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 Ferguson¡¦All 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) ¡¦Schiller¡¯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 liberal¡¦The aim of the Briefe is precisely to rescue the causes of enlightenment and republicanism in the face of such conservative criticism¡¦ 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 people¡¦TheAufklärung 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)¡¦Schiller 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.©ø⁹ 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 play¡¦The 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.©ù©ø 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)¡¦there 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 play¡¦. 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).