attained when the sensual and rational in man are fully integrated but his aesthetic disposition is seen as coming from Nature. These letters provide a rich vein of ideas from which the thoughtful and attentive reader may find inspiration in consideration of the aesthetics and the nature of the work of art.
April 30, 2013
A very deep analysis on aesthetics, full of insights, but makes a difficult reading for the current generations. Yet, I enjoyed this book as far as I could follow. I should return to various passages, which I have marked enthusiastically. Excellent text.
March 1, 2018
Some quick thoughts; not a final review . . .
__________
It took me two, or three (maybe more) times as long to finish this than I had expected, because of the amount of arresting points that I came across and had to note down . . .
__________
I think I will carry what is contained in both Schiller's Letters, and Seneca's Letters, with me every day, for the rest of my life. They have both introduced some new notions and ideas with which I agree wholeheartedly, but they have both also clarified and expanded upon certain ideas, feelings, and views, that I already had.
I'll promise myself now: I will, one day, go through both Seneca's and Schiller's letters, one by one, clarifying in each what each author is saying, and how this relates to my beliefs, outlooks, and views . . .
__________
This Penguin edition (which I only discovered after reading, was first published in 2016; thanks Penguin!) contains Schiller's Letters which constitute On the Aesthetic Education of Man, but equally importantly, also contain, for the first time in an English translation, his Letters to Prince Frederick Christian von Augustenburg.
_____
The translation by Keith Tribe was excellent. I quickly read some reviews of this and noticed some people saying that they found it hard to understand what Schiller was saying. I suspect this may have been to the translation they were reading, because this more modern one is excellent. Any trouble with understanding will not be due to the translation.
Schiller is not too hard to understand, and no prior reading of Kant, or Burke, for example, is required to understand his ideas and concepts.
_____
The Prince was a sponsor of Schiller, allowing him "three of the intellectually most intense years of his life. He dedicated himself to a close study of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy, especially the aesthetic theory in the Critique of Judgement of 1790."
For the sake of brevity, I'm not going to comment on what Schiller touches upon right now, but I will say that he does not view asesthetics and the cultivation of taste as any kind of panacea of the first order, but as: a complement to morality; a substitute for true virtue, and some other things which I will not go into here.
I am not doing a full review here, so for now, please read some of the quotes I have included below. By doing so, you should easily see that his work stretches beyond purely theoretical aesthetics and the cultivation of taste, but more into the application. Do not read them all (unless you want to), but use them as an example of some of the views and ideas that are Schiller touches upon. I have not been exhaustive with the selection, but included some more extended passages which contain some of Schiller's more important and central arguments.
(Bolded passages below are ones that I personally find particularly insightful, perceptive &c. I apologise for any spelling errors, I was typing some of the longer passages in some haste . . .)
_____
Also, something you should bear in mind:
__________
鈥擮ur reputation for education and refinement, which we rightly value by comparison with all other merely natural humanity, is pulled up short by the natural humanity of the Greeks, for they freely embraced all the natural delights of art and worthiness of wisdom, though without being seduced by then as we have to our age; they are also our rivals, even our models, in respect of those very advantages in which we seek consolation and reassurance for our unnatural manners. At once complete in form and substance, at once philosophical and creative, at once gentle and energetic, the Greeks united the youth of imagination with the manhood of reason in a glorious humanity.
. . . How different are we moderns! The image of the human species in each of us has been enlarged, shattered and scattered as shards, not in proportioned admixtures; so that one has to go from one individual to another to reconstitute the totality of the species.
. . .Which modern man is prepared to challenge and one Athenian to debate the prize of humanity?
. . .How did an individual Greek come to be representative of his era, and why does no modern man claim this distinction? Because the first was formed as a unity by nature, and the second by an intellect that divided and subdivided.
鈥擨f the commonweal makes office the measure of man, if it prizes in one citizen only his memory, in another only mathematical understanding, in a third only a mechanical skill; if it is here indifferent to character and only interested in particular knowledge, but there by contrast a sense of order and lawful conduct is thought enough compensation for the most occult thinking - if at the same time these individual skills are to be pushed to such a degree of intensity as the subject allows in extension - should we be surprised that all other faculties of the mind are neglected, so that the one single faculty prized above all others should be exclusively rewarded? We do know that the powerful genius does not take the limits of his occupation to be the limits of his activity, but the mediocre talent uses up the entirety of his meagre powers in pursuing the occupation that has fallen to him; and anyone who has time left over for his own pursuits once his occupational duties are fulfilled must already be commonly gifted. Moreover, the state seldom thinks it any recommendation when powers exceed tasks; nor if the higher intellectual needs of the man of genius compete with the demands of office.
鈥擥reek states resembled a colony of polyps, for within themselves individuals enjoyed an independent life, although in times of necessity they could form into a whole; this new gave way to a clockwork mechanism, the joining together of an infinite number of lifeless parts to create a new mechanically driven whole. State and Church, laws and manners, means from end, effort from reward. Eternally shackled to one small fragment of the whole, man imagined himself to be a fragment, in his ear the constant and monotonous noise of the wheel that he turned; never capable of developing the harmony of his being, and instead marking the humanity in his nature, he simply became the impress of his occupation, his particular knowledge.
鈥擭ot for nothing does the ancient myth have the goddess of wisdom emerging fully armed from Jupiter's head; for her very first action is that of a warrior. Even at her birth she must enter a bitter struggle with senses that do not wish to be torn from sweet repose. .
The more numerous part of mankind is too tired and exhausted from its struggle with need to gird itself up for a new and more intense struggle against error. Happy to avoid the troublesome effort of thinking, they gladly leave the control of their concepts to others; and if it so happens that they rouse themselves to higher needs, they seize with greedy credulity upon the formulations that state and priesthood have prepared for them in anticipation.
Such people prefer the twilight of obscure belief, in which one can feel more alive and shape the imagination in whatever way one likes, to the ways of truth that chase away the comforting delusions of their dreams. These illusions, which the malevolent light of knowledge threatens to scatter, are the basis of all their happiness; how can they be expected to pay so much for a truth that begins by robbing them of all they hold so dear? To love wisdom, they would already have to be wise, which itself is a truth already felt by those who gave philosophy its name.
Culture of the capacity for feeling is the more urgent need at this time, not merely because it will enable better insight into life, but because it prompts the improvement of such insight itself.
鈥擨nclination can only say: that suits your individuality and your present need, but your individuality and your present need will be swept away with change, and what you today fiercely desire will in time behind the object of your disgust. If, however, moral feeling says: that shall be, then it decides for ever and eternity - if you admit truth because it is truth, and practice justice because it is just, then you have made over single case the rule for all cases, and treated one moment of your life as eternity.
鈥�The more aspects there are to man's receptivity, the more flexible it is and the greater the number of aspects presented to phenomena, so the greater the amount of the world that man can grasp, the more faculties he develops within himself. The more power and depth the personality gains, the more freedom that reason gains, so the more world does man comprehend, so the more form he creates outside of himself.
His culture would therefore consist of: firstly, bringing about the most varied contact with the world for the receptive faculty, while intensifying as far as possible passivity in feeling; secondly, securing for the determining faculty the greatest independence from the receptive faculty, developing reason to the greatest possibly degree of activity. Where both qualities are united, man will combine the most abundant existence with the greatest autonomy and liberty and, rather than losing himself in the world, instead draw into himself the sheer infinity of its phenomena and subordinate it to the unity of his reason.
鈥擮ne cannot therefore say that those who regard the aesthetic condition as the most fruitful in respect of knowledge and morality are entirely wrong. They are in fact completely right, for a disposition of the soul that comprehends all of humanity just necessarily and potentially also include within it every individual expression; a disposition of the soul that removes all limits from the entirety of human nature must also necessarily remove these limits from every single expression of the same.
Every other operation confers upon the soul a special skill, but for doing so sets a particular limit; only the aesthetic leads to the state of unlimitedness . . . only the aesthetic is a totality in itself, uniting in itself all the conditions of its origin and of its persistence. Only here do we feel ourselves torn from time . . .
鈥�Endorsing appearance of the first kind cannot harm truth, since one is never in danger of taking appearance for truth, which is in fact the only thing that can be harmful to truth; to despise appearance means to despise all fine art, for it is in its essence appearance. The enthusiasm of intellect for reality can sometimes lead to such a degree of intolerance that the whole art of beautiful appearance is dismissed out of hand, just because it is appearance; but this happens to the intellect only if it recalls the affinity mentioned above.
鈥�The answer to the question 'To what extent may appearance exist in the moral world?' is simply this: to the extent that it is aesthetic appearance, i.e. appearance that neither seeks to represent reality, nor needs to be represented by it. Aesthetic appearance can never endanger the truth of morals, where one finds otherwise, it will be demonstrated without any difficulty that the appearance was not aesthetic.
鈥擧owever since he now also includes outer form in his enjoyment, taking note of the form of things that satisfy his appetites, he goes beyond time itself, having not merely enhanced his enjoyment in extent and degree, but also ennobled the way in which he gains such enjoyment.
鈥擮ne had advanced so far with theoretical culture that the most sacred pillars of superstition were rocked, and the throne of thousand-year-old prejudice began to shake. Nothing was wanting save the signal for the great transformation.
鈥擯erhaps you may object, most serene Prince, that we have a circular argument here: that the character of a citizen depends just as much upon a constitution as that constitution depends on the citizen's character. I admit that, and so claim that, if we wish to break out of this circularity, we must either think of means of assisting the state without involving character, or deal with the character without involving the state. The first contains a contradiction, for no constitution can be conceived that is independent of the disposition of the citizen. However, perhaps there is something to the second idea, so that sources independent of the state might be made capable of refining ways of thought, but which sources for all their faults uphold the state in a pure and open manner.
鈥�But even if he is permitted to adhere to the spirit of the century, he should not take direction from it. The guiding laws of art do not take their form from a changing and often quite degenerated contemporary taste, but are founded in the necessity and eternity of human nature, in the original laws of the spirit. The pure source of beauty streams down from the divine part of our being, from the eternally pure ether of ideal mankind, uninfected by the spirit of the age that seethes in the dark eddies far below. It is for this reason that art can, in the midst of a barbaric and unworthy century, remain pure like a goddess, so long as its higher origin is remembered, and it does not itself become a slave to base intentions and needs. It is in this way that the few remnants of the Greek spirit wander through the night of our Nordic age, and the electric shock of this spirit arouses some related souls to a sense of their greatness.
鈥�In the same way that one can say that a person can receive freedom from another, even though freedom consists in man being relieved of any need to conduct himself in accordance with others, so one can just as well say that taste provides assistance to virtue, even though virtue expressly implies that it requires no external assistance.
鈥擬orality can therefore be furthered in two ways, just like it can be obstructed in two ways. Either one has to strengthen the part played by reason and the strength of good will so that no temptation can overwhelm them; or the power of temptation must be broken, so that a weaker reason and a weaker good will might still have the advantage.
Raw and uncouth souls lack both moral and aesthetic education, allow pure appetite to dictate to them, behaving merely as their desire leads them. Moral souls who lack aesthetic education allow reason to dictate to them, and it is only through respect for their duty that they triumph over temptation. In aesthetically refined souls there is a further item that quite often replaces virtue where it is lacking, and aids it where it is already present. This item is taste.
Taste can therefore be seen as the first weapon used by an aesthetic soul in its struggle against raw nature, driving back the assault before it becomes necessary for reason to intervene as a legislator, and pronounce judgement.
鈥�I have not here placed religion and taste together in one class unintentionally, for both have the merit of being a surrogate for true virtue, securing the regularity of actions where there is no hope of the obligation of conviction.
鈥�A mixed society would be very poorly maintained on the basis of a moral world if one only flattered the senses with pleasant stimuli. For, even taking into account the vacuity of such provision, one could never be sure that the private taste of one individual member of society would not find repellent that which gave pleasure to another; and assuming that this would be resolved for everyone through sheer variety, it could not be said that the one shared the pleasure of the other, but that each would enjoy things for himself, and bury his feelings within.
But this society would not be much better satisfied if one supplied it with the profound truths of mathematics, physics, or diplomacy, for interest in these matters rays upon a particular understanding that cannot be expected from every person. The merely sensuous man and the man of specialised learning are thus both unsuitable subjects for conversation, because both equally lack the ability of generalising their private feelings, and making the general interest their own.
__________
"I love art and everything related to it above all else, and I admit that my inclination is to favour it before any other occupation of the mind. But it is not here what art is to me, but rather how it relates to the human spirit as a whole . . ."
It took me two, or three (maybe more) times as long to finish this than I had expected, because of the amount of arresting points that I came across and had to note down . . .
__________
I think I will carry what is contained in both Schiller's Letters, and Seneca's Letters, with me every day, for the rest of my life. They have both introduced some new notions and ideas with which I agree wholeheartedly, but they have both also clarified and expanded upon certain ideas, feelings, and views, that I already had.
I'll promise myself now: I will, one day, go through both Seneca's and Schiller's letters, one by one, clarifying in each what each author is saying, and how this relates to my beliefs, outlooks, and views . . .
__________
This Penguin edition (which I only discovered after reading, was first published in 2016; thanks Penguin!) contains Schiller's Letters which constitute On the Aesthetic Education of Man, but equally importantly, also contain, for the first time in an English translation, his Letters to Prince Frederick Christian von Augustenburg.
_____
The translation by Keith Tribe was excellent. I quickly read some reviews of this and noticed some people saying that they found it hard to understand what Schiller was saying. I suspect this may have been to the translation they were reading, because this more modern one is excellent. Any trouble with understanding will not be due to the translation.
