Schiller As Philosopher: A Re-Examination

SCHILLER AS PHILOSOPHER This page intentionally left blank Schiller as Philosopher A Re-Examination FREDERICK BEISE...

Author: Frederick C. Beiser

107 downloads 1949 Views 3MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

SCHILLER AS PHILOSOPHER

This page intentionally left blank

Schiller as Philosopher A Re-Examination FREDERICK BEISER

CLARENDON PRESS . OXFORD

3

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With ofﬁces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Frederick Beiser 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–928282–X

978–0–19–928282–1

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Claire

This page intentionally left blank

Preface In 1858 in Jena, in the tavern ‘Die Rose’, Kuno Fischer, later an eminent historian of philosophy, gave a brilliant series of lectures on Schiller’s philosophy, which he later published under the title Schiller als Philosoph (Leipzig: Fues, 1868). The occasion for Fischer’s work was the imminent centennial of Schiller’s birth. Though it has been largely forgotten and is somewhat dated, Fischer’s work set a standard for future scholarship. It is philosophically sophisticated yet historically informed; it is deeply sympathetic but sharply critical; and it breaks down artiﬁcial boundaries between Schiller’s poetry and philosophy. Fischer’s work proved to be only the beginning. Starting with the ﬁrst centennial and throughout much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, much valuable scholarly work on Schiller’s philosophy appeared. Most of it was representative of a much wider intellectual tradition, the neo-Kantian movement that began in the 1860s. Prima facie one might not think the neo-Kantians to be the most devoted and sympathetic Schiller scholars. But, for all its Kantian partistanship, this tradition was not intellectually narrow or dogmatically uncritical; it often treated Kant’s successors and critics with the same respect and in the same depth as Kant himself. For all its promise and brilliance, the neo-Kantian tradition came to an abrupt end in the trenches of the First World War. Scholarship on Schiller’s philosophy has never really recovered. It is an enormous pity that contemporary Kant scholarship, in both the English- and German-speaking worlds, has failed to follow its precedent. Rather than trying to understand Schiller, contemporary Kant scholars have been intent on ignoring him. If they know anything at all about Schiller, it is only as the author of an epigram satirizing Kant. Such have been the dogmatic slumbers of contemporary Kant scholarship that one can say of it only what Friedrich Schlegel once quipped about the Kantian acolytes of the 1790s: when the postcoach from Königsberg turns over, they go without truth for weeks! The present study attempts to return to the older neo-Kantian tradition. Not only in name, it intends to resurrect the spirit of Fischer’s original work. It is an attempt to consider Schiller as a philosopher, to reconstruct and appraise the arguments of his philosophical writings. Since, however, no philosophical interpretation can take place in an historical vacuum, I have also tried as far as possible to see Schiller’s writings in their historical context. Whether such a reconstruction yields results still of interest today, I leave the reader to judge. In attempting to provide a philosophical interpretation and assessment of Schiller, I have had to wage a battle on two fronts. The ﬁrst front has been formed by the narrowness of contemporary Kant scholarship, which has been blind to the extremely interesting issues raised by Schiller’s encounter with Kant. The second

viii

Preface

front consists in the post-modernist emphasis on the rhetorical side of Schiller’s aesthetic writings, which denies in principle the philosophical dimension of Schiller’s writings. In the spirit of a bicentennial, I have come to praise rather than to bury Schiller. I tend to defend rather than criticize his doctrines, not because I think that his philosophy is above criticism but because so much of the criticism against it is paltry. There is a need to right the balance against so much post-modernist and Marxist criticism, which cannot withstand criticism itself. This study is partly thematic and partly textual. It does not attempt to be a complete study of Schiller’s philosophy. It limits itself mainly to Schiller’s aesthetic writings; and, for reasons of space, it does not examine Schiller’s last great essay, Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. It is designed so that each chapter can be read individually. This has made for some repetition. Often the same material has to be set in a different context and seen from a different focus. I hope that those who wish to read the work consecutively do not ﬁnd the repetition too tedious. My many debts to the secondary literature will be obvious. I have learned the most from some of the older work; but I also have debts to more recent scholarship, especially the work of Peter-André Alt, Wolfgang Riedel and Benno von Wiese. I have found David Pugh’s work challenging, Leslie Sharpe’s indispensable. Some will ﬁnd my fondness for the older literature quaint; but it is a predilection that every Schiller scholar needs to cultivate. Some of the very best scholarship has been long forgotten. The present study supersedes my earlier work on Schiller, both the article on Schiller for the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), IV, 224–9, and my chapter on Schiller’s political thought in Enlightenment, Revolution & Romanticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 84–110. While I think that almost all the details of this chapter are right, I also think its general perspective is wrong. Placing Schiller in the liberal tradition is, I now believe, a fundamental mistake. Schiller more properly belongs in the republican tradition, which is at odds with the liberal tradition in fundamental respects. No parts of the present study have been previously published. Chapter V grew out of an invitation to write an article on Kant’s moral philosophy for the Journal of Value Inquiry. Because of disagreements about the editorial policies of that journal, it never appeared. Earlier drafts of the article were read to the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, in January 2000, the Germanic Institute at Cornell University in September 2001, the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania in September 2003, and the Philosophy Department of Emory University in October 2004. I am grateful to many of the participants at those colloquia for their perceptive and helpful comments. My study of Schiller’s philosophical writings began in the 1970s in Oxford. In that decade of waning analytic scholasticism, Schiller the philosopher was not a fashionable topic. After moving to Berlin in the 1980s, my ambition was to

Preface

ix

translate Schiller’s aesthetic essays; a proposal to do so was duly accepted by Cambridge University Press. Paul Guyer wisely advised me, however, that translation is no stepping stone to a philosophical career; and I quickly learned that translation does not pay one’s rent, not even in a Berliner Hinterhof. I have still not abandoned my original ambition, to which I hope to return in the near future. I am pleased to see that much of it has already been realized by Daniel Dahlstrom. F. B. Syracuse, New York 20 December 2004

This page intentionally left blank

Contents Introduction 1. Philosophical Signiﬁcance 2. Schiller in Anglophonia 3. Schiller’s Status as Philosopher 4. Schiller Myths and Legends

1 1 4 7 10

1. Early Philosophy 1. Education and Inﬂuences 2. First Ethics 3. First Metaphysics 4. The Sorrows of Young Julius 5. Confessions of a Theosophist 6. Encounter with Kant 7. The Kantian Revolution

13 13 18 23 29 33 37 41

2. An Objective Aesthetic 1. An Abandoned Ambition 2. A Tale from Sancho Panza 3. Initial Exposition of the Theory 4. The Deduction of Beauty 5. Keeping and Breaking Kantian Limits 6. The Analysis of Beauty 7. The Problem of Application 8. Final Assessment

47 47 49 53 57 62 65 68 74

3. Grace and Dignity 1. The Fate of an Orphan 2. General Themes, Structure and Plan 3. The Classical Legacy 4. Modern Sources 5. The Shaftesbury Myth 6. The Myth of Venus 7. Virtue and Physiognomy 8. Bridging the Two Worlds 9. The Collapse of the Bridge

77 77 80 85 88 91 94 97 101 105

xii

Contents 10. The Distinction between Grace and Dignity 11. Grace and Dignity as Complements 12. Dignity as the Sublime

110 115 117

4. Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe 1. Issues and Method 2. Genesis of the Work 3. Schiller and the Republican Tradition 4. Aesthetic Education and the Vicious Circle of Republicanism 5. The Briefe and the Crisis of Enlightenment 6. The Two Questions 7. The Analysis of Human Nature 8. The Transcendental Deduction of Beauty 9. Interlude: the Hidden Dispute with Fichte 10. The Two Forms of Beauty 11. Freedom as Beauty 12. The Aesthetic Condition 13. The Critique of Rousseau 14. The Aesthetic State 15. The Unity of the Work

119 119 121 123 126 129 134 137 139 144 147 150 154 156 161 165

5. Dispute with Kant 1. Traditions of Misinterpretation 2. The Spirit and the Letter 3. Duty from Inclination 4. Aesthetic Character in Kant 5. A Truce Violated 6. The Break with Kant 7. The Main Sticking Point 8. A Final Difﬁculty

169 169 172 176 179 183 184 187 189

6. Autonomy versus Enlightenment 1. A Troubling Question 2. Early Doubts 3. The Spokesman for the Theatre 4. The Discovery of Autonomy 5. In Transition 6. Autonomy and Popularity 7. Kantian Transformation and New Mediating Efforts 8. A Persistent Tension

191 191 193 195 197 198 200 202 205

Contents

xiii

9. The Germ of a Solution 10. Autonomy and Morality in the Ästhetische Briefe

206 208

7. The Philosophy of Freedom 1. The Primacy of Freedom 2. Schiller versus Kant on Freedom 3. Freedom in the Kalliasbriefe 4. Freedom in Anmut und Würde 5. A Fichtean Theme 6. The Problem of Freedom in the Ästhetische Briefe 7. Aesthetic Freedom in the Ästhetische Briefe 8. Moral Freedom in the Ästhetische Briefe

213 213 216 219 224 227 229 232 235

8. Theory of Tragedy 1. Signiﬁcance and Context 2. Aristotle’s Shadow 3. Between Neo-Classicism and Sturm und Drang 4. Staking out the Middle Ground 5. Settling Accounts with the Stagirite 6. The Sources of Tragic Pleasure 7. The Theory of the Sublime

238 238 241 245 246 251 253 257

Appendix 1: Rhetoric and Philosophy in Schiller’s Essays Appendix 2: The Neo-Kantian Interpretation of Schiller

263 268

Bibliography Index

271 281

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction 1. PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE It is generally recognized that one of the most creative periods of aesthetics was that from Baumgarten to Hegel, a period stretching roughly eighty-ﬁve years, from the publication of Baumgarten’s Aesthetica in 1750 to Hegel’s Vorlesungen über Ästhetik in 1835. During these years, philosophers gave the greatest importance to aesthetics, and they pursued its questions with unmatched rigour and fervour. Among the crowning achievements of this period are Friedrich Schiller’s aesthetic essays, which were written from 1791 to 1795. Schiller’s three major essays—Anmut und Würde (1793), Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (1795), and Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795)—have generally been regarded as classics. Since their publication over two centuries ago, they have been the subject of intensive discussion and commentary. Starting in 1859, the centenary of Schiller’s birth, a series of scholarly works on Schiller’s philosophy began to appear; and since then, the pace of scholarship has seldom slackened.¹ Like many classics, Schiller’s essays present formidable challenges to the reader. Applying the arcane architectonic and abstruse terminology of Kant’s philosophy, Schiller investigates issues with relentless rigor and tireless thoroughness. The reader must learn a technical vocabulary, a welter of subtle distinctions, and an intricate system of classiﬁcation. The essays also demand an immense culture on the part of the reader. They presuppose not only a close study of Kant’s critical philosophy but also a solid knowledge of the history of aesthetics before Kant. One should know, to name only a few, Baumgarten, Winckelmann, Lessing, Mendelssohn and Sulzer from the German tradition; Home, Hogarth, Hume and Burke from the British tradition; and Batteux, Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau from the French tradition. Given such challenges, it is not surprising that Schiller’s essays have been regarded as some of the most difﬁcult writings of the German philosophical tradition.² ¹ On the reception of the aesthetic essays, see Lesley Sharpe, Schiller’s Aesthetic Essays: Two Centuries of Criticism (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1995). ² Such was the judgment of Eduard Spranger, ‘Schillers Geistesart’, Abhandlungen der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Philosophisch-historische Klasse Nr. 13) (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1941), 42.

2

Schiller as Philosopher

All this raises the question: Why bother? Why should a modern reader go to the trouble of studying such difﬁcult and demanding texts? Their place in a canon cannot be a sufﬁcient reason, not when one wants to know why they should be in a canon in the ﬁrst place. There are two quick and easy answers to this question. One reason for reading Schiller’s texts is simply historical: they were profoundly inﬂuential, an inspiration for Romanticism and German Idealism. The other reason is more philosophical: they are some of the most searching, thorough and rigorous writings on aesthetics in the Western philosophical tradition. They give original and interesting answers to some of the basic questions of aesthetics: ‘What is the value of art?’, ‘What is the source of tragic pleasure?’, ‘Is beauty an objective or subjective, rational or empirical, quality?’ and ‘What is the connection between art and morality?’. Of course, these are claims of a tall order. The main aim of the present study is to vindicate them, to convince the reader that Schiller’s texts really deserve their classical status. My task, therefore, is not simply to expound Schiller’s philosophy but to defend it. In the course of the following chapters I will attempt to refute objections against it, show its internal coherence, and stress its abiding strengths. My central thesis is that, in fundamental respects, Schiller’s ethics and aesthetics are an improvement on Kant’s. Where Kant is vague, inconsistent and narrow, Schiller is clear, consistent, and broad. While this thesis would not surprise any nineteenth-century neo-Kantian, it will probably provoke contemporary neoKantians, who have almost entirely ignored Schiller. The chief merits of Schiller’s philosophy vis-à-vis Kant’s can be summarized in the following six propositions. Although all these propositions are controversial, I will provide here no apology for them and offer only the briefest explanation, leaving detailed defense and explication for later chapters. ¶ Schiller’s philosophy retains the rational core of Kant’s ethics but dispenses with its mystical shell. In other words, he accepts Kant’s rigorism and rationalism; but he rejects his transcendent Christian conception of the highest good, replacing it with an entirely immanent and secular one. Schiller agrees with two of the fundamental principles of Kant’s ethics: that moral principles are based on reason rather than experience; and that moral actions derive their worth from moral principle alone. But he departs from Kant regarding the highest good. From Schiller’s perspective, there are two problematic aspects to Kant’s theory of the highest good. First, it is too moralistic, making morality alone the supreme good; neither sensibility nor individuality are valued for their own sake but only insofar as they conform to moral principles. Second, it is transcendent, requiring a belief in the existence of God and providence.³ Schiller’s own conception of the highest good is entirely secular and immanent: the ³ I have argued elsewhere that recent secular and political interpretations of Kant’s ideal of the highest good are implausible. See ‘Philosophy of Religion’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, 2nd edn., ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Introduction

3

end of life is to be achieved only here on earth; and it involves giving intrinsic value to the feelings and desires of sensibility, which are necessarily connected to the mortal human body. See 5.7–8. ¶ Schiller’s account of aesthetic judgment is superior to Kant’s because it recognizes that it is necessary to give reasons for such judgments, reasons that refer to objective qualities of a work of art. Schiller agrees with Kant that aesthetic judgments are universalizable, claiming the assent of everyone alike as an impartial spectator. Unlike Kant, however, he maintains that the demand for universal assent is defensible only if it is possible to give reasons for these judgments, where the reasons specify the qualities of the object of art. Schiller believes that Kant’s subjectivization of aesthetic experience made it impossible for Kant to give reasons for aesthetic judgments, and so he could not ensure their universalizability. See below, 2.2. ¶ Schiller has a more complete account of moral action than Kant, because he recognizes that an action has moral worth only if it derives from moral character or virtue. Kant’s theory of moral worth in the Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten (1786) is incomplete because it does not take into account moral character; it assumes that an action has moral worth solely in virtue of the agent’s intention, regardless of whether that intention derives from a moral character or virtue. It was the task of Schiller’s Anmut und Würde to develop a theory of virtue to complete Kant’s ethics and to provide this missing element in his account of moral action. While Kant himself later supplied a theory of virtue in the second half of his 1797 Metaphysik der Sitten, the evidence indicates that he did so because of Schiller’s prompting and inﬂuence. See 5.3–4. ¶ Schiller’s aesthetic conception of freedom avoids the problems of the Kantian moral conception. There are at least two problems with the Kantian conception of freedom as moral autonomy, i.e. the power of acting according to moral principles. First, it is compatible with a form of constraint, the repression of sensible feelings and desires. Second, it demands a sharp metaphysical dualism, such that the decisions and reﬂections of moral agents are independent of the causality of the natural world. Schiller’s aesthetic conception of freedom remedies the ﬁrst problem because it regards freedom as the autonomous development of all our human powers, sensibility as well as reason. It also addresses the second problem because it sees moral agency within nature, as the product of history and the education of sensibility. See below, 7.2, 7.7. ¶ Schiller avoids the inconsistencies and vacillations in Kant’s treatment of the relationship between aesthetics and morality, and he demonstrates the aesthetic dimension of morality without lapsing into the danger of aestheticism, i.e. making beauty replace or mingle with moral principle as a motive for human action. No one saw more clearly than Schiller the close connection of morality and aesthetics; but no one was also more acutely aware of the dangers of conﬂating them. Schiller joins morality with aesthetics in two fundamental respects: (1) he makes

4

Schiller as Philosopher

the ideal of complete humanity consist in an aesthetic whole, the harmony of reason and sensibility in grace; (2) he maintains that beauty arises from the appearance of freedom in the sensible world. However, he also warns against the danger of confusing art with morality by making aesthetic feeling the basis for moral judgment and action. See 3.2, 3.6–10, 5.2. ¶ Schiller has a conception of aesthetic autonomy that does not deprive art of its moral signiﬁcance or relevance. The classic dilemma consists in advocating a sterile ideal of aesthetic autonomy, which deprives it of all its moral value, or a moralistic ideal of art, which interferes with aesthetic value. Schiller avoids this dilemma by making the value of art reside in the self-awareness of freedom; while freedom is the supreme moral value, it is not subservient to speciﬁc moral or political ends. See Chapter 6. To say that Schiller deserves his classical status is not to put him above criticism. The point is to study Schiller, not to revere him. Like all philosophers, Schiller has his weaknesses and difﬁculties. In the course of the following chapters, we shall see that Schiller is guilty of many of the slips in reasoning attributed to him, and that there are more persistent problems in his philosophy. More speciﬁcally, we shall ﬁnd (1) that Schiller’s attempt to ﬁnd an objective criterion of beauty is illusory; (2) that his deduction of beauty is circular, presupposing what it attempts to prove; (3) that his concept of the beautiful soul suffers from an unresolved ambiguity about whether moral beauty is an entirely internal or also external quality; (4) that he could not uphold moral freedom after his attempt to unify Kant’s dualisms; (5) that he never succeeds in putting his thinking into systematic order; and, ﬁnally, (6) that his argument all too often presupposes premises that he does not explain. All those ﬂaws do not detract, however, from what the aesthetic writings have to offer: searching investigations into some of the fundamental problems of aesthetics.

2. SCHILLER IN ANGLOPHONIA Although Schiller’s essays are part of the canon in the German tradition, their introduction into the Anglophone world has been ﬁtful and fraught. The sheer difﬁculty of the essays has not eased their reception; but there has also been, of course, the vexed problem of translation. Some of the essays were translated twice in the late nineteenth century; but these translations are neither reliable nor readable today.⁴ Partly due to their difﬁculty, and partly due to the lack of adequate translations, Schiller’s aesthetic essays were, prior to the Second World War, rarely studied. If ⁴ See, by an anonymous translator, Essays Aesthetical and Philosophical by Friedrich Schiller (London: George Bell & Sons, 1875); and The Works of Frederick Schiller (New York: John Lovell, no date), vol. IV, Poems and Essays.

Introduction

5

Schiller was valued at all, it was in spite of, rather than because of, the aesthetic essays. Thomas Carlyle did not exactly encourage their study when he wrote in his Life of Friedrich Schiller (1825) about ‘the arcana of transcendentalism’ that made them impenetrable to the uninitiated reader.⁵ Only now and then, through the dark ‘Night of Kantism’, Carlyle wrote, could the patient reader catch a glimpse of Schiller’s natural brilliance. Bernard Bosanquet conceded a chapter to Schiller in his A History of Æsthetic (1892), though he valued Schiller mainly as a precursor of Hegel.⁶ And in his The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller (1901), the standard general work on Schiller for generations, Calvin Thomas gave the aesthetic writings short shrift, justifying his perfunctory treatment on the grounds that, to understand ‘the poet’s development’, ‘it is nowise necessary to lose one’s self . . . in the Serbonian bog of metaphysic’.⁷ In Schiller after a Century (1905), a centenary monograph reviewing Schiller’s achievement, James Robertson stressed the importance of Schiller’s philosophy, but only to relegate it to the dustbin of intellectual history. He saw the aesthetic writings as little more than an attempt to revive, in the face of Kantian criticism, the older metaphysical rationalism of Leibniz and Shaftesbury.⁸ Still, it is not that Schiller was entirely unappreciated; there were voices in the wilderness. Two early admirers of Schiller’s philosophy were William James and Josiah Royce. Although they wrote little about Schiller, they felt a deep sympathy with him. In a nearly forgotten article, Royce wrote a brief appreciative sketch of Schiller’s ethics.⁹ Unfortunately, however, James and Royce were the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule. The ﬁrst study of Schiller’s philosophy in the Anglophone world was by the neo-Kantian Emil Wilm, The Philosophy of Schiller in its Historical Relations (1912). Though somewhat superﬁcial and mistaken in its historical details, Wilm’s work deserves credit for treating Schiller as a thinker in his own right. Wilm correctly saw the distortions of the Hegelian reading of Schiller and rightly stressed the importance of a genetic understanding of his thought. Yet his work bore no immediate progeny. It is a token of the barrenness of succeeding generations, and of the brilliance of its author, that the most important event in Anglophone scholarship was Arthur Lovejoy’s stimulating but problematic account of Schiller’s inﬂuence on German Romanticism.¹⁰ ⁵ Thomas Carlyle, Life of Friedrich Schiller (London: Chapman & Hall, 1873), 97–102. ⁶ Bernard Bosanquet, A History of Æsthetic (London: Allen & Unwin, 1904), 2nd edn., 286–303. ⁷ The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller (New York: Henry Holt, 1901), 263–87. ⁸ John G. Robertson, Schiller After a Century (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1905), 86–91, 96. ⁹ Josiah Royce, ‘Schiller’s Ethical Studies’, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 12 (1878), 373–92. On William James’s opinion of Schiller, see Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1935), I, 273, 276, 278. ¹⁰ Arthur Lovejoy, ‘Schiller and the Genesis of German Romanticism’, Modern Language Notes 35 (1920), 1–9, 136–46. For other details on Schiller reception in the decades preceding the Second World War, see Sharpe, Schiller’s Aesthetic Essays, 51–3.

6

Schiller as Philosopher

It was only after the Second World War, with the expansion of higher education and the growth of German departments in universities, that Schiller’s aesthetic writings became a proper object of study. In the 1960s several important studies appeared: S. S. Kerry published the ﬁrst book entirely devoted to the aesthetic writings; Deric Regin produced a brief survey of Schiller’s historical and philosophical thought; and J. M. Ellis published his monograph on Schiller’s Kallias Briefe.¹¹ While none of these studies are especially exacting, philologically, historically or philosophically, they were signiﬁcant strides in the right direction. A milestone in the reception of Schiller in the Anglophone world came in 1967 with Elizabeth Wilkinson’s and L. A. Willoughby’s translation of Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen.¹² Their translation was not only readable and accurate, but it was accompanied by a 200-page scholarly introduction and a 100-page commentary and glossary. In many respects it is a model edition of a classic text. While the 1970s mark another slump, momentum gathered in later decades. In the 1980s there were two noteworthy studies of Schiller’s Ästhetische Briefe, one by R. D. Miller and another by Anthony Savile.¹³ And in the 1990s T. J. Reed, Steven Martinson and Leslie Sharpe published their general studies of Schiller, all of which gave important place to the aesthetic essays.¹⁴ The most signiﬁcant study of Schiller’s philosophical thought also appeared in the 1990s: David Pugh’s Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schiller’s Aesthetics.¹⁵ Although the speciﬁc aim of Pugh’s study was to uncover the Platonic dimension of Schiller’s aesthetics, he gave special attention to the philosophical argument of the major aesthetic writings. In its historical and philosophical sophistication, Pugh’s study was a milestone, setting standards that go far beyond the earlier English studies of the 1960s and that easily match those of the German tradition. It has been only very recently that some of the other aesthetic writings have been available in reliable form. In 1995 Daniel Dahlstrom published his translation of Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung along with several shorter essays;¹⁶ and in ¹¹ S. S. Kerry, Schiller’s Writings on Aesthetics (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1961); Deric Regin, Freedom and Dignity: The Historical and Philosophical Thought of Schiller (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1965); and J. M. Ellis, Schiller’s Kalliasbriefe and the Study of his Aesthetic Theory (The Hague: Mouton, 1969). ¹² On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). ¹³ See R. D. Miller, A Study of Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Harrogate: The Duchy Press, 1986); and Anthony Savile, Aesthetic Reconstructions: The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kant and Schiller (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987) (Aristotelian Society Series, vol. 8), chaps. 7–8, 193–254. ¹⁴ T. J. Reed, Schiller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Leslie Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Steven Martinson, Harmonious Tensions: The Writings of Friedrich Schiller (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996). ¹⁵ David Pugh, Dialectic of Love, Platonism in Schiller’s Aesthetics (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996) (McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Ideas, No. 22). ¹⁶ Friedrich Schiller: Essays (New York: Continuum, 1995). The shorter essays are ‘On the Art of Tragedy’, ‘On the Sublime’, ‘On the Pathetic’ and ‘Concerning the Sublime’. Dahlstrom’s collection also includes, though without the introduction and commentary, Wilkinson and Willoughby’s translation.

Introduction

7

2002 Jay Bernstein, in a collection of writings on classical German aesthetics, published Stefan Bird-Pollan’s translation of the Kallias Briefe.¹⁷ Some essays, however, remain untranslated; and, remarkably, there is still no solid translation of Anmut und Würde, though it remains the basis of Schiller’s mature thought.

3. SCHILLER’S STATUS AS PHILOSOPHER Apart from difﬁculties of interpretation and translation, the contemporary reception of Schiller’s essays has been complicated and hampered by another factor, one that troubles the German-speaking world as much as the Anglophone. Namely, the essays are essentially philosophical in method and content; but few philosophers read them. In fact, of all the classical thinkers of the Goethezeit, Schiller has been one of the least studied by philosophers. This is surprising, given that scholars have always recognized his historical signiﬁcance, especially his role in the development of post-Kantian idealism. Strangely, the explosion of interest in Kant and German idealism since the 1960s has not helped matters. Since the publication of H. J. Paton’s inﬂuential The Categorical Imperative in 1947, Kant scholars have regarded Schiller chieﬂy as the author of a notorious epigram that lampooned Kant’s ethics.¹⁸ For their part, Hegel scholars have tended to see Schiller as a transitional ﬁgure who deserves credit for anticipating ‘objective idealism’; but rarely have they examined Schiller’s writings for their own sake and on their own terms.¹⁹ Such has been the neglect of Schiller that, since the 1960s, there have been comparatively few books, either in English or German, devoted to Schiller’s major philosophical works.²⁰ Compared to the torrent of work on Kant, or any of the German idealists, the output on Schiller amounts to a trickle. In Schiller scholarship there is nothing remotely on par with Kemp Smith’s, Vaihinger’s, Paton’s, or Beck’s commentaries on Kant. The only study approaching them is Wilkinson and Willoughby’s ‘Introduction’ to their edition and translation of Schiller’s Ästhetische Briefe; but it gets lost in a bog of irrelevant stylistic and historical details; and it fails conspicuously to treat the philosophical argument behind the text.²¹

¹⁷ ‘Kallias or Concerning Beauty: Letters to Gottfried Körner’ in Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics, ed. J. M. Bernstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 145–84. ¹⁸ Regarding Paton’s immense and baneful tinﬂuence, see chap. 4.1. ¹⁹ See Bernhard Engel, Schiller als Denker (Berlin: Weidmann, 1908); and Georg Lukács, ‘Zur Ästhetik Schillers’, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ästhetik (Berlin: Aufbau, 1954), 11–96. On the problems of this interpretation, see below, sec. 4 and chap. 2.5. ²⁰ In addition to Pugh, Kerry and Ellis (notes 13 and 17 above), see Fritz Heuer, Darstellung der Freiheit. Schillers transzendentale Frage nach der Kunst (Cologne: Böhlau, 1970); Hans Reiner, Pﬂicht und Neigung (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1974); and Ulrich Tschierske, Vernunftkritik und ästhetische Subjektivität: Studien zur Anthropologie Friedrich Schillers (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988). ²¹ For the evaluation of their Introduction, see chap. 4.15.

8

Schiller as Philosopher

The reasons for this neglect are not hard to fathom. They lie chieﬂy in the modern academic division of labour. Schiller was both a poet and philosopher; but he was, by profession and inclination, ﬁrst and foremost a poet.²² For our own specialized age, this can mean only one thing: that Schiller must have been an amateur philosopher, so that the study of his writings properly belongs to the realm of literature. Philosophers have been largely content, therefore, to leave Schiller to literary historians, who have inevitably become the chief students of the philosophical writings. The net result of such a division of labour has been disastrous for philosophers and literary historians alike: philosophers remain ignorant of their history, literary historians are forced to philosophize. That our specialized age has been the source of this neglect becomes apparent when we go back into history. For, in that less specialized but still not too distant age, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Schiller was still the focus of philosophical interest. He had indeed become a recognized ﬁgure of study in the neo-Kantian movement. Kuno Fischer, Ernst Cassirer, Bruno Bauch, Eugen Kühnemann, Hans Vaihinger, Wilhelm Windelband and Karl Vorländer all wrote essays or monographs on philosophical themes in Schiller.²³ In 1905, for the centennial of Schiller’s death, Kant-Studien published a number of articles on Schiller, some of which celebrated his importance as a philosopher.²⁴ Sadly, such a collection has been almost unthinkable for the bicentennial. Why, though, regard Schiller as a philosopher? Would it not be more fair and accurate to consider him a poet? The problem is that, even if poetry is Schiller’s greatest talent and deepest interest, we have no choice but to treat his aesthetic writings as philosophy. They are philosophical not only in the questions they raise but also in the method with which they answer them. In standard philosophical fashion Schiller analyzes concepts, makes distinctions, lays down deﬁnitions, and engages in sustained discursive argument. To understand his writings on their own terms is to engage with them as philosophy. Often, Schiller’s philosophical stature is questioned by literary historians. Anxious to prove their own philosophical credentials, they stress Schiller’s many philosophical vices: his vagueness and inconsistency, his bungled conceptual divisions, his many lapses in argument. Such mistakes, they assume, could only be made by a poet. What these scholars are perhaps too polite to say, however, is ²² On Schiller’s self-identiﬁcation as a poet, see his 7 January 1795, and 17 December 1795, letters to Goethe, NA XXVII, 116, XXVIII, 132. But at other times Schiller would complain that he was torn between philosophy and poetry. See his 31 August 1794 letter to Goethe, XXVII, 32, where he describes his intellect as a kind of ‘Zwitterart’ because it hovered between concept and intuition. On Schiller’s dual role as poet and philosopher, see esp. Elizabeth Wilkinson, ‘Schiller: Poet or Philosopher?’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), and her ‘Introduction’ to On the Aesthetic Education of Man, xxix–xxxv. ²³ On these authors, see the bibliography below. ²⁴ Kant-Studien, Band X (1905). The volume contains contributions by Rudolf Eucken, Friedrich Alfred Schmid, Bruno Bauch, Wilhelm Windelband and Ernst Vaihinger (see the bibliography below). There are also two commerative poems, one by Tim Klein ‘Kant und Schiller’ and another by Otto Liebmann ‘In Schillers Garten’.

Introduction

9

that such blunders are endemic in philosophy. As any philosopher would concede, they are simply business as usual. If the absence of such vices were the test of a true philosopher, there would be no such beasts. In fact, measured in terms of sheer rigour, Schiller is not an especially problematic case at all. He is no less rigorous than Kant or Hume, whose place in the canon has never been subject to question. In assessing Schiller’s stature as a philosopher, it is necessary to recognize one basic fact, one whose importance has been rightly stressed by recent work on his intellectual origins and context.²⁵ Namely, Schiller’s university education at the Karlschule in Stuttgart was largely philosophical. At its time the Karlschule was famous in German education for its extraordinary emphasis upon philosophy. Students received a rigorous training in logic, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and the history of philosophy. Although Schiller’s academic training was in medicine, the tradition of medical training in the Karlschule was essentially philosophical, and indeed known as ‘philosophical medicine’. Furthermore, Schiller’s early dissertations were also devoted to philosophical themes, especially ethics, freedom, and the connection between the mind and body. Given such an education, it was only natural for Schiller to gravitate toward philosophy in the early 1790s. His ability to handle technical philosophical issues was by no means, therefore, mere mimicry of Kantian architechtonic. Rather, it came from a much older tradition, the Leibnizian-Wolfﬁan tradition of Gründlichkeit, a tradition prized and praised by both Mendelssohn and Kant alike.²⁶ Another reason to take Schiller seriously as a philosopher is that, in his chosen ﬁeld of aesthetics, he speaks with special weight. It is notorious that in the history of aesthetics there has been a disastrous rift between theory and practice: too few philosophers are artists, too few artists are philosophers.²⁷ Schiller was one of those very rare exceptions: an artist who knew philosophy, a philosopher who knew art. When he turned to aesthetics in the early 1790s he wanted to become aware of the principles of his own creative activity. The attempt to unite theory and practice then became one of the major themes of his intellectual development. If in his sombre moods he complained that philosophy and poetry interfered with one another, in his more buoyant moods he afﬁrmed that they complemented one another.²⁸ Rarely in the history of art, and even more rarely in

²⁵ See esp. Wolfgang Riedel, Die Anthropologie des jungen Schiller (Würzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 1985), 11–59; and Peter-André Alt, Schiller (Munich: Beck, 2000), I, 113–35. ²⁶ See the ‘Vorbericht’ to Mendelssohn’s Über die Empﬁndungen, in Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe, ed. Fritz Bamberger (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1971), I, 43 and Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ‘Vorrede’, B xxxvi. ²⁷ See R. G. Collingwood’s ‘Introduction’ to The Principles of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), 2–4. ²⁸ For the sombre moods, see Schiller to Goethe, 31 August 1794, NA XXVII, 32, and 7 January 1795, NA XXVIII, 116; and for the buoyant moods, see Schiller to Körner, 25 March 1792, NA XXVI, 141 and to Goethe, 16 October 1795, NA XXVIII, 79.

10

Schiller as Philosopher

the history of philosophy, has such sophisticated theory been wedded with such sophisticated practice. One ﬁnal caveat. In vindicating Schiller’s stature as a philosopher, it is important not to separate his philosophy from his poetry and drama. If we make such a separation, we simply fall victim to the academic division of labour from another direction. It is a false abstraction to think that poets cannot be philosophers just as it is to think that philosophers cannot be poets. There is indeed an important sense in which Schiller’s deepest philosophy comes not from his essays but from his plays and poems. If philosophy should come from the experience of life itself, then the best philosophy derives from those media that are closest to that experience: poetry and drama. If this is the case, then the best treatment of Schiller’s philosophy should make no separation between his poetry and discursive essays; it should show how his fundamental themes and problems are found equally in his poetic and discursive works. For this reason, the present study does not claim to be a complete study of Schiller’s philosophy. It is an attempt to treat the aesthetic essays strictly philosophically, and it therefore gives scant attention to his poems or dramatic works. This is an arbitrary and artiﬁcial abstraction, but still a necessary one, if only for reasons of space. A complete study of Schiller’s philosophy will probably have to remain a regulative idea, a goal that we should strive to approach but will never attain.

4. SCHILLER MY THS AND LEGENDS As a re-examination of Schiller’s philosophy, the present study attempts to remove some persistent misconceptions that have marred past and present scholarship. To anticipate and summarize my conclusions, I will identify here the primary mistakes and misunderstandings. They are so endemic that they deserve to be called myths or legends. I will brieﬂy state here the nature of the myth and its sources, leaving its detailed exposé for later chapters. ¶ Schiller attempts to relax the rigour of Kant’s moral principles. This interpretation is persistent and pervasive, appearing whenever a scholar wants to make a quick summary of Schiller’s ethics. But it is at best misleading, at worst downright perverse. In Anmut und Würde Schiller himself protests against this interpretation, insisting that his position is one with the moral rigorists and that he does not want to be taken for a latitudinarian in morals (283). This interpretation arose because Schiller stresses that feelings and inclinations should play a role in moral action, and it then seems as if they can do so only if one relaxes or softens the requirements of the moral law. But it is important to see that Schiller thinks that moral feelings are not natural but arise from internalizing the moral law, from identifying so strongly with the moral principle that it becomes a habit or steady disposition. As we shall soon see (5.2), Schiller accepts Kant’s moral purity thesis, according to which duty alone should be the motivation for action.

Introduction

11

¶ Schiller’s dispute with Kant concerns whether feeling and inclination are necessary for the moral worth of actions. Schiller attributes to Kant the view that actions have a moral worth only if they are done contrary to feeling and inclination; he maintains instead that an action has a moral worth only insofar as the agent wants to do it. This is the general understanding of the Kant–Schiller dispute, one that has been propagated by Kant scholars since Paton. But, as we shall see (5.1–4), it is completely incorrect: Schiller agrees with Kant that feeling and inclination are not necessary conditions for the moral worth of an action. Schiller’s dispute with Kant concerns less the conditions for moral action than the more fundamental issue of the highest good. ¶ Schiller defends natural feelings and instincts as motivations for moral action. This is the most damaging and prevalent of all the Schiller myths. It derives from the assumption that Schiller, like Shaftesbury and Rousseau, believes in the natural goodness of human beings, and that he thinks we should trust our natural feelings and instincts over moral principles. While Schiller did hold such a doctrine in his early years, he abandoned it after his conversion to Kant’s moral philosophy in the 1790s. It is indeed the case that Schiller defends the role of feeling and inclination as an element of moral action; but he thinks that moral feeling and inclination are not natural but acquired by moral education. It is necessary to make a distinction—one constantly confused in the literature—between natural and acquired feelings, or, to use Kantian terms, between pathological and practical inclinations. See 3.2, 4.2, 4.7, 5.12. ¶ Schiller’s philosophy was an attempt to fuse the ethics of Kant with those of Shaftesbury. This interpretation has been enduring and widespread in German scholarship. Roughly, it maintains that Schiller attempted to fuse Shaftesbury’s holistic ethic with Kant’s ethics of duty. We shall soon see, however, that it rests upon a mistaken interpretation of Shaftesbury, who does not espouse the holistic ethic attributed to him. See 3.5. ¶ Schiller’s objective aesthetics anticipates the absolute idealism of Schelling and Hegel. This interpretation, whose ultimate source is Hegel, has been especially propagated by Hegel and Marx scholars. Supposedly, Schiller’s famous deﬁnition of beauty as freedom in appearance anticipates Schelling’s and Hegel’s doctrine that beauty is the sensible appearance of the idea. This reading completely ignores, however, Schiller’s insistence that the idea of freedom has to be read into appearances, and that beauty is a strictly normative or regulative principle. See 2.5. ¶ Schiller’s aesthetic education was a ﬂight from the political world. An old chestnut among Marxists, this myth became ofﬁcial policy of the East German regime. Not surprisingly, the source of this myth came from Marx and Engels themselves. The chief problem with it is that it fails to understand the origins and context of Schiller’s political thought: the modern republican tradition of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Ferguson. See 5.3.

12

Schiller as Philosopher

¶ Schiller was a bitter opponent of all forms of dualism and his chief aim was to surmount dualism with a ‘Vereinigungsphilosophie’. Although several scholars have pointed out the limitations of this one-sided reading, it stubbornly persists all the same. Schiller defended dualism as much as he attacked it. The problem for him was always grasping the unity of human powers while also accounting for the distinctions between them. See 1.3, 5.10, 7.6–7. ¶ Schiller’s Ästhetische Briefe is a fatally divided work because it treats the aesthetic as both means and end. This apparent tension in Schiller’s main work has two sources: ﬁrst, his distinction between the moral and anthropological standpoints; and, second, his distinction between the causal and constitutive role of beauty. Rather than confusing these distinctions, Schiller attempted to relate them systematically to one another. We shall see that the Ästhetische Briefe, while not ﬂawless and seamless, is still a uniﬁed work having two interwoven strands of argument. See 5. 6, 5.14. ¶Schiller is guilty of aestheticism because he makes beauty into a motive for moral action and a justiﬁcation of the state. As we shall soon see, this criticism, very popular in Marxist and post-modernist circles, simply confuses distinctions made by Schiller. Schiller himself anticipated this objection and replied to it, insisting that aesthetic value can never be a reason for moral action. So much by way of summary and anticipation. We shall expose these myths in detail in the following chapters.

1 Early Philosophy 1. EDUCATION AND INFLUENCES Anyone who wants to understand Schiller’s mature philosophy must ﬁrst come to terms with his early intellectual background. The mature philosophy, as Schiller expounded it in his aesthetic writings from 1790 to 1796, cannot be fully understood from its immediate context, as if it were only the product of Schiller’s attempt to come to terms with Kant and the disputes surrounding Kant’s philosophy in the 1790s. For, as we shall soon see, how we interpret these later writings depends very much on how we place them within Schiller’s general intellectual development. Some of Schiller’s fundamental aims, problems and values were determined decisively by his early intellectual environment; and these aims, problems and values shaped everything he wrote afterward. Since the 1950s, Schiller’s early intellectual background has been the subject of intensive research.¹ This work has cast much new light on Schiller’s origins and context, and it has challenged the traditional picture of Schiller as a lonely genius in struggle against a benighted and backward environment. Here I cannot even begin to summarize the results of this research; all I can do is stress those factors that are most important for an understanding of Schiller’s philosophical development. After his primary education from 1765 to 1772, ﬁrst at the Dorfschule in Lorch and then at a Lateinschule in Ludwigsberg, Schiller went to the new Karlschule near Stuttgart, which had been recently founded by Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg in 1770. Schiller’s early education would be dominated by the Karlschule, where he was a student from January 1773 until December 1780. The Karlschule was a rather unique educational institution. It was originally conceived ¹ On the Karlschule see Ernst Müller, Der Herzog und das Genie: Friedrich Schillers Jugendjahre (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1955), 25–128; and Robert Uhland, Geschichte der Hohen Karlschule in Stuttgart (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1953). On the philosophical and intellectual background of the Karlschule, see Reinhard Buchwald, Schiller (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1953) I, 181–98; Benno von Wiese Friedrich Schiller (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1959), 53–95; Wolfgang Riedel, Die Anthropologie des jungen Schiller (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1985); Peter-André Alt, Schiller (Munich: Beck, 2000), I, 113–34, 141–50; and Arthur McCardle, Friedrich Schiller and Swabian Pietism (Berne: Lang, 1986), 71–98.

