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Key
Ideas of Schiller’s “Aesthetic Letters” from F. C. Beiser’s “Schiller as
Philosopher” 1. What was “Aesthetic
Letters”? “A
study of aesthetic education with a theory of the beautiful”(123), “An apology
for beauty, a defense of the aesthetic dimension of human life(124): While
the discussion of aesthetic education treats beauty as an instrument for moral
and political ends, the theory of beauty regards it as an end in itself 2. Schiller and the Republican
Tradition If
a rational constitution were firmly and finally established, Schiller explains,
he would leave the muses and devote all his energies to the state (262). But he
doubts that such a perfectly rational state can be realized, at least not in
the foreseeable future. The problem is that the people are not ready for it.
They lack a civil education. The events in France have shown that, if the
people are not sufficiently educated, they will act only on their animal
desires as soon as they shake off the constraints of the old despotism; they
will not act for the sake of the common good but will simply follow their
self-interest. As a result, the constitution will remain a dead letter, having
no effect in practice. After making this point, Schiller finally reveals his
fundamental principle: that a person has the right to civil freedom only when
they demonstrate their capacity for moral freedom (264). All reform that is to
have stability and permanence should be based upon the habits, dispositions and
way of thinking of a people (264). Any attempt to change the constitution of a
people is untimely until the character of the people themselves has been
reformed(125). It
is important to stress that Schiller’s fundamental principle—that civil freedom
must derive from moral character—ultimately derives from the modern republican
tradition, the tradition of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau and FergusonˇAll
these thinkers stressed that a republic is possible only if its citizens first
possess virtue, a concern for the public good over their private interest.
Their argument in behalf of this principle is perfectly plausible. A republic
requires that people should participate in the affairs of the state, and that
they should restrain their interests for the sake of the common good. If they do
not have such virtue, the republic will degenerate into a competitive
free-for-all where everyone pursues their own self-interest. Hence, when placed
in its broader context, Schiller’s principle proves to be as political as the
republican tradition itself(124-25) ˇSchiller’s broader context shows that his
decision to discuss aesthetics was not an escape from the political. Rather,
that decision is based on a principle that one can regard only as political:
that virtue is the only possible foundation for a republic. It derived from
Schiller’s allegiance to the republican tradition, which had always stressed
the importance of education for the state. Schiller’s distinctive contribution
to that tradition is his insistence on the preeminent importance of aesthetic
education(126). 3. The Letters and the
Crisis of Enlightenment The
evident failure of the Revolution to establish a secure and stable constitution
for France made many question the wisdom of building society and the state on
strictly rational principles(130). Although Schiller was indeed critical of the Jacobins, who
were ready to use force for radical change, this hardly casts him among the
reactionary party. If we place Schiller’s position in the broad spectrum of
political views in the 1790s, then it reveals itself to be moderate,
progressive and liberalˇThe aim of the Briefe is precisely to rescue the
causes of enlightenment and republicanism in the face of such conservative
criticismˇ Like most German moderates in the 1790s, Schiller believed that
republican ideals could be achieved only through cautious and gradual reform.
His reformism was somewhat unique, however, because, unlike most moderates, he
did not think that reform should come from above, from the policies of
enlightened princes. Rather, since modern states were the very source of
corruption, and indeed a threat to liberty, he argued that reform would have to
come from below, and more specifically from enlightened individuals taking
responsibility for the education of the peopleˇTheAufklärung has
destroyed prejudice, superstitution and fanatacism; and it has amassed
knowledge about the principles of natural morality and religion. But this growth
in theoretical culture has not been matched by a corresponding growth in practical
culture (NA XXVI, 299–301). Although the Aufklärung has determined the
fundamental principles of reason, the problem is that people still do not act according
to them. The reason that people do not act on them, Schiller first suggests, is
fundamentally a moral problem. It lies in a lack of resolve, a failure of will
(298). The ancients had an inkling of this problem when they formulated their
adage: Sapere aude! We need resolution, commitment, and
energy to carry out and realize in practice what we already know in theory. To
address this moral issue, Schiller argues, we must educate people. What we need
to do is to change their attitudes, dispositions and heart. Only then will
people be ready and willing to incorporate the principles of reason into their
lives(133). 4. What is Man? The
distinction between person and condition also involves that between form and
matter (343). The person by itself is mere form, something purely
indeterminate, a mere disposition to become something determinate. It becomes
something determinate only if it has an object for its activity, or only if it
receives matter from outside itself. Schiller says that the person must be
determinate to exist, and that it becomes something determinate only through
its matter; hence it exists only through its matter, i.e. by embodying its
activity in something external to itself. As he neatly puts it: though it is
only insofar as it is unchanging that it exists, it is only insofar as it
changes that it exists (343). Here Schiller follows Fichte and breaks
decisively (if silently) with Kant: he is virtually saying that the Kantian
noumenal self exists only in and through its determinate phenomenal manifestation.