Schiller is not too hard to understand, and no prior reading of Kant, or Burke, for example, is required to understand his ideas and concepts.
_____
The Prince was a sponsor of Schiller, allowing him "three of the intellectually most intense years of his life. He dedicated himself to a close study of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy, especially the aesthetic theory in the Critique of Judgement of 1790."
For the sake of brevity, I'm not going to comment on what Schiller touches upon right now, but I will say that he does not view asesthetics and the cultivation of taste as any kind of panacea of the first order, but as: a complement to morality; a substitute for true virtue, and some other things which I will not go into here.
I am not doing a full review here, so for now, please read some of the quotes I have included below. By doing so, you should easily see that his work stretches beyond purely theoretical aesthetics and the cultivation of taste, but more into the application. Do not read them all (unless you want to), but use them as an example of some of the views and ideas that are Schiller touches upon. I have not been exhaustive with the selection, but included some more extended passages which contain some of Schiller's more important and central arguments.
(Bolded passages below are ones that I personally find particularly insightful, perceptive &c. I apologise for any spelling errors, I was typing some of the longer passages in some haste . . .)
_____
Also, something you should bear in mind:
"To be sure, On the Aesthetic Education of Man is an ything but a rounded academic tract on asethetics and politics, leaving as it does many questions unanswered. How exactly would aesthetic education be implemented? What is the relation between the harmony-based model of liquifying beauty and the dynamic model of energetic beauty? But it must be remembered that the text is basically a fragment, a part of a larger, unfinished project. It shares this fate with some of the most important works in eighteenth-century thought, such as Rousseau's Social Contract" 鈥擣rom the Introduction
__________
鈥擮ur reputation for education and refinement, which we rightly value by comparison with all other merely natural humanity, is pulled up short by the natural humanity of the Greeks, for they freely embraced all the natural delights of art and worthiness of wisdom, though without being seduced by then as we have to our age; they are also our rivals, even our models, in respect of those very advantages in which we seek consolation and reassurance for our unnatural manners. At once complete in form and substance, at once philosophical and creative, at once gentle and energetic, the Greeks united the youth of imagination with the manhood of reason in a glorious humanity.
. . . How different are we moderns! The image of the human species in each of us has been enlarged, shattered and scattered as shards, not in proportioned admixtures; so that one has to go from one individual to another to reconstitute the totality of the species.
. . .Which modern man is prepared to challenge and one Athenian to debate the prize of humanity?
. . .How did an individual Greek come to be representative of his era, and why does no modern man claim this distinction? Because the first was formed as a unity by nature, and the second by an intellect that divided and subdivided.
鈥擨f the commonweal makes office the measure of man, if it prizes in one citizen only his memory, in another only mathematical understanding, in a third only a mechanical skill; if it is here indifferent to character and only interested in particular knowledge, but there by contrast a sense of order and lawful conduct is thought enough compensation for the most occult thinking - if at the same time these individual skills are to be pushed to such a degree of intensity as the subject allows in extension - should we be surprised that all other faculties of the mind are neglected, so that the one single faculty prized above all others should be exclusively rewarded? We do know that the powerful genius does not take the limits of his occupation to be the limits of his activity, but the mediocre talent uses up the entirety of his meagre powers in pursuing the occupation that has fallen to him; and anyone who has time left over for his own pursuits once his occupational duties are fulfilled must already be commonly gifted. Moreover, the state seldom thinks it any recommendation when powers exceed tasks; nor if the higher intellectual needs of the man of genius compete with the demands of office.
鈥擥reek states resembled a colony of polyps, for within themselves individuals enjoyed an independent life, although in times of necessity they could form into a whole; this new gave way to a clockwork mechanism, the joining together of an infinite number of lifeless parts to create a new mechanically driven whole. State and Church, laws and manners, means from end, effort from reward. Eternally shackled to one small fragment of the whole, man imagined himself to be a fragment, in his ear the constant and monotonous noise of the wheel that he turned; never capable of developing the harmony of his being, and instead marking the humanity in his nature, he simply became the impress of his occupation, his particular knowledge.
鈥擭ot for nothing does the ancient myth have the goddess of wisdom emerging fully armed from Jupiter's head; for her very first action is that of a warrior. Even at her birth she must enter a bitter struggle with senses that do not wish to be torn from sweet repose. .
The more numerous part of mankind is too tired and exhausted from its struggle with need to gird itself up for a new and more intense struggle against error. Happy to avoid the troublesome effort of thinking, they gladly leave the control of their concepts to others; and if it so happens that they rouse themselves to higher needs, they seize with greedy credulity upon the formulations that state and priesthood have prepared for them in anticipation.
Such people prefer the twilight of obscure belief, in which one can feel more alive and shape the imagination in whatever way one likes, to the ways of truth that chase away the comforting delusions of their dreams. These illusions, which the malevolent light of knowledge threatens to scatter, are the basis of all their happiness; how can they be expected to pay so much for a truth that begins by robbing them of all they hold so dear? To love wisdom, they would already have to be wise, which itself is a truth already felt by those who gave philosophy its name.
Culture of the capacity for feeling is the more urgent need at this time, not merely because it will enable better insight into life, but because it prompts the improvement of such insight itself.
鈥擨nclination can only say: that suits your individuality and your present need, but your individuality and your present need will be swept away with change, and what you today fiercely desire will in time behind the object of your disgust. If, however, moral feeling says: that shall be, then it decides for ever and eternity - if you admit truth because it is truth, and practice justice because it is just, then you have made over single case the rule for all cases, and treated one moment of your life as eternity.
鈥�The more aspects there are to man's receptivity, the more flexible it is and the greater the number of aspects presented to phenomena, so the greater the amount of the world that man can grasp, the more faculties he develops within himself. The more power and depth the personality gains, the more freedom that reason gains, so the more world does man comprehend, so the more form he creates outside of himself.
His culture would therefore consist of: firstly, bringing about the most varied contact with the world for the receptive faculty, while intensifying as far as possible passivity in feeling; secondly, securing for the determining faculty the greatest independence from the receptive faculty, developing reason to the greatest possibly degree of activity. Where both qualities are united, man will combine the most abundant existence with the greatest autonomy and liberty and, rather than losing himself in the world, instead draw into himself the sheer infinity of its phenomena and subordinate it to the unity of his reason.
鈥擮ne cannot therefore say that those who regard the aesthetic condition as the most fruitful in respect of knowledge and morality are entirely wrong. They are in fact completely right, for a disposition of the soul that comprehends all of humanity just necessarily and potentially also include within it every individual expression; a disposition of the soul that removes all limits from the entirety of human nature must also necessarily remove these limits from every single expression of the same.
Every other operation confers upon the soul a special skill, but for doing so sets a particular limit; only the aesthetic leads to the state of unlimitedness . . . only the aesthetic is a totality in itself, uniting in itself all the conditions of its origin and of its persistence. Only here do we feel ourselves torn from time . . .
鈥�Endorsing appearance of the first kind cannot harm truth, since one is never in danger of taking appearance for truth, which is in fact the only thing that can be harmful to truth; to despise appearance means to despise all fine art, for it is in its essence appearance. The enthusiasm of intellect for reality can sometimes lead to such a degree of intolerance that the whole art of beautiful appearance is dismissed out of hand, just because it is appearance; but this happens to the intellect only if it recalls the affinity mentioned above.
鈥�The answer to the question 'To what extent may appearance exist in the moral world?' is simply this: to the extent that it is aesthetic appearance, i.e. appearance that neither seeks to represent reality, nor needs to be represented by it. Aesthetic appearance can never endanger the truth of morals, where one finds otherwise, it will be demonstrated without any difficulty that the appearance was not aesthetic.
鈥擧owever since he now also includes outer form in his enjoyment, taking note of the form of things that satisfy his appetites, he goes beyond time itself, having not merely enhanced his enjoyment in extent and degree, but also ennobled the way in which he gains such enjoyment.
鈥擮ne had advanced so far with theoretical culture that the most sacred pillars of superstition were rocked, and the throne of thousand-year-old prejudice began to shake. Nothing was wanting save the signal for the great transformation.
鈥擯erhaps you may object, most serene Prince, that we have a circular argument here: that the character of a citizen depends just as much upon a constitution as that constitution depends on the citizen's character. I admit that, and so claim that, if we wish to break out of this circularity, we must either think of means of assisting the state without involving character, or deal with the character without involving the state. The first contains a contradiction, for no constitution can be conceived that is independent of the disposition of the citizen. However, perhaps there is something to the second idea, so that sources independent of the state might be made capable of refining ways of thought, but which sources for all their faults uphold the state in a pure and open manner.
鈥�But even if he is permitted to adhere to the spirit of the century, he should not take direction from it. The guiding laws of art do not take their form from a changing and often quite degenerated contemporary taste, but are founded in the necessity and eternity of human nature, in the original laws of the spirit. The pure source of beauty streams down from the divine part of our being, from the eternally pure ether of ideal mankind, uninfected by the spirit of the age that seethes in the dark eddies far below. It is for this reason that art can, in the midst of a barbaric and unworthy century, remain pure like a goddess, so long as its higher origin is remembered, and it does not itself become a slave to base intentions and needs. It is in this way that the few remnants of the Greek spirit wander through the night of our Nordic age, and the electric shock of this spirit arouses some related souls to a sense of their greatness.
鈥�In the same way that one can say that a person can receive freedom from another, even though freedom consists in man being relieved of any need to conduct himself in accordance with others, so one can just as well say that taste provides assistance to virtue, even though virtue expressly implies that it requires no external assistance.
鈥擬orality can therefore be furthered in two ways, just like it can be obstructed in two ways. Either one has to strengthen the part played by reason and the strength of good will so that no temptation can overwhelm them; or the power of temptation must be broken, so that a weaker reason and a weaker good will might still have the advantage.
Raw and uncouth souls lack both moral and aesthetic education, allow pure appetite to dictate to them, behaving merely as their desire leads them. Moral souls who lack aesthetic education allow reason to dictate to them, and it is only through respect for their duty that they triumph over temptation. In aesthetically refined souls there is a further item that quite often replaces virtue where it is lacking, and aids it where it is already present. This item is taste.
Taste can therefore be seen as the first weapon used by an aesthetic soul in its struggle against raw nature, driving back the assault before it becomes necessary for reason to intervene as a legislator, and pronounce judgement.
鈥�I have not here placed religion and taste together in one class unintentionally, for both have the merit of being a surrogate for true virtue, securing the regularity of actions where there is no hope of the obligation of conviction.
鈥�A mixed society would be very poorly maintained on the basis of a moral world if one only flattered the senses with pleasant stimuli. For, even taking into account the vacuity of such provision, one could never be sure that the private taste of one individual member of society would not find repellent that which gave pleasure to another; and assuming that this would be resolved for everyone through sheer variety, it could not be said that the one shared the pleasure of the other, but that each would enjoy things for himself, and bury his feelings within.
But this society would not be much better satisfied if one supplied it with the profound truths of mathematics, physics, or diplomacy, for interest in these matters rays upon a particular understanding that cannot be expected from every person. The merely sensuous man and the man of specialised learning are thus both unsuitable subjects for conversation, because both equally lack the ability of generalising their private feelings, and making the general interest their own.
March 27, 2025
Schiller har vidst fat i den lange ende.. Her kommer et herligt quote, som samler meget af det jeg tager med mig fra brevene:
鈥淒e gr忙ske staters polypnatur, der tillod ethvert individ at leve et uafh忙ngigt liv og om n酶dvendighed at blive helheden selv, afl酶stes af et kunstf忙rdigt urv忙rk, i hvilket mange, men livl酶se dele stykkes sammen til et mekanisk fungerende hele [鈥 Mennesket som i al evighed er l忙nket til et enkelt lille brudstykke af det hele, udvikler kun sig selv som brudstykke; da det evindeligt kun har den ensformige st酶j fra det hjul, der driver det, i 酶ret, udvikler det aldrig sit v忙sens harmoni, og i stedet for at lade mennesket komme til udtryk i sin natur, bliver det til et blot og bart aftryk af sin virksomhed, af sin videnskab. [鈥 Det d酶de bogstav tr忙der i stedet for den levende forstand, og en tr忙net hukommelse bliver en sikrere f酶rer end geni og f酶lelse.鈥� (37)
Selvom hans forherligelse af antikkens Gr忙kenland er weird, er det alligevel k忙mpe optur at l忙se disse breve. Man kan jo l忙se b氓de Marxistisk teori, eksistentialisme, Sontag, Bergson ind i det her.. og s氓 er det jo herligt at l忙se en romantiker som i det syvogtyvende og sidste brev henvender sig til mennesket der vil noget andet end det, der er; nemlig lighed <3 Han er jo simpelthen fortaler for det utopiske potentiale i kunsten.
Subjekterne er til for staten (begrebet 鈥渘ytte鈥� bliver brugt her), ikke omvendt. Han vil minde os om at vi ikke kun er statsborgere, men ogs氓 tidsborgere. Uden at forlade f忙nomenernes verden (formen) kan vi med 忙stetikken for en kort stund tr忙de ind i ideernes. Vi er 鈥渇rar酶vet menneskelighed鈥� - 鈥渇remmedgjorte鈥� Mao. - og udviklingen af f酶lelsen m氓 derfor v忙re tidens mest p氓tr忙ngende opgave, mener han. 鈥淚kke fordi den bliver et middel til at g酶re den forbedrede indsigt virksom for livet, men ogs氓 fordi den tilskynder til at forbedre indsigten.鈥� BUM!