14

Schiller as Philosopher

as a military academy; it then became a gardening school for the children of poor soldiers; and it ﬁnally evolved into something like a university. By 1782 the Karlschule had grown into a sprawling institution: it was a combined university, military academy, medical school, business school, art college and music school. True to its origins, the Karlschule was run very much like a military academy. Students had to wear uniforms and march on parade; the hours for sleeping, eating and instruction were precisely prescribed and strictly observed. Discipline was severe: students were encouraged to spy on one another; and punishment, though not corporeal, took the form of humiliation: a paper stating the infraction was stuck to the uniform. Life was so strictly and precisely regulated that students had virtually no private space or spare time. Family visits to the school were allowed only on Sundays; and visits home were forbidden, even on holidays and for the deaths of family members. The Karlschule always stood under the shadow of its founder and benefactor, Karl Eugen. In some respects Karl Eugen was the very prototype of the eighteenthcentury enlightened despot. Taught the duties of a sovereign under Friedrich II of Prussia, he duly believed that the prince should be the ﬁrst servant of his people, though, of course, government should be always for and never by them. After taking over the reigns of power at the age of 16, however, Karl Eugen quickly forgot the lessons of his master; he began to enjoy all the pomp and power of absolutism. His court was to eclipse the Versailles of Louis XIV; and he squandered his kingdom’s wealth on palaces, banquets, theatres, hunting parties and ﬁrework displays. But Karl Eugen never could be the absolute ruler he so desperately wanted and pretended to be. For Württemberg was a Ständesstaat, a state governed by the old estates—the aristocracy, clergy and higher bougeoisie—who would meet in a parliament or Landschaft. Karl Eugen was constantly locked in a struggle for power with the estates, who attempted to curb his lavish spending and absolutist strivings. The struggle with the Duke was complicated and intensiﬁed by religion: the Duke was a Catholic while the estates were determined to keep Württemberg a Protestant land. In 1770 the Duke’s conﬂict with the estates was ﬁnally settled in their favour. The Duke was forced to sign the so-called ‘Erbvergleich’, a treaty recognizing the traditional rights of the estates. The signing of the Erbvergleich made the duke mend his extravagent and arbitrary ways. Under the inﬂuence of his mistress, Baroness Franziska von Leutrum, he ﬁnally became the enlightened and beneﬁcent ruler he was taught he should be; he would become a new, if smaller, version of Friedrich II. The most conspicuous sign of his beneﬁcence and enlightenment would be the Karlschule. The Karlschule was very much Karl Eugen’s personal project. To an extraordinary degree, he was involved in the details of daily administration: he followed the progress of the students; he hired the faculty; he attended disputations and examinations; and he bestowed prizes and meted out discipline. All the absolute power denied him by the estates was exercised over the school, which became his little private dominion. Like all enlightened despots, Karl Eugen saw himself as the father

Early Philosophy

15

of his people, and so his students now became his sons. The students were made to regard him as their true father, and not least for this reason were their home visits prohibited. Since he paid for his students’ education, they were completely dependent on his beneﬁcence, a fact he never let them forget. He knew all his students, not least Schiller himself, who became a personal favorite. ‘Aus dem wird etwas’, he once announced against some of Schiller’s more skeptical mentors. Karl Eugen’s close supervision of every aspect of school administration, combined with his immense political power, inevitably made him into an despot, even if a paternal and beneﬁcent one.² This fact, apparently so accidental and arbitrary, is of the utmost importance to understand Schiller’s intellectual development. For Karl Eugen’s tyrannical rule over his students gave Schiller a direct, daily and deep experience of the meaning and consequences of absolutism. Schiller’s supreme spiritual, intellectual and moral value—freedom—grew out of his frustrated rebellion against Karl Eugen. As long as the ﬂame of his resentment burned, Schiller’s love of freedom would persist; and the resentment against the man who oppressed him for eight years, and who deprived him of the comforts of his family, did not gently disappear. In his later years, Schiller would learn to appreciate what Karl Eugen had done for him, the excellent education he had provided, and his paternal devotion, guidance and kindness. When Karl Eugen died in 1793 he was even saddened by his death. But such fairness and mellowness only came with age, hindsight and forgiveness. We should not underestimate the power of Schiller’s resentment, the inner spirit of rebellion, which was the creative spirit behind all his early plays. The curriculum of the Karlschule prescribed the shape of Schiller’s early education. Compared to other eighteenth-century German institutions, the Karlschule curriculum was unique. In some respects, it was very traditional. Students learned to dance, fence and ride, as in the older Ritterakademie for aristocrats. In other respects, however, it was very modern, since students could study such subjects as mathematics, geography, history and economics. Although it taught classical languages, especially Latin and some Greek, the Karlschule did not make the classics the focus of education, as the neo-humanist movement would later advocate. Religion and theology, which were so important for traditional universities, played virtually no role in the Karlschule. As a Roman Catholic in a Protestant state, Karl Eugen had very limited powers with regard to religion; the Landschaft forbade him to introduce theology into the curriculum. The most striking feature of the Karlschule curriculum was the extraordinary emphasis it placed upon ² This point is difﬁcult to dispute, even for those who otherwise stress Karl Eugen’s enlightened policies and benevolent intentions. It is notably conceded by Uhland, Geschichte, 75, who admits that it is ‘eine nicht abzustreitende Tatsache’ that Karl Eugen could be ‘bisweilen äußerst despotisch’. Müller is too one-sided in stressing solely the liberties allowed in the Karlschule. See Herzog und Genie, 63–4, 86. For a critical assessment of Uhland and Müller, see T. J. Reed Schiller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 6–12.

16

Schiller as Philosopher

philosophy.³ Philosophy replaced classical languages and religion as the core of the curriculum. After the reform of the curriculum introduced in 1775, more than ﬁfteen hours a week were devoted to philosophy. Students learned logic, metaphysics, and ethics; they read predominantly modern authors, among them Moses Mendelssohn, Ernst Platner and Christian Garve. They also studied in German translation the central ﬁgures of the Scottish Enlightenment: Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume; and they read in the original the French materialists: Julian Offray de La Mettrie, Paul Henri d’Holbach and Claude-Adrien Helvétius. Their lectures introduced them to some of the latest thinking in aesthetics, especially the writings of Herder, Winckelmann, Sulzer, Lessing and Batteux. The emphasis in learning philosophy was not upon acquiring an historical knowledge of past thinkers but upon developing the power to think for oneself. Students had to defend theses in disputations, write original essays and submit a dissertation. All in all, the philosophical training of the Karlschule was outstanding by eighteenth-century standards.⁴ On these grounds alone, it is necessary to question Schiller’s reputation as a hopeless amateur in philosophy. The absence of theology in the curriculum of the Karlschule was a deep disappointment to the young Schiller, who had long nurtured hopes of becoming a clergyman. Since, however, he could not pay for his own education, he would have to make the best out of the Karlschule. In 1774 Schiller began to study jurisprudence, though this dry subject had little appeal to him. Because there were already too many lawyers in Württemberg, Karl Eugen recommended that Schiller pursue the study of medicine, which had been only recently introduced into the curriculum. For lack of something better, Schiller duly enrolled into the medical faculty in 1775. It was in medicine that he would receive his formal training and degree. It is important to recognize that medicine in the Karlschule was still very much a philosophical discipline. It was indeed its philosophical aspects that would arouse and sustain the interest of the young Schiller. Rather than a study of the mechanics and structure of the body, the medical professors saw medicine as the study of the human being as a whole. The new medical school at the Karlschule was very much in the tradition of what was then known as ‘philosophical medicine’.⁵ The main interest of philosophical medicine was the entire human being, especially the interaction between mind and body. The philosophical doctors stressed that the health of the mind and body were interdependent; and they reacted against the view that the body is simply a machine, as if its health and disease were determined solely by the ﬂow of ﬂuids inside it. They saw medicine as only one part of a new more general science, which they called ³ On instruction in philosophy in the Karlschule, see Müller, Herzog und Genie, 36, 48, 91; and Alt, Schiller, I, 113–35. ⁴ Alt, Schiller, I, 119. ⁵ On the tradition of philosophical medicine at the Karlschule, see Riedel, Anthropologie, 11–37.

Early Philosophy

17

‘Anthropologie’. Anthopology would insist, true to Pope’s dictum, that the most important subject for mankind is mankind; and its approach to its subject was decidedly empirical, stressing the value of observation and experiment. As we shall soon see, Schiller’s early philosophy was very much in the anthropological tradition. Indeed, it had a decisive inﬂuence on his later writings too. Even after his appropriation of Kant in the 1790s, Schiller would continue to pursue the main goal of anthropology: to understand a human being as a whole. It is striking that, in the Ästhetische Briefe, Schiller claims that the conﬂicting sides of our nature can be fully reconciled only by ‘the complete anthropological standpoint’. One of the most important inﬂuences upon Schiller during his Karlschule years was his philosophy professor, Jacob Friedrich Abel (1751–1829).⁶ Shortly after his arrival in the Karlschule in 1775, Abel became a popular teacher, a central ﬁgure in the faculty and administration who had gained the conﬁdence of Karl Eugen. It was Abel who gave philosophy its central place in the curriculum of the Karlschule. He believed in the great value of philosophy in education, since it alone taught a student to think for himself about fundamental issues. It is indeed revealing about the signiﬁcance of philosophy in Schiller’s education that he should derive his greatest inspiration as a student from a philosopher. Abel was so important for Schiller mainly because he aroused his enthusiasm and curiosity, gave him intellectual self-conﬁdence, and inspired him toward academic achievement. Before his encounter with Abel in 1775, Schiller had lapsed almost to the bottom of his class, probably due to his disappointment in not studying theology and his disaffection with jurisprudence. By stressing the value of thinking for oneself, Abel showed Schiller that he could be creative in every aspect of intellectual life. Abel was important to Schiller for other reasons. It was Abel who introduced him to Shakespeare, to the philosophers of the Scottish and French Enlightenment, to the aesthetic writings of Batteux, Home, Riedel, Lessing and Winckelmann. Abel’s own philosophy also set the direction of his early interests. In the tradition of German anthropology, Abel’s main interest lay in developing an empirical psychology, especially one that would investigate extreme personalities, such as geniuses, heroes, psychopaths and criminals. This inspired the young Schiller, whose early dramas are psychological portraits of extreme personalities. Abel held two speeches before the Karlschule that could have been inspirational for the young Schiller: Entstehung und Kennzeichen grosser Geister (1776), which extols the rights and powers of the genius to follow his own interests and passions regardless of social conventions; and Seelenstärke ist Herrschaft über sich selbst (1777), which stresses a stoic ideal of moral independence, the powers of the soul to resist and ⁶ For more detailed accounts of Abel’s inﬂuence, see Buchwald, Schiller, I, 184–98, 204–13; and Alt, Schiller, I, 141–50. On Abel’s philosophy, see Wolfgang Riedel, Jacob Friedrich Abel, Eine Quellenedition zum Philosophieunterricht an der Stuttgarter Karlschule (1773–82) (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1995), 377–450.

18

Schiller as Philosopher

control strong sensual drives and impulses, the apparent prototype of Schiller’s concept of tragic character.⁷ Although Abel’s inﬂuence upon Schiller was deep and broad, it would still be a mistake to conclude that his entire intellectual development grew out of Abel’s philosophy.⁸ This underrates not only the powerful inﬂuence that Kant would later have upon Schiller but also Schiller’s critical attitude toward Abel. Abel taught Schiller to think for himself, even when that meant disagreeing with his teacher. And Schiller would indeed, for reasons we shall soon see, take issue with his teacher. Schiller’s writings during the Karlschule years are devoted almost exclusively to philosophy. There are two speeches written on prescribed questions for festive occasions: ‘Rede über die Frage: Gehört allzuviel Güte, Leutseeligkeit und große Freygebigkeit im engsten Verstande zur Tugend?’ (1779), and ‘Die Tugend in ihren Folgen betrachtet’ (1780). There are also three dissertations. One of them, De discrimine febrium (1780), is essentially medical in content, a theory of fevers. The other two, though, are of direct philosophical interest: Philosophie der Physiologie (1779) and Versuch über den Zusammenhang der thierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner geistigen (1780).⁹ These dissertations, very much in the tradition of philosophical medicine, were attempts to determine the relationship between the mental and physical, the intellectual and sensible. We must now examine the content of these writings.

2. FIRST ETHICS Of all Schiller’s early philosophical interests, ethics took pride of place. Both the early speeches were devoted to ethical themes; though they answered prescribed questions, the speeches very much reﬂected Schiller’s personal interests. It is noteworthy that when Abel later reminisced about Schiller’s years in the Karlschule he remarked that morals had been of ‘primary importance’ to him.¹⁰ It was indeed Schiller’s interest in ethics that motivated both his philosophical dissertations.¹¹ The foundation for Schiller’s early ethical views came from his answer to one fundamental, though no longer fashionable, question: ‘What is the vocation of man?’ This question was central to German moral philosophy in the late ⁷ For texts and commentary, see Riedel, Abel, 181–236, 552–75. ⁸ This is the estimate of Buchwald, Schiller, I, 198. ⁹ For translations and commentaries on the early dissertations, see Kenneth Dewhurst and Nigel Reeves, Friedrich Schiller: Medicine, Psychology and Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). ¹⁰ Schillers Leben Dokumentarisch, ed. Walter Hoyer (Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1967), 37. ¹¹ When Schiller had to propose topics for his dissertation in 1780 it is noteworthy that he proposed discussing questions of freedom and morality. See ‘Themata zu einer Streitschrift’, NA XXI, 124.

Early Philosophy

19

eighteenth century, and it was given great popularity through J. J. Spalding’s famous 1748 Die Bestimmung des Menschen.¹² The vocation of man was a religious formulation for an even more basic question that had dominated classical and medieval ethics: What is the highest good? To ask about the vocation of man was to ask about the end of life, the highest value to which we should devote ourselves; but it was also to inquire into the purpose or meaning of life itself, where the underlying assumption is that this purpose or meaning is created by God. We know the purpose of our lives, it is assumed, if we determine why God has created us, or if we know our role and place in providence. This question had lost much of its importance in early modern moral philosophy; Locke and Hobbes, for example, dismissed it as beneath discussion.¹³ It is noteworthy, however, that it had lost none of its importance for Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Ferguson. In his Moralists Shaftesbury explicitly revives it, most probably in reaction against Locke and Hobbes.¹⁴ It is also striking that this question was still very much on the agenda of the Karlschule. Schiller’s examination theses for 1778 were ‘Philosophische Säze über das höchste Gut’.¹⁵ Such was the importance of the topic for the young Schiller that he devoted the introduction of his Philosophie der Physiologie to it. At ﬁrst blush, his answer to it is strikingly unmodern, not what we would expect for a youth growing up in the age of Enlightenment. It is almost as if we are reading a medieval philosopher when Schiller writes ‘identity with God is the vocation of man’ (Gottgleichheit ist die Bestimmung des Menschen) (NA XX, 10).¹⁶ It is the task of man to study nature, he explains, so that he can fathom the plan of creation, the purpose of divine providence. The more we know about this plan, the closer we become to God; and the closer we become to God, the happier we are. In defending his thesis Schiller cites ‘a wise man of the century’. We expect this ‘wise man’ to be a reincarnated Bonaventura or St. Thomas; but it turns out to be Adam Ferguson, a leading light of the Scottish Enlightenment.¹⁷ So Schiller’s views were not especially medieval after all. In fact, the same theory of the vocation of man was very popular in the ¹² On this work and its signiﬁcance for the Aufklärung, see Riedel, Anthropologie, 166–73. ¹³ Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book II, chap. xxi, §55; and Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 126, 160, 490–1. ¹⁴ See Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (London: Purser, 1732) II, 225–6. ¹⁵ For this text and commentary, see Riedel, Abel, 51–60, 487–90. ¹⁶ All references in the text are to Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. Julius Petersen et al. (Weimar: Böhlausnachfolger, 1943f ), abbreviated ‘NA’. Roman numerals indicate volume numbers, arabic numerals page numbers, and italicized arabic numerals line numbers. ¹⁷ See Adam Ferguson, Institutes of Moral Philosophy (Edingburgh: Kincaid & Bell, 1769). Schiller knew this work in the translation of Christian Garve, Grundsätze der Moralphilosophie. Uebersetzt und mit einigen Anmerkungen versehen von Christian Garve (Leipzig: Dyck, 1772). The crucial passage states: ‘the affection of a mind enlighened to conceive what is the object and what the efﬁcacy of God’s providence is, of all others, most pleasant, and approaches most to an entire exemption from pain’ (154). Schiller gives these lines an emphasis and importance they do not have in the original. Here he follows Garve, who in his Anmerkungen declared this passage to be ‘Eine der schönsten Stellen des Fergusons’ (408–9).

20

Schiller as Philosopher

Aufklärung; it had been championed by such prominent Aufklärer as Spalding, Mendelssohn, Garve and, not least, Abel himself.¹⁸ The same question, and a very similar answer, also ﬁgures in the opening of Schiller’s second Karlschule speech. Here Schiller begins, very much like Shaftesbury in the Inquiry, by trying to determine our fundamental duties from our place within nature and providence. We must see man as a citizen of the great world system, he explains, so that we should determine his duties by his place within it. A good action is that which perfects the world system, or that which promotes the end of God in having created us. All of creation is designed so that everything works toward the perfection of spiritual beings, so that we can determine the worth of our actions according to the degree that they promote the spiritual perfection of the system as a whole (NA XX, 30–1). If we only climb further upwards in the chain of being, Schiller continues, we will ﬁnd that the perfection of spiritual beings rests upon the imitation of God; we will then see that conformity with the divine nature is the criterion of worth for all moral actions (31). An action has a moral worth, then, only when it promotes the perfection of spiritual existence, and in turn only when it agrees with the essence of that most spiritual being of all, God. The same teleological-theological doctrine is the basis for Schiller’s views on two central ethical topics: the link between perfection and happiness, and the connection between individual and social good. The plan of providence is such, Schiller argues, that God has created a natural link between perfection and happiness. There is a wise law of creation, he writes in the Philosophie der Physiologie, that joins perfection with pleasure, so that what perfects a person’s nature makes them feel pleasure, and what harms their nature makes them feel pain (NA XX, 11). The sum of the greatest perfection is therefore also the sum of the greatest pleasure; and since the sum of pleasure is the same as happiness, ‘it is the same whether one says: man exists to perfect himself or man exists to be happy’ (11). There is another wise law of creation, Schiller adds, that connects the perfection or happiness of the whole with the perfection or happiness of the individual. We are not solitary but social by nature, so that we perfect ourselves only if we become part of and contribute to society as a whole. Hence we as individuals enjoy what makes the whole more perfect and happy. This beneﬁcent order, which has so tightly connected the good of the individual with society, means that there is the closest connection between virtue and happiness. Also of central importance for Schiller’s early ethics was the meaning of virtue, a key theme of both Karlschule speeches. In his ﬁrst speech, he deﬁnes virtue as ‘the harmonic bond of love and wisdom’ (NA XX, 4,5). In the second, he gives a similar account: virtue is ‘wise good will’ (weises Wohlwollen) (32). He drops a tantalizing hint about the provenance of his deﬁnition when he attempts to support it by ¹⁸ On this doctrine and its importance for the Aufklärung, see Riedel, Anthropologie, 156–76.

Early Philosophy

21

appealing to ‘some of the greatest wisemen of this century’ (32). This is almost certainly a reference to all, or some combination of, the British sentimentalists, viz. Shaftesbury, Smith, Ferguson and Hutcheson. It is indeed in his account of virtue that we can determine Schiller’s great debt to the British sentimentalists, who had always insisted on the priority of feeling over reason in determining our moral obligations. The theme of the ﬁrst speech is that virtue consists in both love and wisdom, and that neither of these alone is sufﬁcient for it. It is striking, however, that Schiller limits the role of the intellect in the same manner as the British sentimentalists. He stresses that the intellect must ﬁrst determine whether an inclination leads to happiness, and then which inclination results in the greatest happiness (NA XX, 3). The intellect does not, though, determine the goals or ends of action itself. Like the sentimentalists, Schiller holds that these goals or ends are determined by the passions or sentiments, ﬁrst and foremost among them, love. Love was the young Schiller’s favorite theme, the very heart of his early ethics. No other value did he praise so highly, no other did he consider more important. Both the early speeches contain ﬂorid passages in praise of love. Love is the creative force that made nature and man, who should honor and bow before it (7–8). Love is the great bond of the spiritual universe. It is to the spiritual world what the power of gravity is to the physical world: it makes everyone come together in harmony. Love makes God descend to his creatures, it makes his creatures ascend to God (32). It brings all mankind together as the sons and daughters of a single loving father. The immediate inspiration for Schiller’s early concept of love comes neither from Platonism nor Protestantism but, again, British sentimentalism. Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Ferguson saw the source of morality as benevolence, which they identiﬁed with love.¹⁹ The cause of love seems so noble and pure, as Schiller presents it, that it appears to stand above all reproof and objection. But Schiller knew all too well that his theory had a potent enemy: egoism, the doctrine that all human action is motivated by self-interest. His own theory of love was indeed a reaction against egoism. He found the most notorious protagonist of this doctrine in Claude-Adrien Helvétius, whose posthumous book, De l’homme, was well known in the Karlschule.²⁰ Helvétius had argued that all social bonds are ultimately based on self-interest, and that love and benevolence are ultimately only means to one’s personal happiness. The young Schiller was very much caught up in the battle between ‘the system of

¹⁹ The immediate source was most probably Ferguson, who states in the Institutes that ‘the fundamental law of morality’ consists in ‘the love of mankind’ (170–1, 174). Ferguson is reafﬁrming Francis Hutcheson, who claims that all morally worthy actions stem from ‘Love or Benevolence’. See An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (London, 1729), 116, 118. Hutcheson is in turn developing some suggestions of Shaftesbury. See Shaftesbury, The Moralists in Characteristicks II, 137–8, who writes about a ‘mystical love’ for all mankind and nature. ²⁰ See Riedel, Anthropologie, 176–182.

22

Schiller as Philosopher

benevolence’ and ‘the system of egoism’, a controversy which began in early eighteenth-century Britain in the disputes between the sentimentalists and the materialists (Hobbes and Mandeville). The controversy surfaces time and again in his early ethical writings, and we shall consider below how Schiller attempts to resolve it (1.5). Its most vivid incarnation is Franz Moor in Die Räuber, who represents the groping egoist who wants to overthrow all ethical values in the pursuit of his selﬁsh ends (NA III, 19). Apart from the lurking enemy of egoism, Schiller’s early ethics paints a remarkably optimistic picture of the world. A loving God creates man and nature; and the purpose of his creation is nothing more than human happiness and perfection. Furthermore, it is easy for human beings to achieve these ends, for there is no conﬂict between self-interest and virtue, personal happiness and perfection. If we know our true self-interest, we cultivate virtue and perfection, because our selfinterest is inextricably linked with the good of the social whole. The wheels of the system would turn smoothly—it would naturally achieve its intended end—if people simply act in the very same spirit as their creator: the spirit of love. Of course, such optimism was not unique to Schiller; it was the spirit of the dominant philosophy of the Aufklärung, the Leibnizian-Wolfﬁan system, which saw this as the best of all possible worlds. Inevitably, such optimism could not last. In the 1780s Schiller began to realize that Dr Pangloss’s philosophy is really only what Voltaire said it was: a beautiful fantasy. There is no room for tragedy in such a picture of the universe; and in the 1780s, for many reasons, Schiller began to ﬁnd life deeply tragic. He would come to see that virtue is often achieved only at the cost of suffering, that love can be an egoistic delusion, that people usually cannot achieve spiritual perfection because they have to struggle to survive, and that there are conﬂicts in duty that destroy even the purest souls. The rosy optimism of Leibnizian-Wolfﬁan rationalism could not withstand the experience of life, which it would soon be Schiller’s purpose as a poet and dramatist to explore. Besides its naive optimism, there is another fundamental ﬂaw in Schiller’s early ethics. It suffers from a basic tension, one that Schiller will have to wrestle with throughout his intellectual career. This tension arises from its conﬂicting answers to the question of the highest good. On the one hand, Schiller is explicit and emphatic that the vocation of man is to perfect his spiritual nature, especially his moral and intellectual powers. This aspect of his ethics is especially evident when, following the Chistian tradition, he makes the contemplation of God the highest value and end of life. On the other hand, however, Schiller is no less clear and ﬁrm that the purpose of life is to develop our complete humanity, which includes not only the spiritual but also the physical, not only the intellectual but also the sensible, sides of our nature. This was indeed the central thesis of the Versuch, which in several places deﬁnes human perfection exactly in such holistic terms (41, 23–9; 64, 5–8; 68, 11). It is a great mistake, Schiller argues there, to regard a human being as a disembodied spirit or intellect, for whom the body is nothing more than

Early Philosophy

23

a prison. This is the error of the stoics, which should be avoided at all costs. While he stresses that it is no less an error to overrate the physical side of our nature, as the Epicureans once did, he still thinks that the more common error is to give overdue attention to the moral and intellectual side of our nature. The whole thrust of the Versuch is then to show how our physical and sensible nature plays an important and indispensable role in our well-being. In stressing his holistic conception and the physical side of our nature, Schiller was taking a much more modern tack, showing his indebtedness to the Empﬁndsamkeit movement of the 1760s, which would attempt to reclaim human sensibility as an essential part of our humanity. The young Schiller was still not ready to resolve such a basic tension, which required taking some very radical steps. To follow Empﬁndsamkeit to its bitter end meant a complete break with the Christian tradition. For if the development of our complete humanity is the highest good, and if humanity has a sensible and physical side, it follows that the highest good has to be realized here on earth. After all, it is only here that we have a sensible and physical nature to develop. There would be no need, therefore, for the postulate of immortality, which is necessary only to support the Christian conception of the highest good. In the Karlschule, however, Schiller was nowhere near to giving up this postulate, which he still regarded as a necessary incentive for virtue. Schiller will eventually resolve this tension in favour of the more modern and worldly conception of the highest good. This will happen only later in the 1780s, however, when he moves away from Christianity and toward a more secular and neo-pagan view of the world. Fortunately, he will have a precedent, indeed a model, in his struggle to resolve this tension: Christian Martin Wieland (see 3.5). Still, as we shall eventually see, echoes of this tension resurface in Schiller’s later philosophy. It will be the source of a basic ambiguity in Schiller’s concept of grace in Anmut und Würde, which can be deﬁned in both spiritualist and holistic terms. 3. FIRST METAPHYSICS According to an old interpretation, Schiller’s early philosophy is fundamentally monistic and holistic, devoted to overcoming the dualisms between mind and body, intellect and sensibility, in a single uniﬁed conception of the self. It was this early tendency of Schiller’s thought—so the interpretation goes—that later collided with Kant’s dualisms and that led to the efforts to resolve them in Anmut und Würde and the Aesthetische Briefe. On this view, then, Schiller’s philosophical development consists in an attempt to reconcile his early monism and holism with his later Kantian dualisms. It sees Schiller as an essentially reluctant and heretical Kantian who could never really accept the critical dualisms. There are some important elements of truth to this interpretation. The young Schiller was devoted to bridging dualisms and developing a uniﬁed conception of

24

Schiller as Philosopher

the self. This was the inheritance of philosophical medicine, and indeed the chief goal of both early dissertations. Furthermore, Schiller’s early endeavour continued after his adoption of Kant’s philosophy in the early 1790s. He wrestled with the Kantian dualisms in the 1790s as he had once struggled with the Cartesian dualisms in the late 1770s. However, there is still something very misleading about this interpretation, a lurking error that has to be removed if Schiller’s entire intellectual development is not to be misunderstood. Namely, it is a serious mistake to think that the young Schiller’s philosophy is opposed in principle to dualism. The very opposite is the case: Schiller explicitly reafﬁrmed and passionately argued for dualism. His problem was how to explain the interaction between the mental and physical, the intellectual and sensible, given that there is a fundamental difference in kind between these entities. Schiller’s attempts to bridge these dualisms—it must be stressed—essentially took place within the presuppositions of the Cartesian dualistic tradition. Hence, Schiller’s concern was not simply to establish unity but unity within difference. The goal of his early, and indeed later, philosophy was not merely wholeness but harmony, unity amid tension.²¹ Once we fully accept this point, Schiller’s later adoption of Kant seems much more intelligible and straightforward. Schiller was happy to accept Kant’s dualistic philosophy because his own early philosophy was already fundamentally dualistic, and indeed, as we shall soon see, for reasons very similar to Kant’s. Hence, when Schiller later attempted to bridge Kant’s dualisms, he was simply continuing his early anthropological project begun with the Cartesian dualisms. The evidence for Schiller’s early dualism is striking, straightforward, and overwhelming. Several facts should be taken into account. First, throughout both dissertations, Schiller described the mind and body in classic Cartesian terms, so that there is a ﬁrm dualism between them. Hence he writes that the mind is simple and indivisible while the body is compound and divisible (NA XX, 44, 5–6; 48, 17–21); that the mind is penetrable, not occupying any deﬁnite space, whereas the body is impenetrable, resisting any body that would take its space (12, 27–30); and that the mind is spontaneous, acting from its own inner causes, while the body is inert, moving only if it is moved upon (20, 28–32; 26, 30–5; 46, 6–10). Second, in the Philosophie der Physiologie, Schiller ﬂatly rejected the two most common monistic theories of the late eighteenth century: materialism and idealism.

²¹ This point is the central theme of Steven Martison’s interdisciplinary study, Harmonious Tensions (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996). The same point, in a somewhat different context, has been stressed by David Pugh, Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schiller’s Aesthetics (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 15–6, 68. Both Martinson and Pugh emphasize– rightly, in my opinion–how Schiller’s thinking attempts to achieve unity amid difference. Their account agrees with the assessment of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who, in his commemorative essay on Schiller, ‘Ueber Schiller und den Gang seiner Geistesentwicklung’, stated that the distinctive characteristic of Schiller’s thinking was his attempt to wed holistic and analytical thinking. See Werke in Fünf Bänden, ed. Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), II, 360.

Early Philosophy

25

He dismissed materialism because it could not explain the sui generis characteristics of the mind on the basis of mechanism (12, 30–3); and he scorned idealism because it turned all reality into a mere dream, into nothing more than the play of my own representations (13, 1–9). Third, in the Versuch, Schiller postulates a harmony between two very different kinds of sentiments, one intellectual and the other physical. While he thinks that there is some interaction between them, he assigns each to different ontological domains (NA XX, 45–6). Nothing more plainly reveals Schiller’s endorsement of dualism than his critique of Abel’s hypothesis that the soul is an impenetrable substance.²² In his Seelenlehre, Abel had argued that if we only assume that the soul is impenetrable then we can explain its interactions within the natural world; it will then obey the laws of attraction and repulsion like all other matter.²³ But Schiller did not hesitate to criticize his teacher’s hypothesis, fearing that it led down the slippery slope toward materialism. ‘But who can separate the concept of matter from impenetrability?’, he asked rhetorically in the Philosophie der Physiologie (NA XX, 12, 28–30). Apparently, Abel was not sufﬁciently dualistic for his young student. The motives for Schiller’s allegiance to dualism were essentially moral and religious. If the mind were only material, there would be no reason to believe in immortality because the mind, like all compound substances, would be dissolvable (12, 30–5). If, conversely, the world were only mental, all reality would become a dream and we would have no reason to be held responsible for our actions (13, 6–7 ). It is noteworthy, however, that there is one moral belief that Schiller was especially eager to defend on the basis of his dualism: moral freedom. In both dissertations, Schiller argues avidly that our intellectual powers of attention and abstraction show our spontaneity, our independence from the determination of the senses and the external world; it is thanks to these powers that we have the capacity to diminish, though never to destroy, the inﬂuence of the senses (NA XX, 26–7, 46). In his 1789 ‘Themata zu einer Streitschrift’, where Schiller proposed topics for his second dissertation, he revealed that one of the most important subjects he had been thinking about in the past year had been ‘On the Freedom and Morality of human beings’ (NA XXI, 124). While he never wrote the dissertation on this topic, solely due to the advice of his teachers who found it unsuitable for a medical faculty, its signiﬁcance for him is still reﬂected in many ²² On this doctrine and Schiller’s critique of it, see Riedel, Anthropologie, 91–3. In his Abel, 445 n184, 511–2, Riedel traces this doctrine back to Christian August Crusius. There is indeed a clear afﬁnity. See Crusius, Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunft-Wahrheiten (Leipzig: Gleditsch, 1745), §§364, 402. It is noteworthy that the young Kant too was a critic of Crusius’s doctrine. See Träume eines Geistersehers, AA II, 319–23. This suggests that Kant’s and Schiller’s dualism was forged against a common opponent. ²³ See J. F. Abel, Einleitung in die Seelenlehre (Stuttgart: Meztler, 1786), §§32–3, 18–9. Although Abel published this work after Schiller’s stay in the Karlschule, he had most probably formulated it earlier. His Dissertatio de origine characteris anima (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1776) already stresses the physical basis of representation and the inﬂuence of physical causes in mental development. See §§11, 32, 8–10, 27 (Riedel, Abel, 148–9, 167).

26

Schiller as Philosopher

places in the Versuch where Schiller attempts to defend the belief in freedom. The young Schiller’s use of dualism to support this belief is another reason why it was easy for him to assimilate Kant’s philosophy, whose dualism is based on similar motivations. Having postulated two heterogeneous substances, Schiller’s problem was then to explain the interaction between them. It is striking that Schiller posed the problem in classical dualistic terms. In the Versuch he wrote that the soul and body are like two well-tuned instruments: when one struck a string in one, the same string sounded in the other; the problem, however, is to explain ‘the wonderful and remarkable sympathy’ between such ‘heterogeneous principles’ (64, 4–7 ). So Schiller faced the classic Cartesian difﬁculty. If the mind were not within space, how could something in space act upon it? The mechanical model of explanation of Cartesian physics had explained all causation in terms of impact, by how much a body changes place when another acts upon it. But if the mind were not within space, it could not be acted upon or moved. In that case, however, it seemed as if the mind could not be explained at all, falling outside the naturalistic worldview as a ‘ghost in the machine’. Painfully aware of this very difﬁculty, Schiller still insisted that interaction is a fact. The testimony of experience is undeniable, even if what it reveals is also inexplicable: the mind acts on the body, the body acts on the mind. For this reason he swore his allegiance to the inﬂuxus physicus, the doctrine that there could be an interchange between such heterogeneous substances, the favorite theory among the German anthropologists. Accordingly, Schiller rejected the two alternative dualistic theories of the eighteenth century: occasionalism and pre-established harmony. The problem with occasionalism is that it made a miracle out of interaction: every time matter acts upon mind, God must intervene to give it this power (NA XX, 13). The problem with the pre-established harmony is that it makes mind and world completely independent, so that the mind could have all its representations even if the world did not exist (13). From a broader historical viewpoint, it is striking that Schiller did not seem to be aware of one of the most important monistic theories of the late eighteenth century. This was the organicist theory that there is only a difference in degree between mind and body because both are simply stages in the development and organization of living force. This theory has its origins in the esoteric Leibniz, and more speciﬁcally in his doctrine of vis viva; it was later developed into an explicit monistic doctrine by Herder, Jacobi and Schelling toward the end of the eighteenth century. It was this theory that would later play a fundamental role in the development of German idealism, when it became a cardinal tenet of the absolute idealism of Schelling, Hölderlin and Hegel. The crucial move behind this theory is the denial of Cartesian mechanism, and more speciﬁcally its central underlying claim that the essence of matter consists in extension. It is telling, however, that Schiller, who insists that matter is inert, impenetrable and extended in classic Cartesian manner, refuses to make this important move. This is noteworthy

Early Philosophy

27

because it places Schiller ﬁrmly outside the organicist tradition, into which his early philosophy is all too often placed.²⁴ In this respect, then, Schiller cannot be regarded as an ancestor of Schelling’s and Hegel’s objective idealism. Schiller’s early metaphysics has sometimes been placed within the organicist tradition because of his apparent sympathy for the vitalistic theory of G. E. Stahl. In the eighteenth century Stahl’s theory found much support as an alternative to the purely mechanical conception of the human body. In his Theoria medica vera (1707), Stahl challenged mechanism with the thesis that the human body is organized and directed by a governing vital force or anima.²⁵ If this anima should leave the body, the result is death, the complete corruption of organic matter. Stahl explained illness and disease as the result of disturbances in the governing force rather than as products of mechanical disfunctions or obstructions. Stahl’s views were well known in the Karlschule where some students, though few professors, regarded them sympathetically. For this reason, Schiller’s own early physiology has been interpreted as essentially Stahlian.²⁶ But, in this regard, it is necessary to make two points. First, Schiller was not especially sympathetic to Stahl. While he did think Stahl was right to stress the inﬂuence of the mind over the body, he did not think that it is necessary to postulate a special anima to account for it (NA XX, 69–70); and he dismissed as fantasy Stahl’s views that all physical disease could be cured by treatment of the mind alone.²⁷ Second, even if Schiller were sympathetic to Stahl, there is still a fundamental difference between Stahl’s vitalism and Herder’s organicism. Namely, Stahl’s doctrine essentially concerns organic matter and not matter as such; it does not dispute dualism in general but only the dualism between the mind and the human body. Herder’s doctrine, however, is a general metaphysical thesis against dualism, one which denies that matter consists in extension and which claims there is no difference in kind between the mental and physical because they are different degrees of organization and development of living force. Given that Schiller endorses dualism, how does he attempt to explain the interaction between mind and body? It was the central purpose of his Philosophie der Physiologie to settle this conundrum. Showing much speculative daring, Schiller ²⁴ In his Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie und Aesthetik (Würzburg: Stahel, 1892), Robert Sommer argued against the prevalent Kantian interpretations of Schiller and stressed the importance of Herder’s organic worldview for Schiller’s early and late philosophy. See pp. 367, 373, 378, 387, 391, 430–1. Yet Sommer overlooked the evidence for Schiller’s early dualism. ²⁵ G. E. Stahl, Theoria medica vera (Leipzig: Voss, 1831–3), I, 43, 234. On Stahl’s theories and their reception in the Karlschule, see Riedel, Anthropologie, 24–5, 48–9; and Dewhurst and Reeves, Schiller, 95–6, 112–3. ²⁶ This is the interpretation of Buchwald, Schiller I, 247; Jakob Minor, Schiller: Sein Leben und seine Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1890), I, 248–50; and Benno von Wiese in his commentary in the Nationalausgabe, XXI, 117–31. ²⁷ See De discrimine febrium, NA XXII, 33, 38. Regarding Schiller’s treatment of Stahl, see Riedel, Anthropologie, 6–8. It is unclear on what evidence Dewhurst and Reeves base their view, Schiller, 195–6, that Schiller was inﬂuenced by Stahl in his treatment of psychosomatic disorders. Such an interpretation does not agree with the critique of Stahl in Versuch, NA XX, 69–70.

28

Schiller as Philosopher

resorted to the hypothesis of a Mittelkraft, a mediating power that is partly material and partly mental (NA XX, 13). This mediating power connects mind and body because they act upon one another through it; each acts directly on it, and it in turn acts on them (13). Since this power is the condition under which we have perceptions, it cannot be directly perceived itself; but it is still possible to know of its existence through its effects (16). Schiller declares that he has ﬁnally come to the ﬁrm conviction that, though it is imperceptible, this mediating power inheres in ‘an inﬁnitely ﬁne, simple and moveable being’ (Weesen), which ﬂows in the nervous sytem. Hence he sometimes calls the power Nervengeist (16). The nervous spirit transmits through the nerve channels the stimuli of the external world that reach the senses; these stimuli are then transformed by the mind into representations (17–19). Regarding the precise nature of the medium of transmission of the nervous spirit—whether it is by vibrations or a ﬂuid—Schiller refuses to speculate further, warning that this is a ﬁeld where many a ‘metaphysical Don Quixote’ has come to ruin (16). The Mittelkraft hypothesis is, of course, a desperate strategem. It seems to explain the interaction only by invoking a power that is inexplicable itself. Its critics dismissed such a Zwitterding as an Unding on the grounds that it is self-contradictory: it would have to be both penetrable and impenetrable, divisible and indivisible. Schiller realized that it seemed self-contradictory, but insisted that it had to exist all the same. Here he rested his case on nothing more than Hamlet’s maxim: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’.²⁸ Schiller’s theorizing is less fantastic and more defensible, however, once we place it in context. The idea that there is an entity between mind and body had never disappeared in early modern theories of the mind. The Cambridge Platonist Henry More, for example, had protested against Cartesian dualism on the grounds that the soul could also exist in space, and he postulated the extra dimension of ‘essential Spißitude’ to account for this strange kind of non-material extension.²⁹ The struggle against dualism had kept this kind of theory very much alive in eighteenth-century Germany, where one version or the other was defended by F. C. von Creuz, F. C. Oetinger, G. Ploucquet and J. F. Abel.³⁰ Their works would have been familiar to Schiller, who almost certainly knew of the theory. All its versions postulated the soul as a kind of mediating entity between a more spiritual mind and a more material body. Yet Schiller gives this theory a novel twist, and it is here that his main contribution to the problem lay. He located the Mittelding not in the soul but in the nervous ﬂuid itself. This move seemed very strategic: it seemed to provide the basis for explaining the interaction between mind and body ²⁸ Hamlet, Act I, Scene v, 166–8. Schiller cites the maxim in De discrimine febrium in a similar context. Cf. NA XXII, 34 and XX, 13. ²⁹ Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings (London: Morden, 1662), I, 20. ³⁰ On this tradition in Germany, see Riedel, Anthropologie, 61–93.

Early Philosophy

29

while removing the dangers of materialism resulting from attributing indivisibility or extension to the soul itself. Still, whatever its dialectical advantages, the theory is still intrinsically fragile. It is not surprising, therefore, that Schiller dropped any mention of it in his second dissertation.