Although Schiller makes a sharp distinction between form and content, he also insists
upon their interdependence (343)ˇSchiller calls the ‘two fundamental laws of
our sensible-rational nature’ (344). The first demand is that we should
materialize form, i.e. we should externalize and embody it in something
particular. The second demand is that we should formalize matter, i.e. we
should internalize it and make it our own. We materialize form when we
externalize something inner; and we formalize matter when we internalize
something outer. In the twelfth letter, Schiller explains that there are two
aspects of our nature corresponding to each of these demands. Following
Reinhold, he calls each of them drives.⁹ There is the form drive,
whose task is to formalize matter, or to internalize what is external; and
there is the sense drive, whose task is to externalize what is internal (344).
Schiller’s distinction between these two drives sounds like, but is in fact
broader than, Kant’s distinction between understanding and sensibility. Kant’s distinction
is essentially theoretical, dealing with the two basic elements of knowledge, concepts
and intuitions; Schiller’s distinction is not only theoretical but also practical,
since the sense drive encompasses feelings and desires as well as sensations, and
the form drive involves not only concepts but also moral principles (138-39). 5. What is Beauty? The
task of an aesthetic education is not simply to make the individual become the
ideal, as if their individuality could then be discarded, but also to make the
ideal become individual(140). Granted
that culture must synthesize the realms of unity and multiplicity, universality
and individuality, reason and sensibility, where each opposite is given equal
weight, how are we to conceive such a synthesis? Schiller calls the synthesis of
his two fundamental drives, the form and sense drives, ‘the play drive’ (Spieltrieb).
But what does this mean? Why does he call the unity of these two drives ‘play’?
Schiller states that his use of the term ‘play’ conforms entirely to ordinary
usage because play means ‘everything that is neither subjectively nor objectively
contingent, and that still neither externally nor internally constrains’ (357).
Such abstruse language alludes to the paradoxical fact that play is neither necessary
nor arbitrary: not necessary, because we do not play from need but do it for
its own sake; not arbitrary, because our actions still conform to rules. In general
and more simply, Schiller contrasts play with seriousness and necessity, with
what we must do according to some constraint or because of some need. Given
this account of the concept of play, we can now begin to understand how the
synthesis of the two drives is play. Each of the drives, taken on their own,
subjects a human being to a form of constraint. The sense drive imposes the
constraint of physical need; and the form drive imposes the constraint of
reason, which demands that we act on moral principle. When, however, we
synthesize the two drives, each limits the other and so frees us from the
constraint of the other. Sensibility ceases to constrain us when morality makes
its claims upon us; and morality ceases to constrain us once a cultivated
sensibility intervenes, which takes pleasure in acting according to duty. Since
in this synthesis we are no longer subject to constraint, and since play
characterizes those activities not subject to constraint, their synthesis
consists in playˇThe human being who unites its form and sense drives into a
perfect harmony is the beautiful soul. When the beautiful soul acts, Schiller
writes in Anmut und Würde, it does so with a sense of lightness or ease because
it is free from the constraints of both sensibility and reason(141). Play
Drive: Schiller’s general definition of play in Letter XV, which is at first so
forbidding and abstract, also makes perfect sense when it is placed in the
context of his original ideal of the beautiful soul. The general definition
states that play is neither necessary nor arbitrary. We should describe the
actions of the beautiful soul in the same terms. They are neither arbitrary nor
necessary. On the one hand, they are not arbitrary because, although they seem
to happen spontaneously and naturally, they still conform to rules; they are
really the result of the agent’s having internalized moral principles, of his
so greatly identifying with them that he enjoys acting on them. On the other
hand, they are not necessary because, as we have just seen, neither sensibility
nor reason are a constraint when the agent takes pleasure in acting on the
principle of duty(142). Having
introduced the play drive in Letter XIV, Schiller turns to his deduction of
beauty in Letter XV. This letter is pivotal, since here Schiller finally
reaches, if only provisionally and abstractly, the conclusion that he had
promised in the tenth letter: that the full development of our humanity
consists in beauty. It is therefore something of an anticlimax to read
Schiller’s extremely dense and schematic deduction. Schiller argues that the
object of the sense drive is life, and that the object of the form drive is
form, so that the synthesis of these drives consists in living form, which is
beauty (355). In other words, the synthesis of these drives means that sense
must be formalized, and that form must be sensualized; the combination of these
activities is the unity of form and sense, which is beauty(143). (1) Reason demands that we should
perfect our humanity.