鈥淒e gr忙ske staters polypnatur, der tillod ethvert individ at leve et uafh忙ngigt liv og om n酶dvendighed at blive helheden selv, afl酶stes af et kunstf忙rdigt urv忙rk, i hvilket mange, men livl酶se dele stykkes sammen til et mekanisk fungerende hele [鈥 Mennesket som i al evighed er l忙nket til et enkelt lille brudstykke af det hele, udvikler kun sig selv som brudstykke; da det evindeligt kun har den ensformige st酶j fra det hjul, der driver det, i 酶ret, udvikler det aldrig sit v忙sens harmoni, og i stedet for at lade mennesket komme til udtryk i sin natur, bliver det til et blot og bart aftryk af sin virksomhed, af sin videnskab. [鈥 Det d酶de bogstav tr忙der i stedet for den levende forstand, og en tr忙net hukommelse bliver en sikrere f酶rer end geni og f酶lelse.鈥� (37)
Selvom hans forherligelse af antikkens Gr忙kenland er weird, er det alligevel k忙mpe optur at l忙se disse breve. Man kan jo l忙se b氓de Marxistisk teori, eksistentialisme, Sontag, Bergson ind i det her.. og s氓 er det jo herligt at l忙se en romantiker som i det syvogtyvende og sidste brev henvender sig til mennesket der vil noget andet end det, der er; nemlig lighed <3 Han er jo simpelthen fortaler for det utopiske potentiale i kunsten.
Subjekterne er til for staten (begrebet 鈥渘ytte鈥� bliver brugt her), ikke omvendt. Han vil minde os om at vi ikke kun er statsborgere, men ogs氓 tidsborgere. Uden at forlade f忙nomenernes verden (formen) kan vi med 忙stetikken for en kort stund tr忙de ind i ideernes. Vi er 鈥渇rar酶vet menneskelighed鈥� - 鈥渇remmedgjorte鈥� Mao. - og udviklingen af f酶lelsen m氓 derfor v忙re tidens mest p氓tr忙ngende opgave, mener han. 鈥淚kke fordi den bliver et middel til at g酶re den forbedrede indsigt virksom for livet, men ogs氓 fordi den tilskynder til at forbedre indsigten.鈥� BUM!
October 9, 2014
膽峄峜 cho l峄沺 philosophy. n贸i chung c农ng 膽瓢峄. M矛nh 膽峄峜 quy峄僴 n脿y r峄搃 xem phim American Beauty. Kh么ng hi峄僽 phim n脿y li锚n quan g矛 膽岷縩 c谩i quy峄僴 s谩ch sau khi xem phim xong hai l岷. Nh瓢ng 媒 m脿 Schiller mu峄憂 n贸i v峄� Education r岷 c谩ch m岷g. L媒 tr铆 kh么ng th峄� 膽瓢a ch煤ng ta 膽岷縩 t峄� do, c岷 x煤c l岷 膽瓢a ta tr峄� v峄� v峄沬 b岷 n膬ng. C岷� hai c谩i n岷縰 t峄搉 t岷 膽峄檆 l岷璸 th矛 kh么ng th峄� h脿i h貌a 膽瓢峄. 膼峄� ti岷縩 t峄沬 t峄� do, con ng瓢峄漣 ph岷 h峄峜 c谩ch c岷 nh岷璶 v峄� c谩i 膽岷筽, v脿 t峄� 膽贸 con ng瓢峄漣 m峄沬 c贸 c岷 gi谩c v脿 l媒 tr铆 膽峄� h脿nh 膽峄檔g theo lu芒n l媒. Th岷� n锚n nh峄痭g ng瓢峄漣 l脿m ngh峄� thu岷璽 theo 么ng ta 膽岷縩 g岷 v峄沬 th峄眂 t岷 nh岷, 膽瓢峄 t峄� do nh岷.
鬲賳赖丕-丕賳丿讴蹖-禺賵丕賳丿赖-卮丿赖-赖丕
October 24, 2015丨丿賵丿 50 氐賮丨卮賵 禺賵賳丿賲 - 蹖毓賳蹖 卮卮 賳丕賲賴. 丨爻 禺丕氐蹖 亘乇丕蹖 丕丿丕賲賴 丿丕丿賳卮 賳丿丕卮鬲賲 丕賲丕 丕賲蹖丿賵丕乇賲 亘毓丿丕 亘禺賵賳賲卮 鬲賲賵賲 卮賴貙 丕夭 卮乇卮 乇丕丨鬲 卮賲! - 丕賱亘鬲賴 亘丿 亘乇丿丕卮鬲 賳卮賴 丕氐賱丕 賴蹖趩 囟乇賵乇鬲蹖 亘乇丕蹖 禺賵丕賳丿賳卮 賳丿丕乇賲
讴賱丕 亘丕 賳賵卮鬲丕乇 丌賱賲丕賳蹖 賴丕蹖 丕賵賳 丿賵乇丕賳 丨丕賱 賳賲蹖 讴賳賲 - 賴賲 丿卮賵丕乇 賳賵蹖爻蹖 賵 賴賲 丕胤賳丕亘 賵 賮囟賱 賮乇賵卮蹖. 丕蹖賳噩丕 賴賲 讴賱蹖鬲 丨乇賮 卮蹖賱乇 噩丕賱亘賴 - 丕蹖賳讴賴 亘丕蹖丿 亘蹖賳 丨爻 賵 毓賯賱貙 亘蹖賳 孬亘丕鬲 賵 鬲睾蹖蹖乇貙 亘蹖賳 囟乇賵乇鬲 賵 丌夭丕丿蹖貙 亘蹖賳 卮賴乇賵賳丿 賵 丿賵賱鬲 賵 ... 噩賲毓 讴乇丿 賵 丌賳 噩賲毓 丿乇 賵丕賯毓 賲賯丕賲 丕賳爻丕賳蹖 丕爻鬲 ( 丕賲乇蹖 賮乇丕爻賵蹖 丕蹖賳 賵 丌賳 ). 丕賲丕 丕賳賯丿乇 丨乇丕賮蹖 賲蹖 讴賳丿 卮蹖賱乇 讴賴 丕诏乇 丿賯鬲 讴賳蹖 賲蹖 亘蹖賳蹖 毓賲賱丕 丕賮賯蹖 亘乇丕蹖 丨賱 賲爻兀賱賴 亘丕夭 賳讴乇丿賴. 氐乇賮丕 丿丕卅賲 亘乇 乇賵蹖 丕蹖賳 毓賳氐乇 賮乇丕爻賵蹖 鬲囟丕丿 亘賵丿賳 鬲兀讴蹖丿 賲蹖 讴賳賴
丕诏乇 乇賵夭蹖 禺賵丕賳丿賲卮 丕蹖賳 鬲賵囟蹖丨丕鬲 乇丕 丿乇爻鬲 賵 讴丕賲賱 賲蹖 賳賵蹖爻賲
讴賱丕 亘丕 賳賵卮鬲丕乇 丌賱賲丕賳蹖 賴丕蹖 丕賵賳 丿賵乇丕賳 丨丕賱 賳賲蹖 讴賳賲 - 賴賲 丿卮賵丕乇 賳賵蹖爻蹖 賵 賴賲 丕胤賳丕亘 賵 賮囟賱 賮乇賵卮蹖. 丕蹖賳噩丕 賴賲 讴賱蹖鬲 丨乇賮 卮蹖賱乇 噩丕賱亘賴 - 丕蹖賳讴賴 亘丕蹖丿 亘蹖賳 丨爻 賵 毓賯賱貙 亘蹖賳 孬亘丕鬲 賵 鬲睾蹖蹖乇貙 亘蹖賳 囟乇賵乇鬲 賵 丌夭丕丿蹖貙 亘蹖賳 卮賴乇賵賳丿 賵 丿賵賱鬲 賵 ... 噩賲毓 讴乇丿 賵 丌賳 噩賲毓 丿乇 賵丕賯毓 賲賯丕賲 丕賳爻丕賳蹖 丕爻鬲 ( 丕賲乇蹖 賮乇丕爻賵蹖 丕蹖賳 賵 丌賳 ). 丕賲丕 丕賳賯丿乇 丨乇丕賮蹖 賲蹖 讴賳丿 卮蹖賱乇 讴賴 丕诏乇 丿賯鬲 讴賳蹖 賲蹖 亘蹖賳蹖 毓賲賱丕 丕賮賯蹖 亘乇丕蹖 丨賱 賲爻兀賱賴 亘丕夭 賳讴乇丿賴. 氐乇賮丕 丿丕卅賲 亘乇 乇賵蹖 丕蹖賳 毓賳氐乇 賮乇丕爻賵蹖 鬲囟丕丿 亘賵丿賳 鬲兀讴蹖丿 賲蹖 讴賳賴
丕诏乇 乇賵夭蹖 禺賵丕賳丿賲卮 丕蹖賳 鬲賵囟蹖丨丕鬲 乇丕 丿乇爻鬲 賵 讴丕賲賱 賲蹖 賳賵蹖爻賲
May 6, 2020
Muito se fala sobre o quanto a filosofia hegeliana foi um desenvolvimento do pensamento kantiano, desenvolvimento esse que abordava novas quest玫es, al茅m de modificar a resposta a algumas quest玫es antigas. Eu, nas minhas rasas leituras de Hegel, nunca fui capaz de perceber isso muito bem. Schiller, como um "kantiano" muit铆ssimo aplicado, me ajudou a compreender a ponte entre o pensamento de Kant e Hegel de uma maneira mais natural, j谩 que seu pensamento bebe muito de Kant, mas desemboca em caracter铆sticas que tomar茫o mais forma dentro da exposi莽茫o hegeliana. A constru莽茫o do pensamento de Schiller 茅 interessante e esse texto 茅 um "must-read" para qualquer estudante de est茅tica.
January 6, 2021
Mir haben Schillers Briefe eigentlich sehr gut gefallen. Allerdings hat sich die Thematik sehr in die L盲nge gezogen und vieles hat sich wiederholt. Ich glaube, Schiller im wesentlichen erfasst zu haben, auch wenn die Sprache und Wortverwendung nicht mehr zu hundert Prozent der unsrigen entspricht und dann und wann schwierig zu verstehen waren. Die Briefe lassen sich mit etwas Hintergrundwissen aber deutlich besser lesen, z.b der franz枚sischen Revolution und auch ein bisschen Wissen zu Kant schadet nicht. Besonders gefallen haben mir die Ausf眉hrungen zum Spieltrieb und insgesamt bin ich positiv beeindruckt von Schillers Erl盲uterungen diverser vertrackter menschlicher Zusammenh盲nge.
December 11, 2022
Live with your century, but do not be its creature; render to your contemporaries what they need, not what they praise.
Schiller's Letters have all the making of a five-star classic: the only problem is that much of it went over my head. This has to be one of the toughest books I have read over the past few years, abstract in the extreme, using inconsistent philosophical terms, but making points that I can understand are exhilarating (if only I could scratch below their surface). The prose can be quite fantastic(al) with passages of tremendous beauty jam-packed in between obscure sentences of which I can make little sense.
Despite this book being little over a hundred pages, I believe that this warrants a much, much more closer reading than what I have given it in a few sessions over the last month (the difficulty of this text is also reflected in the irregularity, and indeed, a complete halt in my daily reading that it has brought about).听
Schiller's Eighteenth Letter begins with a sentence that, in my view, is the central thesis (if there is one) of this work:
Through Beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to thought; through Beauty the spiritual man is brought back to matter and restored to sense.
In his artistic critique of the materialistic utilitarianism of industrialisation, Schiller is quite similar to both Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi (and I suspect, but cannot confirm, that he was an influence on the former):
...today Necessity is master, and bends a degraded humanity beneath its tyrannous yoke. Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance...the very spirit of philosophical enquiry seizes one province after another from the imagination, and the frontiers of Art are contracted as the boundaries of science are enlarged.
I can always appreciate these antimodern passages based on an appreciation of the aesthetic. But it is Schiller's philosophy, with its curious amalgamation of Fichte (his primary influence), Kant, and Rousseau that I find difficult to make sense. Perhaps the answer lies in reading Schiller himself as a work of art - an artist's rendition of philosophy - and not as a serious/rigorous work of philosophy in itself.听
I want to stress further on the similarities with Sri Aurobindo's The Human Cycle. Both Schiller and Sri Aurobindo focus on the need to balance unity and multiplicity - respectively the spiritual foundations for harmony and freedom - both in our individual and political existence.
There is much more to say here, but Schiller's work is inviting, and as a work of art, must be seen in the eyes of the beholder.听
...lust can be robbery, but love must be a gift.
Schiller's Letters have all the making of a five-star classic: the only problem is that much of it went over my head. This has to be one of the toughest books I have read over the past few years, abstract in the extreme, using inconsistent philosophical terms, but making points that I can understand are exhilarating (if only I could scratch below their surface). The prose can be quite fantastic(al) with passages of tremendous beauty jam-packed in between obscure sentences of which I can make little sense.
Despite this book being little over a hundred pages, I believe that this warrants a much, much more closer reading than what I have given it in a few sessions over the last month (the difficulty of this text is also reflected in the irregularity, and indeed, a complete halt in my daily reading that it has brought about).听
Schiller's Eighteenth Letter begins with a sentence that, in my view, is the central thesis (if there is one) of this work:
Through Beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to thought; through Beauty the spiritual man is brought back to matter and restored to sense.
In his artistic critique of the materialistic utilitarianism of industrialisation, Schiller is quite similar to both Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi (and I suspect, but cannot confirm, that he was an influence on the former):
...today Necessity is master, and bends a degraded humanity beneath its tyrannous yoke. Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance...the very spirit of philosophical enquiry seizes one province after another from the imagination, and the frontiers of Art are contracted as the boundaries of science are enlarged.