4. THE SORROWS OF YOUNG JULIUS Undoubtedly, the most remarkable work of Schiller’s early philosophy is his Philosophische Briefe, which ﬁrst appeared in the Thalia in 1786. The work is at once both a confession and retraction, a statement and self-critique, of Schiller’s early philosophical beliefs. The Briefe pretends to be an epistolary exchange between Julius, an aspiring young philosopher, and Raphael, his older and wiser teacher. While Schiller speaks through the character of Julius, Raphael plays a role like his old mentor, Abel.³¹ In a section entitled Theosophie des Julius, Julius gives a brief and passionate exposition of his early philosophical credo. We can recognize within it many of the cardinal doctrines of Schiller’s early speeches and dissertations in the Karlschule. Now, however, Julius distances himself from his confession, claiming that it comes from a lost earlier essay he has found in his papers. The credo expressed in the Theosophie, Julius frankly admits, is the work of a naive and impetuous youth, one who has created a philosophy that addresses the needs of his heart more than the demands of his reason. Although Julius does not denounce or abandon his earlier philosophy, he believes in it no longer and does not know how to resolve his doubts about it. Raphael has created a spiritual crisis for Julius. He has encouraged Julius to think for himself, to accept no belief as true unless it meets the standards of his own critical reason. So, seeing many of his early beliefs lack sufﬁcient proof, Julius is now set adrift on doubt’s boundless sea; he begs assistance from his teacher, who, however, tells him that he must cure himself by resolving his own doubts. Schiller leaves his reader with Julius’s crisis. Though he vindicates Julius’s philosophy as a necessary stage in the development of his character and in the investigation of the truth, he does not attempt to resolve Julius’s general skepticism. Schiller proposed a much longer work where the conﬂicting claims of both correspondents would be resolved in ‘a general, puriﬁed and well-founded truth’ (108). But the longer work was never written.

³¹ Who was Julius? Of course, he need not represent any speciﬁc historical person. However, we can legitimately ask: What person in Schiller’s life best ﬁts the role of Julius? There is no unanimity in the literature. Buchwald thinks that it is Abel, Schiller I, 203, which seems to me the most plausible hypothesis. Alt, Schiller I, 101, suggests that it is Schiller’s friend Albrecht Friedrich Lempp. Von Wiese surmises that it could be another early friend, G. F. Scharffenstein, NA XXI, 152. One might think that it is Körner, who takes the role of Raphael in writing the last letter of the Briefe. See NA XXI, 156–60. But this is implausible, given Schiller’s surprise that Körner did this. See Schiller to Körner, April 15, 1788, NA XXV, 40.

30

Schiller as Philosopher

What brought on Julius’s, crisis of doubt? What intellectual tumult did Schiller go through from 1782 to 1786 that he now had such reservations about his early philosophy? Obviously, the question is of crucial importance for an understanding of Schiller’s philosophical development; but it admits of no simple or deﬁnitive answers. There is some evidence that Schiller had been exposed to Hume’s skepticism in the Natural History of Religion.³² While he might not have read this work himself—it had been available in translation since 1759—he would have learned about the thrust of its argument from Abel, who had discussed it in his lectures. (This is one reason why Abel ﬁts the role of Raphael in the Briefe.) It has sometimes been suggested that Schiller’s skepticism was a response to Kant.³³ But this is unlikely. Schiller’s intensive study of Kant will begin only in 1790. In his April 18, 1788, letter to Körner he picks up the suggestion that he should read Kant; but he then admits that he is still not ready for the dry and dreary study of epistemology (NA XXV, 40). In any case, if Schiller were responding to Kant, it must be said he was not a very good student; for he was hardly appreciative of Kant’s challenge to metaphysics. For all his skepticism in the Briefe, Schiller does not proscribe metaphysics in general; he thinks only that there is something problematic about his metaphysics in particular. If there is little evidence regarding external inﬂuences on Schiller, there are also few hints in the Briefe itself. Julius refers to the general dangers of free-thinking and skepticism—‘the paroxysms of the fever of the human spirit’—and he fears his system will collapse with the ﬁrst shove of materialism. But he is not very speciﬁc about how these doubts undermine his beliefs or which beliefs are affected. There is one place, however, where Schiller does reveal his doubts regarding one fundamental doctrine: the belief in providence, the divine creation and government of the universe. As we have seen, this belief is crucial to Schiller’s early ethics, the foundation for his beliefs in the vocation of man and the harmony between virtue and happiness (1.2). But now this belief begins to waver. At one point Julius confesses that he cannot understand God’s creation of the universe. If God is perfect, why did he create me now and not from eternity? Why did he create humanity later than nature? Since the world must be better with humanity, it seems that he did not act from the beginning according to his inﬁnite goodness. Although the point is not made explicit, Julius hints where his doubts are heading: atheism. For he asks: if God is not a creator, is he really a God at all? (110) Not surprisingly, Julius’s doubts about providence reﬂect Schiller’s own growing skepticism in the early 1780s. If we consider some of Schiller’s writings during these years we ﬁnd him questioning, though not entirely rejecting, the Christian doctrine of a providential order. His doubts are especially apparent from his Spaziergang unter den Linden, a short dialogue which Schiller wrote in the beginning of 1782 for

³² This is the suggestion of Alt, Schiller, 250. ³³ See Emil Wilm, The Philosophy of Schiller in its Historical Relations (Boston: J. W. Luce, 1912), 87.

Early Philosophy

31

the Wirtembergische Reportorium. This dialogue represents a dispute between the pessimistic and cynical Wollmar and the optimistic and idealistic Edwin. While the dialogue ends in an aporia where both speakers have some right on their side, it is signiﬁcant that Wollmar’s position has a justiﬁcation all its own. Wollmar is a materialist who thinks that ‘the fate of the soul is written in the body’ (NA XXII, 76). There is no room for providence or immortality in his concept of nature. Nature follows a cycle, reworking and feeding off her own creations, like ‘a dirty monster who feeds off her own excrement’ (74). The order of nature is not such that people attain perfection or happiness, because most of them have to struggle only to survive. Since nature is a scene of constant destruction, despair and death, all for no purpose or reward, it does not give witness to a wise creator. So Wollmar screams his challenge to Edwin: ‘Justify the potter from his pot!’ (78). Some of the poems of the 1780s go further than skepticism: they protest against the very idea of a providential order where virtue is rewarded and vice is punished only in the afterlife. In the 1784 poem Freigeisterei der Leidenschaften, for example, the poet protests against the bonds of duty that demand squelching his passion for a married woman (NA I, 163–5). He has sworn to his goddess that he would follow the path of righteousness, but he now wants to break the pact that causes him so much suffering. There is no heavenly reward that can compensate for his present loss, and there is no higher good than the passions he could satisfy here on earth. The poem Resignation, also written in 1784, voices a similar complaint against providence: the poet now asks himself whether it was right for him to sacriﬁce his happiness on earth for moral redemption in the afterlife (I, 166–9). A spirit tells the poet that we all have to choose between two principles: hope or enjoyment, the prospect of eternity or the pleasures of the earth. We cannot have both; and whatever we choose will affect us forever; either we forfeit eternal happiness or the enjoyment of this life. Here Schiller does not decide for one principle or the other; but it is already striking that he thinks that we must choose between these principles.³⁴ In the early philosophy they were not at odds with one another: the providential order guaranteed that the striving for perfection would bring happiness, whether in this life or the next. Another crucial development of the early 1780s—one that ﬁts hand-in-glove with his doubts about providence—is Schiller’s movement toward a more humanistic ethic. We have already seen how in the Karlschule years Schiller’s ethic made spiritual perfection the highest good, how it made the imitation of God into the vocation of man. We also saw, however, how Schiller also held, somewhat inconsistently, that the highest good is the full development of our humanity, where

³⁴ Alt maintains that Resignation already marks Schiller’s turn to a purely immanent and thisworldly ethical system because of the famous lines ‘Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht’ (NA I, 168, v.95). See his Schiller I, 250. However, the Weltgericht here could be an allusion to the Christian idea that the good and the evil receive their deserts only with the second coming of Christ.

32

Schiller as Philosopher

humanity includes sensibility as well as reason. It is noteworthy that, in the early 1780s, Schiller began to resolve this tension in favor of the more humanistic, less Christian doctrine. Hence, some of the poems of the early 1780s—Rousseau, Klopstock und Wieland, An einen Moralisten, Kastration und Männer—tend toward humanism or praise the realm of the senses, stressing how they deserve cultivation for their own sake.³⁵ Such a development was indeed inevitable: if love is the preeminent value, as Schiller had preached, it cannot be separated from eros, its physical embodiment. It is also signiﬁcant that Schiller’s poetic ideal during this time was not the Christian heaven but the pagan Elysium, where one could escape the realm of death and time but still enjoy the human pleasures of the senses.³⁶ Nowhere is Schiller’s new humanistic this-worldly ethic more apparent, though, than in some lines he wrote to L. F. Huber in October 1785: Enthusiasm is the bold powerful impetus that throws the ball in the air; but he is a fool who would expect the ball to run on forever in the same direction and with the same velocity. The ball makes an arc, because its force breaks in the air . . . Do not glance over this allegory, my friend, for it is more than a poetic fancy; if you think about it carefully you will ﬁnd the fate of all human plans suggested in such a symbol. We all strive and aim to reach the zenith, like a rocket, but we all make the same arc and fall back to mother earth. Still this arc is so beautiful!! (NA XXIV, 26)

Besides Schiller’s skepticism about providence and his growing humanism, there was another important motif behind his new thinking that made him distance himself from his early philosophy. This motif concerns Schiller’s views about philosophy itself. In the 1780s, Schiller came more and more to the conviction that a philosophy is a personal statement, and as such reﬂects the personality, physiology and age of the philosopher. In Spaziergang, Wollmar stresses how much our thinking depends on our physical state. A glass of wine can make the devil seem nice, a bad stomach can ruin the planet for us (NA XXII, 76). In Der Jungling und der Greis, a short dialogue appended to Spaziergang, we also learn how much philosophy depends on age: the youth sees life as striving toward high ideals, whereas the old man advises contentment with one’s lot. This doctrine reaches its apex in the introduction to the Philosophische Briefe where the author tells us that reason has its epochs and its fate just like the heart. The opinions expressed in the dialogues, the author explains, are only relatively true or false, i.e. they reﬂect the world only from the standpoint of the individual (NA XX, 108). Schiller could not except his own philosophy from such a doctrine, and in doing so he now had to admit its own merely relative truth. Hence, in the conclusion of the Briefe, Julius defends his theosophy on the grounds that, however illusory, it has at least beautiﬁed his life.

³⁵ See NA I, 61–3, 81, 86–7, 96–7. ³⁶ On this concept in the early poems, see von Wiese, Schiller, 122–5.

Early Philosophy

33

5. CONFESSIONS OF A THEOSOPHIST By far the most fascinating part of the Philosophische Briefe is the ‘Theosophie des Julius’, where Julius gives a short sketch of his earlier worldview and ethics. There is some truth to Julius’s pretension that the ‘Theosophie’ is an old lost essay he found among his papers. Most of the ‘Theosophie’ does represent Schiller’s earlier philosophy from the Karlschule; it is an epitome of the metaphysical and ethical views of his early speeches and dissertations. However, it would be a mistake to think that there is nothing new in the ‘Theosophie’, for it contains ideas that we do not ﬁnd in the earlier material, viz. the appearance of hermetic ideas. Furthermore, some sections contradict or take issue with Schiller’s earlier beliefs (as we shall soon see). On these grounds we must be careful in treating Julius’s claims that the ‘Theosophie’ is simply an earlier essay, as if it were already written and he were simply inserting it into the Briefe. This is only a literary ﬁction, which should not be taken too literally, as if Schiller wrote most of the ‘Theosophie’ already in his Karlschule years.³⁷ When exactly the ‘Theosophie’ was written remains obscure; but parts of it, and perhaps even all of it, were written later when Schiller was already troubled by some of his earlier views. The whole tone of the ‘Theosophie’ is indeed one of nostalgia and reminscence; it is written with melancholy, distance and detachment, not with the fervour of present conviction. What, then, does Schiller say in his ‘Theosophie’? Its contents deserve the closest attention because it is the best epitome of Schiller’s early philosophy, and because it offers hints about how Schiller’s thinking was changing in the 1780s. The ﬁrst section of the ‘Theosophie’, entitled ‘The World and Thinking Being’, is a grand cosmology. We are told bluntly in its opening sentence: ‘The world is the thought of God’ (115). This sentence reﬂects Schiller’s early faith in providence, his belief in the divine creation and government of the universe, which was the basis of his entire early ethics. Julius also reafﬁrms Schiller’s earlier views about the vocation of man. Just as in the ﬁrst dissertation and Karlschule speeches, the highest good is to achieve spiritual perfection, and in doing so to imitate the divine spirit who has created us all. Since God has created nature according to a plan, Julius argues, it is ³⁷ On the basis of very circumstantial evidence Benno von Wiese has argued that much of the Briefe, and indeed almost all of the ‘Theosophie’, was written much earlier than 1786. See NA XXI, 150–1 and his Schiller, 98–9. His evidence consists in the following points: (a) the similarity of some phrases and sentences between passages in the ‘Theosophie’ and Schiller’s April 14, 1786, letter to Reinwald; (b) the poems in the Briefe correspond with those Schiller wrote for the Anthologie auf das Jahr 1782; (c) the subtitle to Die Freundschaft, written in 1782, is ‘Aus den Briefen Julius an Raphael, einem noch ungedruckten Roman’. It should be obvious, however, that none of these points show, as von Wiese claims, that Schiller actually wrote the text of the ‘Theosophie’ before 1786; they show at most that he had conceived some of the ideas for the Briefe. Von Wiese admits that the main evidence for his thesis rests in the similarity in ideas between the ‘Theosophie’ and the early Karlschule philosophy; but it is precisely here that one must pause to question his thesis, for the content is not the same and in some places there are contradictions. Von Wiese himself has to admit that the section ‘Aufopferung’ was written much later, around the time of the Don Carlos. See NA XXI, 153.

34

Schiller as Philosopher

the vocation of all thinking beings to determine this plan from the phenomena of nature. We become close to God by knowing the reasons he created us and nature. The contemplation of harmony, order, and beauty gives me great joy, he says, because they put me in the situation of their creator and allow me to feel my afﬁnity with him (116). The reafﬁrmation of Schiller’s earlier doctrine is all the more striking at the close of the Briefe when Julius declares that all spirits create from four elements—oneself, nature, god and the future—and that, though they mix these elements in all kinds of different ways, there is one truth that remains in all religions and systems: ‘Come close to the God that you believe’ (129). So far, then, there is nothing new to Schiller’s cosmology, nothing that could not be already found in the Karlschule writings. But Julius then introduces and stresses a doctrine that is not so evident in them: the ancient idea of the liber naturae, the thesis that nature is the secret language of God. The great system of the world is remarkable, Julius says, because it symbolizes the many manifestations of the divine being. The laws of nature are ciphers that the creator has put together to make itself comprehensible to other rational beings; they are the alphabet by which the inﬁnite mind communicates with all ﬁnite minds (116). Everything inside and outside us is a hieroglyph of a power similar to our own; and every state of the soul has its parable in physical creation, viz. ﬁre signiﬁes activity, a stream the ﬂow of time, a circle eternity, the sun truth, and so on (116). Hence Julius says that the universe around him is peopled with spirits. Where there is a body, there is a spirit; and where there is motion there are thoughts (116–7). The cosmology of the Briefe has been read along Herderian lines, as evidence for Schiller’s adherence to organicism and vitalism.³⁸ But if this were the case there would be a conﬂict with the dualistic metaphysics of the other Karlschule writings. Organicism or vitalism means that there is no fundamental difference in kind between mind and body; both are different degrees of organization and development of living force. But nothing in Schiller’s thesis commits him to such a doctrine. Although the universe is now animated, that is not because it is a manifestation of living force but because it is a symbol of a spirit. There can still be a dualism in substance between sign and signiﬁer, just as there can be a difference in kind between a word written on a page and the concept by which it is understood. The next section of the theosophy, entitled simply ‘Idea’, is a kind of moral epistemology. Julius describes what happens to the soul when it perceives some perfection, something good or beautiful. He states that all spirits are attracted toward perfection, which consists in the free expression of their powers. They attempt to extend their activity, to draw everything into themselves, and to make it their own (117). It would seem, then, that knowledge consists in making objects conform to us, a kind of proto-Kantian doctrine. But as Julius’s explanation continues it becomes clear that he means almost the very reverse. We appropriate the ³⁸ Sommer, Grundzüge, 373, 377, 378.

Early Philosophy

35

good and the beautiful only insofar as we become like them. To internalize objects means that our nature should conform to them rather than they should conform to us. As Julius puts it: ‘We ourselves become the perceived’. Rather than Kant, this is the Platonic eros, the doctrine that the love of the good makes us want to unite with it and to turn into it. On the defensive, Julius suspects that such a doctrine might make Raphael smirk; but he begs Raphael to hear him out, stressing that everything that follows will depend on it (117). And so indeed it does. Schiller uses this Platonic doctrine to support two essential theses of his early ethics: that there is a necessary connection between perfection and pleasure, and that there is a necessary link between self-interest and the interest of others (119). Julius now argues along the following lines. Every perfection that I perceive gives me pleasure because I make it my own and extend my own activity in doing so. When, therefore, I perceive the perfection of others, I also make it my own, and so it too gives me pleasure. Therefore, if I love myself—if I desire to increase my own pleasures—I should also strive for the perfection of others (119). Hence Julius concludes that if I love myself I should also desire the happiness of others. To desire their happiness, he then adds, means benevolence or love. After introducing the theme of love, Julius announces that he has now scaled the heights, the fog has lifted, and he stands in the midst of a blooming landscape, in the center of the immeasurable (119). Love is the most beautiful phenomenon in creation, the source of devotion, and the omnipotent magnet of the spiritual world. It is a reﬂection of the single inﬁnite power of creation, the force of attraction of the spiritual world. It is this power of love that so tightly connects self-interest and the interest of others. When I hate someone I take from myself; when I love I become richer through the other (120). Here Schiller perhaps has in mind Shakespeare’s Juliet: ‘the more I give to thee,/The more I have.’³⁹ It is really only love that enriches our life and that makes it worth living, Julius believes. Misanthropy is extended suicide; and egoism is the greatest poverty of a created being (120). Such is Julius’s enthusiasm for love that he extends it to everything in the creation. There are moments in life, he says, when we must press to our heart every ﬂower, every distant star, every worm, and every higher spirit (121). We must embrace all of nature as if she were our love. If each person loved every other, then each would possess the entire world. Julius admits that this faith in love has been called into question by the philosophy of his day. Although he mentions no names, he almost certainly has in mind thinkers like Hobbes, Mandeville and Helvetius, who reduce all feelings down to forms of self-love. But in response to their doctrines, Julius can only swear his personal faith in unselﬁsh love (122). If there is no such love, he will give up god, immortality and virtue (122). It was a moving confession of faith, one that would inspire the young romantics. But how much of Schiller was really behind Julius? In his April 14, 1783, letter to Reinwald, Schiller looked at love from a much more realistic, indeed cynical, ³⁹ Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene ii, 134–5.

36

Schiller as Philosopher

standpoint: ‘Love, my friend, the great infallible bond of sensitive creation, is ultimately only a happy illusion’ (NA XXIII, 79). The illusion, Schiller goes on to explain, is that we surrender to the beloved when in reality we really only love ourselves. This more skeptical assessment of love does not appear in the theosophy, not surprisingly because it would have been completely out of character with the piece as a whole. However, the very next section, ‘Sacriﬁce’, does introduce another more sobering reﬂection about love. Julius now notes that it cannot be the case that working for the happiness of others always increases his own happiness, because sometimes striving for their happiness demands sacriﬁcing his own life (122). Surely, we cannot regard death as a means to increase the sum of our own happiness. It does not help here, Julius argues, to say that a person who sacriﬁces his life will receive their eternal reward in heaven; for this is really only to appeal to their egoism. All true love excludes the motivation behind a reward (122). Ignoring his earlier insistence that self-interest and morality are mutually supportive, Julius now claims that love and egoism divide humanity into two completely heterogeneous groups whose borders never ﬂow into one another. While egoism erects its middle point in oneself, love puts its centre in the eternal whole (123). The section is remarkable because it questions rather than confesses his early philosophy. Schiller now doubts two theses central to his earlier philosophy: the value of the belief in immortality; and the harmony between self-interest and morality. The ‘Theosophie’ concludes with a theology, a short section entitled ‘Gott’. Here Julius applies metaphors from the hermetic and Cabbalistic tradition to explain the relationship between God and his creation. We are told that God and nature are two quantities that are perfectly the same. What exists together in God exists separately in nature. Nature is simply an inﬁnitely divided God (124). Just as in a prism white light divides into seven darker rays, so the divine ego has broken into innumerable particular substances. The prism is the form of nature, and the play of its colours are all the activities of ﬁnite minds. If this prism were to be smashed, then God and his creation would merge into one. In a striking turn of thought Schiller now reverses his metaphor. Just as the single divine ray separates itself into many rays, so the many rays can merge together and again become a single ray. This suggests the heterodox idea that all ﬁnite spiritual beings can come together again and create a single divine being. Julius knows that the idea is heretical—he asks Raphael if he dares to express it—but he goes on to develop it all the same. If everyone were only to love one another, Julius imagines, then they would overcome the separations between spiritual beings and create a single spiritual being, which would be God (124). Nowhere in the earlier writings did Schiller ever take the love metaphor so far. In them he always understood God as an inﬁnite spiritual being that we should strive to imitate; but now he suggests that God is an ideal that we create through our own activity. The Briefe ends with Julius’s apology for his philosophy. Although Julius realizes that his philosophy will sound like little more than a fantasy, he still claims that it has ennobled his heart and beautiﬁed his life (126). He not only admits that his theory might be wrong but he even stresses that it must be; still, he thinks that

Early Philosophy

37

its ﬁnal results agree with the truth all the same. To explain this surprising claim, Julius sketches a remarkable general epistemology.⁴⁰ All of our knowledge reduces down to a conventional illusion, he says, though it is still compatible with truth in the strictest sense. When we attempt to grasp the supersensible, Julius explains, all that we have to go on are sensible signs, which are at best metaphors for their objects. For this reason we should never expect our ideas to be images of things, as if they somehow resemble them. Rather, our ideas are only signs that have a merely conventional relation to their objects. What makes something true is not the resemblance between the idea and the thing but the conformity of the idea with the necessary laws of thought (127). In other words, truth does not depend on a correspondence between a sign and its object but upon the inferences that we draw between signs themselves. Nevertheless, Julius suggests, we can regard our ideas as true if they lead us to the proper results, just as Columbus’s calculations, mere symbols on paper, led him to the discovery of America. Just how this general epistemology vindicates his early philosophy Julius does not explain in any detail; he leaves his reader to draw the implications. What Schiller seems to have in mind, though, is a kind of moral and regulative justiﬁcation of his metaphysics. Even if our ideas are not literally true of reality in itself, we still should act upon them, because on that basis we will create a better world. This coincides perfectly with the conclusion of the theosophy: even if there is no God, even if love is not the creative force of the universe, we can create God, if we only love one another. What Schiller is adumbrating here is a proto-Kantian doctrine: that the ideas of metaphysics have a regulative rather than constitutive, a practical rather than theoretical, validity. He is still too much in the metaphysical tradition, however, to advance such a daring thesis; hence Julius still cannot surrender the claim, which would be unpardonably ‘dogmatic’ for a Kantian, that there is a correspondence or harmony between the laws of our thinking and reality itself (126, 12–4 ). But in this respect, as in so many others, Schiller was preparing the ground for his later reception of Kant. The Kritik der reinen Vernunft had already been published for ﬁve years when the Philosophische Briefe appeared. It was only a matter of time before Schiller would read it. It would prove to be the deliverance Julius for which was pining. 6. ENCOUNTER WITH KANT Schiller began to read Kant after his ﬁrst visit to Jena in August 1787. Jena was then on the verge of becoming the centre of Kantianism in Germany; and there Schiller ⁴⁰ The sources of this epistemology were the Scottish philosophy of common sense. Its germ is in Ferguson’s Institutes, 86–7. Ferguson was in turn going back to the doctrines of his teacher, Thomas Reid. See An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense ed. Derek Brookes (University Park: Penn State Press, 1997), chap. VI, secs. vi, xxix, 90–5, 190–1. Abel was a defender of the Scottish philosophy of common sense. See his Theses philosophicae (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1776), whose Thesis I reads: ‘Vera philosophia est philosophia sensus communis quam, e.g. Reid pluresque Angli sequuntur’. See Riedel, Abel, 31.

38

Schiller as Philosopher

met one of its chief apostles, Karl Leonhard Reinhold. During their conversation, Reinhold proclaimed to a skeptical Schiller that in one hundred years Kant would have the reputation of Jesus Christ! Despite such naivete or hyperbole, Schiller told Körner that Reinhold spoke intelligently about Kant, and that he even aroused his interest in him.⁴¹ It was most probably Reinhold, then, who ﬁrst inspired Schiller to read Kant, though Körner had been urging him to do so for some time.⁴² Wisely, Reinhold advised Schiller to begin with some of Kant’s shorter essays in the Berlinische Monatsschrift. Although Schiller mentions only one of the essays, ‘Idee zu einer Allgemeine Geschichte in weltbürgerlichen Absicht’, he wrote that it had ‘extraordinarly pleased’ him. Schiller now sensed that his intellectual fate would be linked with Kant. It now seemed certain to him, he confessed to Körner, that he would read, perhaps even study, Kant. He then told his friend to look forward to some forthcoming books by Kant, a ‘Critik der praktischen Vernunft oder über den Willen’ and ‘eine Critik des Geschmacks’. Still, despite a ﬁrst favourable impression, Schiller was slow to develop his new interest. When Körner advised him to undertake ‘dry investigations into human knowledge’ before settling on a philosophical system,⁴³ Schiller noted his friend’s hint to take up a more thorough study of Kant. ‘I know the wolf from its howl’, he said.⁴⁴ Still, Schiller doubted whether he was ready and able to undertake the trying and taxing study of epistemology. Hitherto all that had interested him in philosophical writings had been what he could use and feel as a poet. Sooner or later, though, Schiller knew he would have to turn to such a study. In the late 1780s and early 1790s, just before the study of Kant, Schiller’s metaphysical and ethical thinking remained stuck in crisis. The aporia of the Philosophische Briefe had not been forgotten, still less resolved, but only intensiﬁed. The most striking testimony about Schiller’s thinking around this time appears in the short philosophical dialogue appended to his novel Der Geisterseher, ‘Das philosophische Gespräch aus dem Geisterseher’, which he wrote and published in 1789.⁴⁵ Here Schiller describes the philosophy of a decadent young Prince who, after ﬁnding himself the victim of a spiritualist hoax, becomes deeply disillusioned with all morality and religion. Like Julius, the Prince makes the disturbing discovery that reason undermines all moral and religious faith. Now, however, Schiller takes the trials and tribulations of Julius a step further: where Julius was a reluctant skeptic, the Prince is a resolute free-thinker. He maintains that the beliefs in the existence of God, providence and immortality are simply projections of our human imagination; that ends and values are not inherent in the nature of things but valid only for our human consciousness; and that human freedom is an illusion arising from ⁴¹ See Schiller to Körner, August 29, 1787, NA XXIV, 143. ⁴² See Schiller to Körner, ibid. ⁴³ Körner wrote the last letter of Raphael to Julius in the Philosophische Briefe, which Schiller published in Thalia, 1789. See NA XXI, 156–60. ⁴⁴ See Schiller to Körner, April 15, 1788, NA XXV, 40. ⁴⁵ NA XVI, 159–84.

Early Philosophy

39

ignorance of the deeper causes of our actions. The Prince expounds a completely worldly, naturalistic ethic that dispenses with all causes and values beyond this world; he ﬁnds the source and motive for all human actions within our own physical organism, in the mechanism of pleasure and pain. Since he knows nothing about what came before him, or what will happen after him—it is all hidden by ‘two black impenetrable curtains’ which no mortal has ever been able to raise—he resolves to enjoy the moment and to live only in the present. The Prince is even skeptical of patriotism, the ethic of public service or living for one’s country, which was once so important to the young Schiller; he likens the social organism to Jupiter, who devoured all her own children. If there is nothing in it for him, the Prince sees no reason for doing anything at all. While it is clear that Schiller does not endorse the Prince’s egoism and hedonism, it is also plain he regards it as a challenge, one for which he still has no convincing answer. Although Schiller knew he had to address this challenge, he still did not feel ready to tackle the difﬁcult epistemological issues. In the late 1780s and early 1790s he had been engrossed in the study of history, and it is in this ﬁeld that we can detect the ﬁrst fruits of his study of Kant. His Antrittsvorlesung in Jena, ‘Was heisst und zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte?’, held in May 1789, was ﬁlled with Kantian themes. Another short essay on the philosophy of history, ‘Etwas über die erste Gesellschaft’, which was published in Thalia in 1790, acknowledges its heavy debt to Kant in a footnote.⁴⁶ Schiller ﬁnally began his intensive study of Kant only in the early Spring of 1791. He would now begin to study not only the more popular essays but the three Kritiken or the critical system itself. Once again, however, Schiller deferred considering epistemological issues. The Kritik to which he ﬁrst turned was not the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, which alone would address the difﬁcult epistemological issues, but the Kritik der Urteilskraft. The reason Schiller turned to this work was essentially pedagogic. He feared Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft would be too demanding, and he found the third Kritik straightforward and easygoing, not least because it answered to his own longstanding interest in aesthetics. His reaction to the work is apparent from his March 3, 1791, letter to Körner: You will not easily guess what I am now reading and studying? Nothing worse than— Kant. His Critique of Judgement . . . excites me with its new illuminating and rich contents, and it has created in me the greatest desire to gradually work my way into his philosophy. . . . I now feel that Kant will not be such an insurmountable obstacle and I will certainly now work more exactly on him. (NA XXVI, 77–8)

Although Schiller had been incapacitated by illness in the Spring of 1791, he also received a three-year stipend from Friedrich Christian von Augustenberg, Prince of Schleswig-Holstein, which freed him from his debts and allowed him to ⁴⁶ Schiller’s footnote: ‘It is probably necessary only for the fewest readers to remind them that these ideas arose on the occasion of the Kantian essay in the Berlinische Monatsschrift,’ NA XVII, 398.

40

Schiller as Philosopher

devote himself entirely to his personal interests. This gave him the leisure to study Kant’s philosophy. Hence, he wrote to Körner on January 1, 1792 about his new resolve to study Kant: I now engage myself zealously with the study of Kant’s philosophy . . . My resolve is irretractable not to stop until I have fathomed it, even if this should cost me three more years. Moreover, I have now got a lot from it and transformed it into my own property. (NA XXVI, 127)

As months passed, Schiller’s resolve, and his labours, did not slacken. More than two years later, on July 4, 1794, we ﬁnd him writing to Körner: For some time now I have laid aside all work to study Kant. I must ﬁnally get clear about him, if I am not always to go with uncertain steps in the path of speculation. (NA XXVII, 20)

Not that Schiller found work on Kant an unalloyed pleasure. Often in the midst of it he would express his longing to return to drama and poetry. In early 1795 he would complain to Goethe bitterly about how trying and artiﬁcial philosophy could be; then, at the end of the year, he ﬁnally announced that it was ‘high time to close his philosophical shop’.⁴⁷ All told, Schiller’s study of Kant would occupy him for four years. From 1791 to 1795, Schiller would occupy himself primarily with aesthetics, which always involved intensive engagement with Kant. In early 1796 Schiller happily returned to poetry and drama, never to go back to philosophy. He would later regret the enormous effort Kant had cost him, writing in a bitter distich: ‘Zwei Jahrzehnte kostest du mir: zehn Jahr verlor ich. /Dich zu begreifen, und zehn, mich zu befreien von dir’.⁴⁸ But we should not lay too much weight on these sentiments, which reﬂect Schiller’s persistent lack of conﬁdence with own work.⁴⁹ After all, if it were not for the encounter with Kant, he would not have written his aesthetic essays, or, for that matter, developed his mature philosophy. What writings of Kant did Schiller study? We know that he read closely some of the essays from the Berlinische Monatsschrift, and that he had studied intensively the Kritik der Urteilskraft. Close work on the third Kritik is evident not only from the many references to it in Schiller’s aesthetic essays but also from the copious marginal comments to his copy of the book.⁵⁰ It is also clear from the aesthetic essays that Schiller had read both the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten

⁴⁷ See Schiller to Goethe, January 7, 1795, NA XXVII, 116; and December 17, 1795, NA XXVIII, 132. ⁴⁸ ‘You cost me two decades: I lost ten years to understand you, and ten to liberate myself from you.’ ⁴⁹ See Schiller to Goethe, July 1, 1795, NA XXVII, 116. ⁵⁰ See ‘Vollständiges Verzeichnis der Randbemerkungen in Handexemplar der Kritik der Urteilskraft’, in Materialien zu Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, ed. Jens Kulenkampff (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), 126–44.

Early Philosophy

41

and the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. There has been some question whether Schiller really read the ﬁrst Kritik.⁵¹ But there is much indirect evidence that he did so. He wrote to Huber on February 19, 1795 that one should read the ﬁrst Kritik before the third (NA XXVI, 142); and the ﬁrst version of ‘Zerstreute Betrachtungen über verschiedene ästhetische Gegenstände’, which was written during his most intensive study of Kant in Winter 1792–3, contains a long passage that shows a mastery of the psychological doctrines of the ﬁrst Kritik (NA XXI, 197–203).⁵² In addition to the three Kritiken, Schiller also read Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, though, for reasons we shall see, he was very critical of this work.⁵³ All in all, then, Schiller had a fairly thorough knowledge of the Kantian system as a whole. It would be a mistake to think that Schiller’s knowledge of Kant was limited to his reading alone. After Schiller moved to Jena in 1789, he involved himself intensely with the many currents of discussion surrounding Kant’s, Reinhold’s and Fichte’s philosophy. He became friends with some of the pivotal ﬁgures in these discussions, chief among them Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer (1766–1848), Johann Benjamin Erhard (1766–1827) and Franz Paul Herbert (1759–1811). In the Winter of 1792, Schiller formed a Tischgesellschaft to dine and discuss philosophy, both afternoons and evenings.⁵⁴ The group was composed of some young ‘Magistern’ who were especially zealous in their study of Kant, among them Ludwig Friedrich Göritz (1764–1823), Johann Karl von Fichard (1773–1829), Batholomäus Ludwig Fischenich (1768–1831), Carl Immanuel Diez (1766–96) and Konstantin Freiherr von Stein (1772–1844). From these students Schiller not only could learn about but also take part in the many discussions and disputes concerning Kant’s philosophy. It is of the ﬁrst importance to locate his own philosophical writings in this context, which often illuminates their purpose and argument.

7. THE KANTIAN REVOLUTION What did Schiller see in Kant? Why did he think it necessary to embark upon such an intensive study of his writings? We can explain this partly from Schiller’s inner development as a dramatist and poet.⁵⁵ In the early 1790s he sometimes expressed the need to get clear about the fundamental principles of aesthetics, simply because

⁵¹ See, e.g., E. C. Wilm, ‘The Kantian Studies of Schiller’, Journal of English and German Philology 7 (1908), 133. ⁵² Schiller refers to Kantian concepts that come from the ﬁrst Kritik alone and not only Kritik der Urteilskraft §26, which has been seen as the main source of his reﬂections. ⁵³ See Schiller to Körner, February 28, 1793, NA XXVI, 219. ⁵⁴ See Schiller to Körner, January 1, 1792, NA XXVI, 128. ⁵⁵ See Kuno Fischer, Schiller als Philosoph (Leipzig: Fues, 1868), 4–8.

42

Schiller as Philosopher

clarity about them would make him more self-conscious and self-conﬁdent in his own writing.⁵⁶ It is no accident, then, that Schiller would focus upon the ﬁrst half of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, the chief exposition of Kant’s aesthetics. This explains not only why Schiller turns to philosophy but also why he turns away from it. Having acquired sufﬁcient clarity about the principles of aesthetics, he had no more reason to study philosophy; hence his return to poetry and drama in 1796. Although this theory contains an important element of the truth, it still does not tell the full story. It is insufﬁcient for two reasons. First, it tells us why Schiller would devote himself to Kant’s aesthetics, but not why he also had an interest in his metaphysics, ethics and politics. The term ‘aesthetic writings’ is somewhat misleading, because Schiller’s later philosophical essays go far beyond the merely aesthetic: they also deeply concern, and do not merely touch upon, issues in education, ethics and politics. Second, this theory explains at best why Schiller should study Kant, but not why he is attracted to any of his speciﬁc doctrines. To account for Schiller’s attraction to speciﬁc doctrines, it is necessary to go beyond his concerns as a writer; we must also consider the dynamics of his philosophical development. The ultimate reason for Schiller’s adoption of Kant lies in his earlier intellectual crisis, the afﬂictions of the soul that he had so lyrically portrayed in the Philosophische Briefe and in Der Geisterseher. In the early 1780s Schiller had virtually abandoned his guiding faith in providence, his belief in a divinely created and governed universe. As we have already seen, this faith had been the foundation for his early ethics. It was the basis for his theory of the highest good, and the premise behind two of his cardinal doctrines: that there is a harmony between self-interest and morality, and that there is a connection between pleasure and perfection. But Schiller’s own growing skepticism in the early 1780s had shaken this belief and everything resting on it. As a result, Schiller felt himself vulnerable to materialism. He had nothing to counter against a Helvétius or La Mettrie, who who would reduce all human striving down to self-interest, who would insist that the highest good should be nothing more than physical pleasure, and who would destroy freedom by making human action a necessary product of matter in motion. Such, in a nutshell, was the crisis of Julius in the Philosophische Briefe. It was a crisis all too typical of Popularphilosophie in the late eighteenth century, which had unwisely based its moral doctrines upon a very vulnerable theistic metaphysics. It was probably no accident that Reinhold, who had introduced Schiller to Kant, had suffered a very similar crisis in the early 1780s.⁵⁷

⁵⁶ See, e.g., Schiller’s February 9, 1793 letter to Friedrich Christian von Augustenberg, NA XXVI, 184–5. ⁵⁷ See Reinhold’s essay, ‘Ueber das bisherige Schicksal der kantischen Philosophie’, Der teutsche Merkur II (1789), 3–37, 113–35.

Early Philosophy

43

Kant came to Schiller’s rescue, just as he had once done for Reinhold.⁵⁸ What Schiller saw in Kant was primarily his gospel of freedom. Ever since his Karlschule years, Schiller had been deeply concerned to uphold moral freedom from the dangers of materialism, and he supported dualism primarily for this reason. Now Kant’s transcendental idealism gave him a new foundation for his earlier dualism, a new basis to refute materialism and to uphold his undying belief in moral freedom. In the ﬁrst Kritik, Kant postulates a dualism between the realm of noumena and phenomena that could uphold the principle of causality in the natural world while still leaving room for moral freedom. While everything in the phenomenal world would conform to the principle of causality, the noumenal world would be immune from such causality and so at least permit the possibility of transcendental freedom. The dangers of materialism arise, Kant argues, only if we must assume that appearances are things-in-themselves, or only if we hold that phenomena are the sole reality.⁵⁹ But that we must not make this assumption Kant thinks he has shown by the solution to the antinomies: only if we distinguish between things-in-themselves and appearances is it possible to avoid the inevitable contradictions of reason. Kant concedes that the distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves, between noumena and phenomena, in the ﬁrst Kritik had demonstrated only the possibility of freedom; but in the second Kritik he would proceed to a proof of the reality of freedom by an appeal to the ‘fact of reason’, i.e. that we are aware through the moral law that we have a power to act independent of the causality of the phenomenal world. For Schiller, Kant’s argument did much more than save freedom from the snares of materialism. More importantly, it promised a new foundation for morality, one completely independent of the old theistic metaphysics, and one which rests upon nothing more than the idea of human freedom itself. In the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Kant had argued that the fundamental principle of morality, the categorical imperative—‘Act only on that maxim that you can will as a universal law of nature’—rests upon the autonomy of the will, the idea that the rational will alone is the sole source of the law. To be moral is to will a universal law as a rational being; it is to adopt only that maxim for one’s actions that one could impose on oneself as a rational being.⁶⁰ Hence Kant taught Schiller the crucial lesson that moral principles are not given to us—whether by God or the laws of nature—but that they are created by us. To ﬁnd the source of our moral principles outside us—in either the will of god or in the law of nature—is only another kind of heteronomy, an hypostasis of the forms of reason. ⁵⁸ It was the central thesis of Reinhold’s Briefe über die kantische Philosophie that only Kant’s philosophy could resolve the conﬂict between reason and faith. Reinhold argued that by extending the powers of practical reason, Kant had provided morality and religion with a foundation independent of metaphysics. Whether Reinhold had prompted Schiller’s conversion to Kant is speculative; but the similarity in their predicaments is striking. ⁵⁹ See Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 379, A 383, B 418n. ⁶⁰ See Kant, Schriften, Akademie Ausgabe, ed. Wilhelm Dilthey et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1902), IV, 431–2. (Henceforth references to this edition will be abbreviated as AA.)

44

Schiller as Philosopher

That Schiller was inspired by Kant’s gospel of freedom there cannot be any doubt. In his February 18, 1793 letter to Körner he wrote in some famous lines: ‘Surely, no mortal has spoken greater words than these Kantian ones, which are the content of his whole philosophy: Be self-determining! . . . This great idea of selfdetermination radiates back to us from certain appearances in nature, and these we call beauty’ (NA XXVI, 191). This idea was indeed a central theme of Kant’s world history essay, the very writing that ﬁrst sparked Schiller’s interest in Kant in the ﬁrst place. In that essay Kant makes the self-realization of freedom the very purpose of history itself. Although Kant does not dispense with the idea of providence, it is striking that he makes the purpose of providence nothing more than the development of human autonomy. The third proposition of the essay states that man should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he creates for himself according to his own reason.⁶¹ A very similar theme appears in another of Kant’s early essays, ‘Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte’, which would later inspire Schiller. There Kant proposes reading Mosaic history as a parable about the discovery of human freedom. The signiﬁcance of man’s expulsion from the garden of Eden, Kant argues, is that he learns for himself the difference between good and evil, and so takes a crucial step toward the development of his own autonomy. This was just the theme Schiller explored in his 1790 essay, ‘Etwas über die erste Menschengesellschaft’. The lesson behind the Genesis myth, Schiller explains, is that we must now learn to recreate for ourselves the happiness and tranquility that was once given to us in the state of nature. But the real end of history, it turns out, is not so much the recreation of happiness and tranquility but the realization of human freedom in the eternal striving to recreate them. The net effect of Schiller’s reading of Kant in the early 1790s was nothing less than a revolution in his ethical thinking. The revolution was as broad as it was deep. Where Schiller’s early ethics placed the source of moral obligation in the laws of nature and divine providence, his later Kantian ethics would locate that source in the laws of the rational will alone. Where his earlier ethics attempted to connect moral duty and self-interest, his later Kantian ethics would stress moral principle as the sole motive for moral conduct. Where his earlier ethics saw the general happiness as the fundamental law of morality, his later Kantian ethics would ﬁnd this law in the categorical imperative alone. And where his earlier ethics would stress the importance of love and benevolence as the basis of moral action, his later Kantian ethics would replace naturally good sentiments with the moral law. A more complete and sweeping reversal is scarcely imaginable! That Schiller had now converted to the fundamental principles of Kant’s moral philosophy there cannot be any doubt. In his December 3, 1793 letter to Prince von Augustenberg he stated explicitly and emphatically that he now endorsed wholeheartedly the fundamental principles of Kant’s ethics (NA XXVI, 322).⁶² ⁶¹ Kant, AA, VIII, 19–20.