(2) The perfection of humanity consists in the unity of the form and sense drives.
(3) The unity of the form and sense drives is beauty.
Therefore, Reason demands that we should create beauty(144). 6. Freedom as Beauty The
transcendental argument attempts to show that the aesthetic condition of a
human being consists in freedom; and the causal argument states that this
freedom is best achieved through a work of art; in other words, it maintains
that it is the specific and ideal function of a work of art to put someone in
that aesthetic state(150)ˇthere are two meanings to freedom. There is freedom
as the attribute of our reason alone, and there is freedom as an attribute of
our whole nature. As an attribute of reason alone, freedom means autonomy, the
power to make laws for oneself; but as an attribute of our whole nature, it
means acting according to the totality of our being, which involves not only
reason but sensibility too. Schiller is most clear about his second kind of
freedom in the beginning of Letter XX when he writes that freedom arises ‘only when man is a
complete being, when both his fundamental drives are fully developed’, and that
such freedom will be lacking ‘as long as one of the two drives is excluded’
(374). In
making his distinction between the two kinds of freedom, Schiller was implicitly
criticizing Kant’s views and distinguishing his own from them. While Kant
recognizes freedom in the former sense—freedom as an attribute of reason alone—Schiller
implies that it is necessary to go further and to recognize another sense in
which it is an attribute of our whole nature. There are two implied criticisms
of the Kantian conception here. First, in making freedom into moral autonomy,
willing and acting according to rational principles, Kant does not assign any
role at all to sensibility, so that his freedom is possible without
sensibility. Second, Kant’s concept of freedom is compatible even with the
repression of sensibility, so that his freedom is possible even when acting
contrary to sensibility. Having introduced his new concept of freedom, Schiller
now anticipates in Letter XIX a central contention of the next two letters:
that to achieve beauty makes us free. We have seen from Letters XI–XV that
human self-realization or wholeness consists in beauty; and we now learn from
Letters XVIII–XXI that freedom consists in such self-realization or wholeness.
If we add these premises together, it follows that freedom consists in beauty.
Schematically, the argument goes as follows: (1)
Beauty consists in wholeness, the full realization of the sense and form drives.
(The argument of Letters XI to XV.) (2)
Wholeness, the full realization of the sense and form drives, consists in freedom.
(The definition of freedom in Letter XIX.) (3)
Beauty consists in freedom. Although
Schiller never puts his reasoning so formally or explicitly, it is implicit throughout
Letters XX and XXI. It contains his ultimate defense of beauty: that it alone
makes us free. The whole argument develops the earlier definition of beauty in
the Kallias Briefe. Whereas that definition explains beauty from the
standpoint of the spectator, for whom beauty is the appearance of freedom, this
argument explains beauty from the standpoint of the moral agent, for whom the
achievement of beauty is the attainment of freedom(153). 7. The Aesthetic Condition Like
Kant’s aesthetic contemplation, Schiller’s aesthetic condition is
indeterminate, not imparting any specific direction to our activity. Armed with
his concept of the aesthetic condition, Schiller now believes that he is
finally in a position to consider the question of the moral value of beauty.