I can always appreciate these antimodern passages based on an appreciation of the aesthetic. But it is Schiller's philosophy, with its curious amalgamation of Fichte (his primary influence), Kant, and Rousseau that I find difficult to make sense. Perhaps the answer lies in reading Schiller himself as a work of art - an artist's rendition of philosophy - and not as a serious/rigorous work of philosophy in itself.听
I want to stress further on the similarities with Sri Aurobindo's The Human Cycle. Both Schiller and Sri Aurobindo focus on the need to balance unity and multiplicity - respectively the spiritual foundations for harmony and freedom - both in our individual and political existence.
There is much more to say here, but Schiller's work is inviting, and as a work of art, must be seen in the eyes of the beholder.听
...lust can be robbery, but love must be a gift.
May 3, 2022
I enjoyed this book, here are some notes I took to synthesize its affect. The ideal outcome of an aesthetic education, the 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥�, was first described and consequently popularized by the novelist C.M. Wieland in what is considered the first Bildungsroman . Schiller in this 1794 work 'On the Aesthetic Education of Man' develops this concept by giving it a new philosophical and political ground. He emphasizes his conception of its actual possibility and necessary development as the logical consequence of Kant鈥檚 Critical system especially its final work The Critique of the Power of Judgement, whilst maintaining the concepts philhellenic roots. Schiller鈥檚 innovative philosophical ideas are not limited to metaphysics but span across works on history, politics and especially aesthetics; this gives him a wholly new conception of freedom which is strongly related to what he terms 鈥榓esthetic education鈥� or otherwise the process of Bildung. I think Schiller wants to ground the necessity of an aesthetic education transcendentally in the demands of reason which seeks a holistic unity between the competing drives of the human psyche; the possibility of this, which is equally for Schiller the possibility of freedom, lies in the aesthetic mediation of the drives through their 'free play' this being stimulated by a public process of Bildung.
Necessity of Bildung
The methodology Schiller employs in arguing for the necessity of the possibility of an 鈥榓esthetic education鈥� is grounded in his reaction against previous doctrines which concern the aesthetic. He neatly summarizes this reaction in Letter XVIII of the AEoM stating 鈥楢ll the disputes about the concept of beauty (鈥�) have no other source than this, either the investigation did not start with a sufficiently strict distinction, or it was not carried through to a pure and complete synthesis鈥� , the first complaint referring to the 鈥榠ntuitive aesthetics鈥� championed by sentimentalists and the second to the strictly formal rationalism of philosophers such as Kant. It is clear however Schiller did not seek to overcome these positions but instead integrate them into a philosophical whole that could comprehend the formal structure of the beautiful without losing sight of the truth of its content given in intuition. In a footnote to the same section, he allies the task of the AEoM with that of 鈥榬eason鈥� tracking its historical development through thinkers with which he engages, stating: 鈥楴ature (sense and intuition) always unites, Intellect always divides; but Reason unites once more鈥� . This movement is akin to how Schiller understands history; the unity and wholeness found in the Greeks and reflected in the naturalist poetry of Goethe, the divide brought by the intellect reflected in the philosophy of Kant and the Terror of the French Revolution, and then finally his task or that of reason, the development of a second unity which provides a higher intellectual understanding of an original holism.
Schiller therefore embraces the enlightenment ideal concerning reason鈥檚 ability to demand and strive towards a holism, and thereby grounds the necessity of its possibility transcendentally following the metaphysical conclusions of Kant鈥檚 CIII. He still overcomes this position however in the AEoM by providing the grounds for the objective reality of freedom achieved in this unity, outlining a condition of being in beauty that sublates both reason and nature. So, although the demand is made by reason, its reality is found in beauty. Equally, Schiller seeks to ground his philosophical conclusions in reason but strives towards holism through the beauty of his plays. Schiller hereby returns to Shaftesbury鈥檚 original conception of art as identifying the 鈥榯ruth鈥� of its content, something strictly disallowed by Kant鈥檚 subjectivist turn in metaphysics. What he does maintain from Kant, something first developed by Baumgarten , is aesthetics wide range of application in understanding the unification of reason and nature, transcending its mere importance in art. This is crucial to Schillers notion of the 鈥榓esthetic education鈥� allowing for him to conceive of its practice widely , locating the necessity for it, besides metaphysics, in political history; both are developed here.
Metaphysical Necessity
Schiller鈥檚 metaphysics is a result of his attempt to maintain the formal aspects of Kant鈥檚 Critical system, while simultaneously seeking to overcome its subjectivism; or otherwise, the state of 鈥榰nlimited determinability鈥� that lacks all content which he claims the Kantian subject paradoxically exists in. Kant claims that when the faculty of judgement transitions between nature and morality to make an aesthetic judgement, each respective domain remains wholly self-sufficient and independently valid. Schiller introduces Reinhold鈥檚 conception of 鈥榙rives鈥� to highlight the paradoxicality of this position, refiguring Kant鈥檚 domain of reason and sensibility to 鈥榝orm鈥� and 鈥榮ense鈥� he claims 鈥榚ach of these two primary drives (鈥�) strives inevitably, according to its nature, to satisfaction鈥� , the main point being that these drives have different ends. He thereby reconceives Kant鈥檚 dualism as unnecessarily limiting humanity in its moral endeavours as it will inevitably remain in conflict with itself. This is not simply a moral critique trying to work on the readers sense of pathos, Schiller argues for his proof of the 鈥榩ossibility of the sublimest humanity鈥� by grounding its necessity transcendentally in the demands of reason as a self-organizing and harmonizing force in nature. Schiller locates this unity in the 鈥榚njoyment of beauty鈥� which he claims gives rise to a 鈥榓n actual union and interchange between matter and form鈥� brought about by the 鈥榩lay drive鈥�. He therefore makes a transcendental deduction in the way Kant argued for the principle of causality, applying the methodology to argue for the possibility of a generalization of the experience of beauty making it applicable in the practical sphere.
Schiller does not venture to provide an actual metaphysical ground for the 鈥榩lay drive鈥�, in his equivocation of it with freedom he intends a state which is free of all determination both from the faculty of reason and of nature . By integrating both in the play drive by their mutual delimitation Schiller maintains the universalism of their coinciding but independent validity. This state of 鈥榓esthetic determinability鈥� Schiller claims is transcendentally necessary for reason justifying its reality. Schiller thus reconceives Kant鈥檚 understanding of freedom as the capacity for the will to exercise noumenal causality by following the formal structure of the moral law. Instead, freedom is only achieved in a state of objective being or a holism which subsumes Kant鈥檚 equivocation of it with duty, maintaining it, but raising it to a higher level that additionally integrates the sense drive. It is here that we can see Schiller鈥檚 strong association with the naturalized ethics of the Greeks, the 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥� objectifying virtue to the extent that it synthesizes inclination and duty wholly, acting with 鈥榮uch purity and perfection that both conditions disappear entirely in a third one鈥� .
Virtue is thereby once again brought on par with the Kantian notion of duty and Schiller claims to have overcome what he saw as the limitations of the formal rationalists who 鈥榣imit the infinity of nature according to the laws of the discursive understanding鈥� . The question thus becomes if Schiller blatantly overstretched these laws to prove the necessity of the possibility of a successful aesthetic education. This necessity is however difficult to prove, it would mean that it is possible to act as he puts it in his essay On Grace and Dignity 鈥榰nintentionally when intentional movements are carried out鈥� , or equally to allow for the 鈥榠nfinite being realized in the finite鈥� . To attribute an inherent purposiveness to an object would ignore the merely regulative role Kant claimed reflective judgements play. This, as demonstrated by D. Pugh, relegates Schiller in his conception of teleology closer to a form of Neo-Platonism and leads Pugh to question if Schiller was at all interested in Kant鈥檚 鈥榬eformulation of the traditional problems of metaphysics as a new scientific metaphysics of experience鈥� .
Schiller in demonstrating the necessity of the possibility of an aesthetic education seems to sidestep this problem however, in part due to the Platonistic aspect of his thought . As pointed out by Schaper, there are key methodological differences here between Kant and Schiller; whereas Kant sought to identify the mode in which beauty is experienced, Schiller considered this as secondary and first sought the ideal form of the cognition of beauty: aesthetic determination . According to Schaper, Schiller here brings out 鈥榮uppressed tendencies鈥� of Platonistic thought within Kant who merely conceptualized the possibility of the reality of the intellectus archetypus but stopped there. Schiller oversteps the principles of Kants transcendental idealism by bringing out the ontologically 鈥榬eal in itself鈥� to be set against Kant鈥檚 subjectivism and played out these ideas in 鈥榓 key in which Kant never meant his music to be played鈥� . It was perhaps a key fitting to Schiller鈥檚 own artistic ends however, for he did radically diverge from Plato by setting the ends of art at the service of Kant鈥檚 Enlightenment project, providing in his AEoM what Beiser terms 鈥榯he poet鈥檚 reply to Plato鈥檚 Republic鈥� . The mere exhibition of these ends as the ideal form of a whole or a moral totality could thus in a Platonistic manner act as the axiomatic proof of the intelligibility of the 鈥榯hird character鈥� as there is no higher form it can be derived from. This conclusion runs parallel to a methodology he proclaims in the first letter of his AEoM where he states 鈥楥oncerning those idea which prevail in the Kantian system (鈥�) only the philosophers are at variance; the reast of mankind (鈥�) have always agreed鈥� , appealing here to common sense and affirming his belief in the return of reason to intuition in its final pronouncements. This interpretation of Schillers capacity to provide an adequate metaphysical foundation to prove the necessity of an aesthetic education, although lenient, at least situates him accurately historically as engaging critically with thinkers that outline the major obstacles found in both reason and nature for the creation of a political state of freedom.
Political Necessity
By elevating the concept of virtue to the same level of duty Schiller makes the appearance of freedom itself sensible, this occurs both on the individual and species level in terms of a 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥� and the 鈥榓esthetic state鈥� respectively. Kant鈥檚 鈥榢ingdom of ends鈥� is thus transposed by Schiller into a 鈥榢ingdom of taste鈥� and just as its achievement is for Kant conceived of as the highest good, Schiller claims his ends of social holism are 鈥榯he most perfect of all works of art, the building up of true political freedom鈥� . Schiller鈥檚 objectification of freedom as a state of being as opposed to Kant鈥檚 mere subjective formalist conception allows him to put more emphasis on the importance of the reality of political progress throughout history. This has as consequence that Schiller can demonstrate the necessity of an aesthetic education equally in his politics and his metaphysics as both are able to demonstrate reasons self-determined movement towards freedom.
To illustrate Schiller鈥檚 method in doing this it is possible to put him in dialogue with another Greek philosopher who theorized about the state, namely Aristotle, who in his Nicomachean Ethics investigated the relation between insight and ethics. Schiller was sympathetic to German conservative sentiment that the main motivator of action was desire as opposed to reason , as such humanity could theoretically have the proper insight into ethics but fail to realise these insights in practice; in Aristotle鈥檚 terms Schiller sought thus to overcome akrasia or weakness of will. This amounts for Schiller to a conflict embedded in our moral psychology between the same form and sense drive described in section 1.1. His realistic interpretation of teleology demands a necessary reconciliation of this conflict, one which can be understood retrospectively through historiography, he states in his 1789 lecture 鈥榓ll the past events of the world; the whole history of the world at least would be needed to explain this very moment鈥� . He proceeds to do this; polemicizing about both the domination of man by nature in his early existence and in turn the tyranny imposed on nature by reason during the French revolution. His divergence from Kant is seen in the latter claim and outlined in his 1795 Letters , instead of seeking an emancipation from nature through the diffusion of reason Schiller aims for a holistic reconciliation of nature achieved through an aesthetic education. Returning to the first problem of akrasia, Schiller believes human desires (sense) can be cultivated through education to align themselves with the ends of reason (form) through the play drive which de facto does not privilege either drive but allows for their mutual determination.
It is important to note that although Schiller thought that an aesthetic education was necessary for the realization of an ethical state of freedom, it was not wholly sufficient. This is to deter accusations of Schiller鈥檚 AEoM being an apolitical tract that merely espouses an aesthetic humanism that runs contra to the revolutionary spirit of his early plays . He states midway through the AeoM that we 鈥榗annot point to a single instance of a high degree (鈥�) of aesthetic culture going hand in hand with political freedom and civic virtue鈥� , Bildung is indeed an end for Schiller to the extent that it is necessary, but it is equally a means. This does not preclude the fact that there can be other means necessary to achieve this end, not excluding real political reform that is democratically decided upon in a liberal republican state. Schiller in his 1793 letters to the duke Augustenberg is for example aware of the limitations of a class society for providing a universal Bildung to a nation, he does not go as far as provide an economic solution, however he diagnoses it as a further consequence of the imbalance between drives. As pointed out by Beiser Schiller thought the limitation of culture to the upper classes led to indulgence and decadence, and the limited culture provided to the lower classes to vulgarism and immorality. Just as in his metaphysics Schiller sought to affect a mutual delimitation of these two drives to lead to a 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥�, in his politics it is a mutual delimitation of classes that leads to a liberal republican 鈥榓esthetic state鈥�.
Possibility of Bildung
A condition of minimal plausibility of any ethical theory according to Kant is that its necessity entails its possibility, or otherwise 鈥榦ught implies can鈥� . Thus, if one has a moral obligation to do something it must also be achievable in the natural world. Schiller maintains the basic formula of Kant鈥檚 categorical imperative, and thus has in his mind proven the possibility of an 鈥榓esthetic education鈥�. He has however reconfigured the imperative to not only apply to moral but also aesthetic obligation. This means that besides the form and sense drive outlined in section 1 there must also exist a real play drive that is resultant of the state of free play; one that is capable of a practical-self-consciousness that establishes for the subject a relation to the super-sensible to justify its telos. That reason demands such a play drive has been demonstrated in section one, the task however lies also in proving the possibility of it as a result of a synthesis or reconciliation between the form and sense drive.