⁶² See further below, 4.2.

Early Philosophy

45

He made it plain that he followed Kant in making duty the fundamental motive for moral action, and in seeing reason alone as the chief source of moral obligations. Of course, this does not mean that Schiller had now become a dyed-in-the-wool Kantian; for, as we shall later see, there were some important differences between his ethics and Kant’s, and these become more important with Schiller’s later development (4.6–7). However, Schiller’s Kantian confession to Augustenberg also makes it plain that Kant did not simply conﬁrm his old convictions, or that Schiller simply twisted Kant to ﬁt his own earlier agenda.⁶³ For once Schiller accepted these fundamental Kantian theses, he could no longer hold onto most of the central doctrines of his earlier ethics: that the source of the law lies in providence, that pleasure and perfection are necessarily connected, that love is the basis of morality, and that the end of life is the creation of spiritual perfection. To be sure, Schiller had begun to doubt these doctrines on his own; but he still could not bring himself to reject them, let alone provide a new foundation for them. It was Kant who provided that foundation, and in doing so he forced Schiller to jettison the fundamental doctrines of his earlier ethics. This account of Schiller’s appropriation of Kant has some important implications for the general interpretation of his philosophy. It shows that Schiller’s thinking was deeply transformed by Kant in a non-metaphysical direction, and that it is a serious mistake to interpret his mature philosophy as a kind of metaphysics, whether in a Platonic, Leibnizian-Wolfﬁan, or proto-Hegelian direction. While Schiller’s philosophy was still deeply metaphysical in the Philosophische Briefe, it became liberated from the burden of metaphysics after Schiller’s encounter with Kant. It was Kant who taught Schiller that ethics and aesthetics could be autonomous disciplines, based on a non-metaphysical foundation, independent of the traditional doctrines of natural law, providence and perfection. After his study of Kant in the early 1790s, Schiller strongly endorsed and strictly applied Kant’s strictures about metaphysics; he was very aware of, and scrupulously observant of, Kant’s distinction between regulative and constitutive principles. Hence in the Kallias Briefe he insisted time and again that we must not treat freedom as an objective property of the sensible world, and that we must proceed only as if freedom were true of appearances; and in the Aesthetische Briefe he insisted that his own account of the unity of a person is purely transcendental, involving no metaphysical speculations about the ultimate source of our powers.⁶⁴ It is of the utmost importance to see that Schiller’s concept of beauty, and his doctrine of the unity of reason and sensibility, are really only imperatives, regulative ideals or goals for ⁶³ Pace Pugh, Dialectic of Love, 22, 113, and Helmut Koopmann, ‘Bestimme Dich aus Dir Selbst: die Idee der Autonomie und Kant als problematischer Umweg’, in Friedrich Schiller, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982), 202–16. (See further below, 7.1.) ⁶⁴ See Kallias Briefe, February 8, 1793, NA XXVI, 180; February 23, 1793, NA XXVI, 200, 208–9. And Aesthetische Briefe, NA XX, 371, 9–20; 372, 19–26; 356, 18–20. See also Schiller’s letter to Körner, October 24, 1794, NA XXVII, 70–1, where he states that beauty is ‘kein Erfahrungsbegriff, sondern vielmehr ein Imperatif ’.

46

Schiller as Philosopher

action; they are not metaphysical principles, attempts to describe some deeper underlying reality. In one form or another, the various metaphysical interpretations of Schiller commit the classical confusion: they conﬂate a regulative principle with a constitutive one, contrary to Schiller’s express warnings. Now that we have considered Schiller’s early encounter with Kant, we have come to the threshold of his mature philosophy. It is now time to cross that threshold and to examine that philosophy itself.

2 An Objective Aesthetic 1. AN ABANDONED AMBITION In his December 21, 1792 letter to his friend C. G. Körner, Schiller wrote that he had recently had an epiphany about the nature of beauty.¹ He reported that he had now discovered that scientiﬁc concept of beauty, that objective principle of taste, whose possibility had been doubted by Kant. Filled with enthusiasm, Schiller announced that he would now begin to put his thoughts together on the subject. He was now planning to write a work in dialogue form that he would call Kallias, oder über die Schönheit.² He predicted that he would be able to have the book in publishable shape by Easter. As it happened, Kallias was never written. Illness and more pressing projects soon intervened. All that remains of Schiller’s work is some of his letters to Körner, which were written between January and March 1793. The purpose of these letters was to clarify Schiller’s thinking through correspondence with a close friend; after revising and reﬁning them he would put them in more publishable form. We can imagine that the planned dialogue would reﬂect the exchange between Körner and Schiller. Schiller’s letters to Körner are known as the Kalliasbriefe, though the title is somewhat misleading, given that the letters would have provided at best only some of the material for the projected work.³ The letters never appeared in Schiller’s lifetime; they were ﬁrst published by Theodor Danzel only in 1848.⁴ ¹ NA XXVI, 170. All references will be to Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. Julius Petersen et al. (Weimar: Böhlausnachfolger, 1943f ), abbreviated ‘NA’. Roman numerals indicate volume numbers, arabic numerals page numbers, and italicized arabic numerals line numbers. Letters are cited by their date and number (#) in this edition. ² Schiller planned that the book would be about the size of his Geisterseher. Since the original edition of this work consisted in 338 pages, Schiller had in mind a rather large book. ³ The most important letters are #146, December 21, 1792, NA XXVI, 170–2; #150 January 25, 1793, XXVI, 174–77; #151 February 8, 1793, XXVI, 177–83; #154, February 18 and 19, 1793, XXVI, 190–9; #155 February 23, 1793, XXVI, 199–217; and #157 February 28, 1793, XXVI, 219–29. ⁴ Theodor Danzel, Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner, Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur 121 (1848), 1–25. Remarkably, the correspondence was translated and published the next year, Correspondence of Schiller with Körner, Comprising Sketches and Anecdotes of Goethe, the Schlegels, Wieland and other Contemporaries (London: Bentley, 1849). There is now a reliable English translation by Stefan BirdPollan in Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics, ed. Jay Bernstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 145–83.

48

Schiller as Philosopher

Although Schiller never wrote Kallias, his discovery of an objective principle of beauty was a matter of great pride and importance to him. He saw it as the central and characteristic doctrine of his new aesthetics, which he had been working on since 1791. In his February 9, 1793 letter to F. C. von Augustenberg,⁵ Schiller explained the purpose and context behind his new aesthetics. After the Kantian revolution in philosophy, he wrote, the time was ripe to develop a new objective aesthetics. Kant had undermined traditional metaphysics in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, and he had sketched a new basis for ethics in his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Following in his footsteps, philosophers began to rebuild metaphysics and ethics on new critical foundations; but they had neglected aesthetics, which remained enmired in the old methods and assumptions. It was Schiller’s mission to rebuild aesthetics on a new critical foundation; he saw himself as a knight in shining armor to rescue aesthetics from its decrepitude.⁶ What Reinhold had done for epistemology and metaphysics with his Elementarphilosophie, Schiller would now try to do for aesthetics in his Kallias. But if Kant’s philosophy inspired Schiller, it also challenged him. For all his admiration of Kant and loyalty to his basic principles, Schiller could not reconcile himself to one of Kant’s critical teachings in the third Kritik: that there cannot be a science of aesthetics.⁷ The close connection of the feeling of the beautiful with the most noble part of human nature, Schiller explained, made it impossible for him to accept Kant’s conclusion that taste amounts to ‘a mere subjective play of our power of feeling’. Beauty, like truth and right, had to rest upon more eternal foundations, so that taste too could be based on the the fundamental laws of reason. Although Kant rightly insisted that judgments of taste are universalizable, he doubted that there could be objective principles to assess such judgments. He likened the search for such principles to the quest for ‘the philosopher’s stone’, and resigned himself to the impossibility of a scientiﬁc aesthetics. Schiller was conﬁdent, though, that he could succeed where Kant had failed. Though he was no professional philosopher, he claimed that his practical experience as a poet compensated for his philosophical weakness. In any case, the basic principles for the new aesthetics are still implicit in Kant; it was only a question of developing them in a more positive direction. After explaining his project to Augustenburg, Schiller proposed expounding its leading ideas in a series of letters to him. This series of letters formed the basis of ⁵ NA XXVI, 184–6, #152. ⁶ These ambitions are hard to reconcile with Wilhelm Windelband’s claim that Schiller ‘niemals eigentlich darauf aus war, ein System der Philosophie oder eines ihrer Teile, etwa der Ästhetik, lediglich als solches und um des Systems willen auszubilden.’ See his ‘Schillers transcendentaler Idealismus’, KantStudien X (1905), 399. ⁷ See Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, §17, V, 231–2, §34, V, 285–6, and §44, 305–6. References to Kant will be to the Akademie Ausgabe, Kants Schriften, ed. Wilhelm Dilthey et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1902f ). Roman numerals indicate volume numbers, arabic numerals page numbers. References to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft with be to the ﬁrst and second editions, designated ‘A’ and ‘B’ respectively.

An Objective Aesthetic

49

Schiller’s later Ästhetische Briefe.⁸ Though Schiller did not intend it that way, the Ästhetische Briefe stole the energies and interests that would have gone to Kallias. This is in many ways regrettable because the Ästhetische Briefe and Anmut und Würde develop, and indeed presuppose, central themes in Schiller’s letters to Körner. Although Schiller later had some misgivings about his project, these themes remain crucial for the foundation for his moral and aesthetic thought. Given their general importance, it is necessary to examine Schiller’s letters to Körner, especially his attempt to establish an objective principle of beauty. Several questions arise. What, precisely, did Schiller mean by such a principle? How did he attempt to establish it on a Kantian foundation? In what respects did he go beyond Kant, and in what respects did he remain true to him? And, ﬁnally, how did he attempt to meet Kant’s challenge to his principle? Of course, these questions have been raised before, and they have been the occasion of persistent controversy.⁹ Since the main source of these disputes has been the philosophical preconceptions of their participants, my approach to these issues is to attempt, as far a possible, an entirely immanent understanding and criticism of Schiller.¹⁰ I wish to understand Schiller in his own terms, and to provide a sympathetic reconstruction of his philosophical motivation and argument. This is not because I am predisposed toward Schiller but because solid criticism comes only from sympathetic understanding. For these reasons, I will not anticipate my results here, which will emerge only in the conclusion.

2. A TALE FROM SANCHO PANZ A Schiller’s quest for an objective aesthetic began from his dissatisfaction with Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment in the Kritik der Urteilskraft. Like many readers of Kant, Schiller had difﬁculty in squaring two aspects of Kant’s analysis: his claim that aesthetic experience essentially consists in a feeling of pleasure, which ‘designates nothing whatsoever in the object’ (§1); and his insistence that aesthetic judgment demands universal assent (§§6–8, 32–3). The ﬁrst point ⁸ On the origins of the Ästhetische Briefe, see 4.2 below. ⁹ For a brief account of the status controversiae, see Cathleen Muehleck-Müller, Schönheit und Freiheit (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1989), I–XI. ¹⁰ This approach to Schiller was advocated long ago by J. M. Ellis in his Schiller’s Kalliasbriefe and the Study of his Aesthetic Theory (The Hague: Mouton, 1969). Ellis’s work was in large part a provocative polemic against past scholarship, which assailed it on the grounds that it failed to take Schiller’s work on its own terms and to appraise it as philosophical argument. Though Ellis had a point, it cannot be said that he practiced what he preached. He gave Schiller’s aims and arguments short shrift by evaluating them acording to some then fashionable doctrines of analytic philosophy. See, for example, 87–90, 97. Furthermore, his superﬁcial understanding of, and complete lack of sympathy for, Kant’s methods and problems made it impossible for him to appreciate Schiller’s own aims and achievement. When he claimed that Kant did not see the problem of justifying aesthetic judgment (127, 129), he forfeited all understanding of Schiller’s own starting point.

50

Schiller as Philosopher

seems to undermine the second. For if an aesthetic judgment concerns only the feelings of the perceiver, which refer to nothing at all in the object, it is impossible to provide any justiﬁcation or reason for it; and it is then difﬁcult, if not impossible, to secure agreement or universal assent. If one perceiver ﬁnds an object beautiful and another ﬁnds it ugly, they can resolve their disagreement only by giving grounds for their judgments; and such reasons ultimately involve reference to some features of the object itself. It is necessary to identify, for example, the harmony of its design, the interplay of its colors, the expressiveness of its lines, and so on.¹¹ We cannot secure agreement simply by describing the qualities of the feelings elicited by the objects. The point behind a criterion of beauty is then to determine the general nature of these objective features—something that all of them have in common—to facilitate agreement about aesthetic judgments. Schiller’s search for a criterion of beauty inevitably brought him into conﬂict with Kant’s explicit and emphatic denial in §34 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft that there could be an objective principle of taste, a universal standard to determine when an object is beautiful. In §34 Kant contends that judgments of taste are indemonstrable by any appeal to rules or principles. His reasoning is simple but compelling. If we establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that a composition complies perfectly with all the rules of its genre—if we show convincingly that it conforms precisely to some alleged ﬁrst principle of beauty—it still does not follow that the composition is beautiful. The problem is that, despite its formal correctness, someone might not like the composition. In the end, the ultimate test of whether something is beautiful is simply whether people take pleasure in it. Kant then cited Hume’s point that critics shared the same fate as cooks: the proof of the pudding lay in the eating.¹² Schiller could see the force of Kant’s argument, but still took exception to it. In his lectures on aesthetics and in his February 9 letter to Augustenberg,¹³ he dismissed it as a non sequitur. He agreed with Kant that we cannot demonstrate aesthetic judgments, that we cannot reduce aesthetic experience down to a set of recipes, and that the ﬁnal test of a work of art is whether it gives pleasure. Still, it does not follow from these points, he argued, that there cannot be an objective principle of beauty. There must be indeed some reason why people take pleasure in one object rather than another. The problem of specifying an objective principle of taste is to formulate the reasons why they take pleasure in some objects instead of others. Hence, the principle does not claim to be valid independent of ¹¹ Of course, Kant himself stressed the importance of design for aesthetic experience. See Kritik der Urteilskraft §§13–4, V, 223–6. But this is at odds with his earlier insistence in §1 that in an aesthetic judgement ‘nothing whatsoever is designated in the object’ (gar nichts im Objekt bezeichnet wird), and that an aesthetic judgment is one whose justiﬁcation or determining ground (Bestimmungsgrund) ‘cannot be other than subjective’. ¹² Kant seems to have had in mind Hume’s essay ‘The Skeptic’, from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 163. ¹³ Cf. NA XXVI, 185–6 and NA XXI, 81.

An Objective Aesthetic

51

aesthetic experience but only to formulate and explain some of the general features of that experience. It was indeed somewhat ironic that, in denying a standard of taste, Kant had cited Hume. For the very point Schiller now made against Kant had already been made by Hume in his famous essay, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’. Like Kant, Hume held that aesthetic judgments are essentially about feelings, and that they are therefore non-cognitive because feelings do not involve any reference to objects beyond themselves.¹⁴ He also stressed that beauty is essentially in the mind of the beholder and not a property of objects themselves. Nevertheless, it is striking that Hume, unlike Kant, does not conclude that there cannot be any rule of beauty or standard of taste. On the contrary, he recognizes that there still must be something within the object itself that arouses one kind of reaction rather than another, and that judgments of taste need to be justiﬁed by reference to them. And so Hume reasons: Though it be certain, that beauty and deformity, more than sweet and bitter, are not qualities in objects, but belong entirely to the sentiment, internal or external; it must be allowed, that there are certain qualities in objects, which are ﬁtted by nature to produce these particular feelings.¹⁵

To illustrate this point, Hume tells a story from Cervantes. Sancho Panza pretends to be a great judge of wine, of which he has a hogshead. Conﬁdent of his wine but less conﬁdent of the critics, Sancho gives samples to two self-proclaimed experts in his village. One declares the wine to be good, though it has the taste of leather; the other also pronounces the wine to be good, though it has the taste of metal. Though people in the village ridicule the experts, they soon get their comeup pance: when they empty the barrel they ﬁnd a key with a leather thong tied to it! The moral of the story: that a delicate taste detects ﬁne features in objects, so that there are reasons for differences of taste inherent in the object itself. And so the question is inevitable: Had Kant forgotten Sancho’s lesson? The stimulus for Schiller’s search for an objective principle, and the sources of dissatisfaction with Kant, did not come from Hume, however. They are ultimately traceable to the very person to whom the Kalliasbriefe were directed: C. G. Körner. On March 13, 1791, nearly two years before the ﬁrst of the Kalliasbriefe, Körner wrote Schiller about his initial reaction to Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft, which had appeared only a year earlier. Körner complained inter alia that Kant had so stressed the subjectivity of aesthetic experience that he had completely ignored the objective characteristics of beauty itself. He wrote: Kant writes only of the effect of beauty on the subject. The difference between beautiful and ugly objects, which lie in the objects themselves . . . he does not bother to investigate. ¹⁴ ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, in Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, 230.

¹⁵ Ibid., 235.

52

Schiller as Philosopher

That such an investigation is fruitless he asserts with no proof, and one asks whether it is still possible to ﬁnd this philosopher’s stone.¹⁶

It was Körner’s ironic suggestion of a ‘philosopher’s stone’ that tempted Schiller, who would eventually go in search of it.¹⁷ We could reformulate the rationale behind Schiller’s project along these lines: there must be some sufﬁcient reason within the object itself to justify the claim that it, rather than an object with opposing characteristics, is the source of the pleasure. If the pleasure were completely independent of the object, then two perceivers could have the same pleasure from completely different objects, or they could have completely different pleasures from the same object. But if this is the case, in what sense could judgments of taste be universalizable? Although they could perhaps be universalizable with regard to the experience itself—namely, if everyone likes having the experience—they would not necessarily be so with regard to the objects themselves. The universalizability of aesthetic judgment, however, consists not simply in everyone liking a speciﬁc kind of experience, but also in everyone taking pleasure in the same objects. Judgments of taste do not simply report pleasant feelings in a perceiver, but they also evaluate the merits and qualities of speciﬁc objects. The point behind a criterion of taste is to determine what these qualities have in common. Schiller’s search for an objective principle of beauty went hand-in-hand, then, with an attempt to specify beautiful features in an object itself. Prima facie these enterprises are distinct: an objective principle claims to be objective in the sense that it is universal and necessary, demanding the assent of everyone alike, but not in the sense that it refers to features in the object itself. For Schiller, however, the two investigations are necessarily connected. The purpose of an objective principle is to give the reasons for our aesthetic judgments; and to give reasons for these aesthetic judgments ultimately involves specifying not only features of the experience itself but also features in the object that give rise to it. In other words, to give a reason for an aesthetic judgment is to specify something about the object itself that makes us feel one way rather than another. Whatever its ultimate merits, Schiller’s claim that there must be some perceptible features of the object itself to serve as the basis for aesthetic judgment articulates one of the central beliefs of classical aesthetics. We might formulate this belief ¹⁶ NA XXXIV/1, 58. ¹⁷ Schiller was perhaps encouraged in his pursuit of an objective principle by K. L. Heydenreich, who had also explicitly afﬁrmed the possibility of such principles. See his System der Aesthetik (Leipzig: Gößschen, 1790), 385–92. Schiller was an admirer of Heydenreich, and he had acquired his book in October 1792 shortly before his ﬁrst letters to Körner. See Schiller to Gößchen, October 5, 1792, NA XXVI, 156. Whether Heydenreich was also taking issue with Kant is unclear. In the preface to his System, which is dated July 12, 1790, he refers to Kant’s ‘eben erschienenen Kritik der Urteilskraft’ (xxxvi). It is possible that the concluding section of the System was written as a response to Kant. In any case, Heydenreich later took issue with the Kantians. See his October 25, 1792 letter to Schiller, NA XXIV/1, 193.

An Objective Aesthetic

53

as follows: that if A is an object of art and A* is not an object of art, then there must be some perceptual feature of A that A* does not have. Such a belief runs counter to the fundamental principle sometimes cited to justify modern art: that of two perceptually identical objects, one can be an object of art (Warhol’s Brillo Box) and the other not be (the brillo box on the supermarket shelf ).¹⁸ The problem with this principle, Schiller would say, is that it undermines all reason or justiﬁcation for aesthetic judgment, and ultimately the universalizability of aesthetic judgment itself. For if the aesthetic judgment makes no reference to perceptual features of the object, how could one justify it? How could one expect others to feel the same? To appeal to the philosophy of the art world or its institutions is only to take the judgment outside aesthetic experience entirely. Schiller’s point has lost none of its value. For Kant’s distinction between aesthetic experience and its object is the ultimate source of the modernist principle, which has simply inherited all Kant’s problems without acknowledging them. Modernist aesthetics still has to come to grips with Sancho’s story.

3. INITIAL EXPOSITION OF THE THEORY Schiller’s initial formulation of his objective aesthetics appears in his January 25, 1793 letter to Körner.¹⁹ Although it is very vague and schematic, this early account is crucial for a basic understanding of Schiller’s general position. Schiller uses it to describe what is distinctive of his own theory in contrast to those of his contemporaries. It has been argued that Schiller’s formulation distorts Kantian terminology, though it really has no Kantian precedents and should be taken on its own terms.²⁰ Using very general and vague terms, Schiller explains that there are four possible theories of the beautiful. Beauty can be subjective or objective; or it can be empirical or rational. There are then four possible combinations.²¹ Beauty can be rationally subjective or empirically subjective; and it can be rationally objective or empirically objective. Schiller ﬁnds historical examples of all these possibilities. ¹⁸ I refer, of course, to the argument of Arthur Danto, ‘The Artworld’, Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964), 571–84; and Transﬁguration of the Commonplace (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 1–5, 33–9, 90–1, 120–3, 136–9. ¹⁹ NA #150, XXVI, 174–7. ²⁰ See Eva Schaper, ‘Friedrich Schiller: Adventures of a Kantian’, British Journal of Aesthetics 4 (1964), 356–8. See too her ‘Schillers Kant: A Chapter in the History of Creative Misunderstanding’, in Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1979), 105–7. Schaper’s argument that Schiller misdescribes Kant’s theory when he classiﬁes it as ‘subjective-rational’ is also beside the point: Schiller is only trying to describe the subjective universality of aesthetic judgment in Kant’s theory; there is no reason to think he is ascribing a kind of Wolfﬁan rationalism to Kant. ²¹ For a more detailed exposition of these theories in their historical context, see Sigbert Latzel, ‘Die Ästhetische Vernunft: Bemerkungen zu Schillers “Kallias” mit Bezug auf die Ästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, Neue Folge II (1961) 31–40.

54

Schiller as Philosopher

Burke is an instance of the empirically subjective; Kant is an example of the rationally subjective; Baumgarten, Mendelssohn and ‘the whole gang of perfection men’ (die ganze Schar der Vollkommenheitsmänner) are cases of the rationally objective. Schiller implies that the fourth possibility is his own. What, more precisely, does Schiller mean by these vague terms? According to the simplest and most natural interpretation, the ﬁrst set of variables—the subjective and objective—concern the ontological status of beauty: whether it is in the subject or in the object. The second set of variables—the empirical and rational—concern the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgments: whether it is through experience or reason. This interpretation ﬁts Schiller’s characterization of the three historical schools. Burke is an instance of the empirically subjective because he thinks that beauty consists in feelings of pleasure, and that aesthetic judgments are based on experience alone. Kant is a case of the rationally subjective because, though he too thinks that aesthetic judgments concern only feelings of pleasure, he thinks, contrary to Burke, that these feelings must have a universal and necessary (i.e. rational) foundation. Baumgarten and Mendelssohn are versions of the rationally objective because they think that aesthetic judgments are not only universalizable but also refer to properties of the object themselves, namely, their multiplicity in unity or conformity to purposes. So far, so good. The problem comes in applying this schema to Schiller’s own theory. Schiller classiﬁes his own theory as empirical and objective, but he decidedly rejects an empirical justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgment. He sides with Kant against Burke that the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgments cannot be based on experience alone. If this were the correct interpretation of the schema, Schiller would have to describe his theory as rational and objective; but this would place him among the perfectionists, whose theory he no less ﬁrmly rejects. Given such a serious difﬁculty, it seems necessary to reinterpret Schiller’s schema. Fortunately, there is another interpretation of Schiller’s schema, one that seems to avoid this difﬁculty. This interpretation is virtually the opposite of the previous one. On this reading, the subjective and objective involve the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgments: whether they are based on only the feelings of the subject or some more ‘objective’ standard. The empirical and rational concern whether beauty is an empirical or rational property, something irreducibly sensible or a confused perception of the intellect. This seems a more promising interpretation because it avoids the problem of making Schiller an empiricist about the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgments; and it explains why Schiller wants to distinguish himself from the rationalists: they conceive of beauty as a confused perception of the intellect, whereas he wants to regard it as a sui generis property of the senses. While this interpretation seems to apply more readily to Schiller’s characterization of his own theory, it comes unstuck for reasons all its own. First, on this interpretation it is absurd to describe Kant’s theory as subjectively rational, for on no account does Kant think that beauty is a rational property of things. Second, it does not apply entirely and neatly to Schiller himself; for when Schiller describes

An Objective Aesthetic

55

aesthetic judgments as objective he does not mean only that they are based on some objective standard but also that they refer to properties inherent in the object itself. This second sense of objective becomes very clear in the beginning of Schiller’s letter of February 18 to Körner where he states that his theory is not only subjective but objective because it designates properties in the object itself (NA XXVI, 190). So when Schiller seeks an objective principle of beauty he means one that (a) is universal and necessary, and one that (b) ascribes some properties to the object itself. In this second sense the terms subjective and objective do concern ontological status after all. So, to resolve these difﬁculties, it is necessary to go back to the original natural interpretation and to construe its terms loosely and liberally. When Schiller describes his theory as empirical what he means is that the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgments must refer to some sensible properties of the object itself. This should not be taken to mean, however, that Schiller, like Burke, adopts a completely empiricist criterion for the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgments. All that he means is that experience is a necessary, though not a sufﬁcient, condition for the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgment. When Schiller describes his theory as objective he means that it refers to some features of the object itself, properties that the object has even when it is not perceived.²² This too should not be interpreted to mean, however, that Schiller thinks that beauty is entirely a property of the object itself. Reference to such properties he regards as a necessary, though not a sufﬁcient, condition for the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgment. It should be obvious, then, that such general terms are not entirely accurate in pinpointing Schiller’s position. Still, they serve their purpose, which is to distinguish Schiller’s position from Kant’s. In both respects, in being empirical and objective, Schiller’s theory is distinct from Kant’s, which avoids all reference to the empirical and objective features of things in the justiﬁcation of aesthetic judgments. In his January 25 letter Schiller does not attempt to elaborate or justify his own theory—this would be the point behind all the ensuing letters—but he does provide a sketchy explanation for why he rejects the other three theories of beauty. Schiller states that each of these theories has some merit because it determines at least one aspect of beauty; they go astray, however, when they claim to be true of beauty as such. Schiller credits Burke’s subjective-empirical theory for having correctly understood that beauty is a matter of immediate perception, and for having seen that it is independent of concepts of order and proportion; however, Burke went too far in making beauty simply a matter of pleasure. Schiller agrees with the ²² NA #154, February 18, 1793, XXVI, 190, 18–9; #155, February 23, 1793, XXVI, 208, 26–7. In his ‘Der Begriff der Schönheit in Schillers Ästhetik’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung XI (1957), 536, Dieter Henrich maintains that ‘Objektivität hat für ihn [Schiller] nicht den Sinn gegenständlicher Erkenntnis.’ This is not entirely true, since Schiller did think that the concept had to be justiﬁed on the basis of empirical properties.

56

Schiller as Philosopher

Wolfﬁans that beauty belongs to the realm of reason, and that aesthetic judgment has some connection with perfection; but he thinks that the Wolfﬁans were in error in simply identifying beauty with perfection. The Kantian subjective-rational theory is correct that judgments of taste demand universal assent, and that aesthetic pleasure is independent of concepts; but it neglects the objective component of beauty, and the need to give reasons for aesthetic judgment. Schiller explains in a little more detail his departure from the Kantian and Wolfﬁan theories.²³ The central tenet of the Wolfﬁan theory is its identiﬁcation of beauty with perfection, which is a purely formal or logical quality, such as order, regularity, proportion, or unity in multiplicity. Kant had argued against the Wolfﬁan equation on the grounds that it is possible to have an aesthetic experience without knowing anything about the concept or purpose of an object which determines its perfection.²⁴ Although Schiller says that he accepts Kant’s distinction between beauty and perfection, he thinks that Kant has drawn the wrong conclusion from it: namely, that we should distinguish between pure and ﬁxed beauty, between the beauty of pure form and the beauty that depends on the purpose of an object.²⁵ Kant’s rigid distinction shows, Schiller thinks, that Kant has completely missed the real nature of beauty. While refusing to endorse the Wolfﬁan equation of beauty with perfection, Schiller maintains against Kant that beauty is still closely tied to perfection. There must be a connection between them, Schiller argues, because beauty appears to overcome the purely formal characteristics of the object; if there were no such characteristics to overcome, if there were no obstacle to surmount, there would be no beauty at all. Beauty, Schiller then declares in a puzzling formula, is ‘the form of a form’ (die Form einer Form).²⁶ If the perfection of an object is its form, then beauty is the form of perfection, which relates to beauty as its matter. While in his letter of January 25 Schiller offers no further explanation of this peculiar formula, which anticipates his entire theory, his letter of February 23 provides the central clue to its meaning.²⁷ Beauty is the form of a form, the form of perfection, because it consists in not only order, regularity and proportion, but in the inner necessity of order, regularity and proportion, in form as it derives from the very nature of a thing. The form of perfection alone is not sufﬁcient for beauty because beauty is incompatible with all constraint, and order, regularity and proportion can appear to be a constraint upon an object. If they are to be beautiful, they must seem to derive from the intrinsic nature of the object, from its characteristic essence and life. Only then will beauty have the appearance of freedom.

²³ NA #155, January 25, 1793, XXVI, 176, 14–37. ²⁴ See Kritik der Urteilskraft §15, 226–9. ²⁵ Ibid., §16, 229–30. ²⁶ The historical precedent for Schiller’s formula is perhaps Shaftesbury, who in The Moralists described beauty as ‘forming forms’, the inner energy and essence of an object that created forms. See Characteristics (London: Purser, 1737), II, 405. On the complex question of Schiller’s relationship to Shaftesbury, see 3.5 below. ²⁷ NA #155, XXVI, 209, 31–3; 211, 5–7.

An Objective Aesthetic

57

Beauty is the form of a form, then, because it consists in the manner in which the form of an object derives from the object itself. There is some irony in Schiller’s argument here: though he makes this point against Kant it was Kant himself who had already stated it in §45 of the third Kritik when he declared that beauty must appear completely natural and free from constraint. Schiller was simply developing this Kantian point and turning it against its author.

4. THE DEDUCTION OF BEAUT Y How did Schiller attempt to establish his objective principle of beauty? In his February 8, 1793 letter to Körner he explains that there are two ways to prove it.²⁸ One is the path of induction or experience, which is easy and pleasant; the other is the path of deduction or a priori reasoning, which is difﬁcult and dry. Schiller says that, despite its difﬁculty, he will begin with the deductive approach because ‘once it is gone through everything will be easier’. It was not purely on pedagogic or expository grounds, however, that Schiller began with the deductive method. For he was the ﬁrst to insist that an objective principle of beauty must have a priori legitimacy, which it would be impossible to establish through the inductive method alone. Since this principle would have to be synthetic a priori, it would provide a rule for judgment about experience, and so it could not derive its validity from it. Still, the principle would have to be true to experience, because, even though no amount of experience could verify it, only one contrary exerience could falsify it. Schiller concedes that there is something of a vicious circle in any attempt to establish an objective principle of taste: the principle is valid only if it conforms to aesthetic experience; but aesthetic experience is valid only if it conforms to the principle. Schiller still believed, however, that it is possible to obviate the circle by combining the two approaches. He would proceed ﬁrst by an a priori deduction of the principle from the highest faculties of the mind; and then he would conﬁrm the principle through its application to experience. Following the ﬁrst approach, Schiller wrote Körner that he would attempt a ‘deduction’ of the concept of beauty. Such a deduction would legitimate his principle by proving it ‘completely a priori out of the nature of reason’.²⁹ What Schiller has in mind here is something like a Kantian ‘transcendental deduction’ of the concept of beauty. Like any transcendental deduction, it will attempt to legitimate a principle by showing how it plays a necessary role in our general mental taxonomy.³⁰ It is the task of a transcendental deduction to demonstrate, if a principle is constitutive, ²⁸ NA #151, XXVI, 178. ²⁹ NA #150, XXVI, 175. ³⁰ For this account of a transcendental deduction, see Dieter Henrich, ‘Kant’s Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique’, in Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, ed. Eckart Förster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 29–47.

58

Schiller as Philosopher

that it is a necessary condition of possible experience, or, if it is regulative, that it is a necessary condition of judgment upon experience. Since Schiller claims only regulative status for his principle, his deduction holds only that it is a necessary condition of judgment upon experience. Schiller’s transcendental deduction has been the source of much controversy. One dispute concerns its importance for Schiller’s argument. Some scholars insist that it is crucial,³¹ while others dismiss it as irrelevant.³² Neither view is totally accurate. While the deduction is not Schiller’s only argument for his principle, there are still important philosophical points behind it. It is indeed only in his deduction that Schiller justiﬁes some of his most important moves beyond Kant. Another debate concerns whether or not the deduction is truly Kantian. Some scholars regard it as purely Kantian,³³ whereas others dismiss it because of its departures from Kantian orthodoxy.³⁴ Again, neither opinion is correct. While Schiller’s architechtonic is greatly indebted to Kant, it would be pedantic—and indeed question begging—to expect complete ﬁdelity to Kant’s system. Schiller had his own purposes in devising his architechtonic; the crucial question is only whether he achieves them. Schiller’s transcendental deduction, which takes place in his letter of February 8, 1793 to Körner,³⁵ begins with a general analysis of the faculty of representation. Like Kant and Reinhold, Schiller begins with the distinction between form and content. The senses give content, which is a manifold of sensations; and reason creates form, which is the manner in which we unite the manifold of sensations (178–9). Reason in its most general sense, Schiller says, is ‘the capacity of connection’ (das Vermögen der Verbindung). If a manifold of sensation is given to sense, reason attempts to creates its form, i.e. to connect its manifold according to laws. It is striking that Schiller assigns to reason (Vernunft) the very role that Kant assigns to the understanding (Verstand ) in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. There Kant deﬁnes the understanding as the faculty of connection (B 129–30). But Schiller’s reason has a much broader role than Kant’s understanding, which is limited to unifying representations supplied by sensibility. Schiller takes reason in a very general sense as the power of combination or synthesis, a power which unites all kinds of representations among themselves, and even representations with other faculties, such as the will. Such a broad sense of reason has no precedent in

³¹ See, e.g., Fritz Heuer, ‘Zu Schillers Plan einer transzendentalphilosophischen Analytik des Schönen’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch 80 (1975), 90–132. Heuer deserves credit for recognizing the transcendental dimension of Schiller’s analysis of beauty. However, he is so intent on a sympathetic reconstruction of Schiller’s transcendental argument that he underplays its inner tensions and problems. ³² See, e.g., Henrich, ‘Der Begriff ’, 546; and Ellis, Schillers Kalliasbriefe, 97, 102; and Robert Sommer, Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie und Aesthetik von Wolff-Baumgarten bis Kant-Schiller (Würzburg: Stahel, 1892), 384, 401, 410. ³³ See, e.g., S. S. Kerry, Schillers Writings on Aesthetics (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1961), 29–30. ³⁴ See, e.g., Schaper, ‘Schillers Kant’, 102, 106, 112. ³⁵ NA #151, February 8, 1793, XXVI, 178–83.

An Objective Aesthetic

59

Kant, who deﬁnes reason in a much more narrow sense as the faculty of principles, i.e. the power of unifying concepts according to the idea of the unconditioned.³⁶ Whether strictly Kantian or not, Schiller’s general concept of reason is strategic and signiﬁcant: it allows him to bring all forms of judgment within the general domain of reason. Kant saw judgment as the mediating term between reason and understanding, not as a speciﬁc form of reason.³⁷ Armed with his general concept of reason, Schiller proceeds to distinguish between its various forms. There are two distinct forms of reason, he says, depending on what it connects. There is theoretical reason, which connects representations with representations for the sake of knowledge; and there is practical reason, which connects representations with the will for the sake of action (179). Schiller then subdivides each kind of reason by distinguishing between their subject matters. Each form of reason has a twofold subject matter, two kinds of objects to which it applies. Theoretical reason applies to concepts or intuitions. Intuitions are given by the senses, while concepts are created by reason itself. Whether intuitions conform to theoretical reason is contingent, because they are not created by it; but whether concepts conform to theoretical reason is necessary, because they are created by reason itself (179). Practical reason applies its forms to actions, which are either necessary or free. Conformity of necessary actions with practical reason is contingent, since what happens according to the laws of nature might or might not accord with the practical demands of reason; conformity of free actions with reason is necessary, however, because reason, through the moral law, creates the form of free action. From the various forms of reason Schiller derives the various kinds of judgment. Since the application of reason to a speciﬁc subject matter is an act of judgment, there is a distinct form of judgment for each each kind of subject matter (182–3). The application of theoretical reason to concepts is logical judgment, whose task is to assess concepts according to the criteria of knowledge. The application of theoretical reason to intuitions is teleological judgment, whose business is to unify intuitions according to the idea of a systematic whole. The application of practical reason to free actions is moral judgment, which evaluates actions according to the form of the will, the moral law. Finally, and most crucially, the application of practical reason to natural events or necessary actions is aesthetic judgment. Schiller’s deduction of aesthetic judgment brings him close to his ﬁnal derivation of the objective principle of beauty. The deduction ensures a central role to aesthetic judgment within the general economy of the mind: aesthetic judgment shows itself to be one form of practical reason, namely that form that applies its principles to events in the natural world. Aesthetic judgment is therefore the counterpart of moral judgment, which applies the principles of practical reason to

³⁶ KrV B 356, 358, 359, 364; A 405. In its widest sense Kant deﬁnes reason as ‘the entire higher faculty of cognition’ (ganz obere Erkenntnißvermögen) (B 863), which is still narrower than Schiller. ³⁷ Kritik der Urteilskraft V, 195–7.

60

Schiller as Philosopher

human actions. To determine now the basic principle of aesthetic judgment—the objective principle of beauty—we only need to establish the fundamental principle of practical reason itself. What is this principle? Every student of Kant knows it. It is that principle Kant had already laid down in his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: the categorical imperative itself, the principle that one should act only on that maxim that can be a universal law. Since this is the principle by which moral agents govern themselves, Kant maintains that it is one and the same as autonomy or freedom. We are now ready to provide the deduction of the chief principle of aesthetic judgment. Since aesthetic judgment applies the principle of practical reason to the sensible world, and since this principle is nothing less than autonomy or freedom, the principle of aesthetic judgment must concern how freedom appears in the sensible world. In other words, the fundamental principle of aesthetic judgment—the general concept of beauty—is nothing less than the appearance of freedom in the sensible world. It is, to use Schiller’s famous formula, ‘freedom in appearance’ (Freiheit in der Erscheinung), ‘autonomy in appearance’ (Autonomie in der Erscheinung) (182). The pivotal innovation in Schiller’s deduction is his making aesthetic judgment a form of practical reason. More speciﬁcally, Schiller made a distinction between two different forms of reﬂective judgment, one belonging to theoretical reason, the other to practical reason. In the Kritik der Urteilskraft Kant had not recognized any such distinction. Reﬂective judgment is a faculty that mediates between understanding and reason, and so does not fall under the jurisdiction of either.³⁸ Schiller’s innovative move was his attempt to resolve Kant’s own vascillation about the relationship between aesthetics and morality, taste and practical reason. Notoriously, in the third Kritik Kant is deeply ambivalent about this relationship. On the one hand, he explicitly excludes aesthetic judgment from the realm of practical reason. While practical reason has an interest in its object, whether as the useful or good, aesthetic judgment has no interest whatsoever in its object; it simply asks whether its perception produces pleasure (§11, V, 221; §12, V, 222). Indeed, Kant explicitly prohibits the fundamental concept of practical reason— the concept of freedom—from playing any role in aesthetic judgment (§31; V, 280). On the other hand, however, Kant implies in several places that there has to be a very close connection between aesthetic judgment and practical reason. Hence, he claims in §29 that the universality and necessity of judgments about the sublime are based on moral feeling (V 265–6); and in §59 he suggests that the universal communicability of aesthetic experience depends on beauty being a symbol of the morally good (V, 353). In placing aesthetic judgment within the domain of practical reason, Schiller is unequivocally siding with Kant’s latter alternative. Taste is now made an aspect of practical reason, resulting from the ³⁸ Kritik der Urteilskraft , III, V, 177.