Since it is indeterminate or determinable, the aesthetic condition does not lead
to any specific result; it does not produce a definite kind of action, whether
moral or immoral. It would therefore seem that the aesthetic condition is
useless, because it does not make us better morally. Those who claim that
beauty is unfruitful are perfectly correct, Schiller admits, insofar as beauty
yields no result for will or intellect (377). Yet, precisely because it is
indeterminate, the aesthetic condition does have an even greater value for us:
it restores our freedom to us. Since we have become determinable, we can now
make of ourselves whatever we want (377–8). What
beauty gives us, then, is not a moral or intellectual result—a good action or a
true proposition—but the freedom to produce a good action or a true
proposition. And so, Schiller concludes, the great value of beauty lies in
freedom(156). The
great strategic value of the concept of the aesthetic condition is that it allows
Schiller to combine the apparently incombinable: the moral value of beauty and
the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy. Aesthetic autonomy seems to demand that art
have its value completely independent of morality, and indeed it even seems to
exclude morality insofar as making art conform to moral ends amounts to
aesthetic heteronomy. Schiller avoids this apparent implication of the doctrine,
however, by insisting that the essential value of art lies in the realm of freedom
itself, and more specifically with the power of choice and decision. Since we
cannot identify such freedom with a specific kind of action, we need not fear that
it conforms to specific moral ends. Yet the greatest and highest moral value, Schiller
believes, lies in freedom, where this freedom is not simply moral autonomy, action
according to the moral law, but the power of choice, our capacity to decide
between alternative courses of action, whether they be moral or immoral. It is
precisely this form of freedom that is restored to us through the aesthetic
condition, and that will be inculcated through an aesthetic education. Such an
education will therefore have the highest moral value of all. 8. The Aesthetic State Schiller
introduces his concept of the aesthetic state by contrasting it with two other
forms of the state: the dynamic and the ethical. The basic constrast is made in
a single involved sentence (410, 14–20). In the dynamic state of rights, one
person confronts another as a power (Kraft ) and limits his actions. In the
ethical state of duty, one person encounters another according to moral law and
limits his will. In the aesthetic state, one person engages with another only
as an object of free playˇ. If the governing principle of the
dynamic state is power, and if the governing principle of the ethical state is
the moral law, the governing principle of the aesthetic state is taste. It is
taste alone, Schiller contends, that brings harmony in society, because it
alone brings harmony to each individual (410). The other forms of association
address only one aspect or part of our being. The dynamic state treats us
simply as physical beings, who join society simply from self-interest or
physical need. The ethical state treats us simply as rational beings, who join
society because it is a universal moral law. The aesthetic state alone regards
us as whole beings, as both rational and sensible, because we participate in
social life from inclination rather than duty. Clearly, the citizens of the
aesthetic state are the beautiful souls of Anmut und Würde, who act on
duty from inclination and with pleasure. It is only beauty, Schiller claims,
that gives a human being a social character (410). The forms of association in
the other two states separate us from one another. The dynamic state addresses
only our sensibility; the pleasures of sensibility, however, are something
private. The ethical state appeals only to our reason, whose universal laws abstract
from all individuality. Only in beauty do we bring together both universal and
individual, the will of the whole and the nature of the individual. The society
Schiller wants to form is one that people join through their own free
disposition. They do not do so out of physical need, as in the dynamic state; and
they do not do so out of moral obligation, as in the ethical state. Rather,
they do so from their social character, from the fact that they have
incorporated the moral law within their will, so that they want the company of
others. When Schiller says that the aesthetic state unites the individual with
the whole what he means is that the beautiful soul belongs to it from
inclination, from love, and not from a sense of obligation or a sense of
self-interest. The basic idea is that people participate in the social organism
from inclination, from their whole character. The bond of the state is not
self-interest, it is not moral obligation, but it is the sympathy and love that
comes from social character. What Schiller has in mind here is something like
patriotism(162). |
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Key
Ideas of Schiller’s “Aesthetic Letters” from F. C. Beiser’s “Schiller as
Philosopher” 1. What was “Aesthetic
Letters”? “A
study of aesthetic education with a theory of the beautiful”(123), “An apology
for beauty, a defense of the aesthetic dimension of human life(124): While
the discussion of aesthetic education treats beauty as an instrument for moral
and political ends, the theory of beauty regards it as an end in itself 2. Schiller and the Republican
Tradition If
a rational constitution were firmly and finally established, Schiller explains,
he would leave the muses and devote all his energies to the state (262). But he
doubts that such a perfectly rational state can be realized, at least not in
the foreseeable future. The problem is that the people are not ready for it.