For Schiller this reconciliation is equivalent to the mutual delimitation of psychological drives, the will is truly free because it is not strictly determined by either the form or the sense drive. What results is a state of 鈥榩lay鈥� or suspension between these two drives that is motivated by an understanding of their fundamental relation, an understanding supplied and trained by Bildung. This has as consequence that in the 鈥榓esthetic state鈥� the prevalent 鈥榓esthetic consciousness鈥� does not necessarily realise our full humanity but merely secures its possibility by creating certain conditions. Here Schiller makes an essential distinction, stating that through Bildung 鈥榯hat which endures is his person, that which changes, his condition鈥� . This reaffirms Schiller鈥檚 commitment to the production of an expressively social holism, whereas the Kantian subject can attain freedom individually according to the moral law, for Schiller it is a collective condition or state of being attained in a society. This also allows him to dodge the accusation that humanity rises to the status of an intellectus archetypus, this because every 鈥榙eterminate existence, has its origins in time鈥� we thus remain temporally determined although the 鈥榩ure Intelligence within us is eternal鈥� . Schiller hereby equates the possibility of an aesthetic education with the possibility of momentarily sharing in the eternal consciousness of God.
The transcendental ground that Schiller supplies for the necessity of an aesthetic education thus equally determines its possibility, although, due to its revision of Kant鈥檚 metaphysical dualism this possibility has for Schiller radical moral and political consequence鈥檚 which he seeks to embrace in his artistic output. The necessary synthesis of the psychological drives through their mutual delimitation leads to a state whereby the subject is wholly aesthetically determined, this leading to the objectification of virtue in the individual or what Schiller terms the 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥�. Its possibility lies in a public process of Bildung that seeks to cultivate man鈥檚 natural desires. This process, although not wholly sufficient is both a means and an end in the historical development towards Schillers conception
Necessity of Bildung
The methodology Schiller employs in arguing for the necessity of the possibility of an 鈥榓esthetic education鈥� is grounded in his reaction against previous doctrines which concern the aesthetic. He neatly summarizes this reaction in Letter XVIII of the AEoM stating 鈥楢ll the disputes about the concept of beauty (鈥�) have no other source than this, either the investigation did not start with a sufficiently strict distinction, or it was not carried through to a pure and complete synthesis鈥� , the first complaint referring to the 鈥榠ntuitive aesthetics鈥� championed by sentimentalists and the second to the strictly formal rationalism of philosophers such as Kant. It is clear however Schiller did not seek to overcome these positions but instead integrate them into a philosophical whole that could comprehend the formal structure of the beautiful without losing sight of the truth of its content given in intuition. In a footnote to the same section, he allies the task of the AEoM with that of 鈥榬eason鈥� tracking its historical development through thinkers with which he engages, stating: 鈥楴ature (sense and intuition) always unites, Intellect always divides; but Reason unites once more鈥� . This movement is akin to how Schiller understands history; the unity and wholeness found in the Greeks and reflected in the naturalist poetry of Goethe, the divide brought by the intellect reflected in the philosophy of Kant and the Terror of the French Revolution, and then finally his task or that of reason, the development of a second unity which provides a higher intellectual understanding of an original holism.
Schiller therefore embraces the enlightenment ideal concerning reason鈥檚 ability to demand and strive towards a holism, and thereby grounds the necessity of its possibility transcendentally following the metaphysical conclusions of Kant鈥檚 CIII. He still overcomes this position however in the AEoM by providing the grounds for the objective reality of freedom achieved in this unity, outlining a condition of being in beauty that sublates both reason and nature. So, although the demand is made by reason, its reality is found in beauty. Equally, Schiller seeks to ground his philosophical conclusions in reason but strives towards holism through the beauty of his plays. Schiller hereby returns to Shaftesbury鈥檚 original conception of art as identifying the 鈥榯ruth鈥� of its content, something strictly disallowed by Kant鈥檚 subjectivist turn in metaphysics. What he does maintain from Kant, something first developed by Baumgarten , is aesthetics wide range of application in understanding the unification of reason and nature, transcending its mere importance in art. This is crucial to Schillers notion of the 鈥榓esthetic education鈥� allowing for him to conceive of its practice widely , locating the necessity for it, besides metaphysics, in political history; both are developed here.
Metaphysical Necessity
Schiller鈥檚 metaphysics is a result of his attempt to maintain the formal aspects of Kant鈥檚 Critical system, while simultaneously seeking to overcome its subjectivism; or otherwise, the state of 鈥榰nlimited determinability鈥� that lacks all content which he claims the Kantian subject paradoxically exists in. Kant claims that when the faculty of judgement transitions between nature and morality to make an aesthetic judgement, each respective domain remains wholly self-sufficient and independently valid. Schiller introduces Reinhold鈥檚 conception of 鈥榙rives鈥� to highlight the paradoxicality of this position, refiguring Kant鈥檚 domain of reason and sensibility to 鈥榝orm鈥� and 鈥榮ense鈥� he claims 鈥榚ach of these two primary drives (鈥�) strives inevitably, according to its nature, to satisfaction鈥� , the main point being that these drives have different ends. He thereby reconceives Kant鈥檚 dualism as unnecessarily limiting humanity in its moral endeavours as it will inevitably remain in conflict with itself. This is not simply a moral critique trying to work on the readers sense of pathos, Schiller argues for his proof of the 鈥榩ossibility of the sublimest humanity鈥� by grounding its necessity transcendentally in the demands of reason as a self-organizing and harmonizing force in nature. Schiller locates this unity in the 鈥榚njoyment of beauty鈥� which he claims gives rise to a 鈥榓n actual union and interchange between matter and form鈥� brought about by the 鈥榩lay drive鈥�. He therefore makes a transcendental deduction in the way Kant argued for the principle of causality, applying the methodology to argue for the possibility of a generalization of the experience of beauty making it applicable in the practical sphere.
Schiller does not venture to provide an actual metaphysical ground for the 鈥榩lay drive鈥�, in his equivocation of it with freedom he intends a state which is free of all determination both from the faculty of reason and of nature . By integrating both in the play drive by their mutual delimitation Schiller maintains the universalism of their coinciding but independent validity. This state of 鈥榓esthetic determinability鈥� Schiller claims is transcendentally necessary for reason justifying its reality. Schiller thus reconceives Kant鈥檚 understanding of freedom as the capacity for the will to exercise noumenal causality by following the formal structure of the moral law. Instead, freedom is only achieved in a state of objective being or a holism which subsumes Kant鈥檚 equivocation of it with duty, maintaining it, but raising it to a higher level that additionally integrates the sense drive. It is here that we can see Schiller鈥檚 strong association with the naturalized ethics of the Greeks, the 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥� objectifying virtue to the extent that it synthesizes inclination and duty wholly, acting with 鈥榮uch purity and perfection that both conditions disappear entirely in a third one鈥� .
Virtue is thereby once again brought on par with the Kantian notion of duty and Schiller claims to have overcome what he saw as the limitations of the formal rationalists who 鈥榣imit the infinity of nature according to the laws of the discursive understanding鈥� . The question thus becomes if Schiller blatantly overstretched these laws to prove the necessity of the possibility of a successful aesthetic education. This necessity is however difficult to prove, it would mean that it is possible to act as he puts it in his essay On Grace and Dignity 鈥榰nintentionally when intentional movements are carried out鈥� , or equally to allow for the 鈥榠nfinite being realized in the finite鈥� . To attribute an inherent purposiveness to an object would ignore the merely regulative role Kant claimed reflective judgements play. This, as demonstrated by D. Pugh, relegates Schiller in his conception of teleology closer to a form of Neo-Platonism and leads Pugh to question if Schiller was at all interested in Kant鈥檚 鈥榬eformulation of the traditional problems of metaphysics as a new scientific metaphysics of experience鈥� .
Schiller in demonstrating the necessity of the possibility of an aesthetic education seems to sidestep this problem however, in part due to the Platonistic aspect of his thought . As pointed out by Schaper, there are key methodological differences here between Kant and Schiller; whereas Kant sought to identify the mode in which beauty is experienced, Schiller considered this as secondary and first sought the ideal form of the cognition of beauty: aesthetic determination . According to Schaper, Schiller here brings out 鈥榮uppressed tendencies鈥� of Platonistic thought within Kant who merely conceptualized the possibility of the reality of the intellectus archetypus but stopped there. Schiller oversteps the principles of Kants transcendental idealism by bringing out the ontologically 鈥榬eal in itself鈥� to be set against Kant鈥檚 subjectivism and played out these ideas in 鈥榓 key in which Kant never meant his music to be played鈥� . It was perhaps a key fitting to Schiller鈥檚 own artistic ends however, for he did radically diverge from Plato by setting the ends of art at the service of Kant鈥檚 Enlightenment project, providing in his AEoM what Beiser terms 鈥榯he poet鈥檚 reply to Plato鈥檚 Republic鈥� . The mere exhibition of these ends as the ideal form of a whole or a moral totality could thus in a Platonistic manner act as the axiomatic proof of the intelligibility of the 鈥榯hird character鈥� as there is no higher form it can be derived from. This conclusion runs parallel to a methodology he proclaims in the first letter of his AEoM where he states 鈥楥oncerning those idea which prevail in the Kantian system (鈥�) only the philosophers are at variance; the reast of mankind (鈥�) have always agreed鈥� , appealing here to common sense and affirming his belief in the return of reason to intuition in its final pronouncements. This interpretation of Schillers capacity to provide an adequate metaphysical foundation to prove the necessity of an aesthetic education, although lenient, at least situates him accurately historically as engaging critically with thinkers that outline the major obstacles found in both reason and nature for the creation of a political state of freedom.
Political Necessity
By elevating the concept of virtue to the same level of duty Schiller makes the appearance of freedom itself sensible, this occurs both on the individual and species level in terms of a 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥� and the 鈥榓esthetic state鈥� respectively. Kant鈥檚 鈥榢ingdom of ends鈥� is thus transposed by Schiller into a 鈥榢ingdom of taste鈥� and just as its achievement is for Kant conceived of as the highest good, Schiller claims his ends of social holism are 鈥榯he most perfect of all works of art, the building up of true political freedom鈥� . Schiller鈥檚 objectification of freedom as a state of being as opposed to Kant鈥檚 mere subjective formalist conception allows him to put more emphasis on the importance of the reality of political progress throughout history. This has as consequence that Schiller can demonstrate the necessity of an aesthetic education equally in his politics and his metaphysics as both are able to demonstrate reasons self-determined movement towards freedom.
To illustrate Schiller鈥檚 method in doing this it is possible to put him in dialogue with another Greek philosopher who theorized about the state, namely Aristotle, who in his Nicomachean Ethics investigated the relation between insight and ethics. Schiller was sympathetic to German conservative sentiment that the main motivator of action was desire as opposed to reason , as such humanity could theoretically have the proper insight into ethics but fail to realise these insights in practice; in Aristotle鈥檚 terms Schiller sought thus to overcome akrasia or weakness of will. This amounts for Schiller to a conflict embedded in our moral psychology between the same form and sense drive described in section 1.1. His realistic interpretation of teleology demands a necessary reconciliation of this conflict, one which can be understood retrospectively through historiography, he states in his 1789 lecture 鈥榓ll the past events of the world; the whole history of the world at least would be needed to explain this very moment鈥� . He proceeds to do this; polemicizing about both the domination of man by nature in his early existence and in turn the tyranny imposed on nature by reason during the French revolution. His divergence from Kant is seen in the latter claim and outlined in his 1795 Letters , instead of seeking an emancipation from nature through the diffusion of reason Schiller aims for a holistic reconciliation of nature achieved through an aesthetic education. Returning to the first problem of akrasia, Schiller believes human desires (sense) can be cultivated through education to align themselves with the ends of reason (form) through the play drive which de facto does not privilege either drive but allows for their mutual determination.
It is important to note that although Schiller thought that an aesthetic education was necessary for the realization of an ethical state of freedom, it was not wholly sufficient. This is to deter accusations of Schiller鈥檚 AEoM being an apolitical tract that merely espouses an aesthetic humanism that runs contra to the revolutionary spirit of his early plays . He states midway through the AeoM that we 鈥榗annot point to a single instance of a high degree (鈥�) of aesthetic culture going hand in hand with political freedom and civic virtue鈥� , Bildung is indeed an end for Schiller to the extent that it is necessary, but it is equally a means. This does not preclude the fact that there can be other means necessary to achieve this end, not excluding real political reform that is democratically decided upon in a liberal republican state. Schiller in his 1793 letters to the duke Augustenberg is for example aware of the limitations of a class society for providing a universal Bildung to a nation, he does not go as far as provide an economic solution, however he diagnoses it as a further consequence of the imbalance between drives. As pointed out by Beiser Schiller thought the limitation of culture to the upper classes led to indulgence and decadence, and the limited culture provided to the lower classes to vulgarism and immorality. Just as in his metaphysics Schiller sought to affect a mutual delimitation of these two drives to lead to a 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥�, in his politics it is a mutual delimitation of classes that leads to a liberal republican 鈥榓esthetic state鈥�.