An Objective Aesthetic

61

application to the sensible world of the fundamental concept of practical reason, freedom. The crucial question remains: How does Schiller justify this move? Why does he so ﬁrmly place aesthetic judgment under the jurisdiction of practical reason? Schiller’s ofﬁcial explanation in his February 8 letter is not very illuminating (180–1). He states that aesthetic judgment cannot belong to the realm of theoretical reason because it is not cognitive; and since theoretical and practical reason are the only possible forms of reason, aesthetic judgment must fall within the domain of practical reason. This explanation does not help because it simply assumes that aesthetic judgment falls within the domain of reason. It seems as if Schiller’s argument ultimately rests upon nothing more than his very broad concept of reason, according to which any form of synthesis or connection is a form of reason. But this is purely verbal, less the result of argument than Architechtonikspiel. Schiller’s does have, however, a deeper philosophical rationale for placing aesthetic judgment within the domain of reason: his insistence that we must give reasons for aesthetic judgment. According to this rationale, aesthetic judgment falls within the jurisidiction of reason, because reason is a faculty of determining the reasons for our judgments, and aesthetic judgments too must have reasons to support them. Though this gives some support for Schiller’s argument, it still does not provide the connection he wants between aesthetic judgment and freedom. Regarded strictly as an attempt to demonstrate his objective principle of taste, Schiller’s deduction must be regarded as a failure. While it provides an interesting topography of the mind and the place of aesthetic judgment within it, the argument does not work because it presupposes the very conclusion that it is so intent to prove: that beauty is freedom in apperance. The argument shows only that the application of practical reason to natural events gives the concept of freedom in appearance; but it does not explain why the concept of freedom in appearance is equivalent to beauty. Once that step is made, it is obvious that taste falls under practical reason, given that judgments of taste apply the concept of freedom. Still, the question remains: Why make the crucial step? Schiller needs to provide some independent evidence on behalf of his analysis of beauty. To his credit, Schiller himself fully appreciated, and deeply worried about, the difﬁculty.³⁹ It is not surprising that he begins his February 23 letter to Körner by admitting that his objective principle is still unproven (199). Despite the failure of Schiller’s deduction, it would be wrong to dismiss it. It is not the formal mechanics of the deduction, the strict validity of its argument, that are of special interest so much as the philosophical points underlying it. Schiller’s claim that aesthetic experience involves the appearance of freedom allowed him to explain something that Kant had suggested but left unexplored: namely, the signiﬁcance of beauty, our interest in its disinterestedness. By connecting aesthetic ³⁹ See the January 25, 1793 letter to Körner, NA #150, XXVI, 175, 18–35.

62

Schiller as Philosopher

experience with freedom, Schiller could explain why we take such a deep interest in beauty: it seems to address our innermost self because it reveals our deepest moral value, namely freedom. Such is Kant’s insistence upon the disinterestedness of beauty that at times he seem to deprive it of all moral signiﬁcance. Beauty, as Schiller complains, seems to boil down to the pleasure of seeing an arabesque. Still, Kant himself notes that even if the experience of beauty is disinterested, it is still possible for us to take an interest in it.⁴⁰ This remark too could be seen as one of Schiller’s starting points, one more place where he develops Kant as he departs from him.

5. KEEPING AND BREAKING KANTIAN LIMITS For all the Kantian apparatus involved in Schiller’s transcendental deduction, its conclusion ran afoul of Kant’s critical strictures. Contrary to Kant’s declaration against the impossibility of an objective principle of beauty, Schiller ﬁrmly believed that his deduction had established just such a principle. Why, though, was Schiller so conﬁdent that he could avoid Kant’s critical strictures against such a principle? To answer this question, we ﬁrst must have a better idea why Kant imposed his limits in the ﬁrst place. In the third Kritik Kant’s main argument against an objective principle of beauty—apart from the argument in §§34–5 already discussed— is that it must involve some ‘concept of an object’, that is, some concept of an object’s characteristic essence or purpose, and so of what it ought to be.⁴¹ Kant gave two reasons why aesthetic pleasure is independent of any such concept. First, it is possible to take pleasure in the perception of an object without knowing anything about its essence or purpose; for example, we take pleasure in the perception of a ﬂower without having any idea of its nature.⁴² Second, aesthetic pleasure consists in the free play of imagination and understanding, which means that it cannot be subsumed under any speciﬁc concept.⁴³ Whatever their merits, the underlying premise behind Kant’s arguments is that an objective principle of beauty must be cognitive, because it must presuppose some claim to knowledge of its object. Kant never dissociated the claims for an objective principle from the Leibnizian-Wolfﬁan rationalism that had been the central target of the critical philosophy. While Schiller does not engage in an explicit polemic against Kant, it is not difﬁcult to reconstruct his response to this argument.⁴⁴ For starters, it is crucial to see that Schiller accepts the essentials of Kant’s argument against the Wolfﬁans. He ⁴⁰ ⁴¹ ⁴³ ⁴⁴

Kritik der Urteilskraft §2, V 205n.; and §41, V, 296–8. Ibid., §16, V, 229; §17, V, 231–2; §34, V, 285–6. Ibid., §8, V, 215–6; §17, V, 231–2. NA #151, February 8, 1793, XXVI, 178, 6–10.

⁴² Ibid., §16, V, 229.

An Objective Aesthetic

63

agrees with Kant that aesthetic pleasure is independent of any knowledge of the speciﬁc purpose of an object, and that it consists in a free play between imagination and understanding which forbids subsumption under any speciﬁc concept. Aesthetic judgments are not forms of cognition of an object, Schiller recognizes, at least not in the sense that they are confused representations of sense about something noumenal. Like Kant, Schiller distinguishes aesthetic judgment from all forms of cognition, from all judgments of theoretical reason.⁴⁵ Still, despite his agreement with Kant on these scores, Schiller did not draw Kant’s conclusion that an objective principle of beauty is impossible. Why not? Part of the explanation, as we have already seen, is that Schiller thinks Kant’s argument is a simple non sequitur (2.2). Another part of the explanation comes from a remarkable passage—one of Schiller’s very few polemical remarks—in the February 18 letter to Körner.⁴⁶ Here Schiller makes an interesting implicit criticism of Kant’s ban against objective aesthetic principles. According to Schiller, Kant has confused two things. It is one thing to give a concept of the beautiful; but it is quite another thing to claim that we have pleasure because of that concept. Schiller agrees with Kant that we do not have to possess the concept of beauty to take pleasure in beauty; he too insists that the ultimate test for the worth of any aesthetic object is experience. Still, it does not follow from these points, Schiller argues, that there cannot be any objective concept of beauty; for that concept is nothing more than a post facto explanation of the experience that precedes it. This kind of polemic played only a small part, however, in Schiller’s response to Kant. The main reason Schiller believed he had escaped the Kantian strictures is that he had assigned his principle of beauty to the realm of practical reason. Since his principle is practical and not theoretical, it is not cognitive, and so it does not presuppose any concept of an object. In more Kantian terms, this means that his principle is not constitutive but regulative; it determines not that there is beauty in an object but that everyone ought to see beauty in an object. Hence, in several passages of the Kalliasbriefe, Schiller emphasized the regulative status of his principle, insisting time and again that it is possible to treat objects only as if they are appearances of freedom.⁴⁷ He explains that if the subject matter of reason is not created by it but given to it, then reason reads itself into appearances and treats its subject matter as if it originated in reason. In the case of theoretical reason, the idea of a purpose is read into the multiplicity of intuitions, as if they were created according to an intelligent systematic design; in the case of practical reason, the idea of freedom is read into natural events, as if they acted according to some intention or will. In both cases, Schiller insists that reason’s procedure is only regulative: we lend (leyhen) an idea to appearances when we have no knowledge that it is really true of them. He further explains that if there is only a contingent connection

⁴⁵ NA #151, February 8, XXVI, 180–1, 35–1. ⁴⁶ NA #154, XXVI, 190, 20–32. ⁴⁷ NA #151, February 8, 1793, XXVI, 180; #155, February 23, 1793, XXVI, 200, 26–9, 208–9.

64

Schiller as Philosopher

between reason and its object—if the object is only given so that there is no assurred conformity with reason—then it is possible to hold only that the objects are ‘analogues of reason’ (Analogia der Vernunft) or ‘imitations of reason’ (Nachahmungen der Vernunft). Representations not created by theoretical reason, yet appearing to conform to it, are ‘imitations of concepts’; actions or events not created by practical reason, but appearing to comply with it, are ‘imitations of free actions’ (Nachahmungen freier Handlungen). These imitations of reason are at best like reason but do not comply with it; they show only similarity to reason (Vernunftähnlichkeit) but not conformity with it (Vernunftmäßigkeit). What is beautiful in the sensible world is therefore only an imitation of reason; it appears to be free, so that it is analogous to our freedom, but it is a mistake to think that it really is an instance of freedom. Schiller insists that freedom itself is something noumenal or supersensible, which cannot be applied to the phenomenal or sensible world. True to Kantian principles, he afﬁrms that all events in the natural world are necessary and the effects of purely mechanical laws. At this point it is necessary to note a fundamental ambiguity in Schiller’s famous deﬁnition of beauty. The term ‘appearance’ in the phrase ‘freedom in appearance’ is ambiguous, whether in English or its German equivalent (Erscheinung). ‘Appear’ can mean to seem to be something, to be like it in some respect though not really that thing; or it can mean to manifest or reveal, to make speciﬁc, explicit or clear what a thing is. Schiller means, decidedly, the former, not the latter. This is the whole point behind his insistence that we read freedom into appearances, and that beauty is only an analogue of reason. He is indeed perfectly explicit that all that we can claim is a ‘similarity to reason’ (Vernunftähnlichkeit), and that for this reason alone we can regard beauty as the appearance of freedom: ‘thus the analogy of an object with the form of practical reason is not freedom in fact but merely freedom in appearance, autonomy in appearance.’⁴⁸ The point is simple but still worth stressing, if only because Schiller’s principle has been repeatedly read in the opposite sense, as if he were claiming that beauty really is the manifestation or revelation of freedom.⁴⁹ This confusion is the basis for the metaphysical interpretation of Schiller’s aesthetics. According to this interpretation, freedom in appearance means the sensible manifestation, revelation, or embodiment of a noumenal or supersensible reality, in this case freedom. Hence, Schiller’s principle has been read as the prototype for Schelling’s and Hegel’s later doctrine that beauty is the sensible manifestation of the idea. Supposedly, Schiller’s great advance over Kant consists in his moving closer toward the objective idealism of Schelling and Hegel, according to which the idea has an objective ⁴⁸ NA #151, February 8, 1793, XXVI, 182, 31–3. ⁴⁹ See, e.g., Kerry, Schillers Writings, 46; and Schaper, ‘Schiller’, 359. For a more detailed criticism of this conﬂation, see Wolfgang Düsing, ‘Ästhetische Form als Darstellung der Subjektivität: Zur Rezeption Kantische Begriffe in Schillers Ästhetik’, in Friedrich Schiller: Zur Geschichklichkeit seines Werkes, ed. Klaus Berghahn (Kronberg: Scriptor Verlag, 1975), 197–252, esp. 228–30.

An Objective Aesthetic

65

status outside the subject and embodies itself in the sensible world.⁵⁰ This reading commits the very fallacy that Schiller was eager to warn against: conﬂating a regulative with a constitutive principle.

6. THE ANALYSIS OF BEAUT Y No one was less satisﬁed with his transcendental deduction than Schiller himself. He began his February 23, 1793 letter to Körner by admitting that he still had not established his central thesis: ‘that that property of a thing which we designate with the name beauty is one and the same as freedom in appearance’ (199). He then promised Körner a demonstration of two points. First, that those properties in a thing that make it appear to be free are the same as those that give it beauty, and that when they are absent there is no beauty; in other words, Schiller wanted to show that freedom in appearance is a necessary and sufﬁcient condition of beauty. Second, that freedom in appearance has the same effect on our feelings as beauty itself (199). Since we cannot prove a priori what someone feels, Schiller noted, the second point has to be established a posteriori. The demonstration of this second point would then provide empirical proof for the ﬁrst. Obviously, Schiller’s promise was of a tall order. Realizing that the argument for the ﬁrst point would already ﬁll many letters, Schiller postponed his argument for the second point for a later occasion. As it happened, the February 23 letter is all that Schiller wrote. There is only one more letter on beauty to Körner, written February 28 and March 1, which contains an appendix applying some of his ideas to the ﬁne arts. Though Schiller had plans to continue the correspondence, they never came to fruition. Still, the February 23 letter is very substantial and gives us much material for reﬂection. It contains the heart of Schiller’s early aesthetics. Schiller begins his argument for the ﬁrst point by raising a difﬁcult question. If freedom is an idea of reason, which has no corresponding intuition in experience, what objective grounds can there be to seek freedom in appearance? What justiﬁes us in reading freedom into appearances if it is a supersensible quality that cannot be found in the sensible world? Schiller began his critique of Kant by maintaining that there must be some objective characteristics of things that justify attributing

⁵⁰ Kant himself had used the term ‘heautonomy’ in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, though he had given it a different meaning from Schiller. See KU V, 185–6; XX, 225. Kant uses it to refer to the subjective validity of the procedure of judgment: that it must prescribe its laws to itself (heautonomy) rather than to nature (autonomy). It is a mistake to read Schiller’s usage according to Kant’s, as has been done in the latest English translation of the Kallias Briefe (see Classical and Romantic German Aesthetics, 166n.). The explication of this term provided in the notes—‘The heautonomy of the object is its appearing autonomy’—is incorrect (166n.). The emphasis should not be on appearing autonomous, on the subjectivity of the laws, but on the laws deriving from the inner necessity of a thing. In any case, the explication is straightforwardly false because, as Schiller tells us later, heautonomy is an objective property of a thing.

66

Schiller as Philosopher

beauty to them rather than some other thing. Schiller must now identify these characteristics. To answer this question, Schiller ﬁrst analyzes the concept of freedom itself. Freedom means, he says, self-determination, to be determined through oneself or from within, independent of external causes (200). All determination takes place either from inside or outside a thing, from internal or external causes. If someone acts from internal causes, they are free; if they are determined by external causes, their actions are necessary. Since, however, freedom by itself cannot be perceived in the sensible world—since we have no way of perceiving its inner causes—we have no recourse but to determine its presence through negative factors, from an object not having external causes. The representation of ‘not-being-determinedfrom-the-outside’ (Nichtvonaußenbestimmtseyn) is indirectly the same as that of ‘being-determined-from-the-inside’ (Voninnenbestimmtseyns) (201). We must then determine whether something is free if it shows an absence of external causes. But how is this done? How, more concretely, do we recognize when an object is not determined by external causes? Schiller has two answers to this question. He speciﬁes two conditions under which something appears to be free, which are also meant to be two conditions under which it is beautiful. The distinction between these conditions, which becomes fully apparent only much later in his analysis (206), is crucial to his general argument and creates its basic structure. In very general terms, we could interpret these conditions as follows. First, to appear to be free something must seem to act according to laws and rules, and speciﬁcally those that hold for its own nature alone; second, to appear to be free these laws and rules must seem to be created by it and to ﬂow from within it. Remarkably, the two conditions mirror Kant’s famous dictum in §45 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft that in beauty nature must appear like art and art must appear like nature. It is no accident that Schiller would explicitly refer to Kant’s doctrine (209). Throughout his argument Schiller will appeal to another Kantian intuition: that beauty excludes all appearance of constraint (§45; V, 306). Schiller’s ﬁrst condition states that an object appears to be free if it appears to act according to its own form alone. Since the form of an object is its nature, it must appear to act according to its own nature alone. If it seems determined by something outside its nature, it seems to suffer constraint, and so it ceases to appear beautiful to us. Schiller’s formula for this ﬁrst condition is nature in its artfulness (Natur in der Kunstmäßigkeit) (203). The form of the object is the rule or law according to which it acts; and this law or rule is the art or technique (Technik) of a thing. If the object is to appear beautiful to us, it must appear to conform to law or a rule; in other words, it must appear lawful. There are two further factors involved in this condition, though Schiller does not explicitly distinguish them. First, the object must act according to its form, so that there is regularity or lawfulness. Second, the object must appear to act according to this form alone; in other

An Objective Aesthetic

67

words, we must not be able to determine external causes acting upon it, which would appear to be like a constraint. Schiller now attempts to explain the meaning of these conditions in more concrete empirical terms. If an object is to appear to act according to its own nature alone, then its own form should appear to be the cause of its shape and movement. This form must appear to triumph over its mass, which represents the general forces of gravity acting upon it. The more gravity appears to act upon it, the more contraint it appears to suffer, and so the less free it appears to be. Schiller has two examples, one regarding the shape and the other regarding the movement of a body. Regarding shape, if a vase ends in a broad belly, as if gravity had reduced its length and given it breadth, it seems less beautiful than if its base were longer and more slender, because here it seems as if gravity has overcome the form of the object (203–4). Regarding movement, there is a marked difference between those of a workhorse and those of a Spanish palfrey: the workhorse’s movements seem laboured and clumsy, whereas those of the palfrey appear elegant and easy. The workhorse is so used to moving heavy loads that gravity has triumphed over form; the palfrey, however, seems to move by virtue of its own form alone (204). If in the workhorse mass has won over form, in the palfrey form has won over mass. Although Schiller thinks that nature in its artfulness is a necessary condition of beauty, he denies that it is a sufﬁcient condition. It is not enough for beauty, he argues, that an object appears to act according to its own form alone. If this were all there were to beauty, then an object would be beautiful simply in virtue of its regularity and proportion. A strict mathematical ﬁgure would have to be considered beautiful (206). Like Hogarth, Burke, Kant and many others in the eighteenth century, Schiller rejected the classical Pythagorean view that beauty is the same as measure, regularity and proportion. The problem with artfulness or lawfulness alone, he maintains, is that the law or rule might seemed imposed upon the object; but what seems to be a constraint never appears beautiful to us. Apart from artfulness or lawfulness, then, there must be another necessary condition for beauty, another condition for the appearance of freedom. This condition is the virtual converse of the ﬁrst: that art must appear to be natural. This means that the law or form of a thing must appear to derive from it naturally, spontaneously, ﬂowing from its inner energies. It is not form alone that makes for beauty, Schiller says, but also the inner necessity of the form. Speaking ﬁguratively, one could call this, Schiller says, the object’s ‘voluntary consent’ to its form (206). Schiller calls the ﬁrst condition autonomy, because the object seems to be selfdetermining, following the laws of its own nature alone; he calls the second condition heautonomy, because the nature seems to be created by the object itself (207). If autonomy means following the laws of one’s own nature alone, heautonomy means that these laws are, as it were, self-given, created by the subject itself. So heautonomy is not opposed to autonomy but simply a greater degree of it; it is an intensiﬁcation of autonomy, meaning literally ‘self self-governing’. The difference

68

Schiller as Philosopher

between autonomy and heautonomy concerns the relations of the object. While autonomy concerns the relations of the object to other objects, and more speciﬁcally the independence of its nature or form from them, heautonomy concerns the relation of the object to its own nature or form, and more speciﬁcally, that its nature or form derive from it spontaneously and from its inner energies. There is an obvious logical problem connected with Schiller’s concept of heautonomy, which had already been pointed out to him by Körner.⁵¹ What sense does it make to say that the nature or form of an object ﬂows from within it when that nature or form is already its essence or characteristic nature? It seems nonsense to say that such a nature or form is a constraint on the object, for there is nothing else to the object than its nature or form. Körner complained that Schiller’s talk of heautonomy committed him to the old metaphysics of substance, the idea that there was something else to a thing beside its attributes. Schiller does not directly answer this question in the Kalliasbriefe, though it is possible to see the point behind his concept of heautonomy without getting bogged down in metaphysics. Schiller’s talk of heautonomy makes perfect sense once we realize that there are two very distinct kinds of questions we can ask about the essence or nature of a thing. There are the purely taxonomic questions: ‘What does the object consist of ?’, or ‘How do we distinguish it from other objects?’ There are also the more historical questions: ‘How did the object acquire its nature?’, ‘What made the object become what it is?’. The concept of heautonomy arises in answer to the second rather than ﬁrst kind of question. It tells us that to be beautiful an object must appear to acquire its nature from within rather than from without, from its spontaneous energies and organic growth rather than as the result of external causes. The purpose of Schiller’s concept of heautonomy is to bring in this second more dynamic element into the analysis of aesthetic experience. Aesthetic form never appears static but appears to be the product of some internal energy within the work. 7. THE PROBLEM OF APPLICATION Although Schiller’s analysis of beauty went a long way toward clarifying his objective principle, it still was very far from establishing it. For even if Schiller’s analysis of beauty were entirely cogent, it still did not provide what one expects from such a principle: namely, a criterion to guide particular judgments of taste. A deﬁnition of a concept is one thing, a criterion of its application is another. At its best Schiller’s analysis had shown that beauty means the same thing as freedom in appearance; but there still remained the problem of applying this principle, of determining when something in experience is an appearance of freedom. If people differ regarding what they see as beauty in appearance—or if anything can be considered as freedom in appearance—there will be no satisfactory objective principle ⁵¹ See Körner to Schiller, March 4, 1793, NA XXXIV/1, 241.

An Objective Aesthetic

69

of taste. In short, to resolve the problem of arbitrariness in judgments of taste, Schiller required not only an objective deﬁnition of beauty but also a criterion of its application. In more Kantian terms, Schiller had to ﬁnd the schema for his principle of beauty. Schiller was painfully aware of this problem. It was already made especially clear to him by Körner in his February 15, 1793 letter to Schiller.⁵² Körner complained that Schiller’s principle of beauty, as explained in his February 8 letter, was still much too subjective; at any rate, it did not provide the objective principle that Schiller had originally promised in his January 25 letter. Schiller wrote on February 8 that we must read the concept of autonomy into appearances. But then the question arose: Which appearances deserve to be interpreted in this manner? There has to be something in the objects themselves that justiﬁes seeing some as cases of freedom as opposed to others. Schiller said that we ascribe freedom to those objects that appear to be self-determining, to those that seem to act from their own nature alone.⁵³ Yet on what basis could we ascertain this? Somehow, we still had to distinguish cases of self-determination from cases of external determination or constraint. Without clear criteria for the application of the principle, Körner implied, there cannot be any objective principle of beauty. Körner’s objection was a powerful challenge to Schiller, who set about answering it in his next three letters, those of February 18, 19, and 23. In his February 18 reply to Körner, Schiller admitted that his principle of beauty, as he explained it so far, was still only subjective. All that he had shown is that his principle of beauty is inherent in reason itself, but that did not show anything about the nature of objects themselves. That there must be something inherent in the nature of the objects themselves to make the application of the principle possible, Schiller conceded, ‘versteht sich von selbst’.⁵⁴ To meet this need, Schiller now intended to establish that beauty also involves characteristics of objects themselves. Schiller’s reply to Körner’s objection marks an important shift from his February 8 letter. The concept of objectivity now takes on a decidedly more realistic meaning. In the February 8 letter Schiller believed that he had an ‘objective’ principle of beauty only in the sense of ‘subjective universality’, that is, the principle must be valid for every rational being who possesses a sensibility. By itself this did not imply that the principle refers to any characteristics of objects themselves. Indeed, Schiller gave this principle a purely regulative status, insisting that reason had the right only to interpret objects as if they were free; it had no right to assume that they really are so. Now, in his February 15 reply to Körner, Schiller reverts to a more realistic meaning of objectivity, according to which beauty refers to some properties in objects themselves. The pressures pushing him in this direction are clear: it is the need to apply the principle of beauty, the need to justify seeing some

⁵² NA #194, XXXIV/1, 228. ⁵⁴ NA #154, XXVI, 190.

⁵³ NA #151, XXVI, 181–2.

70

Schiller as Philosopher

objects rather than others as instances of beauty. There must be something in beautiful objects themselves, Schiller thinks, that justiﬁes regarding them, rather than some others, as the appearances of freedom. In his February 23 letter to Körner Schiller is perfectly explicit that he now has a stronger sense of objectivity in mind, for he maintains that we can attribute freedom to appearances only if it refers to properties of the objects that remain ‘even when the representing subject has been completely thought away’ (auch wenn das vorstellende Subjekt ganz hinweggedacht wird).⁵⁵ Prima facie Schiller’s reply to Körner creates an inconsistency in his theory. It now seems as if Schiller is making his principle of beauty both regulative and constitutive, both practical and theoretical. It is possible to avoid this inconsistency, however, simply by distinguishing between levels of Schiller’s theory.⁵⁶ It is necessary to distinguish between the meaning or deﬁnition of a concept, and the criteria of its application, that is, the speciﬁc features which indicate when something is an instance of the concept. In the jargon of eighteenth-century philosophy, this is a distinction between the ratio essendi and the ratio cognoscendi of a concept; and in more Kantian terms, the distinction between a concept and its schema. The difference between these levels becomes clear when we consider that a normative or prescriptive concept might have descriptive conditions for its application, even though its meaning is not limited to these conditions. The concept of a good car, for example, does not describe any speciﬁc feature of a car, such as its color, weight or engine size; yet the conditions under which we apply this concept are under deﬁnite circumstances speciﬁable in empirical terms, viz. durability, engine performance, maintenance record. Schiller himself sometimes seems to have meant a distinction like this, for he writes that, although the idea of freedom lies only in reason, the ground or basis for ascribing it to the object lies in the object itself.⁵⁷ In a similar vein, he distinguishes between the conditions of the representation of beauty and beauty itself.⁵⁸ Some scholars have seen another inconsistency in Schiller’s theory, because they see its realism as a relapse into pre-Kantian dogmatism.⁵⁹ Contrary to the ⁵⁵ NA #155, XXVI, 208, 15–8. Cf. 21–2, 24–5. ⁵⁶ Basically, the same point is made by Heuer, ‘Schillers Plan’, 104–5. ⁵⁷ NA #155, XXVI, 208–9, 34–2. This distinction would be Schiller’s reply to the objection that he confuses transcendental freedom with the appearance of self-determination in the phenomenal world. This objection appears in Käte Hamburger’s article ‘Schillers Fragment ‹Der Menschenfeind› und die Idee der Kalokagathie’, in Philosophie der Dichter (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966), 102–3. Hamburger ignores those passages where Schiller more carefully distinguishes between freedom and the appearance of it. See, e.g., NA #151, February 8, 1793, XXVI, 182, 25–33. ⁵⁸ NA #155, February 23, 1793, XXVI, 202, 21–8. ⁵⁹ See, e.g., Kerry, Schiller’s Writings, 45–6; Schaper, ‘Schiller’, 357–9; and Lukács, ‘Zur Aesthetik Schillers’, 47. Schiller’s realistic language has created difﬁculties for even his more sympathetic expositors, who think that it conﬂicts with his commitment to transcendental idealism. See, e.g., Düsing, ‘Ästhetische Form’, 204, 211; Henrich, ‘Begriff der Schönheit’, 536–7; and Benno von Wiese, Friedrich Schiller (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1959), 467–8. These difﬁculties are easily resolved, however, by noting the detailed conceptual apparatus of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, more speciﬁcally Kant’s distinctions between transcendental and empirical realism.

An Objective Aesthetic

71

principles of Kant’s transcendental idealism, Schiller seems to afﬁrm a kind of naive realism regarding aesthetic properties. Nowhere is this more apparent than when Schiller, in his February 23 letter, states explicitly that these properties exist independent of the perception of them (209). To assume that what appears to our senses exists when we do not perceive it is, in Kantian terms, to identify appearances with things-in-themselves. Such a doctrine is transcendental realism, the very antithesis of transcendental idealism, which by deﬁnition denies the identiﬁcation of appearances with things-in-themselves.⁶⁰ Here, then, there seems to be a real inconsistency in Schiller’s general Weltanschauung, given that he elsewhere commits himself to transcendental idealism.⁶¹ Yet here again the inconsistency is only apparent, the result of a failure to appreciate the subtleties and complexities of Kant’s transcendental idealism. It is possible to interpret Schiller’s language about ‘objective properties’ in terms of Kant’s empirical realism, which it is the express purpose of transcendental idealism to justify.⁶² According to empirical realism, objects exist external to me in the sense that they appear in space outside me; they exist in a different place from my own body.⁶³ Such empirical realism does not maintain that the object, as it appears to my senses, exists independent of the conditions of my knowing it; in other words, it does not identify appearances with things-in-themselves. But it does maintain that the object has objective properties in the sense that they are identiﬁable in a single intersubjective spatial world; these properties are indeed independent of my own empirical consciousness, viz. my particular perspective, the state of my physiology. There is nothing in Schiller’s language that commits him to a form of transcendental realism.⁶⁴ His arguments for objective aesthetic properties lose none of their point if they are understood along the lines of empirical realism. When Schiller writes about characteristics of objects themselves, which exist even when consciousness is abstracted away, he refers to empirical consciousness, the awareness of speciﬁc empirical individuals; he need not be making a claim about the transcendental conditions of consciousness in general. In any case, Schiller’s claim does not occur in a metaphysical context but simply within the perspective of ordinary empirical consciousness. Although Schiller’s aesthetic realism need not violate Kant’s transcendental idealism, it does contradict Kant’s aesthetic subjectivism. In the third Kritik Kant

⁶⁰ See Kant’s distinctions between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism in the ﬁrst edn. of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A, 369–74, 491–3. ⁶¹ On the importance of Kant’s transcendental idealism for Schiller’s intellectual development, see Ernst Cassirer, ‘Die Methodik des Idealismus in Schillers philosophischen Schriften’, in Idee und Gestalt (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1924), 81–112. ⁶² On Kant’s empirical realism, see my German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism 1781–1801 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 48–61. ⁶³ See Kant’s deﬁnitions in the ﬁrst edition of the ﬁrst Kritik, A 28, 45, 373. ⁶⁴ Kant himself often uses terms like ‘objective’ and ‘in itself ’ to refer to the object of empirical realism. See, e.g., Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 62–63; cf. Fortschritte der Metaphysik, AA XX, 269.

72

Schiller as Philosopher

is very explicit that aesthetic qualities are only subjective in the sense that they express merely our feelings of pleasure or displeasure about an object; they concern only our reactions to objects rather than the objects themselves.’⁶⁵ In stressing the subjectivity of aesthetic qualities Kant means to distinguish them not primarily from the properties of things-in-themselves—he took that to be evident from the argument of the ﬁrst Kritik—but more importantly from the properties of appearances; in other words, he denies that aesthetic qualities have even empirical reality.⁶⁶ It is precisely in this respect that Schiller’s aesthetic realism takes issue with Kant. Schiller afﬁrms, and Kant denies, that aesthetic qualities have empirical reality. In sum, Schiller’s new objective aesthetics would take issue with Kant in two respects: in afﬁrming the possibility of an objective principle of beauty, and in afﬁrming the empirical reality of aesthetic qualities. Both claims involve different senses of objectivity: intersubjectivity and empirical reality. But, pace Schiller’s bourgeois critics and Marxist admirers, there is no claim to transcendental reality involved in his objective aesthetics. The problem with Schiller’s theory lies not with its consistency but with its failure to fulﬁll its promise. In the end, Schiller does not succeed in determining the objective characteristics that permit the application of the concept of beauty. In his February 23 letter Schiller had analyzed the concept of freedom in appearance in much more speciﬁc terms, so that it consisted in two basic characteristics: autonomy and heautonomy, the artiﬁciality of nature and the naturalness of art. The problem is that neither of these characteristics is really objective, even though Schiller pretends that they are so (208). They are not empirical characteristics of an object that we can read off the objects themselves simply from the perception of them. Autonomy means that the object acts according to its own nature alone; and heautonomy means that it generates its nature from within. But it is not possible to perceive either quality, for the simple reason that there are no such phenomena in nature, at least according to the principles of Kant’s naturalism. According to Kant’s naturalism, every event conforms to the principle of causality and the law of interia, such that it must be determined into action by external causes.⁶⁷ This means that no object in nature is completely self-determining, in the sense that it acts according to the necessity of its own nature alone, or in the sense that its nature spontaneously ﬂows from its inner essence. In the Kalliasbriefe, Schiller himself explicitly and emphatically reafﬁrms Kant’s naturalism. Every object exists, and has the nature it does, he argues, because of other ⁶⁵ Kritik der Urteilskraft §1, V, 203–4; and vii, V, 189–90. ⁶⁶ Compare Kant’s argument in the third Kritik with that in the Aesthetik of the ﬁrst Kritik, A 28–9, A 45. ⁶⁷ See Kant’s Metaphysische Anfängsgründe der Naturwissenschaften, ‘Mechanik’, Lehrsatz 3, IV, 543–4. It is important to see that Kant’s argument in the ‘Zweite Analogie’ of the ﬁrst Kritik does not by itself exclude the possibility of self-determination. That argument shows only that there must be some cause for every event, but not that this cause must be external to some thing. The prior events determining an event into action could be distinct states of the same thing.

An Objective Aesthetic

73

objects and the general system of which it is only one part (193). When this naturalism is fully admitted, it means that neither autonomy nor heautonomy are objective characteristics of the object because they must be read into them. This conclusion does not by itself undermine Schiller’s analysis of beauty, since he can still maintain that autonomy and heautonomy are regulative concepts; yet it does destroy utterly his attempt to provide some objective criteria for the application of his principle of beauty. For the point of those criteria is to determine when we can read the concept of freedom into appearances; but we now ﬁnd that these criteria are themselves regulative, so that they too need criteria about when to read them into experience. So the problem of application has not been resolved; it has only been pushed back another step. It is ironic that Schiller’s search for a criterion of freedom in appearance could have greatly beneﬁted from Kant’s analysis of the concept of a natural purpose (Naturzweck) in the second half of the Kritik der Urteilskraft. In §65 Kant had established two criteria for the objective purposiveness of things in nature: (1) that the very possibility of the parts depends on the whole, and (2) that the parts are reciprocally cause and effect of one another. Kant argues that the ﬁrst condition is not sufﬁcient by itself to distinguish a natural purpose from a work of art, for a work of art also shows an organic unity where the part depends on the whole. What is distinctive of natural purposes, Kant argued, is that they are self-generating and self-organizing. They are not created and produced by some external plan but seem to generate and develop from within according to some inner necessity. Kant’s concept of a natural purpose is the perfect analogue of Schiller’s concept of self-determination. Both concepts involve the idea of an organic whole which is self-generating and self-organizing. As if he were following Kant’s argument in §65, Schiller insisted that self-determination involves not only the idea of perfection— a systematic whole or unity-in-multiplicity—but also the idea of inner necessity, that the perfection derives from the inner essence of the thing. The afﬁnity between their concepts is strengthened even further when we note that Schiller himself endorsed Kant’s maxim that art is beautiful if it looks like nature and nature is beautiful if it looks like art.⁶⁸ The analogy between Kant’s concept of natural purpose and Schiller’s idea of self-determination suggests that Schiller could have proposed natural purpose as his criterion of freedom in appearance. Here again it would seem that Schiller only needed to develop certain Kantian principles to justify his own departure from ofﬁcial Kantian doctrine. Although we can strengthen Schiller’s quest for an objective principle of beauty by making the Kantian concept of a natural purpose the criterion of freedom in appearance, it is important to note how much would be gained by this. While Schiller could claim to have a deﬁnite criterion for the application of the concept of freedom to appearances, he could not claim that it describes some objective ⁶⁸ Kritik der Urteilskraft §45, V, 306.

74

Schiller as Philosopher

characteristics of the object itself, even when ‘objective’ is taken in the more limited Kantian sense of empirical reality. For here again Schiller bumps up against Kant’s regulative limits, though now from a new direction. Kant’s regulative constraints apply not only to the concept of freedom but also to the concept of a natural purpose. Time and again in the second half of the third Kritik Kant insists that the concept of a natural purpose has only a regulative validity. We cannot assume that there are natural purposes but can only proceed in our enquiries as if there were such things, he argues, because, for all we know, it is still possible that things that appear to act for purposes that seem to be self-generating and selforganizing are determined by mechanical causes.⁶⁹ To be sure, the concept of a natural purpose is not logically reducible to some form of mechanism, but this does not entail that the concept has any objective reference. For all Schiller’s recognition of Kant’s critical limits regarding practical reason, he proved to be more naive and dogmatic regarding Kant’s critical limits regarding teleology. While he admitted that the concepts of practical reason have to be read into appearances, he did not always acknowledge that the concepts of autonomy and heautonomy also can only be read into them. Schiller will soon make good this lapse; yet, as we shall soon see, it will be at a terrible price.

8. FINAL ASSESSMENT After this analysis of Schiller’s aesthetics in the Kalliasbriefe we have arrived at a rather mixed appraisal of its worth. Even when we evaluate Schiller in his own terms, his aesthetics is no unqualiﬁed success, but neither is it a complete failure. Schiller himself probably viewed his work in such a light; for while he remained convinced of some of its central ideas, he also became critical of others. He later distanced himself from his early efforts to ﬁnd an objective principle of beauty; not least for this reason Kallias was never written. In appraising the Kalliasbriefe we must never forget that they were never intended to be ﬁnished and formal doctrine. Schiller very much understood them to be work-in-progress; and he hoped in a true Socratic spirit that Körner would probe and criticize them. Schiller’s transcendental deduction of the principle of beauty could not claim to be a success. The problem is not that Schiller’s deduction distorts Kantian concepts, and still less that it contradicts itself. Rather, it simply presupposes what it has to deduce: that the principle of beauty is freedom in appearance. While Schiller’s later analysis of beauty greatly clariﬁes his central principle, it too hardly amounts to a demonstration of its truth. It tells us what beauty as freedom in appearance means; but it does not prove that beauty is freedom in appearance. Ultimately, the only evidence Schiller gave to his principle came from a few examples, ⁶⁹ Kritik der Urteilskraft §71, V, 388. Cf. §75, V, 400.

An Objective Aesthetic

75

which gave it at most an intuitive plausibility; but these were few in number. When he later applied his theory to the ﬁne arts in his March 1, 1793, letter to Körner, he simply presupposed its truth and left his reader to judge whether it really illuminates particular arts. In the end, Schiller was forced to abandon his search for the philosopher’s stone: an objective principle of beauty that could serve as a criterion to resolve aesthetic disagreements. His struggle to make his principle into a workable criterion never bore fruit. Although he would again attempt an ‘analytic of the beautiful’ in the Ästhetische Briefe, this was more an analysis of the concept of beauty than an attempt to determine a criterion or standard how to apply that concept. The search for a speciﬁc criterion, an objective principle, bore no fruit because Schiller never succeeded in specifying those objective characteristics of aesthetic objects that would determine when to apply the concept of beauty. Schiller was convinced that technique (autonomy) and inner necessity (heautonomy), understood as analogues of freedom, were somehow objective, perceptible characteristics of the object itself, and as such would determine when it is proper to read freedom into appearances. But, upon closer inspection, these characteristics proved to be not really objective at all; they revealed themselves as properties read into the object rather than as properties of the object itself. If everything in nature is determined by external causes, as Kant held and Schiller reafﬁrmed, then objects themselves cannot be self-determining or act from the inner necessity of their own nature alone. Hence these characteristics prove to be schema in need of schema; we still need to know the perceptual characteristics of objects themselves that allows us to apply the ideas of technique and inner necessity to objects. It is to Schiller’s great credit, however, that he eventually realized this weakness in his own theory. In his October 24, 1794, letter to Körner, his last correspondence on the topic of beauty, he wrote that all the problems with his theory arose from assuming that beauty is an empirical concept when it is in fact a normative one: ‘The beautiful is no concept of experience but rather than imperative. It is certainly objective, but merely as a necessary task for our sensible-rational nature.’⁷⁰ It was on this level that Schiller would later attempt to deﬁne beauty in the Ästhetische Briefe. There the concept of beauty becomes an inﬁnite goal for our human activity, an ideal that we should strive for but cannot ever attain. But the attempt to identify the speciﬁc empirical characteristics and to generalize them into a single criterion applicable to all cases came to a close with the Kalliasbriefe. In the end, Schiller had to admit that his quest for the philosopher’s stone—the objective criterion of beauty—had been illusory. What, then, is there to salvage from the wreckage? Nothing less than the idea that inspired Schiller in the ﬁrst place. Although Schiller could not supply a criterion of beauty, he still had an interesting and fruitful deﬁnition. Despite his failure to demonstrate it, there remains something very suggestive and plausible about ⁷⁰ NA XXVII, 70–1, #54.

76

Schiller as Philosopher

Schiller’s deﬁnition. In a neat formula, Schiller’s deﬁnition does seem to capture some of our intuitions about beauty. Aesthetic objects are like an appearance of freedom, since they do require absence of constraint yet conformity to rule; paradoxically, they demand vitality and spontaneity not in spite of, but because of, their technical perfection. Schiller is certainly on to something very important with the idea of heautonomy, the thesis that form cannot ever appear as constraint and must derive from the inner energies and forces of the object itself. It is not really a stretch to see this as an analogue or symbol of moral autonomy, which involves the idea of creating and imposing on ourselves the laws by which we live. Of course, one might choose to describe these characteristics in non-moral or purely aesthetic terms. Still, it is one of the more suggestive aspects of Schiller’s deﬁnition that it links the moral and aesthetic, explaining the moral interest that we take in aesthetic phenomena. So, in the ﬁnal analysis, Schiller’s deﬁnition is suggestive and interesting, providing new perspectives for the interpretation of aesthetic experience. Of any philosophical theory it is a mistake to ask for more.

3 Grace and Dignity 1. THE FATE OF AN ORPHAN After his study of Kant, Schiller’s ﬁrst major published philosophical work was his short treatise Anmut und Würde, which appeared in the Neue Thalia in June 1793. Of all his philosophical writings it is surely one of the most important. It is in Anmut und Würde that Schiller gives the most systematic statement of his ethics, begins his famous dispute with Kant, reintroduces the Platonic concept of eros into ethics, and formulates his famous concept of the beautiful soul. The inﬂuence of the treatise on the later romantic generation is immeasurable. Quite apart from its historical importance, Anmut und Würde is of the greatest philosophical interest. Schiller’s aim is to unite the realms of ethics and aesthetics, or, more speciﬁcally, to explain the aesthetic dimension behind moral conduct, the moral dimension behind human beauty. Of course, such a project is controversial; it is to some an attempt to square the circle. But it is scarcely fair or feasible to dismiss it a priori without a detailed examination of Schiller’s arguments. Whatever one’s bias, Anmut und Würde remains one of the most subtle and sophisticated efforts in the history of philosophy to explain the connection between the moral and aesthetic aspects of human conduct. For all its historical and philosophical signiﬁcance, Anmut und Würde has not enjoyed a happy fate. It has always been overshadowed by its later and larger stepsister, the 1795 Ästhetische Briefe, even though it is no less rich and rewarding, and even though it provides much of the foundation for the more famous work. While the Ästhetische Briefe was hailed as a masterpiece immediately after its publication, Anmut und Würde was ignored and spurned for generations. Kant acknowledged its existence, though only in a footnote; Goethe hated it; and most people simply found it too difﬁcult and obscure. So, if not exactly stillborn, the treatise became an orphan. It remained so for more than half a century. Anmut und Würde was ﬁnally adopted by the German literary world only after 1859, the centenary of Schiller’s birth.¹The studies of Kuno Fischer, Karl Tomaschek, Friedrich Ueberweg, Hermann Lotze, Robert Sommer and Karl Vorländer gave ¹ On the importance of this date for Schiller reception, see Lesley Sharpe, Schiller’s Aesthetic Essays: Two Centuries of Criticism (Columbia: Camden House, 1995), 20–4.