They lack a civil education. The events in France have shown that, if the
people are not sufficiently educated, they will act only on their animal
desires as soon as they shake off the constraints of the old despotism; they
will not act for the sake of the common good but will simply follow their
self-interest. As a result, the constitution will remain a dead letter, having
no effect in practice. After making this point, Schiller finally reveals his
fundamental principle: that a person has the right to civil freedom only when
they demonstrate their capacity for moral freedom (264). All reform that is to
have stability and permanence should be based upon the habits, dispositions and
way of thinking of a people (264). Any attempt to change the constitution of a
people is untimely until the character of the people themselves has been
reformed(125). It
is important to stress that Schiller’s fundamental principle—that civil freedom
must derive from moral character—ultimately derives from the modern republican
tradition, the tradition of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau and FergusonˇAll
these thinkers stressed that a republic is possible only if its citizens first
possess virtue, a concern for the public good over their private interest.
Their argument in behalf of this principle is perfectly plausible. A republic
requires that people should participate in the affairs of the state, and that
they should restrain their interests for the sake of the common good. If they do
not have such virtue, the republic will degenerate into a competitive
free-for-all where everyone pursues their own self-interest. Hence, when placed
in its broader context, Schiller’s principle proves to be as political as the
republican tradition itself(124-25) ˇSchiller’s broader context shows that his
decision to discuss aesthetics was not an escape from the political. Rather,
that decision is based on a principle that one can regard only as political:
that virtue is the only possible foundation for a republic. It derived from
Schiller’s allegiance to the republican tradition, which had always stressed
the importance of education for the state. Schiller’s distinctive contribution
to that tradition is his insistence on the preeminent importance of aesthetic
education(126). 3. The Letters and the
Crisis of Enlightenment The
evident failure of the Revolution to establish a secure and stable constitution
for France made many question the wisdom of building society and the state on
strictly rational principles(130). Although Schiller was indeed critical of the Jacobins, who
were ready to use force for radical change, this hardly casts him among the
reactionary party. If we place Schiller’s position in the broad spectrum of
political views in the 1790s, then it reveals itself to be moderate,
progressive and liberalˇThe aim of the Briefe is precisely to rescue the
causes of enlightenment and republicanism in the face of such conservative
criticismˇ Like most German moderates in the 1790s, Schiller believed that
republican ideals could be achieved only through cautious and gradual reform.
His reformism was somewhat unique, however, because, unlike most moderates, he
did not think that reform should come from above, from the policies of
enlightened princes. Rather, since modern states were the very source of
corruption, and indeed a threat to liberty, he argued that reform would have to
come from below, and more specifically from enlightened individuals taking
responsibility for the education of the peopleˇTheAufklärung has
destroyed prejudice, superstitution and fanatacism; and it has amassed
knowledge about the principles of natural morality and religion. But this growth
in theoretical culture has not been matched by a corresponding growth in practical
culture (NA XXVI, 299–301). Although the Aufklärung has determined the
fundamental principles of reason, the problem is that people still do not act according
to them. The reason that people do not act on them, Schiller first suggests, is
fundamentally a moral problem. It lies in a lack of resolve, a failure of will
(298). The ancients had an inkling of this problem when they formulated their
adage: Sapere aude! We need resolution, commitment, and
energy to carry out and realize in practice what we already know in theory. To
address this moral issue, Schiller argues, we must educate people. What we need
to do is to change their attitudes, dispositions and heart. Only then will
people be ready and willing to incorporate the principles of reason into their
lives(133). 4. What is Man? The
distinction between person and condition also involves that between form and
matter (343). The person by itself is mere form, something purely
indeterminate, a mere disposition to become something determinate. It becomes
something determinate only if it has an object for its activity, or only if it
receives matter from outside itself. Schiller says that the person must be
determinate to exist, and that it becomes something determinate only through
its matter; hence it exists only through its matter, i.e. by embodying its
activity in something external to itself. As he neatly puts it: though it is
only insofar as it is unchanging that it exists, it is only insofar as it
changes that it exists (343). Here Schiller follows Fichte and breaks
decisively (if silently) with Kant: he is virtually saying that the Kantian
noumenal self exists only in and through its determinate phenomenal manifestation.