Possibility of Bildung
A condition of minimal plausibility of any ethical theory according to Kant is that its necessity entails its possibility, or otherwise 鈥榦ught implies can鈥� . Thus, if one has a moral obligation to do something it must also be achievable in the natural world. Schiller maintains the basic formula of Kant鈥檚 categorical imperative, and thus has in his mind proven the possibility of an 鈥榓esthetic education鈥�. He has however reconfigured the imperative to not only apply to moral but also aesthetic obligation. This means that besides the form and sense drive outlined in section 1 there must also exist a real play drive that is resultant of the state of free play; one that is capable of a practical-self-consciousness that establishes for the subject a relation to the super-sensible to justify its telos. That reason demands such a play drive has been demonstrated in section one, the task however lies also in proving the possibility of it as a result of a synthesis or reconciliation between the form and sense drive.
For Schiller this reconciliation is equivalent to the mutual delimitation of psychological drives, the will is truly free because it is not strictly determined by either the form or the sense drive. What results is a state of 鈥榩lay鈥� or suspension between these two drives that is motivated by an understanding of their fundamental relation, an understanding supplied and trained by Bildung. This has as consequence that in the 鈥榓esthetic state鈥� the prevalent 鈥榓esthetic consciousness鈥� does not necessarily realise our full humanity but merely secures its possibility by creating certain conditions. Here Schiller makes an essential distinction, stating that through Bildung 鈥榯hat which endures is his person, that which changes, his condition鈥� . This reaffirms Schiller鈥檚 commitment to the production of an expressively social holism, whereas the Kantian subject can attain freedom individually according to the moral law, for Schiller it is a collective condition or state of being attained in a society. This also allows him to dodge the accusation that humanity rises to the status of an intellectus archetypus, this because every 鈥榙eterminate existence, has its origins in time鈥� we thus remain temporally determined although the 鈥榩ure Intelligence within us is eternal鈥� . Schiller hereby equates the possibility of an aesthetic education with the possibility of momentarily sharing in the eternal consciousness of God.
The transcendental ground that Schiller supplies for the necessity of an aesthetic education thus equally determines its possibility, although, due to its revision of Kant鈥檚 metaphysical dualism this possibility has for Schiller radical moral and political consequence鈥檚 which he seeks to embrace in his artistic output. The necessary synthesis of the psychological drives through their mutual delimitation leads to a state whereby the subject is wholly aesthetically determined, this leading to the objectification of virtue in the individual or what Schiller terms the 鈥榖eautiful soul鈥�. Its possibility lies in a public process of Bildung that seeks to cultivate man鈥檚 natural desires. This process, although not wholly sufficient is both a means and an end in the historical development towards Schillers conception
July 21, 2021
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) fue poeta, dramaturgo historiador y una de las eximias figuras del idealismo alem谩n. En sus 鈥楥artas est茅ticas sobre la educaci贸n est茅tica de la humanidad鈥� (1793-1795) expone un camino para alcanzar la libertad individual que no atente tampoco contra el orden social.
Confeso heredero de las ideas kantianas, Schiller ya desde el inicio de sus cartas apuesta por el desarrollo y futuro de la humanidad otorgando a la cultura est茅tica 鈥攜 por ende al arte aunque va m谩s all谩鈥� un papel crucial para alcanzar la libertad del individuo y hacerle a su vez social, es decir se podr铆a alcanzar un verdadero Estado org谩nico ideal basado en la libertad racional. Y es que cuando Fiedrich Schiller redact贸 sus cartas la Revoluci贸n Francesa, en un primer momento acogida con entusiasmo, atravesaba su periodo m谩s sangriento: el llamado R茅gimen del Terror (1793-1794), cap铆tulo hist贸rico este que no resulta balad铆 para entender parte del porqu茅 Schiller propugna 芦para solucionar el problema pol铆tico en la pr谩ctica es necesario tomar la v铆a est茅tica, porque el camino de la belleza conduce a la libertad禄 (c. 2, p. 11), pues de lo contrario, y como suced铆a ya en Francia, la ley de la mayor铆a podr铆a convertirse en tiran铆a y con ello suprimir la singularidad del individuo (c. 6, p. 36).
Pues bien, y sintetizando mucho, para Schiller hay dos cualidades fundamentales en el ser humano: los impulsos sensibles relacionados con el estado natural o f铆sico, y los impulsos formales que ata帽en al entendimiento, la voluntad, y que conducen a la determinaci贸n racional y las leyes. Para el fil贸sofo la clave para conseguir el estado del hombre ideal, es decir el libre, est谩 en c贸mo se realiza el paso del estado f铆sico al formal y para ello 芦ambos impulsos necesitan limitaci贸n; el sensible, para no traspasar el 谩mbito de la legislaci贸n; el formal, para no invadir el campo de la sensibilidad禄 (c. 13, p. 68). As铆 pues ser谩 con la armon铆a de ambos, y mediante el impulso del juego, entendido este como esa autonom铆a de la realidad de la actividad contemplativa y creadora que tiende a recrearse en la apariencia (c. 26, P. 136), como se podr铆a alcanzar tal armon铆a llamada 芦belleza ideal禄 (c. 16, p. 84).
Por tanto el entendimiento y la sensibilidad unidas bajo ese tercer y nuevo impulso, el del juego, servir铆a al hombre en su actividad como flujo por el cual conducir de forma adecuada la sensibilidad hacia la raz贸n. De tal suerte cabe entender as铆 c贸mo el Arte podr铆a completar la vida humana y cooperar en la evoluci贸n moral, porque la contemplaci贸n y la reflexi贸n de las cualidades est茅ticas de las cosas as铆 como la creaci贸n art铆stica son una manera de adiestrar el intelecto y de hallar la armon铆a (la belleza).
En definitiva, con todo ello, con esa educaci贸n 芦el hombre est茅ticamente formado podr谩 enunciar siempre que quiera juicios de valor universal y realizar actos dotados de valor universal禄 (c. 23, p.115).
Confeso heredero de las ideas kantianas, Schiller ya desde el inicio de sus cartas apuesta por el desarrollo y futuro de la humanidad otorgando a la cultura est茅tica 鈥攜 por ende al arte aunque va m谩s all谩鈥� un papel crucial para alcanzar la libertad del individuo y hacerle a su vez social, es decir se podr铆a alcanzar un verdadero Estado org谩nico ideal basado en la libertad racional. Y es que cuando Fiedrich Schiller redact贸 sus cartas la Revoluci贸n Francesa, en un primer momento acogida con entusiasmo, atravesaba su periodo m谩s sangriento: el llamado R茅gimen del Terror (1793-1794), cap铆tulo hist贸rico este que no resulta balad铆 para entender parte del porqu茅 Schiller propugna 芦para solucionar el problema pol铆tico en la pr谩ctica es necesario tomar la v铆a est茅tica, porque el camino de la belleza conduce a la libertad禄 (c. 2, p. 11), pues de lo contrario, y como suced铆a ya en Francia, la ley de la mayor铆a podr铆a convertirse en tiran铆a y con ello suprimir la singularidad del individuo (c. 6, p. 36).
Pues bien, y sintetizando mucho, para Schiller hay dos cualidades fundamentales en el ser humano: los impulsos sensibles relacionados con el estado natural o f铆sico, y los impulsos formales que ata帽en al entendimiento, la voluntad, y que conducen a la determinaci贸n racional y las leyes. Para el fil贸sofo la clave para conseguir el estado del hombre ideal, es decir el libre, est谩 en c贸mo se realiza el paso del estado f铆sico al formal y para ello 芦ambos impulsos necesitan limitaci贸n; el sensible, para no traspasar el 谩mbito de la legislaci贸n; el formal, para no invadir el campo de la sensibilidad禄 (c. 13, p. 68). As铆 pues ser谩 con la armon铆a de ambos, y mediante el impulso del juego, entendido este como esa autonom铆a de la realidad de la actividad contemplativa y creadora que tiende a recrearse en la apariencia (c. 26, P. 136), como se podr铆a alcanzar tal armon铆a llamada 芦belleza ideal禄 (c. 16, p. 84).
Por tanto el entendimiento y la sensibilidad unidas bajo ese tercer y nuevo impulso, el del juego, servir铆a al hombre en su actividad como flujo por el cual conducir de forma adecuada la sensibilidad hacia la raz贸n. De tal suerte cabe entender as铆 c贸mo el Arte podr铆a completar la vida humana y cooperar en la evoluci贸n moral, porque la contemplaci贸n y la reflexi贸n de las cualidades est茅ticas de las cosas as铆 como la creaci贸n art铆stica son una manera de adiestrar el intelecto y de hallar la armon铆a (la belleza).
En definitiva, con todo ello, con esa educaci贸n 芦el hombre est茅ticamente formado podr谩 enunciar siempre que quiera juicios de valor universal y realizar actos dotados de valor universal禄 (c. 23, p.115).
August 28, 2019
To me this was an introduction to Herr Schiller's philosophical work and I'm delighted to admit that liked it a lot. As an essay on aesthetics I find it to be an accurate sample of what an aesthetic work reads like. These are rather beautiful and uplifting ideas written here and recommend the book to everybody.
October 28, 2007
When I was a kid, I loved the crap out of this book (in a translation by, I think it was... Bruno Snell).
January 14, 2023
I always wonder why aesthetics and beauty give us the tendency to give up all reality and reason and we sacrifice truth to gain an attractive facade. What is it in the beauty that makes us irrational and we tend to be biased to it blindly? I was a victim of the halo effect and still to a certain degree when I always thought beauty equals all goodness and perfection without making any rational judgment.
it was a good read about aesthetics and beauty and I will reread it whenever I get the chance, highly recommended.
it was a good read about aesthetics and beauty and I will reread it whenever I get the chance, highly recommended.
April 9, 2025
How terrific it is to read someone like Schiller and have him affirm everything you鈥檝e ever thought about why your own aesthetic taste is unimpeachable. Vindication!
August 25, 2015
脕hugaver冒 og tengist a冒 m枚rgu leyti skrifum Antonins Artauds um tengsl l铆fs og listar, nema gengi冒 er 煤t fr谩 枚冒rum kenningum.
Hann fer svol铆ti冒 langt 谩 k枚flum 镁annig a冒 茅g fylgdi ekki alltaf allan t铆mann, en oft n谩冒i hann m茅r alveg.
Setningar eins og 镁essar:
"Nei, 茅g mun varast a冒 misbj贸冒a frj谩lsum anda y冒ar.",
"Lif冒u me冒 镁inni eigin 枚ld, en vertu ekki afkv忙mi hennar.",
"... umkringdu (samfer冒amenn 镁铆na) me冒 t谩knum fullkomnunarinnar, 镁ar til s媒ndin sigrar veruleikann og listin n谩tt煤runa.",
"... og s谩 sem aldrei 谩r忙冒ir a冒 fara 煤t fyrir landam忙ri hins raunverulega, hann muna aldrei hreppa sigurlaun sannleikans.",
"... heimurinn er 煤tf忙rsla 铆 t铆manum, breyting, ...",
"Til 镁ess a冒 geta dregi冒 upp mynd af einhverju 铆 r煤mi, ver冒um vi冒 a冒 takmarka hi冒 贸endanlega r煤m; til 镁ess a冒 geta 铆mynda冒 okkur breytingu 铆 t铆ma ver冒um vi冒 a冒 b煤ta ni冒ur t铆mann sem heild. ... ef ekki v忙ri eitthva冒 til sta冒ar sem v忙ri veri冒 a冒 煤tiloka fr谩, ef neitunin sem skilyr冒islaus hugsunarath枚fn v铆sa冒i ekki til einhvers raunveruleika... en 谩n alt忙ks r煤ms g忙tum vi冒 aldrei 谩kvar冒ar nokkurn sta冒 yfirleitt. ... en 谩n 贸endanlegs t铆ma g忙tum vi冒 aldrei numi冒 augnabliki冒.",
"... vi冒 n谩lgumst heildina 铆 gegnum einstaka hluta hennar, og hi冒 贸takmarka冒a einungis 铆 gegnum takmarkanirnar.",
"Vogask谩larnar eru 铆 jafnv忙gi 镁egar 镁忙r eru t贸mar; 镁忙r eru l铆ka 铆 jafnv忙gi 镁egar jafn 镁ungt er 铆 b谩冒um.",
"... hugsunin 镁arfnast l铆kama...",
"Fegur冒in ein f忙rir heiminum s忙lu, og s茅rhver vera gleymir takm枚rkunum s铆num svo lengi sem h煤n er undir t枚fravaldi hennar." og
"脥 r铆ki smekkv铆sinnar ver冒ur jafnvel hinn mesti snillingur a冒 afsala s茅r h谩tign sinni og st铆ga 铆 au冒m媒kt ni冒ur af stalli s铆num til 镁ess a冒 hugsa aftur eins og l铆ti冒 barn."
镁essar setningar eiga s茅r enn sta冒 铆 huganum.
Hann fer svol铆ti冒 langt 谩 k枚flum 镁annig a冒 茅g fylgdi ekki alltaf allan t铆mann, en oft n谩冒i hann m茅r alveg.