78

Schiller as Philosopher

detailed and incisive readings of the text; and their work is still very much worth reading today.² Unfortunately, their precedent has rarely been followed. Recent Schiller scholarship has played a very stepmotherly role toward Schiller’s orphan.³ Since the 1950s, the general reaction to Anmut und Würde has been, to say the least, cool, skeptical and patronizing. Like any unwanted waif, Schiller has been scolded for his quixotic ambitions and his patchy performance. While some scholars maintain that his attempt to combine the moral and aesthetic is ﬂawed in principle, others question the general rigor and consistency of his argument. With almost monotonous regularity, we are told that the text is riddled with fatal inconsistencies and facile reasoning. It is not simply that Anmut und Würde has been ignored and misunderstand; to add insult to injury, it has also been the source of one of the most persistent and pervasive myths about Schiller’s philosophy. All too often Schiller has been seen as a Rousseauian apostle of original goodness, as a moral naturalist who defends sentiment and feeling against the discipline and constraint of reason. Such, for example, was Nietzsche’s interpretation of Schiller when he described him as ‘die Moralprediger aus Säckingen’.⁴ Such, indeed, was the interpretation of Schiller given by Irving Babbitt in his inﬂuential Rousseau and Romanticism.⁵ Ironically, Anmut und Würde fuelled this interpretation because it was best known for its defense of the concept of the beautiful soul (die schöne Seele). Already in the early nineteenth century this concept had acquired the fatal connotations that Rousseau had bestowed upon it in his Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse. Following Rousseau, ² Kuno Fischer, Schiller als Philosoph (Leipzig: Fues Verlag, 1868), 61–77; Karl Tomaschek, Schiller in seinem Verhältnisse zur Wissenschaft (Vienna: Gerold, 1858), 187–207, 229–41; Friedrich Ueberweg, Schiller als Historiker und Philosoph (Leipzig: Reißner, 1884), 181–214; Hermann Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (Munich: Cotta, 1868), 87–111; Robert Sommer, Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie und Aesthetik (Würzburg: Stahel, 1892), 387–401; and Karl Vorländer, ‘Ethischer Rigorismus und sittliche Schönheit. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Kant und Schiller’, Philosophische Monatshefte 30 (1894), 225–80, 371–405, 534–77. ³ See esp. Käte Hamburger, ‘Schillers Fragment «Der Menschenfeind» und die Idee der Kalokagathie’, in Philosophie der Dichter (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966), 83–128; Dieter Henrich, ‘Der Begriff der Schönheit in Schillers Ästhetik’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 11 (1957) 527–47; Martin Breylage, ‘Schillers Kritik an der Kantischen Ethik oder Gesetz und Evangelium in der philosophischen Ethik’, in Studien zur Transcendentalphilosophie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), 230–44; Lesley Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 133–40; Robert Norton, The Beautiful Soul (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 225–45; David Pugh, Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schillers Aesthetics (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s, 1996), 239–86; Hans Richard Brittnacher, ‘Über Anmut und Würde’, Schiller Handbuch, ed. Helmut Koopmann (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1998), 587–609. ⁴ See Götzen-Dämmerung, in Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe, eds. G. Colli and M. Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967–77), VI, 111. In Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Nietzsche makes very clear his conviction that Schiller’s moralism has its source in Rousseau. See Werke II, 65. ⁵ See Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism (Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1919), 43–4, 70, 132 n4, 140–1, 240–1. Throughout, Babbitt portrays Schiller as a second-generation follower of Jean Jacques. For all its prejudices and pretensions, it would be a mistake to underrate Babbitt’s book, which was highly successful in disseminating its image of Rousseau. It was in response to Babbitt that Ernst Cassirer wrote his Das Problem Jean Jacques Rousseau, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, XLI (1932), 177–213, 479–513.

Grace and Dignity

79

Hegel, Goethe and Nietzsche understood the beautiful soul as someone who tried to recover their original innocence, as someone who wanted to ﬂee from the corruptions of the world into some ideal moral realm apart from society and state. So, inevitably, Schiller became tarred with Rousseau’s brush. Such an interpretation cannot withstand any close reading of Anmut und Würde; but, then again, who needs to read the text when they already understand its central concept so well? In the Anglophone world too, Anmut und Würde has never had a happy fate. There is no reliable commentary on the text and usually, at best, only passing references to it. Most of the general treatments of Schiller’s philosophy in English have given the text only the briefest consideration.⁶ Its fate has not been helped by the lack of a reliable translation.⁷ Here again the jealous stepsister, the Ästhetische Briefe, with several good translations to aid her, has been able to steal the limelight. It is probably for this reason that Anglophone Kant scholars, who should otherwise have an interest in Kant’s debate with Schiller, have virtually ignored the text.⁸ The unhappy fate of Anmut und Würde—the enormous discrepancy between its signiﬁcance and its reception—makes its re-examination a necessity. The main aim of this chapter is to provide an historical and philosophical introduction to Anmut und Würde. It will attempt to locate the text in its historical and systematic context, and to explain the main arguments behind it. No attempt is made here to provide a complete philosophical or historical commentary, which would be the task for a treatise. We will consider only some of the sources and inﬂuences upon Schiller, and some of his central arguments. We shall see that Schiller is scarcely guilty of the facile criticisms made against him. Although Schiller’s argument and exposition are indeed ﬂawed—he does not explain his premises, he introduces needless distinctions, he develops artiﬁcial contrasts, his terminology is misleading and not consistently used—these kinds of problem are, as any philosopher will attest, par for the course for any treatise on such a difﬁcult topic. We shall see that Schiller fails to prove his central thesis that there is an aesthetic dimension to moral action. However, this does not show that Anmut und Würde is a failure. As always in the history of philosophy, we must measure the value of a work not by the success of its argument, but by the light it sheds—whether by its insights or illusions—on important issues.

⁶ In his Schiller and the Ideal of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 31, R. D. Miller regards the text mainly as ‘an exposition of [Schiller’s] aesthetics’ and mentions the text only to mine a few comments about freedom. Despite the promising title of his Freedom and Dignity (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), 112–13, Deric Regin devotes no more than a page to Anmut und Würde. Steven Martison’s Harmonious Tensions (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996), does not discuss Anmut und Würde. The single exception here is David Pugh’s provocative reading of the text in Dialectic of Love, 239–86. ⁷ See ‘On Grace and Dignity’, by an anonymous translator, in Essays Aesthetical and Philosophical by Friedrich Schiller (London: George Bell & Sons, 1875), 168–222; and, by another anonymous translator, ‘On Grace and Dignity’, in The Works of Frederick Schiller (New York: John Lovell, no date), IV, 175–229. ⁸ See 5.2.

80

Schiller as Philosopher 2. GENERAL THEMES, STRUCTURE AND PL AN

Anmut und Würde is divided into two halves. The ﬁrst half treats the concept of grace (Anmut), the second the concept of dignity (Würde). Schiller latched upon these concepts because they seemed to illustrate so well the aesthetic qualities of human conduct. He pairs grace and dignity with the traditional concepts of the beautiful and the sublime. Grace is a form of moral beauty; dignity is a form of moral sublimity. Grace and dignity are therefore different kinds of pleasing appearances of moral virtue. Although Schiller’s contrast between grace and dignity is subtle and nuanced, a subject for more detailed investigation below (3.10), its general meaning is clear enough. The essential difference between grace and dignity derives from two different relationships between reason and sensibility. If there is a harmony between reason and sensibility, if a person does their duty with pleasure, if they act from inclination according to the moral law, then the action has grace. If, however, there is a conﬂict, if a person in tragic circumstances must do their duty by asserting their will against the strong resistance of sensible desires and feelings, then the action has dignity. Exactly why Schiller thinks a graceful action appears beautiful, and why a digniﬁed action appears sublime, are questions that we will investigate in more detail later. Anmut und Würde is a treatise more on the aesthetic aspects of moral conduct than on aesthetics itself. It therefore presupposes the general aesthetic theory Schiller had already outlined in his Kallias Briefe. It is indeed simply an application of that theory to human actions. Since, however, Schiller never completed that theory, Anmut und Würde is a house without a foundation, or at best without a ﬁrm and ﬁnished one. As we shall soon see, this will prove to be one of the greatest difﬁculties in understanding Schiller’s text: it presupposes premises that are never explained and barely alluded to in the text. One of the more visible cracks in that foundation affects the structure of the whole work. In Anmut und Würde Schiller maintains that both grace and dignity are appearances of freedom in the sensible world. It is for this reason that he believes both have their aesthetic qualities: since both are appearances of freedom, grace is beautiful, and dignity is sublime. According to the Kallias Briefe, however, the appearance of freedom in the sensible world is beauty alone. Hence the concept of beauty in Anmut und Würde is equivocal: it has a speciﬁc sense where it refers to the pleasing appearance of graceful actions, and it has a general sense where it refers to any appearance of freedom in the sensible world, whether graceful or digniﬁed.⁹ Though the difﬁculty is not necessarily fatal, Schiller never came to full clarity about it or reformulated his principles to resolve it. ⁹ This generic sense comes to the fore when Schiller uses beauty to describe the apearance of grace and dignity combined (NA XX, 301, 6, 12).

Grace and Dignity

81

If the aesthetic principles behind Anmut und Würde are implicit and inchoate, its ethical principles are more explicit and developed. We know from some crucial passages, and from Schiller’s earlier correspondence with Augustenberg, that he accepted some of the basic principles of Kant’s moral philosophy.¹⁰ More speciﬁcally, Schiller endorses two of Kant’s central theses in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: that moral principles must be justiﬁable by reason alone; and that an action has a moral worth only if it is done for the sake of duty alone. Furthermore, he accepts Kant’s account of the moral law, his famous categorical imperative: ‘Act only on that maxim that can become a universal law’. Most importantly, Schiller enthusiastically embraces the central concept behind Kant’s ethics: moral autonomy or self-determination. All these agreements with Kant do not mean, however, that Schiller’s ethical views are entirely Kantian. Indeed, as we shall see below (5.6), he makes some very signiﬁcant criticisms of Kant’s ethics in the Ästhetische Briefe. Still, Anmut und Würde is a much more Kantian work than the Ästhetische Briefe, written when Schiller had not attained complete clarity about his own views and disagreements with Kant. It is less an attempt to correct Kant’s moral theory than to complete it.¹¹ Schiller wants to defend the possibility, which Kant had failed to consider in the Grundlegung and second Kritik, that we can do our duty with pleasure, or that we can act on the moral law from inclination. Admitting this possibility does not detract from the purity of the moral law, Schiller argues, because moral sentiments and inclinations concern the execution, not the justiﬁcation or motivation of moral action, i.e. they concern how rather than why they are done (283, 7–15).¹² This means that we need not see moral duty and inclination in constant combat with one another, as if the moral worth of an action came from doing it contrary to inclination. Schiller is careful to say that he does not think Kant is guilty of such a misconception, though he regrets that his exposition in the Grundlegung sometimes gives that impression (284, 34 ). As a work in ethics, Anmut und Würde is essentially an attempt to develop an account of moral virtue. As Schiller puts it, he wants to explain not only the conditions of moral action, but the conditions of having a moral character (283, 23–9). In attempting to develop such a theory, Schiller was turning to a task that Kant himself had left incomplete in the early 1790s. The Grundlegung and second Kritik were essentially theories about the ﬁrst principles of morality and the morality of an action; but neither was devoted to the nature of virtue or moral character. It is important to recall that the ‘Tugendlehre’ of Kant’s Metaphysik der Sitten would not appear until 1797, four years after Schiller’s own work. Although Schiller’s main aim in Anmut und Würde is to develop a theory of virtue, it would be a mistake to equate his concerns with what is now regarded as ¹⁰ See 5.2. ¹¹ See 5.3–4. ¹² See too, ‘Ueber den Moralischen Nutzen Ästhetischer Sitten’, NA XXI, 28.

82

Schiller as Philosopher

‘virtue ethics’. The central thesis of virtue ethics is that virtue rather than principle is primary in ethics, because there is no single set of principles that we should rely upon under all circumstances, and because we must determine what is right or good according to circumstances and deliberation. There are passages in Anmut und Würde where Schiller seems to endorse a thesis like this. We would not regard a person as morally developed, he points out, if he trusted his feelings so little that he was constantly forced to determine his precise obligations before every single action (287, 2–5 ). This passage has misled some into thinking that Schiller is more an Aristotelian than Kantian in ethics.¹³ It is important to see, however, that, at least in normal cases, Schiller does give primacy to principle over virtue. He makes a distinction between making and executing the law, assigning to reason exclusively the task of making the law and to virtue solely the task of executing it.¹⁴ He warns explicitly and emphatically against the confusion of these functions, against allowing the sentiments that execute the law to usurp the function of making the law itself. It is necessary to read the above passage in this context. When Schiller stresses that a morally developed person should trust his or her feelings he does not mean that these feelings should replace reason but that they should be reliable enough to execute the laws determined by reason itself; it is not that we should suspend reason but that we do not have to explicitly calculate according to it on every occasion. Although Schiller follows Kant in recognizing the primacy of principle over virtue, he is also more sensitive than Kant to problems of moral ambiguity and conﬂict. While he thinks that principle should always have primacy when its application is clear, he still recognizes that some of the most important and fateful cases of moral action are those where its application is unclear, where duty speaks with no clear voice or where it is in conﬂict with another duty. These gray areas are of course precisely the stuff of drama, which Schiller will address and exploit time and again in his plays. Still, we should not make the exceptional the normal, the dramatic into the stuff of everyday life. Schiller’s acceptance of Kant’s basic principles, and his insistence on distinguishing between making and executing the law, make it difﬁcult to endorse the existentialist reading of his ethics.¹⁵ Schiller’s attempt to deﬁne the aesthetic aspect of moral conduct in Anmut und Würde culminates in his infamous concept of ‘the beautiful soul’ (die schöne Seele). A beautiful soul is someone who does their duty from inclination, who acts on the moral law with joy. Schiller describes the beautiful soul as a person who acts with complete freedom, and therefore without the constraint of sensibility or the moral ¹³ See Bernhard Engel, Schiller als Denker (Berlin: Weidmann, 1908), 49, 65–6. ¹⁴ Cf. Anmut und Würde, NA XX, 283; ‘Ueber die nothwendigen Grenzen beim Gebruach schöner Formen’, NA XXI, 3; and ‘Ueber den Moralischen Nutzen Ästhetischer Sitten’, NA XXI, 28. ¹⁵ This kind of interpretation was especially popular in the 1950s. See Käte Hamburger, ‘Schiller und Sartre’, in Philosophie der Dichter (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966), 129–77; and Hans Jaeger, ‘Schillers Philosophie der Existenz’, in Schiller 1759/1959, Commerative American Studies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1959), 36–57.

Grace and Dignity

83

law. They do not feel the constraint of sensibility because they have learned to master their feelings and desires; and they do not feel the constraint of the moral law because they take pleasure in obeying it. Since the beautiful soul acts without constraint, and since a graceful action is one that involves no effort and suffers no hindrance, a beautiful soul acts with grace. Hence, Schiller gives this deﬁnition: ‘One calls it a beautiful soul when moral feeling has mastered all the sentiments of a person, and to such a degree that it may leave to affect (Affekt) the direction of the will and never run into danger of coming into contradiction with its decisions’ (XX 287, 12–6 ). It is crucial to see that the moral feeling of the beautiful soul does not replace but executes moral principle. It is the feeling that comes from moral virtue, from the exercise of habits constituting moral virtue, and that it is the result of moral character. The beautiful soul is free from the constraint of the moral law, not because he disregards it and trusts his natural instincts instead, but because he has so internalized its precepts that he takes pleasure in complying with them. In Kantian terms, the feelings in question are practical rather than pathological, i.e. they are not those we are given by nature but those that we create through education, resolution, discipline and restraint (see 5.4). Schiller himself will make a distinction along just these lines in Anmut und Würde when he distinguishes between the beautiful soul and virtues of temperament (NA XX, 294). While the virtue of the beautiful soul arises from internalizing moral principles, the virtue of temperament consists in nothing more than an accidental harmony between the requirements of the moral law and one’s natural inclinations. Despite all Schiller’s careful explanations, and despite all his precise distinctions, scholars time and again ignore them and ride roughshod over them. They construe Schiller’s moral sentiments and practical feelings as natural sentiments and pathological feelings.¹⁶ It then seems as if Schiller were a champion of natural goodness, as if he were advocating a virtue ethics, or as if he were defending sentiment against discipline and culture. The mistake is simple, but it is also endemic, and indeed one of the main sources of misinterpretation of Schiller’s treatise. It is repeated whenever Schiller’s philosophy is conﬂated with Shaftesbury’s, whenever Schiller is made into an apostle of the Sturm und Drang, and whenever he is criticized for presupposing a harmony between natural feeling and moral principle. Once we have seen through this mistake, it is easy to correct another, one of the most enduring myths of Schiller scholarship. This is the persistent claim that Schiller’s ethics consists in an attempt to soften or moderate Kant’s moral rigorism. This claim is false if it means that Schiller wanted to replace reason with feeling as a justiﬁcation of moral principles, or if it means that he did not want duty to be the sole motive for moral action. It is striking that Schiller himself protests against this interpretation. He stresses that on no account does he want to ¹⁶ Nowhere is this mistake more evident than in Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, 1332 n4, who tendentiously translates the term ‘Affekt’ in Schiller’s deﬁnition to mean ‘instinct’.

84

Schiller as Philosopher

be ‘a latitudinarian in morals’, someone who would diminish the rigor of the Kantian moral law (283, 16–22). Hence he insists, no less than Kant, that a moral action must be done solely from respect for the moral law, and that as such it excludes pathological inclination as a reason for action. Apart from the beautiful soul, there is another redolent concept that makes a brief but captivating appearance in Anmut und Würde: love. Schiller’s paean to love in his early Philosophische Briefe, and his re-introduction of this concept into his mature moral philosophy, proved to be profoundly inﬂuential. It was sheer inspiration for the romantic generation, an intoxicating spring from which Hölderlin, the young Hegel and Novalis would heartily drink. In Anmut und Würde Schiller explains that love is the pleasure that reason has when it perceives beauty, when it recognizes the appearance of its ideas in the sensible world (302). Such love does not consist in physical desire but in the spiritual attraction toward the appearance of an idea in the sensible world. Here Schiller injects Platonic eros into Kantian reason; but he also casts Platonic eros in Kantian terms, for he describes love in terms of freedom, the central characteristic of Kant’s noumenal world. Love alone is a free sentiment, Schiller writes, because it arises from freedom and is attracted toward its appearance in the sensible world (303). But we must beware of romantic intoxication. Schiller’s concept of love has been misinterpreted as much as the beautiful soul. It has been taken as evidence for Schiller’s adherence to an evangelical or Pauline ethic, an ethic that replaces the moral law with love.¹⁷ This was indeed how the young Hegel interpreted it in his Geist des Christenthums.¹⁸ But the mature Schiller never had any such programme. To be sure, in the Philosophische Briefe he had proclaimed love to be the true source of virtue, whatever that meant (XX, 119). By the time of Anmut und Würde, however, he had become sobered by the astringent wash of the Kantian moral law. In Anmut und Würde Schiller did not regard love as the criterion of morality, and still less as a reason for dispensing with the moral law. Rather, it is only the most powerful stimulus or incentive for following the moral law. It gives us more energy and motivation to act on moral principle; but it does not provide the rationale for the principle in the ﬁrst place. As if to thwart any confusion about the issue, in a later essay, ‘Von den notwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schöner Formen’, Schiller warns against making the experience of love into the basis for moral conduct (XXI, 24–5). If love could be an incentive for executing the moral law, it should never become a reason or justiﬁcation of the law. Love can be a source of selfdeception, Schiller realizes, because we think that we are acting selﬂessly, and so according to moral principle, when ultimately a deeper selﬁshness is at play (24–5). Love, he wrote in Anmut und Würde, is at once both the most generous and most selﬁsh feeling: generous, because it gives everything; and selﬁsh, because it only sees itself in everything (304). It was this selﬁsh element that disqualiﬁed ¹⁷ Brelage, ‘Schillers Kritik’, 241–4.

¹⁸ See Hegel, Werke I, 317–36.

Grace and Dignity

85

love from serving as a basis of morality. But, whatever Schiller’s own reservations about love, he had let the genie out of the bottle; its effect on the romantics was never one upon which he had intended and never one of which he would have approved.

3. THE CL ASSICAL LEGACY It should be obvious that Schiller’s Anmut und Würde grew out of a rich tradition of moral and aesthetic thought. Precisely how to place Schiller in this tradition, however, is no easy matter. Where Schiller breaks with and borrows from his ancestors and contemporaries is never very explicit and often very obscure. Lacking hindsight, Schiller himself could not know all his contributions and debts to the past. A precise account of Schiller’s individuality remains a desideratum of Schiller scholarship. Here, however, we will note only some central points about sources and inﬂuences. Our interest in doing so is more philosophical than historical. For history helps us to diagnose some of the difﬁculties behind Schiller’s concepts. Unfortunately, philosophers inherit not only the wisdom but also the confusion of the ages. The central concept of Anmut und Würde, the idea of moral beauty or the beautiful soul, has its origins and inspiration in classical Greece. Its ancestor is the ancient Greek ideal of kalokagathia, which means someone who is both beautiful (kalos) and good (kagathos). Kalokagathia summed up the Greek ideal of human excellence.¹⁹ It meant having the highest qualities of body and soul, achieving harmony in all one’s characteristic human powers. Originally, kalokagathia was an aristocratic ideal, the privilege of someone of noble birth, the birthright of somebody who enjoyed wealth and came from the right family. Having kalokagathia signiﬁed having ‘a clear and delicate perception of correct and appropriate behavior in every situation’, ‘a sense of proportion and control’, and above all a kind of ‘spiritual freedom’. Someone who could achieve kalokagathia enjoyed ‘an easy and unconstrainted way of life, appreciated and admired by all’.²⁰ Around the fourth century BC, however, kalokagathia became a more democratic ideal, one that ought to be achieved by every citizen. Kalokagathia was no longer a birthright or privilege but an acquisition or accomplishment, something to be developed through education and effort. The term retained its original connotation of allround excellence, a harmony of soul and body; but it also acquired the meaning of civil virtue.²¹ What exactly kalokagathia meant, and how to achieve it, were for centuries some of the central questions of Greek life and culture. The precise meaning of the ¹⁹ My account of kalokagathia is based on Werner Jaeger, Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet (New York, Oxford, 1945), and Jacob Burckhardt, The Greeks and Greek Civilization, ed. Oswyn Murray and trans. Sheila Stern (New York: St. Martins, 1998). ²⁰ Jaeger, Paideia, 276. ²¹ Ibid., 444 n48.

86

Schiller as Philosopher

ideal would very much depend, therefore, on the speciﬁc writer who attempted to deﬁne it. Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus would all struggle to explain it or its synonyms. We cannot consider their efforts in any detail here. It is important to see, however, that from the very beginning the concept of a beautiful soul was fraught with a deep ambiguity. The ideal could refer strictly to an attribute of the mind, the beauty of virtue alone, independent of its appearance in the sensible world; or it could also refer to the whole person, the unity of mind and body, the soul as it appears in the sensible world. This ambiguity is apparent in both Plato and Plotinus. In Phaedo Plato writes of a moral beauty independent of the body (114d–e); but in Phaedrus beauty is an attribute that mediates between the senses and the forms (250d). In the sixth book of The Enneads, Plotinus writes of beauty of soul as a virtue transcending the world of sense (I.6.1,6); but he also says that physical beauty reveals and reﬂects higher moral beauty (I.6.1–2). Plato and Plotinus both connect and separate moral and physical beauty: they connect them when they regard physical beauty as a preﬁguration of moral beauty; and they separate them when they insist upon turning away from the appearances and pleasures of the sensible world to grasp the forms of true beauty and goodness. Corresponding to this tension, the ideal of the beautiful soul acquired two very different meanings: a gnostic meaning, where it referred to moral and intellectual excellence acquired by retreating from the world of sense; or a holistic meaning, where it denoted the development of all human powers into a whole, which required cultivating sensibility as well as reason. The concepts of grace and dignity, to which Schiller’s title alludes, also had a classical provenance. The terms gratias and dignitas, or their equivalents venustas and gravitas, were terms of ancient art criticism. They were generally and primarily used to describe qualities of paintings, architechture, sculptures and forms of speech.²² They were Latin translations of critical terms from the ancient Greek: gratias and venustus rendered charis; and gravitas was sometimes used for semnos.²³ Gratia and venustas had the meaning of pleasant, charming and lovely; venustas referred to external or visible beauty, and was often contrasted with pulchritudo, which meant beauty in a more transcendental and ideal sense. Gravitas, which literally means heaviness, had the metaphorical sense of moral seriousness; and dignitas implied worth in a moral and intellectual sense. Beyond these very general meanings, though, the terms did not seem to have a more precise connotation, whether in Greek or Latin. Here again their precise sense depended very much on the speciﬁc author who used them. It is important to note another analogous ambiguity in the concepts of grace and dignity. Grace and dignity could sometimes refer to the pleasing appearances of ²² It is too narrow to claim, as Wiese does, that the provenance of these terms is from ancient rhetoric. See NA XXI, 216. ²³ On the meaning of the Latin terms and their Greek equivalents, see J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art (New Haven: Yale, 1974), 347–51, 380–2, 449–51.

Grace and Dignity

87

moral actions,²⁴ and it is this meaning that Schiller will later stress. But what is an action? This concept is very ambiguous. It could be a kind of movement, having physical qualities that appear in space and time and that are perceptible by the senses; or it could be the intentions of the agent, an act of will and the exercise of a disposition to act under certain circumstances. We do not perceive these intentions by the senses but determine them by acts of judgement and inference; hence, to know someone’s intentions, we need to know their moral character, the norms expected of them, the speciﬁc circumstances of their action, and so on. The concept of grace could be very ambiguous according to these different senses of action. It could refer to a movement that takes place without physical obstructions or hindrances; or it could refer to the agent’s intentions and character, the ease with which they do their duty. In short, the absence of constraint could be physical or moral. What, precisely, did Schiller inherit from his classical sources? We know much too little about Schiller’s acquaintance with them. He had almost certainly read some Plato, but we do not know when and what. Since his early days in Lateinschule Schiller had studied some of the classical authors (viz. Cicero, Horace, Virgil) who had used terms like grace and dignity; but there is no evidence he drew on any speciﬁc one in writing Anmut und Würde.²⁵ What Schiller deﬁnitely did inherit, however, was the deep ambiguities surrounding these concepts. He struggled with them and tried to avoid them; but, in dealing with objections, he also exploited them and eventually fell victim to them. Regarding the two ideals of kalokagathia, Schiller settled decisively for the holistic varient, ﬁrmly rejecting gnostic views of human excellence. But sometimes—when he found it difﬁcult to explain the connection between the noumenal and phenomenal, moral virtue and its pleasing appearances in the word—he would move closer to a more gnostic conception, where grace became something entirely internal rather than a mediator between the internal and external. In the same manner his concept of grace is very ambiguous. It could mean sometimes moral intention, sometimes physical movement, and sometimes the fusion of the two. All these equivocations will become apparent when we later deal with the details of Schiller’s argument.²⁶ ²⁴ This sense of grace is already apparent in Plotinus, Enneads I.6.2,4. ²⁵ In NA XXI, 217 Benno von Wiese suggests that Schiller’s reading of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria might have had an inﬂuence on his thinking. In July 1793 Schiller asked his publisher Göschen for a copy of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria. See NA XXVI, 257. According to K. P. Conz, Schiller had read the work with great enthusiasm in the Autumn of 1793. See Schillers Gespräche, ed. Julius Petersen (Leipzig: Becker, 1911), 270. However, this could not have been a source for Anmut und Würde, since, as von Wiese himself notes, Schiller had already sent the complete manuscript to Körner in June 1793. Schiller’s interest in Quintilian came less from any question of substance than from the possibility of a Latin translation of Anmut und Würde. See NA XXVI, 257. In any case, Quintilian does not discuss the classical terms in any detail; he gives only a quick deﬁnition of venustas as ‘that which is said with grace and charm’. See Institutio oratoria VI, III, 18. ²⁶ In his Dialectic of Love, 39–66 and passim, David Pugh ﬁnds a similar, if not identical, ambivalence running through Schiller’s entire philosophy, and more speciﬁcally in Anmut und Würde. He argues that Schiller’s philosophy suffers from the classic Platonic dilemma: the intelligible and sensible, the archetypical and ectypical, must be both identical with and distinct from one another.

88

Schiller as Philosopher 4. MODERN SOURCES

By the middle of the eighteenth century the concepts of grace and dignity had become fashionable topics in Britain, Germany, and France. Burke, Home and Hogarth in Britain, Winckelmann, Mendelssohn and Sulzer in Germany, Voltaire, Rousseau and Watelet in France, had all discussed them. The concept of grace was placed on centre stage when both Voltaire and Watelet wrote articles on it for Diderot’s Encyclopédie.²⁷ Despite, or because of, the popularity of these concepts, there was no general consensus about how to deﬁne them; and there was no readily accepted customary distinction between grace and dignity. Grace had a wide variety of uses; it was used to describe qualities of art works as well as human actions. It was generally regarded as a species of beauty, but of what species exactly remained obscure and disputed. In Germany the problem of deﬁning grace was especially acute since there was no exact German equivalent; some suggested ‘Reiz’, others ‘Anmut’ or ‘Anmutigkeit’. Given the ﬂuid situation and the lack of a general deﬁnition, it is not surprising that some were skeptical that grace could be deﬁned at all. In his Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, Sulzer complained about the growing ‘scholasticism of feeling’ that was inventing such subtle and reﬁned distinctions among the feelings that they could not be felt themselves.²⁸ In many minds the concept of grace stood for the ‘je ne se quois’, the distinctive yet indeﬁnable quality of aesthetic pleasure.²⁹ Such was the ﬂuid and chaotic state of discourse when Schiller turned to the topic in 1793. Fortunately, it is not difﬁcult to trace many of the sources and inﬂuences on his thinking. In January 1793, six months before writing Anmut und Würde, Schiller told Körner that he was reading many books on aesthetics, and that he already had in his possession books by Burke, Sulzer, Mengs, Winckelmann, Home, Batteux, Wood and Mendelssohn.³⁰ In Anmut und Würde Schiller joined in this discussion, citing and taking issue with the works of Burke, Home, Mendelssohn and Winckelmann. Although Schiller never refers to Edmund Burke’s brief chapter on grace in his Enquiry, he certainly knew the work and would have taken it very seriously.³¹ On this theme, see Ernst Cassirer, ‘Eidos und Eidolon: Das Problem des Schönen und der Kunst in Platons Dialogen’, Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 2 (1922–3), 1–27. While I disagree with Pugh’s interpretation of Anmut und Würde, I accept his general thesis that Schiller suffers from the Platonic dilemma. ²⁷ See Diderot, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers (Paris: Le Breton, 1757), VII, 805a–806b. Voltaire’s article treats the grammatical, literary and mythological meaning, Watelet’s the meaning for the ﬁne arts. ²⁸ See the article ‘Reiz’, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1793), IV, 88a. ²⁹ See, e.g., Jacques Lacombe, Dictionnaire portatif des beaux-arts (Paris: Herissant, 1753), ‘Grace’, 311. ³⁰ Schiller to Körner, January 11, 1793, NA XXVI, 174. ³¹ Schiller read the work in the translation of Christian Garve, Burkes Philosophische Untersuchungen über den Ursprung unserer Begriffe vom Erhabenen und Schönen (Riga: Hartknoch, 1773). In general,

Grace and Dignity

89

Indeed, there is reason to think that he would have been challenged by it. For Burke was among those who were skeptical that grace ever could or should be deﬁned. He described it as ‘delicacy of attitude and motion’; but he declined to deﬁne its ‘magic’ further, insisting that it is a ‘je ne sais quoi’.³² Even more provocatively for Schiller, Burke strongly disapproved of applying the concept of beauty to any form of virtue; such a practice, he complained, had ‘given rise to an inﬁnite deal of whimsical theory’.³³ In response to Burke, Schiller not only had to provide a credible deﬁnition of grace, but also to justify applying the concept of beauty to virtue. In his lectures he had complained about how Burke had been much too empirical, failing to base beauty upon rational principles (NA XXI, 77). It was now incumbent upon him to make good on Burke’s shortcoming. While Schiller does not openly quarrel with Burke, he does explicitly takes issue with Home. He had read Henry Home’s Elements of Criticism in the translation of J. N. Meinhard, who, signiﬁcantly, had rendered Home’s terms ‘grace’ and ‘dignity’ as Anmut and Würde. Home discusses grace only en passant as a beauty of motion; but he devotes an entire chapter to dignity, which he deﬁnes as an attribute of human actions that accord with our status as rational beings.³⁴ While Schiller agrees with Home that grace is primarily an attribute of motion, he thinks that Home has unduly narrowed the concept by limiting it to movements alone (NA XX, 264n). We can also apply it to ﬁxed features such as posture and facial expressions, Schiller argues, when they are the product of constant or habitual movements. He also chastens Home for confusing the concepts of grace and dignity even after having distinguished them (NA XX, 302n). Also important for Schiller was Mendelssohn’s analysis of grace in Ueber die Empﬁndungen. Mendelssohn had suggested that one could explain ‘charm’ (Reiz), the German equivalent for grace, as ‘the beauty of a true or apparent movement’.³⁵ An example of a true movement would be the mannerisms or gestures of a person; an example of an apparent movement would be the serpentine line propounded by Hogarth.³⁶ Schiller complained that if Home’s deﬁnition unduly narrows the concept of grace, Mendelssohn’s deﬁnition unduly broadens it. It makes grace almost equivalent to all forms of beauty, since all beauty is in the ﬁnal analysis a property of true or apparent movement. Grace can be applied only to those Schiller took Burke very seriously. See his comments on Burke’s account of beauty in Fragmente aus den Aesthetischen Vorlesungen, NA XXI, 76. ³² Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London: Dodsley, 1757). Part III, sec. xxii. ³³ Ibid., Part II, sec. xi. ³⁴ Home, Elements of Criticism (Edinburgh: Millar, 1777), I, 317–18, II, 27–39. ³⁵ Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe, ed. Fritz Bamberger et al. (StuttgartBad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1971), I, 282–3, 316. ³⁶ Mendelssohn refers to William Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty (London: Reeves, 1753), 50–67. Hogarth called an undulating wavy line ‘the line of beauty’ or ‘the line of grace’. The book was translated by C. Mylius in 1754 as Zergliederung der Schönheit. After writing Anmut und Würde Schiller requested that a friend send him the book. See to Reinwald, 24, 1794, NA XXVII, 28.

90

Schiller as Philosopher

movements that derive from feeling, which is not the case in inanimate apparent movements (NA XX, 265–6). In another essay, his 1758 ‘Ueber das Erhabene und Naive’, Mendelssohn anticipated Schiller’s analysis of grace in one very important respect: he connected the concept of grace (Grazie) with the naive on the grounds that a gracious person’s movements have to take place with simplicity and ease, without self-awareness and artiﬁciality.³⁷ Schiller too will insist on this requirement, stressing how true grace banishes all coyness and self-consciousness (269). Perhaps the most important source for Schiller’s treatment of grace and dignity in Anmut und Würde is Winckelmann. It was indeed impossible for him to avoid Winckelmann, who was credited with making the concept of grace (Grazie) so popular in mid-eighteenth-century Germany.³⁸ Certainly, Winckelmann had made the concept central to his own very inﬂuential account of ancient Greek art in his 1764 Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. There grace is the distinguishing characteristic of the culminating stage of Greek art, what Winckelmann called the ‘beautiful style’.³⁹ Winckelmann ﬁrst deﬁned the concept, however, in his 1759 essay, ‘Von der Grazie in Werken der Kunst’.⁴⁰ It is noteworthy that here, like Schiller, he regards grace primarily as an attribute of human action, and then only by extension one of Greek sculpture, which only imitates the quality in human actions.⁴¹ Winckelmann deﬁnes grace in general as the ‘rationally pleasing’, and more speciﬁcally as the pleasing aspect of human actions. In limiting it to actions Winckelmann seems to mean that grace is voluntary and a personal quality. Hence, he states that grace primarily concerns ‘the characteristic relation between the acting person and the action’, and that it designates the ‘simplicity and serenity’ of the person’s attitude or soul. He further explains that grace is more than just beauty, which is a gift of heaven and only gives the capacity for grace. While beauty seems to be a strictly physical characteristic, grace is something that we acquire through education and reﬂection. It is a quality of our actions that is alien to all constraint, wit and artiﬁciality, even though it is formed through attention and effort. The inﬂuence of Winckelmann upon Schiller is evident as early as the 1780s. In the ‘Selbstkritik’ of Die Räuber he spoke about the need to sketch his characters ³⁷ Mendelssohn, Schriften I, 488. Mendelssohn’s concept of the naive was of the greatest importance for Schiller; it will ﬁnd its echo in his concept of naive poetry. ³⁸ See Sulzer, Allgemeine, IV, 88a. Sulzer’s claim that Winckelmann is the ﬁrst to use the concept to designate ‘a certain quality of the beautiful in visible form’ is only correct from a German perspective. French and English writers, viz. Hogarth, Burke, and Watelet, had used the term in this sense before Winckelmann. ³⁹ See Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), Erster Teil, Viertes Kapitel, Drittes Stück, 219. ⁴⁰ See J. J. Winckelmann, Kleine Schriften und Briefe, ed. Hermann Uhde-Bernays (Leipzig: Insel, 1925), I, 155–9. ⁴¹ Since Winckelmann himself used the concept originally in a moral sense, Hamburger cannot be correct in her contention that Schiller illegitimately extended Winckelmann’s aesthetic concepts from sculptures to describe moral dispositions. See her ‘Schillers Fragment’, 96, 122.

Grace and Dignity

91

with more ‘decency and moderation’ (NA XXII, 130). ‘In nature Laocoon can scream from pain, but in visual art one allows him only a suffering manner.’ In his 1785 Briefe eines reisenden Dänen, Schiller described the sculptures in the gallery of antiquities in Mannheim in Winckelmannian terms (NA XX, 101–6). It is unclear whether this inﬂuence is from his direct reading or from other sources, whether lectures at the Karlschule or Lessing’s own Laoköon. Be that as it may, by the Summer of 1793 at the latest, Schiller was reading Winckelmann to help deﬁne his own position in Anmut und Würde. He agrees with Winckelmann that grace is a kind of pleasing quality of human actions, and that it speciﬁcally concerns the relationship between character and action. Despite his debts to Winckelmann, Schiller did not hesitate to take issue with him. His main critique of Winckelmann is that he has confused the very different concepts of grace and dignity (301–2n).⁴² When Winckelmann describes composure under suffering as a form of grace, Schiller contends, he is really conﬂating these two concepts, because this is a case of dignity rather than grace. Schiller admits that these qualities can be mixed in the same appearance; but he still insists that what Winckelmann regards as grace is really only ‘grace with predominating dignity’. For Schiller, Winckelmann had remained too close to the aesthetic appearances without examining the underlying moral dispositions behind them. There is a very great difference between the serenity of grace and the composure of dignity, even if their sensible appearances are in some respects alike; for grace derives from those actions when a person does his duty with pleasure, dignity when he does it at the cost of suffering.

5. THE SHAFTESBURY MY TH The most controversial issue about the sources and inﬂuences upon Anmut und Würde concerns Schiller’s perplexing relationship to Shaftesbury. One of the most venerable and enduring accounts of Schiller’s ethics describes it as a synthesis of Kant’s ethics of duty with Shaftesbury’s ideal of human excellence or aesthetic harmony.⁴³ According to this interpretation, even before his acquaintance with Kant, Schiller had been deeply inﬂuenced by Shaftesbury’s account of moral beauty or human excellence, which states that human perfection consists in the harmony of reason and sensibility or in the development of all characteristic human powers. Rather than abandoning this Shaftesburyian ethic after his acquaintance with ⁴² Schiller cites various passages from the later 1776 edition, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1776), Teil I, Kap. 4, Stück 3, 480ff. ⁴³ The locus classicus for this view is Oskar Walzel’s ‘Einleitung in Schillers philosophische Schriften’, Säkular-Ausgabe, Schillers Sämtliche Werke (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1904–5), viii–x, lxxxiii. Essentially the same view is endorsed by Ernst Cassirer, ‘Schiller und Shaftesbury’, Publications of the English Goethe Society, New Series 11 (1935), 51. Their interpretation is accepted by Benno von Wiese in the ‘Erläuterungen’ to Anmut und Würde, NA XXI, 217.