Although Schiller makes a sharp distinction between form and content, he also insists
upon their interdependence (343)ˇSchiller calls the ‘two fundamental laws of
our sensible-rational nature’ (344). The first demand is that we should
materialize form, i.e. we should externalize and embody it in something
particular. The second demand is that we should formalize matter, i.e. we
should internalize it and make it our own. We materialize form when we
externalize something inner; and we formalize matter when we internalize
something outer. In the twelfth letter, Schiller explains that there are two
aspects of our nature corresponding to each of these demands. Following
Reinhold, he calls each of them drives.⁹ There is the form drive,
whose task is to formalize matter, or to internalize what is external; and
there is the sense drive, whose task is to externalize what is internal (344).
Schiller’s distinction between these two drives sounds like, but is in fact
broader than, Kant’s distinction between understanding and sensibility. Kant’s distinction
is essentially theoretical, dealing with the two basic elements of knowledge, concepts
and intuitions; Schiller’s distinction is not only theoretical but also practical,
since the sense drive encompasses feelings and desires as well as sensations, and
the form drive involves not only concepts but also moral principles (138-39). 5. What is Beauty? The
task of an aesthetic education is not simply to make the individual become the
ideal, as if their individuality could then be discarded, but also to make the
ideal become individual(140). Granted
that culture must synthesize the realms of unity and multiplicity, universality
and individuality, reason and sensibility, where each opposite is given equal
weight, how are we to conceive such a synthesis? Schiller calls the synthesis of
his two fundamental drives, the form and sense drives, ‘the play drive’ (Spieltrieb).
But what does this mean? Why does he call the unity of these two drives ‘play’?
Schiller states that his use of the term ‘play’ conforms entirely to ordinary
usage because play means ‘everything that is neither subjectively nor objectively
contingent, and that still neither externally nor internally constrains’ (357).
Such abstruse language alludes to the paradoxical fact that play is neither necessary
nor arbitrary: not necessary, because we do not play from need but do it for
its own sake; not arbitrary, because our actions still conform to rules. In general
and more simply, Schiller contrasts play with seriousness and necessity, with
what we must do according to some constraint or because of some need. Given
this account of the concept of play, we can now begin to understand how the
synthesis of the two drives is play. Each of the drives, taken on their own,
subjects a human being to a form of constraint. The sense drive imposes the
constraint of physical need; and the form drive imposes the constraint of
reason, which demands that we act on moral principle. When, however, we
synthesize the two drives, each limits the other and so frees us from the
constraint of the other. Sensibility ceases to constrain us when morality makes
its claims upon us; and morality ceases to constrain us once a cultivated
sensibility intervenes, which takes pleasure in acting according to duty. Since
in this synthesis we are no longer subject to constraint, and since play
characterizes those activities not subject to constraint, their synthesis
consists in playˇThe human being who unites its form and sense drives into a
perfect harmony is the beautiful soul. When the beautiful soul acts, Schiller
writes in Anmut und Würde, it does so with a sense of lightness or ease because
it is free from the constraints of both sensibility and reason(141). Play
Drive: Schiller’s general definition of play in Letter XV, which is at first so
forbidding and abstract, also makes perfect sense when it is placed in the
context of his original ideal of the beautiful soul. The general definition
states that play is neither necessary nor arbitrary. We should describe the
actions of the beautiful soul in the same terms. They are neither arbitrary nor
necessary. On the one hand, they are not arbitrary because, although they seem
to happen spontaneously and naturally, they still conform to rules; they are
really the result of the agent’s having internalized moral principles, of his
so greatly identifying with them that he enjoys acting on them. On the other
hand, they are not necessary because, as we have just seen, neither sensibility
nor reason are a constraint when the agent takes pleasure in acting on the
principle of duty(142). Having
introduced the play drive in Letter XIV, Schiller turns to his deduction of
beauty in Letter XV. This letter is pivotal, since here Schiller finally
reaches, if only provisionally and abstractly, the conclusion that he had
promised in the tenth letter: that the full development of our humanity
consists in beauty. It is therefore something of an anticlimax to read
Schiller’s extremely dense and schematic deduction. Schiller argues that the
object of the sense drive is life, and that the object of the form drive is
form, so that the synthesis of these drives consists in living form, which is
beauty (355). In other words, the synthesis of these drives means that sense
must be formalized, and that form must be sensualized; the combination of these
activities is the unity of form and sense, which is beauty(143). (1) Reason demands that we should
perfect our humanity.