Setningar eins og 镁essar:
"Nei, 茅g mun varast a冒 misbj贸冒a frj谩lsum anda y冒ar.",
"Lif冒u me冒 镁inni eigin 枚ld, en vertu ekki afkv忙mi hennar.",
"... umkringdu (samfer冒amenn 镁铆na) me冒 t谩knum fullkomnunarinnar, 镁ar til s媒ndin sigrar veruleikann og listin n谩tt煤runa.",
"... og s谩 sem aldrei 谩r忙冒ir a冒 fara 煤t fyrir landam忙ri hins raunverulega, hann muna aldrei hreppa sigurlaun sannleikans.",
"... heimurinn er 煤tf忙rsla 铆 t铆manum, breyting, ...",
"Til 镁ess a冒 geta dregi冒 upp mynd af einhverju 铆 r煤mi, ver冒um vi冒 a冒 takmarka hi冒 贸endanlega r煤m; til 镁ess a冒 geta 铆mynda冒 okkur breytingu 铆 t铆ma ver冒um vi冒 a冒 b煤ta ni冒ur t铆mann sem heild. ... ef ekki v忙ri eitthva冒 til sta冒ar sem v忙ri veri冒 a冒 煤tiloka fr谩, ef neitunin sem skilyr冒islaus hugsunarath枚fn v铆sa冒i ekki til einhvers raunveruleika... en 谩n alt忙ks r煤ms g忙tum vi冒 aldrei 谩kvar冒ar nokkurn sta冒 yfirleitt. ... en 谩n 贸endanlegs t铆ma g忙tum vi冒 aldrei numi冒 augnabliki冒.",
"... vi冒 n谩lgumst heildina 铆 gegnum einstaka hluta hennar, og hi冒 贸takmarka冒a einungis 铆 gegnum takmarkanirnar.",
"Vogask谩larnar eru 铆 jafnv忙gi 镁egar 镁忙r eru t贸mar; 镁忙r eru l铆ka 铆 jafnv忙gi 镁egar jafn 镁ungt er 铆 b谩冒um.",
"... hugsunin 镁arfnast l铆kama...",
"Fegur冒in ein f忙rir heiminum s忙lu, og s茅rhver vera gleymir takm枚rkunum s铆num svo lengi sem h煤n er undir t枚fravaldi hennar." og
"脥 r铆ki smekkv铆sinnar ver冒ur jafnvel hinn mesti snillingur a冒 afsala s茅r h谩tign sinni og st铆ga 铆 au冒m媒kt ni冒ur af stalli s铆num til 镁ess a冒 hugsa aftur eins og l铆ti冒 barn."
镁essar setningar eiga s茅r enn sta冒 铆 huganum.
May 3, 2021
Libro magn铆fico, se pone denso en algunos momentos pero en otros tiene ideas geniales.
El ideal de belleza y el sentido de lo est茅tico en nuestrasociedad me parece m谩s que apropiado. Hoy en d铆a necesario.
La importancia de m谩s all谩 de tener una vida 煤til, funcional y progresar como sociedad. Tener una sociedad con individuos con vidas significantes, camino que se adquiere con la cultura est茅tica sin duda.
El ideal de belleza y el sentido de lo est茅tico en nuestrasociedad me parece m谩s que apropiado. Hoy en d铆a necesario.
La importancia de m谩s all谩 de tener una vida 煤til, funcional y progresar como sociedad. Tener una sociedad con individuos con vidas significantes, camino que se adquiere con la cultura est茅tica sin duda.
September 21, 2017
Poetic argument for the importance of the arts not only in the balancing and ideal functioning of the individual but for society as a whole. Schiller warns against an infatuation with the "quantifiable" disciplines at the expense of an appreciation for art. In our modern era of STEM obsession and general disunity, I think this book is as timely as ever.
February 25, 2015
Why did I just read this and what did I just read?
November 24, 2015
While I think Schiller intelligent, I had a hard time following him in this work. I would think it was just me, but I have digested the likes of Descartes and Hegel, who are both far more clear.
August 5, 2018
Most challenging book I have ever read.
Read
May 6, 2021Read this book for the XXIV Letter alone, a section of which must (I beg your pardon) be quoted at length:
鈥淲hat is Man before Beauty lures from him his free enjoyment and tranquil form tempers his wild life? Eternally uniform in his aims, eternally shifting in his judgements, self-seeking without being himself, unfettered without being free, a slave though serving no rule. At this period the world to him is merely destiny, not yet object; everything has existence for him only insofar as it secures existence for him what neither gives to him nor takes from him, is to him simply not there. Every phenomenon stands before him single and isolated, just as he finds himself in the ranks of beings. Everything that is, is to him through the instant鈥檚 word of command; every change is for him an entirely fresh creation, since together with the necessity *within himself* he lacks that necessity *outside himself* which binds together the varying shapes into a universe, and, with the passing of the individual, holds law firmly upon the scene of action. [鈥 Either he hurls himself at objects and wants to snatch them into himself in desire; or else the objects force their way destructively into him, and he thrusts them from him in abhorrence. [鈥 Ignorant of his own human dignity, he is far removed from honoring it in others, and conscious of his own savage greed, he fears it in every creature that resembles him.He never perceives others in himself, only himself in others; and society, instead of expanding him into the species, only confines him ever more closely inside his individuality."
My god! What a passage. This short but dense book has been really enlightening for me, not least of all because his thought sees as such a strong precursor to Hegel, which I have been reading a lot lately. I hope to become familiar with his lectures on aesthetics soon, in fact, after having read the Introduction to the lectures. In regards to Schiller鈥檚 influence on Hegel, Schiller receives warm praise from Hegel in the Introduction. In fact, in an interesting footnote by the editor of Schiller鈥檚 鈥淎esthetic Education" mentions that the German word *aufgehoben*, which can be translated as 鈥減reserved by destruction,鈥� was absolutely key to understanding Hegel鈥檚 dialectic鈥攖he footnote also mentions that Hegel probably derived this very technical term from Schiller, a term which would play such a profound role in his own philosophical system.
Using the language of Schiller, modern culture has inflicted a wound on society which has 鈥渆nlarged experience鈥� and 鈥渟harpened speculation鈥� to the point of stark separation between spheres of knowledge, guarding their field with jealousy and mistrust of other spheres. In this world, the individual may not rise up as a 鈥渨hole in themselves鈥� but fall back as a mere piece of machinery, a mere fragment of what he once was. As a result, the subject鈥檚 relationship to spheres of knowledge and other subjects, too, is likewise fragmented. The result is that the only method of thinking valued is a 鈥減atchwork of intellect鈥� and abstract generalization whose only play to compensate for the loss of wholeness is to 鈥渄isburden itself through classification鈥濃€攖he analytic impulse.
Like other Germans of his time Schiller looks back to the 鈥渨holeness鈥� of Greek society for an example of an echo of what a harmonious society might be鈥攖he individual and their world completely in accord with one another. Schiller admits that this 鈥減itch could not be maintained or surpassed鈥� for a higher calling was required of them which meant to rise to the occasion of greater clarity of knowledge, thus 鈥渟urrendering the wholeness of their being鈥� in the pursuit of truth. This antagonism between reality and the ideal of truth is the driver of culture鈥擲chiller sees this antagonism as culture itself, a self-moving prophecy where the pure and empirical intellects undermine the authority of one another.
Did the Greeks err in shedding their wholeness? This would be besides the point, I think. I do think that, similar to Hegel after him, Schiller sees the various commitments of life as teasing out contradictions in understanding which were always available to speculative thought. Schiller calls these commitments a 鈥減artiality in the exercise of powers鈥濃€攖his partiality (driven by our particularity of existence.. our 鈥渘on-omnipotence鈥�) causes us to 鈥渁ttach wings鈥� to a single power which elevates it above its peers, dismembering Reason. This drive brushes us against the Absolute, and the cause of truth is furthered.
Like any birth, there is pain (Schiller uses the allegory of Athena being birthed, fully armed, from the head of Zeus to illustrate the rather cutthroat nature of this pursuit of truth) but a new breath of life runs through humankind. After all, Rome suffered through civil war and Greece through servitude before realizing its moment of genius, a moment which established its truth for eternity. Schiller sees the role of the artist as this figure which pushes us beyond the accepted boundaries of our understanding by way of realizing the ideal (timelessness) in time (conditional). Rather than the being who simply consumes as a 鈥渟imple formless content of time,鈥� the artist lends form to their material rather than simply destroying it through consumption. Tarrying with the ideal and reality, the artist cannot but strive to become, yet should never simply settle to be themself. The artist is a creator!
What the artist *does* is put in motion a reciprocal relationship between two impulses鈥攖he form impulse (Reason, the moral, which can鈥檛 purely exist in time but is active, yet must be realized) and the sense impulse (Nature, the conditional, which requires time and variety, but allows no freedom and is passive, yet must be recognized). To use roughly synonymous terms employed by Schiller, the act of creation is a proper founding of determinate being in the absolute and the realization of the absolute in determinate being. The mixture of these impulses results in the *play impulse* which lies at the center of Schiller鈥檚 project, and is meant to satisfy both the moral and physical, where life and shape are entwined to produce the *living shape.鈥� This is not mere toying, but he act of giving form to Nature. This living shape gives rise to what Schiller considers Beauty, which is the basis of the aesthetic science.
We should consider this a moment鈥擲chiller is not arguing for a 鈥渟tandard鈥� of beauty or any sort of 鈥渂eauty analytic鈥� which would focus on properties of/or objects of beauty. This would, according to Schiller, be impossible, since proper Beauty is the result of the intermingling of the finite and the infinite. To plot out the relationship between the two is not to be broached by either Reason or empirical detailing鈥攖his is why Beauty lies at the heart of who we are as partially spiritual, partially material beings. Beauty, thus, has no common object, but is the divine come down to earth. Beauty = 鈥渘ot mere life, nor mere shape, but living shape [鈥 absolute formality, absolute reality.鈥�
Furthermore, Schiller urges that Beauty is not a straddling of stable categories of form and reality, but by canceling out opposition which are supposed to remain eternally opposed. Opposition is overcome not which the two ideal and real constituents mix, but when the constituents cancel each other out, forming a new whole which leaves no trace of the division. As a result Beauty is what is preserved by this destruction. The arresting movement of Beauty involves a 鈥渉armony of laws鈥� coupled with an 鈥渋nclusion of all realities.鈥�
While nature combines all, the intellect divides all. Only Reason combines again. An interesting footnote by Schiller points out that this is the paradox of humankind鈥� that knowledge was a kind of expulsion from the Eden of pure nature where all was whole. Knowledge introduced division, antagonism. Only reason can once again make us whole. In Schiller鈥檚 own words,
鈥淸鈥 before [Man] begins to philosophize, therefore, Man is nearer the truth than the philosopher who has not yet completed his inquiry.鈥�
Which kind of reminds me of the Alexander Pope quote which encourages us to drink deep in knowledge if we chose to drink at all, for the one who knows a little is stupider than the one who knows nothing. Or something like that. (Haha!)
Anyway, the fulfillment of these two impulses is an act of freedom, for both impulses are fundamental (as nature, necessity outside ourself and Reason, necessity inside ourself) and must be developed to make the person whole. Freedom is, then, the observance of the law of Beauty鈥攏ature as authority and the will as authority are both forms of slavery, while the reconciliation of the two is a voluntary recognition stemming from speculation, where we place objects (and ourselves) at a distance from us.
This said, Beauty is able to restore us to a state similar to the untutored state of nature, yet altogether higher than such a naive state, for the world becomes *ours* insofar as we are responsible for the creation of a world which bows to no authority apart from the law of Beauty while reconciles concrete determination with the Ideal. This is why Schiller calls Beauty our 鈥淪econd Creator鈥� insofar as through it we are reborn, reconciled with the world in a harmony of inner and outer impulse. The world of objects is no longer one of annihilation (in the natural state) or fear (in the pure-morality state) but one which we revere as something integral to ourselves. For Schiller, this is the proper sense of the 鈥渉uman being鈥� which goes beyond the 鈥渞ational animal鈥� many thinkers have made human kind out to be.
鈥淭he divine monster of the Oriental, that governs the world with the blind strength of a beast of prey, dwindles in the Grecian fantasy into the friendly outlines of humanity; the empire of the Titans falls, and infinite force is mastered by infinite form."
Aesthetic, as it has been articulated, not only has consequences for art theory but for political theory as well鈥擲chiller鈥檚 conception of the 鈥淎esthetic State鈥� would a a state in which people did their duty not out of a sense of obligation or force, but as an exercise of Freedom, feeling a sense of ownership in their determinations.
A truly excellent book鈥攖here鈥檚 a certain 鈥渉igh鈥� you get from German philosophy you don鈥檛 get elsewhere.
鈥淲hat is Man before Beauty lures from him his free enjoyment and tranquil form tempers his wild life? Eternally uniform in his aims, eternally shifting in his judgements, self-seeking without being himself, unfettered without being free, a slave though serving no rule. At this period the world to him is merely destiny, not yet object; everything has existence for him only insofar as it secures existence for him what neither gives to him nor takes from him, is to him simply not there. Every phenomenon stands before him single and isolated, just as he finds himself in the ranks of beings. Everything that is, is to him through the instant鈥檚 word of command; every change is for him an entirely fresh creation, since together with the necessity *within himself* he lacks that necessity *outside himself* which binds together the varying shapes into a universe, and, with the passing of the individual, holds law firmly upon the scene of action. [鈥 Either he hurls himself at objects and wants to snatch them into himself in desire; or else the objects force their way destructively into him, and he thrusts them from him in abhorrence. [鈥 Ignorant of his own human dignity, he is far removed from honoring it in others, and conscious of his own savage greed, he fears it in every creature that resembles him.He never perceives others in himself, only himself in others; and society, instead of expanding him into the species, only confines him ever more closely inside his individuality."
My god! What a passage. This short but dense book has been really enlightening for me, not least of all because his thought sees as such a strong precursor to Hegel, which I have been reading a lot lately. I hope to become familiar with his lectures on aesthetics soon, in fact, after having read the Introduction to the lectures. In regards to Schiller鈥檚 influence on Hegel, Schiller receives warm praise from Hegel in the Introduction. In fact, in an interesting footnote by the editor of Schiller鈥檚 鈥淎esthetic Education" mentions that the German word *aufgehoben*, which can be translated as 鈥減reserved by destruction,鈥� was absolutely key to understanding Hegel鈥檚 dialectic鈥攖he footnote also mentions that Hegel probably derived this very technical term from Schiller, a term which would play such a profound role in his own philosophical system.