92

Schiller as Philosopher

Kant—so the theory goes—Schiller used it to complement Kant’s rigorism and one-sided rationalism. Although Schiller never departed from Kant’s insistence that reason is the source of the law, and although he still held with Kant that moral actions must be done from respect for the law, he completed Kant’s ethics of duty by adding to it Shaftesbury’s emphasis upon aesthetic education. Despite its initial plausibility, there is a serious difﬁculty with this theory. The problem is not conceptual: it is not impossible in principle to unite Kant’s ethics with Shaftesbury’s; it all depends exactly on how one does it, what speciﬁc features of each are combined. The problem is also not historical: there is some evidence for Shaftesbury’s inﬂuence upon Schiller. We know that, before 1788, Schiller had imbibed some of Shaftesbury’s ideas indirectly through a translation of Adam Ferguson’s Institutes of Moral Philosophy, which he already studied in the Karlschule.⁴⁴ We also know that, after 1788, Schiller probably had read Shaftesbury himself.⁴⁵ The problem rather is exegetical: it rests upon a misinterpretation of Shaftesbury himself. Schiller could not have acquired his idea of moral beauty or aesthetic harmony from Shaftesbury—no matter how indirectly—for the simple reason that Shaftesbury has no such ideal. There is a fundamental difference between Schiller’s and Shaftesbury’s moral ideals. Although both of them ultimately took their inspiration from the Greek tradition of kalokagathia, they have different interpretations of that very ambiguous ideal. While Schiller’s account is essentially holistic, Shaftesbury’s interpretation is fundamentally gnostic. There are the following differences between Schiller’s and Shaftesbury’s ethical ideals and their moral philosophies in general. ¶ First, Schiller’s ideal of moral beauty consists in the unity of reason and sensibility; it gives equal weight to both faculties; and it stresses the importance of educating the desires and feelings of sensibility in the development of humanity. Shaftesbury’s ideal of moral beauty, however, does not conceive moral excellence in terms of the all-rounded development of human powers; it does not give equal weight to sensibility at all.⁴⁶ Following in the contemplative tradition of Aristotle and Plotinus, Shaftesbury holds that moral excellence resides in the development ⁴⁴ The translation, by Christian Garve, was entitled Grundsätze der Moralphilosophie (Leipzig: Dyck, 1772). Regarding Shaftesbury’s inﬂuence on the young Schiller, see the still valuable discussion in Überweg, Schiller als Historiker und Philosoph, 28–34. ⁴⁵ In response to Caroline von Beulwitz’s advice to read Shaftesbury, Schiller wrote November 27, 1788, NA XXVI, 147: ‘Den Shaftesbury freue ich mich einmal zu geniessen, vielleicht ist das ein Geschäft für den Sommer.’ Whether Schiller actually found time for this pleasure we do not know. Hamburger has argued that the monologue of Hutten in Schiller’s Menschenfeind, a work he wrote around this time, has very close parallels with Shaftesbury’s The Moralists. See her ‘Schillers Fragment’, 88. ⁴⁶ In Miscellaneous Reﬂections, Shaftesbury does stress the importance of developing not only ‘Wit’ but also ‘Temper’, not only our head but also our ‘Heart and Resolution’. See Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (London: Purser, 1732), III, 99. This does not mean for Shaftesbury, however, what it would mean for Schiller: the development of our physical nature, the cultivation of our desires and feelings. Shaftesbury thinks that we should develop our affections and temper so that we realize the highest happiness, which consists in the intellectual pleasures and contemplation of beauty. See Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit, Characteristicks II, 101–5.

Grace and Dignity

93

of our characteristic power of rationality.⁴⁷ It is through the development of our reason, our inner eye, that we perceive beauty and eventually acquire the power to attain it.⁴⁸ While Shaftesbury has indeed an ideal of harmony, this ideal is achieved in the intellectual realm alone; he assumes a difference in kind between the harmony of the senses and the harmony of virtue.⁴⁹ ¶ Second, Schiller saw beauty as the mediator between reason and the senses; it is the sensible appearance of something supersensible. Shaftesbury, however, following the neo-Platonic tradition, postulates a purely intellectual beauty that is the object of the mind alone.⁵⁰ The purpose of aesthetic education is not to harmonize reason with sensibility, as Schiller thinks, but to grasp a purely intellectual beauty.⁵¹ ¶ Third, Schiller’s and Shaftesbury’s ethical ideals have very different foundations: the fundamental value behind Schiller’s ethical ideal is freedom, while that behind Shaftesbury’s is nature.⁵² In other words, Schiller thinks that we must create our moral constitution, so that it is the product of our will; Shaftesbury holds, however, that our moral constitution is given to us by nature, and that it is only necessary to develop already latent potentialities. It is central to Kant’s revolution in ethics—and Schiller strongly endorses the point—that the source of the law derives from the will, and that we are not subject to any law that we do not make and impose on ourselves. This is completely opposed to Shaftesbury’s moral realism, according to which goodness and justice are determined by the law of nature, independent of the human will.⁵³ ¶ Fourth, since Schiller sees freedom as the source of moral value, he cannot regard desires and passions as either naturally good or naturally evil. What makes something good or evil is simply whether it conforms to the moral law, which is the product of the will alone. Shaftesbury, however, believes that we are born with a naturally good human constitution; we have innate within us desires for social behaviour and sympathy, which only have to be fostered and developed.⁵⁴ If we are to search for precedents for Schiller’s account of moral beauty, we have to look closer to home and to consider more indigenous German sources. Here one ﬁgure stands out: ‘the German Voltaire’, that nestor of Weimar, Christian Martin Wieland. Schiller greatly admired Wieland, whose criticism had a clear inﬂuence on some of his poetry and drama.⁵⁵ It would not be surprising, therefore, if ⁴⁷ See The Inquiry, II, 101, 105; and The Moralists, Characteristicks II, 395, 398–400. ⁴⁸ The Moralists, II, 414–5, 422–5. ⁴⁹ See Inquiry, II, 28–9. ⁵⁰ Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, I, 6; and Shaftesbury, The Moralists, II, 414–5, 422–5, 398–400. ⁵¹ Of course, Shaftesbury and the neo-Platonists did envisage a sensible beauty that was the appearance of an intellectual beauty; but this was only the foreshadowing of a purely intellectual beauty that could be perceived by the mind alone. After his study of Kant, Schiller had no place for a completely intellectual concept of beauty or an intellectual intuition. ⁵² In The Moralists, II, 433, Theophron insists that there can be nothing more desirable than to follow nature. ⁵³ See Inquiry, II, 49–50, and The Moralists, II, 267, 436. ⁵⁴ See Shaftesbury, Inquiry, II, 26, 138–9; The Moralists, II, 414; and Reﬂections, III, 145–6. ⁵⁵ On Wieland’s inﬂuence on Schiller, see Wiese, Schiller, 121, 245–7, 401–7, 450–4.

94

Schiller as Philosopher

Wieland were as important for Schiller’s philosophy as he was for his art. Ever since the 1750s, in a series of essays, novels and poems, Wieland had been advocating an ideal of moral beauty inspired by the Greek ideal of kalokagathia. In fundamental respects, Wieland’s ideal is the forerunner of Schiller’s concept of grace in Anmut und Würde. ¶ Like Schiller, Wieland understands moral beauty as doing duty from inclination, as taking pleasure in moral action, even when it is contrary to self-interest and even when it does not incur the approbation of others.⁵⁶ ¶ More signiﬁcantly, Wieland interprets the Greek ideal of kalokagathia to mean the harmony of all human powers, and he stresses the importance of developing sensibility, the power of feeling as well as reason. Much as Schiller would later criticize Kant, Wieland attacks the stoics for their severe rationalism, for repressing our feelings for the sake of moral duty.⁵⁷ In other words, like Schiller, but unlike Shaftesbury, Wieland endorses the holistic rather than gnostic interpretation of kalokagathia. Hence his concept of grace takes account of the body as well as the soul. ¶ Wieland’s deﬁnition of grace—the effect of moral beauty upon the body—is the clear ancestor of Schiller’s.⁵⁸ Anticipating Schiller, Wieland very much stresses the interdependence of reason and sensibility, and especially the power of mind over the body in creating beauty. Although he admits that a person can be virtuous and ugly, vicious and beautiful, he still insists that external beauty ultimately depends on virtue, which is the source of all beauty. Once we take into account Wieland’s inﬂuence, another mystery resolves itself. We can understand why Shaftesbury has been so persistently misread as the father of Schiller’s concept of aesthetic education. The reason is that Wieland himself interpreted Shaftesbury in this light.⁵⁹ Enlisting Shaftesbury in support of his own ideals, Wieland made Shaftesbury’s concept of the virtuoso the inspiration for his programme of aesthetic education. It proved to be a seminal confusion.

6. THE MY TH OF VENUS Schiller begins his treatment of grace by interpreting an ancient Greek myth. Venus, the goddess of beauty, had a belt that would confer grace on whomever she bestowed it. Schiller ﬁnds it signiﬁcant that the myth represents grace as a belt. ⁵⁶ See Wieland, Theages. Über Schönheit und Liebe, in Sämtliche Werke (Leipzig: Göschen, 1798), Supplement IV, 141–92. ⁵⁷ See Wieland, Theages, 185; and Moralische Briefe, Werke, Supplement I, 317–9. ⁵⁸ See Wieland, Timoklea. Ein Gespräch über scheinbare und wahre Schönheit, in Sämtliche Werke, Supplement, IV, 57. ⁵⁹ In Theages the narrator is ‘einen Virtuoso nach den Begriffen unsers Shaftesbury’, IV, 144. The young Wieland sketched an educational plan inspired by Shaftesbury’s virtuoso. See ‘Plan einer Akademie zu Bildung des Verstandes und des Herzens junger Leute’, in Wielands Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Weidmann, 1916), IV, 183–206, esp. 188.

Grace and Dignity

95

Since Venus is the goddess of beauty, and since a belt can be taken on or off, this signiﬁes that beauty is distinct from grace. All grace is beautiful; but, because Venus still has her beauty when she takes off the belt, not all beauty is graceful (251). Schiller ﬁnds the belt signiﬁcant for other reasons. The fact that it can be removed means that grace is a moveable beauty (bewegliche Schönheit), i.e. a beauty that a person can have or not have (252). Schiller distinguishes such moveable beauty from ﬁxed beauty, i.e. a beauty that always belongs to the subject. While moveable beauty is a contingent property of its subject, ﬁxed beauty is a necessary property. Without her belt, Venus can still be Venus; but without her beauty, she is not Venus at all. Schiller notes yet another interesting feature about the myth. Venus can bestow her belt upon the less beautiful, or even those who are ugly (251). It has the magical power to transform whoever possesses it. Grace then becomes an objective propery of the person; in other words, if a person is graceful, he or she does not simply seem so to the spectator; they really are graceful, whether a spectator acknowledges it or not (253). The fact that Venus can confer grace even upon the ugly is signiﬁcant, for it shows that Schiller does not equate moral with physical beauty. On the basis of his interpretation of the myth, Schiller suggests his ﬁrst general conclusion about the nature of grace. If grace is a contingent and an objective property of a subject, then it must be a beauty of movement (Schönheit der Bewegung) (253). For beauty of movement satisﬁes both features of grace: it is objective, belonging to the subject and not only how it seems to the observer; and it is contingent, such that the person remains the same even if it were removed (253). Schiller now asks: What kind of beauty of movement is grace? (253) Not all beauty of movement is graceful. The Greek myth is very clear in limiting grace to human beings. No movement that is purely natural or physical can be graceful. We do not readily say that the waves of the sea, the branches of a tree, the limbs of an animal, all move with grace (254). Furthermore, movements arising from instinct or physical need alone are not graceful, e.g. falling asleep or sneezing. The only movements that can be graceful, Schiller concludes, are voluntary movements (willkührlichen Bewegungen) (254). In attributing grace only to voluntary movements, Schiller is essentially making it a moral attribute. Grace is a moral quality insofar as we can acquire it through effort; it is not something that we have naturally or that is given to us by good fortune. Schiller is here endorsing one of the fundamental principles of Kant’s moral philosophy: that having a good will is a necessary condition of moral worth.⁶⁰ The point is basic but worth stressing because it shows that Schiller is no aesthete, i.e. someone who makes possessing physical beauty a sign or condition of moral worth. Hence he distinguishes sharply between grace and physical beauty, or what he calls architechtonic beauty (255–6). Architechtonic beauty comprises ⁶⁰ Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, AA IV, 393.

96

Schiller as Philosopher

proportion of body, pleasing complexion, a ﬁne voice. Since such beauty arises entirely from nature alone, it cannot be a moral attribute. Schiller denies that architechtonic beauty is necessary to grace; and he thinks that even an ugly person, viz. a Socrates or a Falstaff, can have the moral beauty of grace. Again, it is worth stressing that he thinks the belt of Venus can be conferred even upon those who are less beautiful or ugly. In more contemporary parlance, Schiller’s limitation of grace to voluntary movements essentially makes it an attribute of human actions. Though Schiller does not make an explicit distinction between movement and action, it is already implicit in his insistence on the intentional or voluntary aspect behind grace. It is important to stress this point because the emphasis on movement can be very misleading, suggesting that grace is essentially a physical quality, something that we can observe entirely from the senses. Schiller’s language is perfectly in accord with traditional discourse about moral beauty, which always understood it as an attribute of human actions, of movements insofar as they were expressive of voluntary states. The beauty of virtue was never a phenomenon that one could simply observe through the senses by noting the physical qualities of movements.⁶¹ After his initial efforts to specify the precise kind of movements that are graceful, Schiller suggests a provisional deﬁnition of grace. Grace, he suggests, is ‘nothing other than a beautiful expression of the soul in voluntary movements’ (255). Wherever there is grace, he explains, the soul is the moving principle and the ground of beauty of movement. He then declares, using quote marks to add emphasis, that the whole myth resolves into the following idea: ‘Grace is a beauty that is not given by nature but that is created by the subject’ (255). The emphasis placed on the last statement highlights one of Schiller’s fundamental differences with Shaftesbury, for whom grace is a harmony already implicit in nature. Since it is based only on a myth, Schiller’s deﬁnition has been assailed as arbitrary, as falling far short of his claim to prove his doctrine. It is, we are told, a typical instance of his attempt ‘to envelop his hazy logic in elegant, pellucid prose’.⁶² But this is to misunderstand Schiller’s intentions and method. Schiller does not claim to provide a proof, a ‘transcendental deduction’. All that he does is provide an interpretation of a myth, under the presupposition that the myth articulates in intuitive form something about the meaning of a concept. Schiller’s deﬁnition is therefore intentionally provisional and hypothetical. This does not mean, however, that the deﬁnition is simply prescriptive, setting down an imperative about ⁶¹ Shaftesbury held that moral beauty, as an attribute of actions, is perceptible through the mind rather than the senses. See An Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit: ‘In a Creature capable of forming general Notions of Things, not only the outward Beings which offer themselves to the Sense, are the Objects of the Affection; but the very Actions themselves, and the Affections of Pity, Gratitude, and their Contrarys, being brought into the Mind by Reﬂection, become Objects. So that, by means of this reﬂected Sense, there arises another kind of Affection towards those very Affections themselves, which have been already felt, and are now become the Subject of a new Liking or Dislike.’ Characteristics II, 28. ⁶² Norton, The Beautiful Soul, 236.

Grace and Dignity

97

what the word will or ought to mean. Rather, it aims to be descriptive, attempting to articulate the meaning of a concept already in ordinary usage. Its accuracy can be assessed only by whether it conforms to this usage and experience.

7. VIRTUE AND PHYSIOGNOMY After his interpretation of the myth of Venus, Schiller attempts to reﬁne his initial deﬁnition of grace.⁶³ He recognizes that the provisional deﬁnition is still much too general and vague. It deﬁnes grace as the beautiful expression of the soul in voluntary movements. But it has not speciﬁed in what this expression consists; and it has not explained which voluntary movements are graceful. So Schiller now turns to the questions: What kind of voluntary actions are graceful? What does it mean for them to be a beautiful expression of the soul? Schiller ﬁrst stresses that the genus of voluntary action should not be taken in a too narrow sense, as if all voluntary actions were the immediate result of a selfconscious decision of the will. There are kinds of voluntary actions, he notes, that do not involve deliberation or decision and that occur almost automatically because they are the product of habit and education. Although these kinds of actions have their ultimate source in the will, because they involve resolve, discipline and practice, they do not have their immediate source there but in the agent’s character or disposition. Since these actions occur immediately and automatically as the result of habit or disposition, they appear involuntary, even if they are really voluntary in having their ultimate source in the will. Without referring to Kant, Schiller is here building upon one of his most famous doctrines in the Kritik der Urteilskraft. Schiller’s voluntarily involuntary, or involuntarily voluntary, actions reveal that paradoxical characteristic Kant regarded as essential to all beauty: purposiveness without a purpose.⁶⁴ For Schiller, the paradigm case of these voluntary but involuntary actions are those that happen from sentiment, feeling or inclination. When we act from sentiment, feeling or inclination we act according to our will, so that the actions are voluntary; but we also act without decision or deliberation, so that the actions appear involuntary. Accordingly, Schiller now distinguishes between two kinds of movement: a movement is voluntary (in a narrow sense) if it is under the immediate direction of the will; and a movement is sympathetic if it is under the immediate direction of feeling (266). He then maintains that grace applies speciﬁcally to sympathetic movements (267). He explains that the will determines what we do; it settles the goals or principles of our action; but it leaves indeterminate how we ⁶³ Schiller’s exposition of the concept of grace is interrupted by a lengthy discussion of its philosophical meaning (NA XX, 255–65). He proceeds to reﬁne the deﬁnition only much later. My exposition here does not follow the order of the text. ⁶⁴ Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft §17, V, 236.

98

Schiller as Philosopher

do them, the speciﬁc manner of action. How we perform the action is left to our moral disposition or character, which reveals itself through our feelings (267). Still attempting to specify the precise kind of graceful actions, Schiller adds that they fall within the genus of what he calls speaking (sprechend ) movements, i.e. those that accompany and express a state of mind (271). In a broad sense animal movements speak because they reveal through outer means something inner; but they lack grace because here it is only nature and not freedom that is expressed (271–2). Speaking movements in a more narrow sense, however, express a moral condition or state of feeling (Empﬁndungszustand) (272). In the case of plants and animals nature gives not only the end but also executes it; but in the case of man it gives the end and leaves him the execution (272). Schiller distinguishes speaking movements (in the narrow sense) from mute (stumm) movements, which reveal only nature insofar as it is independent of the soul (273–4). Some features are mute because, though they reveal something about nature, they are silent about character, i.e. the individuality of a person, what they have made of themselves through the use of their freedom (274). As Schiller has argued so far, then, grace consists in sympathetic and speaking movements. This seems straightforward enough. But he then takes a more controversial step by widening the realm of grace to include even so-called ‘ﬁxed features’, e.g. posture, gestures and facial expressions. Although grace is essentially an attribute of movement, this should not prevent ﬁxed features from showing grace, he argues, for even these features began as movements that eventually became habitual (264). Schiller corrects Home for excluding ﬁxed features from grace, because he did not see the extent to which many of them have their source in the person (264n).⁶⁵ Against Home, he maintains that the will expresses itself throughout the entire organism, so that ultimately even architechtonic beauty is affected. The interaction between the mental and physical should not be underrated, Schiller argues, because it takes place even in subconscious and scarcely visible ways. A vicious and troubled character will eventually run the best frame into the ground, whereas a virtuous and serene character will aid even someone disabled (265). Schiller’s extension of the realm of grace even to architechtonic beauty has gotten him into trouble. It has been taken as evidence for Schiller’s adherence to Lavater’s physiognomy, the doctrine that we can infer a person’s inner character from their external appearance.⁶⁶ There is indeed a general similarity between Schiller and Lavater, because Lavater maintains, like Schiller, that moral virtue expresses itself in beautiful actions and expressions, and that a person’s character has a deep inﬂuence on their gestures, posture and facial expressions. The similarity, however, stops here. ⁶⁵ Home, Elements of Criticism, I, 317–18. ⁶⁶ See Hamburger, ‘Schillers Fragment’, 111–13; Norton, The Beautiful Soul, 237–8; and Brittnacher, ‘Anmut und Würde’, 595. Wiese too, sees the possible inﬂuence of Lavater in Schiller’s account of how feeling expresses itself in physical form. See Wiese, Schiller, 104.

Grace and Dignity

99

For Lavater also holds that there is a direct correlation between moral virtue and physical beauty, moral vice and physical ugliness, and he does not limit this equation down to voluntary movements even in the broadest sense.⁶⁷ We can determine moral character, Lavater argues, from not only voluntary movements but from a person’s bone structure, nervous system, facial features and silhouette.⁶⁸ These are just the architechtonic features that Schiller had excluded from the very beginning. If Schiller includes some architechtonic features later on, it is only those that could have been inﬂuenced by habits and dispositions that have their ultimate source in the will. This would never have satisﬁed Lavater, and it barely borders on physiognomy. Schiller did not help to prevent the confusion, however, when he later added a statement that seemed to support physiognomy (274, 6–10).⁶⁹ Schiller appeared to praise the physiognomist for noting that even mute features can be indicative of a person’s character. When read more closely in context, however, it is clear that Schiller is not endorsing physiognomy but distancing himself from it. He is making a contrast between his own procedure and that of the physiognomist: the physiognomist makes inferences about mute features because he wants to know what nature has made of a person, but not what the person has made of himself. Schiller’s own account of graceful actions, however, deals only with what a person has made of himself. It would be indeed surprising if Schiller were endorsing physiognomy in Anmut und Würde because he had already expressed considerable skepticism about it. In his early dissertation Versuch über den Zusammenhang der thierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner Geistigen he admitted the possibility that physiognomy could perhaps someday become a science, but he also insisted that it was still far from such status, ‘even if Lavater enthuses over it in ten quarto volumes’ (XX, 70). He later wrote a mock epitaph for Lavater, ‘Grabschrift eines gewissen— Physiognomen’: Wes Geistes Kind im Kopf gesessen, Konnt’ er auf jeder Nase lesen: Und doch—daß er es nicht gewesen, Den Gott zu diesem Werk erlesen, Konnt’ er nicht auf der seinen lesen.⁷⁰

There is nothing in Anmut und Würde to suggest that Schiller ever departed from his general skepticism about physiognomy. ⁶⁷ See Lavater, Physiognomische Fragmente (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984), 45–53. ⁶⁸ In his opening account of his science Lavater is explicit that physiognomy concerns all aspects of external appearance, from facial features to bone structure. See Fragmente, 21–3. He stresses, for example, the great value of silhouettes in making inferences about moral character (159). ⁶⁹ So the statement has been read. See Norton, Beautiful Soul, 238 n41. ⁷⁰ ‘What child of the spirit sat in the head/he could read from every nose:/but that he was not the one/that God elected for this work/he could not read from his own.’

100

Schiller as Philosopher

Schiller’s general account of sympathetic actions is problematic for other reasons. His exposition is very sloppy and misleading. Schiller understands sympathetic actions as a kind of voluntary action; but then, for lack of a better word, he distinguishes between voluntary and sympathetic actions, so that it seems as if sympathetic actions are somehow involuntary. This impression seems conﬁrmed when he states that sympathetic movements follow without the will and according to a law of necessity (266, 13). The result is troubling: it seems as if Schiller were attributing grace to a person’s natural or innate character, as if grace arose from a happy harmony between moral imperative and natural instinct. Here Schiller was unwittingly providing support for those who would interpret him as a preacher of Rousseauian primitivism. Against this interpretation, it is important to stress that Schiller thinks that even sympathetic actions have their ultimate source in the person, that they too are a species of voluntary actions in a wider generic sense. Hence Schiller is explicit that they are not involuntary, arising from nature alone (266, 16–8); and he is at pains to stress that sympathetic movements should not be confused with those that are determined by the sensible faculty (das sinnliche Gefühlsvermögen) or the drives of nature (Naturtriebe) alone (266). The source of the confusion disappears as soon as we recognize that sympathetic actions are instances of our moral second nature, expressions of dispositions or character that have been formed under the guidance of moral principles; in a word, they are exercises of virtue. Recognizing that sympathetic actions are instances of virtue, that they they derive from our second rather than ﬁrst nature, helps to dispel one of the chief objections against Schiller’s moral theory. It has been argued that the ideal of moral grace postulates a happy harmony between sensibility and rational principle, as if Schiller fails to recognize the conﬂict that often arises between them.⁷¹ This objection arises, however, only if we assume that the desires and feelings of sensibility are entirely natural, deriving from our ﬁrst nature. Since Schiller thinks that grace arises from moral virtue, and that moral virtue arises only from acquiring and learning habits of restraint and self-control, he fully recognizes that there is often a conﬂict between rational principle and sensibility. Acquiring habits of virtue, developing a strong moral character, will never make this conﬂict disappear entirely, Schiller recognizes, because we are still sensible beings whose sensibility can, in certain circumstances, be made to suffer by the demands of the moral law.⁷² It should now be clear—despite Schiller’s confusions—what is wrong with the interpretation of Schiller as an apostle of primitivism or naturalism. Schiller is not advocating returning to the state of nature or trusting one’s natural feelings and sentiments, as if there were no need for moral principle and self-restraint. On the contrary, he thinks that one acquires moral feelings and sentiments only through ⁷¹ See Pugh, Dialectic of Love, 157–8, 268–70; and Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 136, 139. ⁷² See the passages in NA XXI, 289, 35–8; 291, 25–8; 293, 14–9, 28–37.

Grace and Dignity

101

internalizing moral principle, only through incorporating it into one’s moral character. Still less is Schiller a champion of a Pauline ethic—a moral fanatic, who would dispense with the law.⁷³ He fully recognizes that, no matter how well educated we might be, we cannot completely control, let alone eradicate, our natural desires and feelings, which are sometimes likely to tempt us to act contrary to the moral law. For this reason, the imperative form of the moral law will always have its point. When Schiller expounds the concept of dignity in the second half of the treatise he will make it plain that the moral law often requires us to act contrary to our desires and feelings. So, ultimately, the fallacy behind the primitivist interpretation is very simple: it confuses moral desires and feelings with natural ones, our moral ‘second nature’, which is created by us, with our physical nature, which is given to us. The confusion is understandable because in Anmut und Würde Schiller goes into no detail about moral education, about how we acquire moral grace. This would soon become, however, the central task of the Ästhetische Briefe. There it becomes evident how much the harmony of reason and sensibility would be the product of education and culture.

8. BRIDGING THE T WO WORLDS Schiller’s central aim in Anmut und Würde is to connect the realms of the moral and the aesthetic in human conduct. This is already evident from his deﬁnition of grace, which makes it the beautiful appearance of moral virtue. Schiller’s attempt to unify these aspects of human conduct stem from his deeply-held conviction— one that he held since the Karlschule years—that human beings are indivisible, that their powers form an organic unity. This conviction is behind his interpretation of the myth of Venus. Like all Greek poetry, the myth of Venus expresses, Schiller says, the admirable philosophy that humanity is ultimately one, that ‘nature and morality, matter and spirit, earth and heaven, ﬂow wonderfully together’ (254–5). Schiller fully realized, however, that connecting the moral and aesthetic is a very problematic undertaking. The problem is that the moral and the aesthetic, on the premises of the Kantian philosophy, are completely distinct from one another, and Schiller does not question but only endorses these premises. He too lays down a sharp dualism between the moral and the aesthetic, one no less severe than Kant’s. We cannot take into account the dignity of our moral vocation in making an aesthetic judgment, he argues, because beauty concerns us only as something in space, as an appearance among appearances (257). As such beauty must remain always an effect of mere nature; it not only appears in the sensible world but also ⁷³ See Brelage, ‘Schillers Kritik an der kantischen Ethik’, 240–5; Gerold Prauss, Kant über Freiheit als Autonomie (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983), 247–8; and Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 183–4.

102

Schiller as Philosopher

arises from it, and so it is part of the phenomenal realm (258). Schiller gives two reasons for making such a sharp distinction between the aesthetic and moral. First, he insists that beauty and goodness have distinct causes; beauty arises from the sensible world and goodness from the intelligible or supersensible world (258, 277). Second, he stresses that aesthetic and moral appraisal apply or involve distinct criteria; the eye and reason have ‘different tribunals of judgment’ (verschiedenen Instanzen der Beurtheilung) (259, 277). Whereas aesthetic judgment concerns only what is pleasing to the senses, moral judgment involves what complies with the principles of reason. So the question is: How can Schiller unite the moral and aesthetic given his distinction between them? The most challenging aspect of Schiller’s argument in Anmut und Würde is that he must both unite and separate the noumenal and phenomenal realms, upon which the distinction between the moral and aesthetic is based. The Kantian dualisms are both necessary and impossible for him: necessary, because freedom has to be preserved against the determinism of the phenomenal world; and impossible, because they divide human beings into distinct compartments, prohibiting, contrary to experience and common sense, all interaction between the moral and the phenomenal. The crucial question is whether Schiller can consistently connect and distinguish them. Fully aware of the problem facing him, Schiller attempts to address the ‘apparent contradiction’ (259). Somewhat vaguely and tentatively, he ﬁrst suggests that the connection between these realms must be a mediate one, because moral qualities, being supersensible, cannot be immediately perceived by the senses (259). He seems to allude here to Kant’s famous claim in §59 of Kritik der Urteilskraft that beauty can be a symbol of morality. In any case, he does not specify the precise terms that mediate the connection, or what it means for beauty to symbolize morality. He only reassures his reader that though beauty is a quality that pleases the senses, it also satisﬁes reason, even if it does not entirely depend on it (259). But that still leaves the question: how does beauty satisfy reason? Or, more generally, what is the connection between the purely phenomenal realm of beauty and the noumenal realm of morality? To address the issue, Schiller introduces a distinction between two ways in which appearances can be objects of reason (259). Following, to some extent, Kant’s distinction between determinate and reﬂective judgment in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, Schiller explains that reason can extract its ideas from (herausziehen), or place them into (hineinlegen), appearances. In the ﬁrst case, the idea will correspond to a quality of the object that is given with the appearance, so that the idea is objective, a condition of the possibility of the appearance itself; and in the second case, the idea is made by reason, so that it is only read into objects and is not a quality of the object itself; it is not objectively but only subjectively necessary (259–60). It is imporant to see that Schiller’s distinction here is co-extensive with Kant’s distinction between constitutive and regulative principles. According to Kant, a principle has constitutive validity if it is objectively valid as a necessary condition of experience; and a

Grace and Dignity

103

principle has regulative validity if it is only subjectively valid, i.e. it is necessary to proceed as if it were true to bring systematic unity to our experience, though we cannot know whether it is really valid of experience. In alluding to Kant’s distinction between regulative and constitutive judgments, Schiller is being methodologically careful, deliberately observing Kant’s regulative guidelines about how we can attempt to join the noumenal and phenomenal realms. This is a clear case in point of his resistance against metaphysical speculation. The precise implications behind Schiller’s distinction between these forms of judgment is obscure and never fully explained by him. Still, the general point behind introducing the distinction is clear enough: Schiller thinks that it legitimates postulating a connection between the noumenal and phenomenal realms despite the dualism between them. He is claiming that it is still possible to connect these realms by proceeding as if ideas of reason were still true of the sensible realm. Although we cannot claim that these ideas are true of experience, we still have the right to read them into experience, to treat them as if they were true. While Schiller’s introduction of the Kantian distinction is strategic, it is also problematic. To give only a regulative validity to the ideas of reason in their application to the sensible realm still leaves, for all we know, a real gulf between these realms. The license to connect them is only heuristic or methodological, not categorical or ontological. Even worse, Schiller’s claim that, in attributing the concept of grace to appearances, we read ideas of reason into them hardly tallies with his previous claim that grace is an objective property of the person. Schiller further compounds his problems by refusing to identify the idea of reason that we have a right to read into appearances. What this idea is, and what properties of the object make it possible to apply the idea to it, are much too important questions to be answered in passing, he says, so he is saving the task for a later ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ (Analytik des Schönen) (261). Ironically, it is Schiller’s cryptic allusion to an ‘Analytic of the Beautiful’ that provides the crucial clue to explain how he thinks grace unites the aesthetic and moral realms. This is a reference to his earlier account of beauty in the Kallias Briefe, where beauty is deﬁned as freedom in appearance (2.4). The idea of reason that we read into appearances is therefore nothing less than freedom itself. Schiller’s earlier deﬁnition of beauty now connects the aesthetic and moral realms in the following way: if moral actions are appearances of freedom, and if beauty is an appearance of freedom, then at least some moral actions will be beautiful. In Anmut und Würde, then, Schiller simply applies his earlier deﬁnition to human actions. The reason he thinks he is justiﬁed in attributing grace, a form of beauty, to moral actions is that these actions are appearances of freedom. Not that the earlier deﬁnition solves all Schiller’s problems. Several difﬁculties remain. It is still much too general to explain the attribution of grace to human actions. Although all moral actions are appearances of freedom, they are not all graceful, as Schiller himself insists (265–6); so there must be something more about them that makes them beautiful. It is also not so clear that the regulative

104

Schiller as Philosopher

doctrine is needed in the case of human actions.⁷⁴ In the Kallias Briefe, Schiller needed that doctrine because he was essentially talking about natural beauty, inorganic and organic objects in the natural world that seemed to be acting according to the concept of freedom. We have no right to apply the concept of freedom to these objects, because they are not purposive at all (inorganic objects) or because we cannot know whether they are purposive (organic objects). In the case of human agents, though, it seems as if we are justiﬁed in assuming that they are free. The reason for Schiller’s caution here is perhaps twofold: ﬁrst, Kant’s doctrine that we cannot ever really know the cause of human actions; and second, general scruples about the attribution of intentions or rational agency to external appearances (the problem of other minds).⁷⁵ Whatever Schiller’s reasons, he does not explain why he introduces his regulative doctrine into this new context. If it is so pivotal for his argument, why does Schiller not explicitly introduce the deﬁnition of beauty from the Kallias Briefe into Anmut und Würde? The most obvious explanation is that which Schiller provides: that explaining it would take him too far aﬁeld from his immediate task, which is to account for a speciﬁc form of beauty (261). It has been argued, however, that there was a deeper reason: that Schiller was concealing from himself a deeper inconsistency in his argument.⁷⁶ According to this interpretation, there is a fundamental conﬂict between the concept of freedom of the Kallias Briefe and that of Anmut und Würde, which would have been all too patent to Schiller and his readers if he only became more explicit and went into more detail. While the concept of freedom of the Kallias Briefe is metaphoric, that of Anmut und Würde is literal. In Kallias Briefe Schiller argued that we should treat a beautiful object in the sensible world that acts without hindrance as if it were self-determining, as if it were a morally free agent; in Anmut und Würde, however, Schiller is writing about moral freedom in the literal sense, because it is the source of voluntary graceful actions. It is difﬁcult to understand, however, why there is an inconsistency here. There is one and the same concept of freedom, ﬁrst applied metaphorically to natural objects, then applied more literally to rational agents. The general sense of the concept of freedom here is selfdetermination, freedom from constraint from external causes and acting according to reasons given by the agent itself. It is evident that we have a right to apply the concept of freedom only in a metaphoric sense to natural objects, and a right to apply it literally in the case of human agents. Where, then, is the inconsistency? Whatever the difﬁculties of Schiller’s regulative doctrine, and whatever the problems introduced by the deﬁnition of beauty in the Kallias Briefe, Schiller still ⁷⁴ The problem here was seen clearly by Ueberweg, Schiller als Historiker und Philosoph, 203. ⁷⁵ The problem of other minds was never really crucial for Kant; however, Fichte had made it a central issue of his own philosophy. He had raised the issue in provocative form in the second lecture of his 1794 Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, Werke VI, 301–11. Though Schiller knew this work well, he could not have known about it before writing Anmut und Würde. Schiller wrote his work in early summer 1793; but Fichte would arrive in Jena only in the Summer of 1794. ⁷⁶ See Hamburger, ‘Schillers Fragment’, 105–6.

Grace and Dignity

105

feels sufﬁciently conﬁdent to provide a more formal deﬁnition of grace. An obvious application of the general theory of beauty in Kallias Briefe, Schiller’s definition goes as follows: ‘Grace is beauty of form under the inﬂuence of freedom, the beauty of those appearances that are determined by the person’ (264). Like the earlier provisional deﬁnition, the more formal deﬁnition reveals Schiller’s attempt to wed the sensible realm of beauty with the intelligible realm of morality. Beauty of form is that pleasing aspect of a person’s appearance that stands under the laws of the sensible realm. The ‘person’ is Schiller’s term, of evident Kantian provenance,⁷⁷ for ‘the free principle in a human being’ (das freye Principium im Menschen) (263). Hence grace mediates between the sensible and intellectual realms because, although it appears in the sensible world as beauty, its ultimate source is in the noumenal will of the person.

9. THE COLL APSE OF THE BRIDGE After his discussion of sympathetic and speaking movements, Schiller returns to the knotty problem of connecting the moral and aesthetic (277–9). He did not believe that his earlier account had resolved the problem; it had really only explained its terms. It was only the deﬁnition of beauty in the Kallias Briefe that shed some light on the connection between these realms, but Schiller never explicitly introduced that deﬁnition. In any case, it really only rephrases the problem rather than solving it. The deﬁnition states that beauty is an appearance of freedom; but it still does not explain how freedom, which is purely noumenal, can appear in a pleasing manner in the phenomenal world. Schiller now poses the problem in a new context. We demand that a person have a form that is speaking, he writes, where such a form reveals and expresses his or her moral vocation (277). But this demand turns out to be not only moral but aesthetic. Where moral feeling demands satisfaction, Schiller insists, taste too does not want to be slighted. Just as reason demands an expression of morality, the eye demands beauty (277). The problem is getting these demands to coincide, because they seem to require the co-operation of totally heterogeneous ontological realms. Moral speaking movements must have a cause outside the sensible world in the noumenal will, whereas beauty must have its cause inside the sensible world. Hence, graceful actions must have their causes both inside and outside the sensible world (277–8). Fully aware of the challenge before him, Schiller now resolves to tackle what he calls ‘the great difﬁculty’ of his theory (277). At ﬁrst he simply postulates a harmony between the moral and the aesthetic. Since the demands of both reason and the eye fall on the same person, he argues, one and the same cause must satisfy ⁷⁷ See Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, V, 86–7.