(2) The perfection of humanity consists in the unity of the form and sense drives.
(3) The unity of the form and sense drives is beauty.
Therefore, Reason demands that we should create beauty(144). 6. Freedom as Beauty The
transcendental argument attempts to show that the aesthetic condition of a
human being consists in freedom; and the causal argument states that this
freedom is best achieved through a work of art; in other words, it maintains
that it is the specific and ideal function of a work of art to put someone in
that aesthetic state(150)ˇthere are two meanings to freedom. There is freedom
as the attribute of our reason alone, and there is freedom as an attribute of
our whole nature. As an attribute of reason alone, freedom means autonomy, the
power to make laws for oneself; but as an attribute of our whole nature, it
means acting according to the totality of our being, which involves not only
reason but sensibility too. Schiller is most clear about his second kind of
freedom in the beginning of Letter XX when he writes that freedom arises ‘only when man is a
complete being, when both his fundamental drives are fully developed’, and that
such freedom will be lacking ‘as long as one of the two drives is excluded’
(374). In
making his distinction between the two kinds of freedom, Schiller was implicitly
criticizing Kant’s views and distinguishing his own from them. While Kant
recognizes freedom in the former sense—freedom as an attribute of reason alone—Schiller
implies that it is necessary to go further and to recognize another sense in
which it is an attribute of our whole nature. There are two implied criticisms
of the Kantian conception here. First, in making freedom into moral autonomy,
willing and acting according to rational principles, Kant does not assign any
role at all to sensibility, so that his freedom is possible without
sensibility. Second, Kant’s concept of freedom is compatible even with the
repression of sensibility, so that his freedom is possible even when acting
contrary to sensibility. Having introduced his new concept of freedom, Schiller
now anticipates in Letter XIX a central contention of the next two letters:
that to achieve beauty makes us free. We have seen from Letters XI–XV that
human self-realization or wholeness consists in beauty; and we now learn from
Letters XVIII–XXI that freedom consists in such self-realization or wholeness.
If we add these premises together, it follows that freedom consists in beauty.
Schematically, the argument goes as follows: (1)
Beauty consists in wholeness, the full realization of the sense and form drives.
(The argument of Letters XI to XV.) (2)
Wholeness, the full realization of the sense and form drives, consists in freedom.
(The definition of freedom in Letter XIX.) (3)
Beauty consists in freedom. Although
Schiller never puts his reasoning so formally or explicitly, it is implicit throughout
Letters XX and XXI. It contains his ultimate defense of beauty: that it alone
makes us free. The whole argument develops the earlier definition of beauty in
the Kallias Briefe. Whereas that definition explains beauty from the
standpoint of the spectator, for whom beauty is the appearance of freedom, this
argument explains beauty from the standpoint of the moral agent, for whom the
achievement of beauty is the attainment of freedom(153). 7. The Aesthetic Condition Like
Kant’s aesthetic contemplation, Schiller’s aesthetic condition is
indeterminate, not imparting any specific direction to our activity. Armed with
his concept of the aesthetic condition, Schiller now believes that he is
finally in a position to consider the question of the moral value of beauty.