Using the language of Schiller, modern culture has inflicted a wound on society which has 鈥渆nlarged experience鈥� and 鈥渟harpened speculation鈥� to the point of stark separation between spheres of knowledge, guarding their field with jealousy and mistrust of other spheres. In this world, the individual may not rise up as a 鈥渨hole in themselves鈥� but fall back as a mere piece of machinery, a mere fragment of what he once was. As a result, the subject鈥檚 relationship to spheres of knowledge and other subjects, too, is likewise fragmented. The result is that the only method of thinking valued is a 鈥減atchwork of intellect鈥� and abstract generalization whose only play to compensate for the loss of wholeness is to 鈥渄isburden itself through classification鈥濃€攖he analytic impulse.
Like other Germans of his time Schiller looks back to the 鈥渨holeness鈥� of Greek society for an example of an echo of what a harmonious society might be鈥攖he individual and their world completely in accord with one another. Schiller admits that this 鈥減itch could not be maintained or surpassed鈥� for a higher calling was required of them which meant to rise to the occasion of greater clarity of knowledge, thus 鈥渟urrendering the wholeness of their being鈥� in the pursuit of truth. This antagonism between reality and the ideal of truth is the driver of culture鈥擲chiller sees this antagonism as culture itself, a self-moving prophecy where the pure and empirical intellects undermine the authority of one another.
Did the Greeks err in shedding their wholeness? This would be besides the point, I think. I do think that, similar to Hegel after him, Schiller sees the various commitments of life as teasing out contradictions in understanding which were always available to speculative thought. Schiller calls these commitments a 鈥減artiality in the exercise of powers鈥濃€攖his partiality (driven by our particularity of existence.. our 鈥渘on-omnipotence鈥�) causes us to 鈥渁ttach wings鈥� to a single power which elevates it above its peers, dismembering Reason. This drive brushes us against the Absolute, and the cause of truth is furthered.
Like any birth, there is pain (Schiller uses the allegory of Athena being birthed, fully armed, from the head of Zeus to illustrate the rather cutthroat nature of this pursuit of truth) but a new breath of life runs through humankind. After all, Rome suffered through civil war and Greece through servitude before realizing its moment of genius, a moment which established its truth for eternity. Schiller sees the role of the artist as this figure which pushes us beyond the accepted boundaries of our understanding by way of realizing the ideal (timelessness) in time (conditional). Rather than the being who simply consumes as a 鈥渟imple formless content of time,鈥� the artist lends form to their material rather than simply destroying it through consumption. Tarrying with the ideal and reality, the artist cannot but strive to become, yet should never simply settle to be themself. The artist is a creator!
What the artist *does* is put in motion a reciprocal relationship between two impulses鈥攖he form impulse (Reason, the moral, which can鈥檛 purely exist in time but is active, yet must be realized) and the sense impulse (Nature, the conditional, which requires time and variety, but allows no freedom and is passive, yet must be recognized). To use roughly synonymous terms employed by Schiller, the act of creation is a proper founding of determinate being in the absolute and the realization of the absolute in determinate being. The mixture of these impulses results in the *play impulse* which lies at the center of Schiller鈥檚 project, and is meant to satisfy both the moral and physical, where life and shape are entwined to produce the *living shape.鈥� This is not mere toying, but he act of giving form to Nature. This living shape gives rise to what Schiller considers Beauty, which is the basis of the aesthetic science.
We should consider this a moment鈥擲chiller is not arguing for a 鈥渟tandard鈥� of beauty or any sort of 鈥渂eauty analytic鈥� which would focus on properties of/or objects of beauty. This would, according to Schiller, be impossible, since proper Beauty is the result of the intermingling of the finite and the infinite. To plot out the relationship between the two is not to be broached by either Reason or empirical detailing鈥攖his is why Beauty lies at the heart of who we are as partially spiritual, partially material beings. Beauty, thus, has no common object, but is the divine come down to earth. Beauty = 鈥渘ot mere life, nor mere shape, but living shape [鈥 absolute formality, absolute reality.鈥�
Furthermore, Schiller urges that Beauty is not a straddling of stable categories of form and reality, but by canceling out opposition which are supposed to remain eternally opposed. Opposition is overcome not which the two ideal and real constituents mix, but when the constituents cancel each other out, forming a new whole which leaves no trace of the division. As a result Beauty is what is preserved by this destruction. The arresting movement of Beauty involves a 鈥渉armony of laws鈥� coupled with an 鈥渋nclusion of all realities.鈥�
While nature combines all, the intellect divides all. Only Reason combines again. An interesting footnote by Schiller points out that this is the paradox of humankind鈥� that knowledge was a kind of expulsion from the Eden of pure nature where all was whole. Knowledge introduced division, antagonism. Only reason can once again make us whole. In Schiller鈥檚 own words,
鈥淸鈥 before [Man] begins to philosophize, therefore, Man is nearer the truth than the philosopher who has not yet completed his inquiry.鈥�
Which kind of reminds me of the Alexander Pope quote which encourages us to drink deep in knowledge if we chose to drink at all, for the one who knows a little is stupider than the one who knows nothing. Or something like that. (Haha!)
Anyway, the fulfillment of these two impulses is an act of freedom, for both impulses are fundamental (as nature, necessity outside ourself and Reason, necessity inside ourself) and must be developed to make the person whole. Freedom is, then, the observance of the law of Beauty鈥攏ature as authority and the will as authority are both forms of slavery, while the reconciliation of the two is a voluntary recognition stemming from speculation, where we place objects (and ourselves) at a distance from us.
This said, Beauty is able to restore us to a state similar to the untutored state of nature, yet altogether higher than such a naive state, for the world becomes *ours* insofar as we are responsible for the creation of a world which bows to no authority apart from the law of Beauty while reconciles concrete determination with the Ideal. This is why Schiller calls Beauty our 鈥淪econd Creator鈥� insofar as through it we are reborn, reconciled with the world in a harmony of inner and outer impulse. The world of objects is no longer one of annihilation (in the natural state) or fear (in the pure-morality state) but one which we revere as something integral to ourselves. For Schiller, this is the proper sense of the 鈥渉uman being鈥� which goes beyond the 鈥渞ational animal鈥� many thinkers have made human kind out to be.
鈥淭he divine monster of the Oriental, that governs the world with the blind strength of a beast of prey, dwindles in the Grecian fantasy into the friendly outlines of humanity; the empire of the Titans falls, and infinite force is mastered by infinite form."
Aesthetic, as it has been articulated, not only has consequences for art theory but for political theory as well鈥擲chiller鈥檚 conception of the 鈥淎esthetic State鈥� would a a state in which people did their duty not out of a sense of obligation or force, but as an exercise of Freedom, feeling a sense of ownership in their determinations.
A truly excellent book鈥攖here鈥檚 a certain 鈥渉igh鈥� you get from German philosophy you don鈥檛 get elsewhere.
January 12, 2019
Om menneskets estetiske oppdragelse er skrevet av Schiller, og man merker at han er veldig opptatt av 氓 ha en kantiansk fremstilling av mennesket. Denne boken er god 鈥� 氓 lese figurer fra opplysningstiden skrive 芦Sapere Aude!禄, er like motiverende for 氓nden som 氓 lese eksistens-filosofiske verk. Under lesningen merket jeg at det ble vanskelig 氓 oppfatte alt som ble skrevet, ettersom nye definisjoner og slutninger ble tatt hele tiden, men jeg fikk fortsatt et stort utbytte av lesingen. Det som i alle fall var klart, var hovedform氓let: 氓 fremstille hva 芦lekedriften禄 g氓r ut p氓.
Schiller skiller mellom tre ulike drifter: Stoffdrift, formdrift og lekedrift. De mest 氓penbare av de tre er stoffdriften og formdriften. Stoffdrift betegner det sanselige og erfaringsbaserte; det spontane og begj忙rlige. Formdrift betyr den delen av menneske氓nden som tenker, danner lover og forholder seg til det n酶dvendige. Denne dualismen er gjennomg氓ende i all filosofi og dukker ogs氓 opp her. Heller enn 氓 sammensl氓 en syntese, velger Schiller (inspirert av Kant) 氓 skrive at erfaringen og tankene er parallelle funksjoner som utgj酶r menneskets uendelige muligheter. N氓r tankenes n酶dvendighet og sanseverdenens spontanitet kommer i en viss harmoni oppl酶ses begge deler, skriver Schiller. Denne oppl酶sningen/foreningen kaller Schiller for det estetiske. Han legger vekt p氓 at vi m氓 s酶ke etter det 芦skj酶nne禄, ettersom tankene og sansene er forutsetninger og ikke m氓l. Det skj酶nner er ment ganske bokstavelig og betegner den h酶yeste form for skj酶nnhet som enkeltmennesket kan forestille seg.
芦S氓 lenge mennesket, i sin f酶rste fysiske tilstand, bare passivt opptar sanseverdenen i seg, er det enn氓 fullstendig ett med denne tilstand. Og nettopp fordi det selv bare er verden, eksisterer det enn氓 ingen verden for det. F酶rst n氓r mennesket i sin estetiske tilstand stiller verden opp utenfor seg eller betrakter den, skiller dets personlighet seg ut fra den.禄
Skj酶nnheten er ikke enten form eller objekt, men begge deler samtidig: Vi opplever det skj酶nne som noe ytre samtidig som vi merker det i v氓rt indre. Det er en motsigelse mellom menneskets evne til 氓 sanse og tenke, men disse blir forent ved det skj酶nne, som er en egen natur for hva det vil si 氓 v忙re menneske. Dette 氓pner for uendelige muligheter, ettersom vi ikke kun f氓r muligheten til 氓 gi objekter verdi, men ogs氓 v氓r tilstand 鈥� friheten finner plass. Livet er alts氓 et objekt for fantasien, som skal fylle de tomme formene og forme de fylte legemene. Alt vi ser, skriver Schiller, er en illusjon som vi m氓 hengi oss til med et rent hjerte, fordi det rene hjertet ikke 酶nsker noe annet enn det skj酶nne.
I boken ser man ogs氓 hvordan disse driftene reflekteres i samfunn og politikk, kunst og filosofi. Boken bruker et litt avansert spr氓k, men er stort sett ganske leselig om man har litt forkunnskaper om emnet som tas opp. Det var ogs氓 fint 氓 lese en filosofisk avhandling skrevet av en kunstner, for man merker meget at de vakre beskrivelsene kun kan v忙re produkter av en kunstnersjel. 4/5
Schiller skiller mellom tre ulike drifter: Stoffdrift, formdrift og lekedrift. De mest 氓penbare av de tre er stoffdriften og formdriften. Stoffdrift betegner det sanselige og erfaringsbaserte; det spontane og begj忙rlige. Formdrift betyr den delen av menneske氓nden som tenker, danner lover og forholder seg til det n酶dvendige. Denne dualismen er gjennomg氓ende i all filosofi og dukker ogs氓 opp her. Heller enn 氓 sammensl氓 en syntese, velger Schiller (inspirert av Kant) 氓 skrive at erfaringen og tankene er parallelle funksjoner som utgj酶r menneskets uendelige muligheter. N氓r tankenes n酶dvendighet og sanseverdenens spontanitet kommer i en viss harmoni oppl酶ses begge deler, skriver Schiller. Denne oppl酶sningen/foreningen kaller Schiller for det estetiske. Han legger vekt p氓 at vi m氓 s酶ke etter det 芦skj酶nne禄, ettersom tankene og sansene er forutsetninger og ikke m氓l. Det skj酶nner er ment ganske bokstavelig og betegner den h酶yeste form for skj酶nnhet som enkeltmennesket kan forestille seg.
芦S氓 lenge mennesket, i sin f酶rste fysiske tilstand, bare passivt opptar sanseverdenen i seg, er det enn氓 fullstendig ett med denne tilstand. Og nettopp fordi det selv bare er verden, eksisterer det enn氓 ingen verden for det. F酶rst n氓r mennesket i sin estetiske tilstand stiller verden opp utenfor seg eller betrakter den, skiller dets personlighet seg ut fra den.禄
Skj酶nnheten er ikke enten form eller objekt, men begge deler samtidig: Vi opplever det skj酶nne som noe ytre samtidig som vi merker det i v氓rt indre. Det er en motsigelse mellom menneskets evne til 氓 sanse og tenke, men disse blir forent ved det skj酶nne, som er en egen natur for hva det vil si 氓 v忙re menneske. Dette 氓pner for uendelige muligheter, ettersom vi ikke kun f氓r muligheten til 氓 gi objekter verdi, men ogs氓 v氓r tilstand 鈥� friheten finner plass. Livet er alts氓 et objekt for fantasien, som skal fylle de tomme formene og forme de fylte legemene. Alt vi ser, skriver Schiller, er en illusjon som vi m氓 hengi oss til med et rent hjerte, fordi det rene hjertet ikke 酶nsker noe annet enn det skj酶nne.
I boken ser man ogs氓 hvordan disse driftene reflekteres i samfunn og politikk, kunst og filosofi. Boken bruker et litt avansert spr氓k, men er stort sett ganske leselig om man har litt forkunnskaper om emnet som tas opp. Det var ogs氓 fint 氓 lese en filosofisk avhandling skrevet av en kunstner, for man merker meget at de vakre beskrivelsene kun kan v忙re produkter av en kunstnersjel. 4/5
Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.