Since it is indeterminate or determinable, the aesthetic condition does not lead
to any specific result; it does not produce a definite kind of action, whether
moral or immoral. It would therefore seem that the aesthetic condition is
useless, because it does not make us better morally. Those who claim that
beauty is unfruitful are perfectly correct, Schiller admits, insofar as beauty
yields no result for will or intellect (377). Yet, precisely because it is
indeterminate, the aesthetic condition does have an even greater value for us:
it restores our freedom to us. Since we have become determinable, we can now
make of ourselves whatever we want (377–8). What
beauty gives us, then, is not a moral or intellectual result—a good action or a
true proposition—but the freedom to produce a good action or a true
proposition. And so, Schiller concludes, the great value of beauty lies in
freedom(156). The
great strategic value of the concept of the aesthetic condition is that it allows
Schiller to combine the apparently incombinable: the moral value of beauty and
the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy. Aesthetic autonomy seems to demand that art
have its value completely independent of morality, and indeed it even seems to
exclude morality insofar as making art conform to moral ends amounts to
aesthetic heteronomy. Schiller avoids this apparent implication of the doctrine,
however, by insisting that the essential value of art lies in the realm of freedom
itself, and more specifically with the power of choice and decision. Since we
cannot identify such freedom with a specific kind of action, we need not fear that
it conforms to specific moral ends. Yet the greatest and highest moral value, Schiller
believes, lies in freedom, where this freedom is not simply moral autonomy, action
according to the moral law, but the power of choice, our capacity to decide
between alternative courses of action, whether they be moral or immoral. It is
precisely this form of freedom that is restored to us through the aesthetic
condition, and that will be inculcated through an aesthetic education. Such an
education will therefore have the highest moral value of all. 8. The Aesthetic State Schiller
introduces his concept of the aesthetic state by contrasting it with two other
forms of the state: the dynamic and the ethical. The basic constrast is made in
a single involved sentence (410, 14–20). In the dynamic state of rights, one
person confronts another as a power (Kraft ) and limits his actions. In the
ethical state of duty, one person encounters another according to moral law and
limits his will. In the aesthetic state, one person engages with another only
as an object of free playˇ. If the governing principle of the
dynamic state is power, and if the governing principle of the ethical state is
the moral law, the governing principle of the aesthetic state is taste. It is
taste alone, Schiller contends, that brings harmony in society, because it
alone brings harmony to each individual (410). The other forms of association
address only one aspect or part of our being. The dynamic state treats us
simply as physical beings, who join society simply from self-interest or
physical need. The ethical state treats us simply as rational beings, who join
society because it is a universal moral law. The aesthetic state alone regards
us as whole beings, as both rational and sensible, because we participate in
social life from inclination rather than duty. Clearly, the citizens of the
aesthetic state are the beautiful souls of Anmut und Würde, who act on
duty from inclination and with pleasure. It is only beauty, Schiller claims,
that gives a human being a social character (410). The forms of association in
the other two states separate us from one another. The dynamic state addresses
only our sensibility; the pleasures of sensibility, however, are something
private. The ethical state appeals only to our reason, whose universal laws abstract
from all individuality. Only in beauty do we bring together both universal and
individual, the will of the whole and the nature of the individual. The society
Schiller wants to form is one that people join through their own free
disposition. They do not do so out of physical need, as in the dynamic state; and
they do not do so out of moral obligation, as in the ethical state. Rather,
they do so from their social character, from the fact that they have
incorporated the moral law within their will, so that they want the company of
others. When Schiller says that the aesthetic state unites the individual with
the whole what he means is that the beautiful soul belongs to it from
inclination, from love, and not from a sense of obligation or a sense of
self-interest. The basic idea is that people participate in the social organism
from inclination, from their whole character. The bond of the state is not
self-interest, it is not moral obligation, but it is the sympathy and love that
comes from social character. What Schiller has in mind here is something like
patriotism(162).
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