106

Schiller as Philosopher

both. What a person does as a moral being must also be advantageous in appearance; in other words, his moral capacities must reveals themselves through grace (277). We are left wondering, however, why such very different demands, simply because they fall on the same person, should have the same cause, or, if they have different causes, why they coincide. Aware that simply postulating a harmony begs the question, Schiller attempts to explain in more detail how the two causes would co-operate. Although the moral cause of our actions is the very same that creates the natural conditions of beauty, this cause creates only the conditions of the possibility of beauty; but its actuality still depends on sensible conditions (278, 16–7 ). It is a noumenal or supersensible ground that makes moral actions speaking, but a sensible ground that makes them beautiful (279). In other words, spirit does not create but only permits beauty (279). Yet such a solution only raises more questions than it answers. We are left with only mere faith in a pre-established harmony between the moral and the aesthetic. For why should the realm of the senses co-operate with those of reason to actualize what reason makes merely possible? The solution implies that noumenal activity creates only the possibility of beauty; but we still need to know why the senses realize this possibility if they belong to a completely distinct ontological order. Here Schiller remains too much of a Kantian—too observant of his master’s dualisms—for his own good. Although at one point he suggests an organic principle to unite these realms (262, 30–7 ), he knows all too well that, following Kant’s critical principles, he has no right to assume its constitutive validity. It would be demanding too much, however, to tax Schiller for failing to resolve a classical metaphysical problem. In attempting to treat such an intractable problem he had set his sights too high in the ﬁrst place. For this really goes beyond the purview of Anmut und Würde, which is only to explain how grace mediates the moral and aesthetic, not how there is a harmony between the noumenal and phenomenal. Indeed, in the Ästhetische Briefe he will announce a general embargo upon metaphysical explanations of the unity of human powers (356, 372). In the concluding pages of the section on grace, Schiller seems to follow this more modest conception of his task; he now attempts to explain why moral virtue appears as grace by leaving aside all metaphysics. The premises for his explanation are much more straightforward: his analysis of moral virtue and his deﬁnition of beauty in Kallias Briefe. Schiller begins his explanation by raising the questions: Why must virtue appear beautiful in the sensible world? What are the conditions of beauty that they manifest moral character? (279) He explains that there are three possible relations between our rational and sensible sides (280). Reason can dominate sensibility; sensibility can dominate reason; or reason and sensibility can be in harmony (280). It is Schiller’s thesis that only the last relation is conducive to beauty. If reason dominates sensibility, sensibility will be repressed and resist reason, so that the realm of appearances will not reveal or manifest freedom (280). If, on the

Grace and Dignity

107

other hand, sensibility dominates reason, there is no moral freedom at all, and so nothing to manifest itself in appearances (281). So neither a reason dominating sensibility nor a sensibility dominating reason is compatible with beauty, which demands the absence of all constraint; hence, only a harmony between sensibility and reason is compatible with it (282). Schiller’s argument here does not rest upon mere exclusion, still less upon the force or connotations of harmony. The crucial missing premise here is, again, the deﬁnition of beauty from Kallias Briefe. When we supply this premise, Schiller’s argument is perfectly straightforward. (1) A person who does their duty from inclination does not suffer the constraint of either reason or sensibility, and so they act with their whole being in accord with freedom. (2) Beauty is freedom in appearance. Hence, it follows that (3) if a person acts with complete freedom, without the constraint of sensibility or reason, their actions must be beautiful, i.e. graceful. While the argument is straightforward, it also seems false. As formulated, it is vulnerable to a simple but decisive objection. It seems obvious that someone’s powers could harmonize perfectly in an act of virtue yet their actions still appear displeasing to the senses. So even though they do their duty with joy, they might execute it in a bumbling, awkward and clumsy manner. Take the case of Falstaff. He is a virtuous soul, not only by nature but by habit; but he never performs a good deed without hufﬁng and pufﬁng, without heaving and sighing, without, in short, the most awkward and heavy motions. So his deeds satisfy the mind but displease the eye. The objection is not simply that a virtuous person can be physically ugly—that concerns only architechtonic features irrelevant to grace—but that even their voluntary movements can appear so. There is just no reason, it seems, that a morally virtuous action must be executed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. This objection is very troubling because it seems to divide the concept of grace into two halves that have nothing to do with one another. The moral half is doing my duty from inclination; the aesthetic half is the pleasing appearance of an action to the senses. If cogent, the objection would make it pointless to appeal to grace to unite the moral and aesthetic for the simple reason that it is already divided into distinct moral and aesthetic halves. Although Schiller never deals explicitly with this objection, it is possible to reconstruct from his general premises what his response to it would have been. He would insist that the objection wrongly focuses upon the physically beautiful aspects of an action but ignores those that are morally beautiful. Schiller himself seems to endorse this kind of argument when he distinguishes between subjective (moral) and objective (physical) beauty (260). But this line of reply is problematic for at least two reasons. First, if grace is entirely intellectual and moral, it is difﬁcult to understand how it is beauty at all; for the very concept of beauty seems to involve some appearance to the senses. This is indeed the purport of Schiller’s deﬁnition of beauty in the Kallias Briefe, which demands that freedom somehow appear in the sensible world. Second, if there is a sharp distinction between kinds of beauty— one of them intellectual and moral, the other sensible and physical—then beauty as

108

Schiller as Philosopher

such cannot be a mediating factor between the intellectual and sensible. Schiller would now have to drop his entire programme of using beauty to harmonize the two sides of human nature. He would have to retreat from a holistic to a gnostic conception of moral beauty. Schiller could respond to these problems by insisting that there is still an analogy between moral and physical beauty. Just as there is harmony and order in the sensible world, so there is harmony and order in the moral world. On this theory, the idea of moral beauty is essentially metaphoric, based upon but not reducible to physical beauty. We must never simply conﬂate these kinds of orders; but there is still a structural afﬁnity between them because they are both forms of harmony. This structural afﬁnity gives us a right to claim that moral beauty is still beauty; and it allows beauty to mediate between the intellectual and sensible. That there is only an analogy, but not an identity, between moral and physical beauty had been a central contention of many classical theorists of moral beauty, such as Plato, Plotinus and Shaftesbury; and it could be that Schiller is simply following them. There are indeed passages in Anmut und Würde where Schiller seems to endorse just this conclusion. Hence, he insists that judgments of moral beauty are regulative because we have a right to treat human actions only as if they were appearances of freedom, given that the concept of freedom is completely heterogenous with appearances in the sensible world. Still, the analogical thesis does not give Schiller what he ultimately wants: the indivisible unity of the human being, the integral wholeness of his moral and physical nature. Analogy alone cannot support such a grand doctrine. Schiller’s ultimate response to this objection would have to lie with his theory of aesthetic judgment. This theory is only sketched, and largely presupposed in Anmut und Würde; but it is developed in much more detail in Kallias Briefe, where it essentially applies to natural objects or events. According to this theory, we perceive natural objects and events as beautiful if we can read the idea of freedom into certain sensible appearances. The crucial question is which features of appearances give us a right to read freedom into them. Schiller explains that, through a variety of visual cues, the event or object must appear to act without constraint and by virtue of its own nature alone. There is a problem in applying this theory to human actions, because here it is a question of the agent’s motivations and intentions in doing the action, which are not reducible to any set of physical criteria. After all, whether a person acts without the constraints of desire or the moral law cannot be simply read off the appearances. There is at best only an analogy between an event taking place without physical obstructions and an action taking place without moral constraints. However, physical movements and social context provide sufﬁcient evidence to justify making these assumptions about the person’s motivations. Assuming that we are justiﬁed in reading these motivations into the action, we take pleasure in observing it because it conforms to our moral expectations. Since we take pleasure in observing the action, we ﬁnd it beautiful, and so attribute grace to it. Schiller’s doctrine of aesthetic judgment here is very much an

Grace and Dignity

109

application of Kant’s doctrine in the third Kritik, which holds that aesthetic pleasure consists in the interplay between sensibility and understanding, and more speciﬁcally the interplay that arises when something appears to our senses that unexpectedly conforms to the demands of our understanding. Here, however, the context is moral, and the concepts in question are moral principles. The crucial point to see here is that the pleasure I take in a person performing an action is independent of any speciﬁc physical qualities of the action; indeed, even if those actions are displeasing to the senses because they are subject to physical constraints—such as the hufﬁng and pufﬁng, panting and perspiring of Falstaff—I still take pleasure in them because they conform to my moral expectations. What determines the pleasure here is the moral principles which I read into the action, not the sensible qualities of the action itself. It is completely contrary to Schiller’s theory of aesthetic judgment for a person to perceive immediately the aesthetic qualities of grace, as if they could somehow be read off the appearances. We read grace into appearances, we do not derive it from them. On this account, then, the faulty premise behind the objection is that it still understands grace as if it consisted in some kind of sensible or physical qualities characteristic of movement itself. But this is just to misunderstand the speciﬁc aesthetic quality of grace, and indeed Schiller’s whole theory of aesthetic judgment. Though this reading of Schiller’s theory might avoid the objection, it does so at a price. For it seems that the pleasure we take in a moral action is really moral rather than aesthetic. We take pleasure in the action because it conforms to our moral principles, not because it pleases our senses. ‘What does this have to do with aesthetic pleasure?’, one might ask. We cannot claim to have brought together the moral and aesthetic realms at all—unless, of course, we equivocate with the concept of pleasure. This concept is indeed equivocal because on the one hand it has close associations with the senses, and because on the other hand it can be extended to the most intellectual activities. Here it is worthwhile to note a general ambiguity in the concept of sensibility as it was developed by Kant and inherited by Schiller. Sensibility is in part a conative concept, involving reference to feelings and desires; it is also in part a physical concept, signifying a person’s nervous system and reaction to the external world. When Schiller writes of moral grace he already thinks that he has a connection with sensibility in the conative sense because it involves doing duty from pleasure, learning how to control my desires and feelings. But Schiller thinks that there is a further connection of moral grace with sensibility in the physical sense because the action will appear beautiful to the senses. The objection would then be that a connection with sensibility in the former sense does not necessarily entail a connection with sensibility in the latter sense. So, in the end, it would seem that Schiller can unite the moral and aesthetic realms only by retreating to a more gnostic conception of moral beauty, one that disconnects it entirely from the physical world and that unites it with the aesthetic only by making the aesthetic a function of moral judgment. This is a perfectly coherent

110

Schiller as Philosopher

position to take; but it is still far removed from Schiller’s original conception—a holistic conception of moral beauty—and from his original ambition: uniting the two sides of human nature through the aesthetic. So it seems Schiller’s theory is guilty of a type fallacy, a category mistake, a metabasis eis allo genos.⁷⁸ It appears that he is a victim of an ambiguity in the concept of moral pleasure, and indeed in the concept of sensibility itself. For he seems to try to connect the moral and aesthetic realms, the noumenal and phenomenal domains, simply in virtue of an analogy, or purely on the basis of a metaphor. But is Schiller really guilty? Scarcely. We could accuse him of a fallacy only if he were making a constitutive claim about the actual connection between these realms; but Schiller’s own theory of aesthetic judgment is entirely regulative, expressly forbidding any such inference. All that it allows us to infer is that the moral and aesthetic realms seem to be like one another, or that sensible movements appear to be manifestations of freedom. Hence, some of the most severe objections against Schiller’s theory disappear once we keep in mind the methodological modesty behind it. But this very modesty also means that Schiller has no guarantee for his broader hopes: uniting the rational and the sensible according to the concept of beauty. In the end, Schiller’s humanistic ideals went beyond the conﬁnes of his Kantian methodology. It would be left to his romantic heirs to break with that methodology to realize his grander goals. But they would have to take his theory in a metaphysical direction that he would never have approved.

10. THE DISTINCTION BET WEEN GRACE AND DIGNIT Y In a single-sentence paragraph, Schiller bluntly begins the section on dignity by declaring: ‘Just as grace is the expression of a beautiful soul, dignity is the expression of a sublime disposition’ (erhabenen Gesinnung). Here Schiller applies the classical distinction between the beautiful and sublime to his ethical typology. If grace is a form of beauty, dignity is a form of the sublime. Only from the later exposition, however, do we discover the basis for this contrast. Schiller’s cryptic opening remark, and the entire division of the treatise, leave the reader wondering about a larger issue: What is the precise relationship between grace and dignity? It is the task of the entire second section to answer this question. Some of the most difﬁcult and controversial issues in the interpretation of the treatise concern this relationship. While some scholars maintain that grace and dignity are really the same, others hold that they are incompatible with one another. Many commentators ﬁnd a contradiction in Schiller’s basic ideal, because he states that grace alone, and grace united with dignity, is the ideal of humanity. We should now follow Schiller’s exposition to sort through these issues. ⁷⁸ Hamburger, ‘Schillers Fragment’, 100–3.

Grace and Dignity

111

After his cryptic opening paragraph, Schiller immediately declares that the ideal of a human being is to harmonize its rational and sensible natures, to unite them in a single organic whole (289). Here grace alone, apart from dignity, appears to be the sole goal of humanity. Schiller then stresses that the beautiful soul is only an idea, where he uses the term in the Kantian sense, i.e. it is a goal that we can approach but never attain through endless striving. The reason that we cannot attain this idea, Schiller explains, is because of ‘the unchangeable constitution of [human] nature’, i.e. the sheer physical conditions of its existence (289). This statement is important, providing the central clue to understanding the relation between grace and dignity. For, it turns out, the role of dignity arises in just those cases where the physical conditions of our existence make it impossible for us to act gracefully. So, to understand dignity, we must ﬁrst determine those physical conditions that make it impossible to act with grace. What are these conditions? Why do they make acting with grace impossible? And how does acting under them constitute dignity? Schiller attempts to answer all these questions systematically, placing them in the context of a general theory of moral action. He begins his explanation by stating that these conditions are those that make it necessary for us to satisfy certain needs for our sheer survival. Nature has determined not only the content but the form of our needs; it determines both what we need (content) and how we satisfy them (form) (290). Hence we have certain natural drives (Triebe) which are nothing more than ‘the necessity of nature [acting] through the medium of feeling’ (eine Naturnotwendigkeit durch das Medium der Empﬁndung) (290, 7–8). This necessity means that some things create pain and that others create pleasure. We have no choice in what we feel, in whether we feel pleasure or pain, and in this regard we are no better than animals. As Schiller graphically puts it: the stoic philosopher feels the pain of hunger with just as much intensity as the worm he treads under his foot (290, 16–9 ). In living under these natural conditions, human beings are subject to the same fate as animals. Nevertheless, Schiller insists, there is still a great difference between a human being and an animal. An animal acts immediately according to its desires and aversions; but a human being has a power of will that can choose to act or not act on these desires and aversions. A human being does not simply have desires and aversions but the power to will its own desires and aversions (292); or, to put his point in the language of contemporary philosophy, the will is a second-order power: it reﬂects on its desires and aversions, and it has desires and aversions about desires and aversions. We are above animality in virtue of two facts, Schiller thinks. First, while an animal must act to avoid pain, a human being can choose to endure it (290, 292). Second, we can reﬂect upon our desires and aversions, deliberating whether to satisfy them or not (293). In either case, we break the necessity of nature, making its operations contingent upon our will. It is important to see that Schiller’s account of the will does not deﬁne its freedom simply in terms of its power to act on the moral law. Unlike Kant in his

112

Schiller as Philosopher

Grundlegung and second Kritik, Schiller does not think that the freedom of a human being consists in its acting on the moral law independent of motives of sensibility. Rather, Schiller explains its freedom in terms of its power to act or not act on the moral law. He states that the will stands between two domains: that of morality and that of nature. It can choose from which of these domains it receives its law. We use our freedom even when we follow the law of nature contrary to reason; but we use it in an unworthy manner because we then choose to stay within the sphere of nature (291). Although we are not forced to act on the law of nature or on the law of reason, we are still obligated to obey the law of reason (291). As Schiller puts the point in some untranslatable lines: ‘Gebunden ist er an keine, aber verbunden ist er dem Gesetz der Vernunft’ (291). This account of freedom has important implications for Schiller’s concept of dignity. It means that human dignity does not consist simply in acting according to the principles of morality against the desires and feelings of nature; rather, it consists in exercising our power of choice, even when we choose to act on these desires and feelings. A person still retains their human dignity even when they act immorally, and it is for just this reason that we hold them responsible for their actions. It should be obvious by now that Schiller’s account of dignity occurs in the context of his general Kantian dualism between reason and sensibility. He reintroduces that dualism and now explains it in his sharpest terms. We are told that each domain has its necessity and lays down its commands independent of the other (293). Reason demands that we follow moral laws, regardless of our needs and desires; indeed, we ought to do our duty, even if it frustrates our deepest desires and our greatest needs. Conversely, nature demands that we satisfy our needs and desires, even if that would be contrary to the moral law. Even if we choose to act on reason against sensibility, the demands of sensibility never disappear. The strongest spirit has difﬁculty in repressing the demands of sensibility; he can refuse to satisfy them, to be sure, but he cannot eradicate them. We can disarm natural drives through reason, but we can mollify them only through nature (293). Schiller did not believe that the powers of education would ever be such that we could completely disarm our instincts; for him too, civilization had its discontents. Although Schiller thinks that dignity exists even when we choose to act on our natural desires and feelings, he also maintains that it manifests its characteristic nature only when there is a conﬂict between reason and sensibility. A person reveals their dignity when they choose to act on duty contrary to inclination. This alone shows that they are acting for the sake of moral principle rather than according to some desire or feeling alone. If they choose to act on their duty, and if it is also evident that in doing so they are frustrating their natural desires and feelings, then they demonstrate their moral independence, their power to stand above the powers of nature and to act according to the higher principles of reason. Hence, Schiller arrives at a preliminary deﬁnition of dignity: ‘Ruling our natural drives

Grace and Dignity

113

through moral power is independence of mind (Geistesfreiheit), and its expression in appearance is dignity’ (294, 22–4 ). The most simple and straightforward formulation of the contrast between grace and dignity goes as follows: in grace the rational and sensible sides of our nature are in harmony because we do our duty from inclination, whereas in dignity these two sides of our nature are in conﬂict because we do our duty contrary to inclination. However, this formulation is inaccurate, because, as we have just seen, dignity does not require that an agent does his or her duty, and it is compatible with a person acting contrary to their duty. The formulation is correct, however, provided that it is understood to apply solely to the paradigmatic cases of grace and beauty, those where the characteristic nature of grace and duty are made evident and manifest. Dignity understood as the appearance or manifestation of independence does require that the agent act contrary to inclination, because this alone shows that he or she has the capacity to act from motives independent of sensibility. It is important to see that the contrast between grace and dignity is not between dispositions or habits of acting but simply between occasions, contexts or circumstances for the exercise of a single disposition or habit. The single disposition or habit is moral virtue—the power to act according to moral principles—which a person might or might not actualize according to the circumstances. If the contrast were between different dispositions or habits, then there would be indeed a contradiction between them; then one and the same person might enjoy or hate doing their duty on the same occasion. If, however, the contrast is between only different occasions, circumstances or contexts, no contradiction arises. A virtuous person will act with grace in those circumstances where he ﬁnds no signiﬁcant obstacle to the performance of duty; and they will act with dignity where they do ﬁnd such an obstacle. The simple formulation of the contrast between grace and dignity can be misleading for still another reason: it might seem as if a person who acts with grace does so in virtue of a happy harmony between reason and sensibility. Schiller thinks, however, that even to act with grace we must learn to control or discipline our natural sensibility, so that here too there has been, at least before the acquisition of virtue, a conﬂict between reason and sensibility, the moral law and natural desires and feelings. Schiller himself is anxious to make this point, and he does so by distinguishing moral virtue from ‘the good heart’ (guten Herzen) or ‘the temperamental virtue’ (Temperamentstugend ) (294). In the case of the moral virtue of the beautiful soul, moral demands harmonize with sensible feelings and desires only because they have been made to do so through habit and education, through learning to discipline and control oneself. In the case of a good heart or a temperamental virtue, however, a person acts according to moral laws simply because he has been born with the right character or temperament. For the good heart or temperament, there is a fortunate coincidence between reason and sensibility; but there is no moral quality attaching to his actions simply because they do not

114

Schiller as Philosopher

demonstrate good will, the fundamental condition of all moral value. No less than Kant, then, Schiller is not willing to ascribe moral value to actions done from innate sympathy or natural benevolence. Once we distinguish grace from a good heart or a temperamental virtue, we are left with a difﬁcult question: If in both grace and dignity we must learn to act contrary to our natural needs and desires, what is the difference between them? Understandably, on just these grounds, some scholars have been skeptical of Schiller’s whole distinction. To specify the difference between grace and dignity, it is necessary to return to Schiller’s opening remark that, under certain conditions, it is necessary to act with dignity rather than grace. Schiller still owes us a precise explanation of these conditions. So far, his account is still insufﬁcient to distinguish grace from dignity. We know that these conditions involve having certain natural desires and feelings that are in conﬂict with the moral law, that are subject to natural necessity, and that continue to assert their demands even when we refuse to satisfy them. But this is not enough to discriminate cases of grace from those of dignity—not if, even in the case of grace, we often have to restrain refractory desires and feelings. Something more needs to be said to distinguish why in some cases it is necessary to act with dignity rather than grace. It is just here that Schiller’s explanation is insufﬁciently precise. He leaves only a few suggestive remarks. When a person acts with dignity rather than grace it is because acting on the demands of duty creates sacriﬁce (Opfer) or suffering (Leiden) (294, 13; 296, 15; 98, 27). A prisoner who does not betray his county under torture, a ruler who has to command the execution of his criminal son, a general who must command a suicide mission for his favorite regiment—all these are cases where a person acts with dignity. This suggests what Schiller never says but always implies: we act with dignity in cases of tragedy. It is in tragedy that the digniﬁed soul ﬁnds his place and calling. The difference between grace and dignity now hinges on whether or not we are in tragic circumstances, whether or not acting on our duty involves suffering and sacriﬁce. Although a person who acts from grace must also sometimes act contrary to their natural desires, they do not have to suffer or sacriﬁce anything. A gracious host who inconveniences herself to entertain her guests could not be said to be suffering. The many inconveniences and frustrations of daily life are not tragic. But this would seem to make the difference between grace and dignity one of degree rather than kind. It all seems to depend on the degree of frustration or trouble involved in doing our duty, on the degree to which our desires and feelings are thwarted. To some extent this is true. There is indeed a gray area in which it would be difﬁcult to determine whether a person acts from grace or dignity. But there are still extreme cases at the end of the spectrum, whose differences from those in the middle are impossible to deny. There is all the difference in the world between the gracious but inconvenienced host and the ruler who must execute his son. Once we take into account the crucial circumstances of tragedy, it is possible to give a more accurate formulation of the difference between grace and dignity.

Grace and Dignity

115

When we act with grace we do our duty with joy, even if it involves restraining our desires and appetites; but when we act with dignity we do our duty with sorrow, because it involves suffering or sacriﬁce. As Schiller formulates it, in grace we perform our obligations with a sense of play and ease; but in dignity we do our duty with seriousness and difﬁculty (298). In cases where great suffering or sacriﬁce is involved we could not expect a person to act with grace; and, indeed, we would be suspicious, indeed indignant, if they did so. This raises the problem of how to determine these expectations, or how to determine whether there is a genuine case of tragedy that would make it impossible for someone to do their duty with pleasure. It all seems rather subjective or arbitrary after all. A sensitive soul who endures a minor inconvenience might ﬁnd his experience tragic. Aware of this very problem, Schiller explains that the demands of dignity can reveal either the limits of the individual or those of humanity in general (298). In the ﬁrst case, if it is only because of the limits of the individual there is suffering or sacriﬁce, the moral value of the action lessens. For our moral judgment brings every individual under the standard of the species. We judge whether there is suffering and sacriﬁce according to our standards of what is normal. We ﬁnd real dignity, Schiller explains, only when acting on our duty violates the concept of our humanity. He then declares his general rule: we must do everything with grace that can be achieved within humanity; and everything with dignity that demands going beyond our humanity (298). This is perhaps as good a rule as the subject matter permits.⁷⁹

11. GRACE AND DIGNIT Y AS COMPLEMENTS Now that we have ﬁnally determined how grace and dignity differ from one another, the question is how they depend on one another. Schiller is ﬁrm and clear that they complement one another, that each strengthens the other. He claims that grace receives its worth only from dignity, and that dignity gets its credibility only from grace (300). Each serves as the warrant or proof of the other. What Schiller has to say about the complementary nature of grace and dignity makes perfect sense once we see that he is talking about different occasions or contexts of acting according to a single disposition. Both grace and dignity are really different kinds of exercise of moral virtue. The beautiful soul shows that it possesses genuine moral virtue, and not only a good heart or temperamental virtue, only when, in cases of tragedy, it has the power to act with dignity. This demonstrates that it has complete control over its passions, that it can rise above them and deny their satisfaction when they conﬂict with the moral law (294). Conversely, a noble mind can prove its dignity only if, in less tragic circumstances, it can act with grace (300). If we are to have real dignity, Schiller argues, two conditions must hold. ⁷⁹ Schiller could fall back upon Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, chap. 3, 1094b.

116

Schiller as Philosopher

First, we must act for the sake of principle and not because of some overwhelming passion; and, second, we must have some sensibility, some capacity to suffer, and not ‘a heart of stone’ impervious to all feeling. When we act with grace in less tragic circumstances we provide evidence that these conditions obtain. For when we act with grace we do not act from some overwhelming passion but do our duty with pleasure; and we show we still have some capacity of feeling, for we take pleasure in doing the good action. Since grace and dignity complement one another, Schiller maintains that both are necessary for the complete expression of humanity (300). He claims that both grace and dignity can be found in the same person. Dignity is inherent in virtue from its very nature, because virtue consists in dominance over our natural drives and instincts (297). It is only by showing the power to act with dignity that a person shows that they possess the moral virtue that is also required of grace. Since, however, the ideal of complete humanity involves the development of all our powers, more is required of us than dignity alone (298). If a person only had dignity, the power to act on principle in cases where it imposes suffering and sacriﬁce, he might still not develop his sensibility, his powers of moral feeling. Although Schiller’s claim that grace and dignity are both necessary for humanity seems perfectly reasonable, none has raised more criticism. Some of his critics maintain that it is impossible for both to be united in a single person because these states contradict one another: grace involves a harmony of reason and sensibility, whereas dignity implies their opposition.⁸⁰ When examined more precisely, however, it is difﬁcult to see why there is a contradiction. There would be one only if, for one and the same action, Schiller demanded acting with both grace and dignity. But, as we have seen, he thinks that we must act with dignity only in tragic circumstances, with grace in non-tragic ones. There are two reasons why Schiller’s critics are so quick to ascribe a contradiction to him. First, they see grace and dignity as different kinds of virtues or dispositions, when they are really only different instances of a single virtue or disposition. Second, they continue to conﬂate the moral virtue of grace with the good heart or a temperamental virtue. It then seems as if the moral virtue of dignity, because it involves great self-restraint, cancels the harmony between reason and sensibility of grace. But, as we have already seen, this is a confusion that Schiller himself has expressly warned us against. Schiller’s critics have been no less forgiving about the apparent contradiction involved regarding his ideal of humanity. First he claimed that grace alone is the ideal of humanity (289); but then he seemed to retract this by saying that grace and dignity is the complete ideal of humanity (300). Schiller himself addresses this issue when he explains that the ideal of complete humanity requires grace because this alone develops all of our powers (297–8). This ideal does not exclude ⁸⁰ See Hamburger, ‘Schillers Menschenfeind’, 115; Sharpe, Schiller, 139; Henrich, ‘Der Begriff der Schönheit’, 543–4; Pugh, Dialectic of Love, 24, 157, 269–70; and Calder, ‘Schiller on the Will’, 48–9.

Grace and Dignity

117

dignity, however, which is understood within this ideal, because dignity involves the dominance of reason over sensibility required of all virtue. In other words, Schiller continues to think that grace alone is a sufﬁcient statement of his ideal of humanity; but by that statement he does not mean to exclude but include dignity. The need for dignity arises when the virtue involved in both grace and dignity needs to be shown in the face of tragic circumstances. What unites grace and dignity together is the simple fact of moral virtue, the power to act on the principles of reason acquired by education and habit. In non-tragic circumstances this virtue expresses itself in grace; in tragic circumstances it expresses itself in dignity. Since a human being is bound to confront tragic circumstances in life, he or she needs to act with dignity as well as grace. Though perhaps vague and confusing, Schiller’s position is entirely consistent. 12. DIGNIT Y AS THE SUBLIME We must now return to Schiller’s cryptic opening paragraph about the sublimity of dignity. Why does he think that the aesthetic expression of dignity is the sublime? Schiller does not fully explain the basis for this claim in Anmut und Würde but essentially relies on the argument of some of his earlier essays, especially ‘Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenstände’ and ‘Vom Erhabenen’. In these essays Schiller explains the sublime as that whose representation makes our sensible nature feel its limits and our rational nature its freedom from all limits (171). The feeling of the sublime consists partly in the feeling of powerlessness with regard to our sensible nature, and a feeling of superior power with regard to our moral nature, which is not limited by the physical world and has power over it (138). It is this concept of the sublime that Schiller applies to human actions in Anmut und Würde. We can now see why the expression of dignity is sublime: we demonstrate our moral power over the physical world because we act according to the demands of duty even when it imposes great suffering and sacriﬁce. The aesthetic dimension of dignity is evident from its importance for tragedy. The aesthetic experience of tragedy arises from the perception of dignity. Despite the obvious connection with tragedy, it is striking that Schiller scarcely touches on the subject in Anmut und Würde itself. Here he ﬁnds the paradigm expression of dignity not in drama but in sculpture. The ideal of complete humanity—the combination of grace and dignity in a single person—is best expressed, he writes, in ‘the divine form of a Niobe, in the Apollo Belvedere, in the Borghesi winged genius, in the Muse of the Barberini Palace’ (301).⁸¹ In his account of these sculptures Schiller shows a debt to Winckelmann. In every affect stimulated by the drive toward self-preservation, he explains, there are two kinds ⁸¹ On the reception, history and images of some of these sculptures, see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and Antique (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).

118

Schiller as Philosopher

of movement (295). One movement is involuntary and natural, the other is voluntary, or at least ought to be determined by the will. We might see a suffering person undergoing both movements at once. Among his involuntary movements we ﬁnd his tense muscles, his cramped voice, his heaving breast, and his compressed frame; among his voluntary movements we see serenity in his eyes and forehead. If the person were only a sensible being, we would see only suffering; but since he is also a moral being, we see him having a power over his sensible nature. The combined expression of both these movements Schiller calls ‘repose in suffering’ (Ruhe im Leiden) (296). It is precisely in Schiller’s treatment of Greek sculpture, it has been argued, that we ﬁnd the proton pseudos of his whole argument in Anmut und Würde.⁸² The source of Schiller’s confusion of the moral with the aesthetic, we are told, came from his not distinguishing between the beauty of a sculpture and the beauty of a person. While the beauty of art has a symbolic character, which Winckelmann was right to stress, the beauty of a person is not a symbol of anything. Schiller, however, went astray, we are told, when he took a step beyond Winckelmann: he treated people as if they were sculptures, seeing a symbolic meaning behind their physical appearance. This objection derives all its plausibility from construing beauty in a purely physical sense, as if it were what Schiller calls architechtonic beauty. It presupposes that there is no such thing as beauty of movement; but this is only to beg the question. It is again necessary to stress that beauty of movement is not simply a physical or empirical quality for Schiller. He is perfectly explicit that we perceive the sublimity of dignity only from an act of judgment and inference, from reading moral ideals into phenomena (294, 296). We cannot pursue any further here the details of Schiller’s argument in Anmut und Würde. We have been able to investigate only some of its central contentions. It should be clear from our account that, while Schiller’s theory is not guilty of the mistakes so often attributed to it, its central argument remains problematic. Schiller did not resolve the fundamental ambiguities that haunted the concept of moral beauty since antiquity; still less did he succeed in in reconciling reason and sensibility in an aesthetic whole. Schiller’s aesthetic realm retreats far too much into the noumenal world for it to bridge the divide between it and the phenomenal world; and Schiller’s cautious regulative account of aesthetic judgment makes it impossible for him to offer anything more than the most agnostic theory about how to unify these domains. Still, despite these problems, it should be clear from our exposition that Schiller’s thinking about these issues was of the greatest intensity and profundity, the natural starting point for anyone to reinvestigate the connection between the moral and aesthetic in human action. In the end, Anmut und Würde was an heroic failure. But there is nothing unique or odd about this: the history of philosophy has always been a history of intellectual tragedy. ⁸² Hamburger, ‘Schillers Menschenfeind’, 96, 100.

4 Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe 1. ISSUES AND METHOD Schiller’s major philosophical work is his Über die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, the so-called Ästhetische Briefe, which ﬁrst appeared in the Horen in 1795. The Ästhetische Briefe is the most systematic and rigorous of all Schiller’s philosophical writings. It was the culmination of all his labours in the early 1790s. Here Schiller ﬁnally supplies the ‘analytic of the beautiful’ left incomplete in the Kallias Briefe. Here too he ﬁnally explains the connection between morality and aesthetics left so ambiguous in Anmut und Würde. And here too he makes his most sustained defense of beauty, marshalling together in a single phalanx all the arguments left only in verse form in Die Künstler. On all these issues the Ästhetische Briefe would be Schiller’s last will and testament. The Ästhetische Briefe was also Schiller’s most inﬂuential work. Its programme of aesthetic education was the inspiration for Frühromantik. The underlying message behind its analytic of the beautiful—that human beings should become works of art—eventually became the romantic imperative that we should make our lives novels. Some of Schiller’s major themes—the unity of opposites, the aesthetic state, the concept of freedom—were crucial for the absolute idealism of Hölderlin, Schelling and Hegel. The legacy of the work lived on in the Frankfurt school, most notably in the aesthetics of Marcuse and Adorno, who followed Schiller in stressing the importance of art for the liberation of humanity.¹ Given its importance and inﬂuence, it should come as no surprise that the Ästhetische Briefe has been the most controversial of all Schiller’s philosophical writings. Discussion and debate began with the work’s publication, and they have never ceased. There are many unresolved questions, but two are especially important and contentious. The ﬁrst concerns Schiller’s intentions in writing the work: Is the Briefe an attempt to escape from or to engage with politics? The second regards the work’s structure: Is the Briefe an integral whole or a deeply divided work? It ¹ Regarding Schiller’s legacy for the Frankfurt school, see Klaus Berghahn, ‘Ästhetische Reﬂexion als Utopie des Ästhetischen’, in Schiller, Ansichten eines Idealisten (Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1986), 125–55.

120

Schiller as Philosopher

seems to be a divided work insofar as Schiller makes art both means and end, insofar as ‘an education through art becomes an education to art’.² Since these questions are so basic, it is impossible to avoid them. I will address both in the course of the chapter. Regarding the ﬁrst question, I will attempt to show that the Briefe is an essentially political work, whose political dimension becomes apparent only when we place it within its proper context: the modern republican tradition of Machiavelli, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Ferguson. Regarding the second question, I will argue that the Briefe is indeed a uniﬁed and coherent work, and that its apparently opposing parts are necessary means to attain its general goal: an apology for beauty. This does not mean, however, that the work is seamless and ﬂawless, since we shall see it still contains notable lapses in planning and execution. My task here is both historical and philosophical. Historically, it is to place the Ästhetische Briefe in its general context, to understand it as a response to some of the cultural, political and aesthetic issues of its age. After more than a century of scholarship, it still cannot be said that this task is anywhere near complete, since Schiller’s position within the context of the political and aesthetic disputes of the 1790s remains very obscure. Philosophically, I will attempt to reconstruct some of Schiller’s more technical transcendental arguments. However, I will do so only in broad and sketchy terms; a more precise and detailed account is the work of an entire treatise. Here too it cannot be said that this task has been exhausted by previous scholarship. Although most scholars agree about the need for a philosophical account of the text, there has been a yawning gap between expectation and performance. None of the major exegetical works on the Ästhetische Briefe provide anything like a careful reconstruction and assessment of its arguments.³ Either they get bogged down in philology,⁴ or they have passed off broad generalizations and stereotypes as a surrogate for real philosophical understanding.⁵ ² This is the perspicuous formulation of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: Mohr, 1990), 88. ³ The only signiﬁcant exception I know is Anthony Savile’s three chapters on the work in his Aesthetic Reconstructions: The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kant and Schiller, Aristotelian Society Series’ vol. 8 (Oxford: Blackwell 1987), 193–254. Savile’s work is rare in Schiller scholarship for its combination of sympathy and philosophical acumen. ⁴ This is the case with Hans Lutz’s Schillers Anschauungen von Kultur und Natur (Berlin: Ebering, 1927) (Germanische Studien, Heft 60), and Elizabeth Wilkinson’s and L. A. Willoughby’s ‘Introduction’ to their translation and edition of the work, On the Aesthetic Education of Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). All these scholars stress the importance of a philosophical account of the work; Wilkinson and Willoughby indeed ‘deplore’ how the emphasis on Schiller as a poet has interfered with proper appreciation of the work’s content (xcix). We shall see below (sec. 15), however, that they have not practiced what they have preached. ⁵ Nowhere is this more apparent than in Wilhelm Böhm’s Schillers Briefe über die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (Halle/Salle: Niemeyer, 1927). Although Böhm too stresses the need for a philosophical appreciation of the work, his idea of a philosophical interpretation seems to be categorizing Schiller as an absolute idealist or phenomenlogist, terms he never deﬁnes. See, e.g., 37, 40, 44, 51–2, 57. Böhm never freed himself from the prejudice that Schiller is only a poet who cannot think philosophically, and so he accuses Schiller constantly of dilletantism and facile mistakes (e.g., 15, 40, 50), all of which exist more in his imagination than in the text.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

121

Before we proceed to the text proper, it is necessary to engage in a preliminary task. We must consider, if only very brieﬂy, the genesis of the work. Any interpretation of the Ästhetische Briefe—no matter how philosophical—presupposes some knowledge of its origins.

2. GENESIS OF THE WORK The genesis of the Ästhetische Briefe is a complex, even dramatic story, involving several drafts, abrupt reversals in conception, a generous Prince, and the intervention of ﬁckle fate. Schiller ﬁrst announced his plan to write something like the Ästhetische Briefe in his February 9, 1793 letter to Prince von Augustenburg. In gratitude for receiving a stipend from the Prince, Schiller proposed to write for him ‘a series of letters’ containing ‘my ideas about the philosophy of the beautiful’ (NA XXVI, 186). Since in the same letter he describes his project to provide a foundation for aesthetics—or what he calls an ‘analytic of the beautiful’—we can assume that ‘the ideas about the philosophy of the beautiful’ would concern this project. Hence the series of letters was originally conceived as an analytic of the beautiful, a continuation of the project Schiller had already embarked upon in the Kallias Briefe. Starting in the Summer of 1793, Schiller duly wrote a series of letters to Augustenburg. These are the so-called Augustenburger Briefe, whose contents provide the raw materials for Letters I–IX and XXIII to XXVII of the later published work. Schiller sent at least seven letters to Augustenburg. However, in February 1794, all these letters were destroyed by a disastrous ﬁre in Augustenburg’s Copenhagen palace. Of these only ﬁve have been recovered, based on copies of the originals. These letters were ﬁnally published only in 1875.⁶ After the ﬁre, Augustenburg requested that Schiller make good the loss. Scarcely able to refuse, Schiller dutifully rewrote the letters, but in doing so reformulated and expanded them. It is this new rewritten version that ﬁnally appeared as the published version in the Horen. Although Schiller originally intended the Briefe to be his analytic of the beautiful, it is noteworthy that the original letters do not contain anything like his later account of that topic. They discuss only such subjects as the relevance of art to politics, the effects of the arts on morals, and the role of the arts in history. This is true not only of the ﬁve extant letters but even all seven original letters. For, when Schiller later summarized the content of all the letters, he speciﬁcally states that they did not include ‘the concept of beauty’; he described their contents only as ‘aesthetic education’ and ‘a general reﬂection on the connection between beautiful ⁶ See A. L. J. Michelsen, ‘Briefe von Schiller an Herzog Christian von Schleswig-HolsteinAugustenburg über ästhetische Erziehung’, Deutsche Rundschau VII (1875), 67–81, 273–84, 400–13, and VIII (1876), 253–68.

122

Schiller as Philosopher

sentiments with culture as a whole’.⁷ The content of these letters corresponds closely—though with some signiﬁcant variations—to the ﬁrst nine and the last ﬁve letters of the published Horen version. Apparently, though, Schiller still intended to include a discussion of the concept of the beautiful. This is plain from his February 3 letter to Körner where Schiller goes on to sketch some ideas for such a theory. It is striking, however, how little these ideas have to do with the later published version. Schiller discusses in some detail how he will derive the concept of beauty from genius, how each art presupposes a speciﬁc end, and how the speciﬁc rules of an art derive from this end (343–5). There is no anticipation whatsoever of the content of the later Letters, especially XI to XV, which would discuss the concept of beauty. After a pause of several months, Schiller rethought his work once again. By the Summer of 1794 he appeared to abandon his plan to write a theory of the beautiful. It seemed that the Aesthetische Briefe would be a work devoted solely to aesthetic education, the different kinds of beauty, and the role of beauty in the development of humanity. He wrote Körner on September 12, 1794, that he was now working on his correspondence with the Prince, which he would entitle ‘Ueber die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen’ (XXVII, 46). But this work, Schiller expressly adds, is independent of his theory of the beautiful, even if it did contain some ideas useful for an introduction to such a theory. However, sometime in October, for reasons hard to fathom, Schiller rethought again, now planning to include a discussion of the foundation of beauty after all.⁸ He ﬁrst mentioned to Garve on October 1 that he was thinking about ‘the objective principles of taste’ in connection with a treatise on ‘aesthetic manners’ (aesthetischen Umgang ) (XXVII, 57). He later wrote to Erhard on October 26, 1794, that he was now preoccupied with his ‘analytic of the beautiful’, which would be no less than ‘the chief subject of his contributions for the Horen’ (XXVII, 72–3). It was this last plan that ﬁnally prevailed and that became the ﬁnal published version. Summa summarum, Schiller’s plans for the Briefe show an almost astonishing vacillation and uncertainty. The work was ﬁrst supposed to be just an analytic of the beautiful; then it evolved into a study of aesthetic education combined with an analytic; then again it morphed into solely a study of aesthetic education; and ﬁnally it again became a study of aesthetic education with a theory of the beautiful. ⁷ See Schiller to Körner, February 3, 1794, NA XXVI, 342. ⁸ Whether this was due to the inﬂuence of Goethe or Fichte, or some combination of the two, has been a much discussed question. On the inﬂuence of Goethe, see Joachim Ulrich, ‘Goethes Einﬂuß auf die Entwicklung des Schillerschen Schönheitsbegriffs’, Jahrbuch der Goethe Gesellschaft 20 (1934), 165–212; and Gottfried Baumecker, Schillers Schönheitsbegriff (Heidelberg: Winter, 1937), 21, 68–9, 125–8. On the inﬂuence of Fichte, see E. Winkelmann, ‘Schiller und Fichte’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Erziheung und des Unterrichts 24 (1934), 177–248; and Wolfram Hogrebe, ‘Schiller und Fichte. Eine Skizze’, in Schillers Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung, ed. Jürgen Bolten (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), 276–89.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

123

From such a tangled tale, one would imagine, only confusion results. And so, indeed, it has been argued that the genesis of the Ästhetische Briefe gave rise to an essentially divided, even incoherent, work. One part is a discussion of aesthetic education, the other a theory of beauty. Having very different aims, these parts reﬂect completely opposed attitudes toward beauty. 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.⁹ We will later have occasion to examine the case for the incoherence of the Ästhetische Briefe. But this brief account of its genesis teaches us already one very important lesson: that the Ästhetische Briefe cannot be regarded, following its title, simply as a treatise on aesthetic education.¹⁰ Such a characterization fails to account for the other half of the work, the analytic of the beautiful, which is not about education at all, not even by Schiller’s own reckoning. The best way to account for both halves of the work, and so to explain its underlying unity, we shall eventually see, is to describe it as an apology for beauty, a defense of the aesthetic dimension of human life. While the analytic shows beauty to be a necessary condition of an ideal humanity, the part devoted to aesthetic education shows art to be necessary for the development of that ideal in the empirical world.

3. SCHILLER AND THE REPUBLICAN TRADITION Why did Schiller write the Briefe? Were his motivations primarily aesthetic or political? Some maintain that the Briefe was Schiller’s retreat from politics into the ideal world of art, others that it was his form of engagement with politics.¹¹ The best way to deal with this issue is to examine Schiller’s own response to it. He explains his motivations for writing the Briefe in the second letter. Writing in 1793, during some of the most fateful and dramatic events of the French Revolution, Schiller admits that it seems irresponsible to be preoccupied with aesthetics when the political world is in such turmoil. It seems sheer indifference to the welfare of humanity, he concedes, to ignore such pressing political issues (311–2). Nevertheless, Schiller declares that he will put beauty before freedom, aesthetics before politics. He will do so, however, because he believes that ‘one ⁹ This is the argument of Wolfgang Düsing, Friedrich Schiller, Über die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, Text, Materialien, Kommentar (Munich: Hanser, 1975), 138–41. ¹⁰ Pace Wilkinson and Willoughby, ‘Introduction’, xcvii–xcviii. ¹¹ On the view that Schiller’s later thinking is marked by a retreat from politics, see Georg Lukács, Goethe und seine Zeit (Bern: Francke, 1947), 109; Maurice Boucher, La Revolution de 1789 vue par les Écrivains Allemands (Paris: Didier, 1954), 94–5, 103–4; Alexander Abusch, Schiller (Berlin: Aufbau, 1980), 175–205, esp. 192–3. This view had become virtual party policy in the former East German State. According to the Zentralkommittee der SED, February 1, 1955, Schiller’s two major ﬂaws were his critique of the excesses of the Revolution and his escape into the illusory world of art. See Gustav Mathieu ‘Schiller and the Zentralkomitee’, German Life and Letters IX (1955), 40–6. For a critique of this a-political interpretation, see Wilkinson and Willoughby, ‘Introduction’, xv–xx.

124

Schiller as Philosopher

achieves freedom only through the path of beauty’ (312). So, if we take Schiller at his word, rather than ignoring politics for the sake of aesthetics, he wants to focus on aesthetics for the sake of politics. While Schiller’s second letter is dense, brief and even cryptic, his attitude toward politics is much clearer in his July 1793 letter to Augustenburg. Here he cites a maxim of Solon that damns a citizen who does not take sides during an insurrection (260).¹² If there were ever a case where this maxim should be applied, Schiller admits, it is now. He fully recognizes, therefore, his obligation to take part in the issues of his day. He again declares, just as he did in the second letter, that he will discuss aesthetics for the sake of politics. He now explains, however, that he will focus on aesthetics because of his allegiance to a fundamental principle. What is this principle? That is the crucial question in coming to terms with Schiller’s political commitments. In the second letter Schiller only alludes to this principle; but in the July 1793 letter its provenance and meaning are ﬁnally revealed. 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. Prima facie Schiller’s principle implies, if not a retreat from politics, at the very least a diminution of its signiﬁcance. For, by giving priority to moral over civil freedom, it seems to make morality more basic than politics. This emphasis on morality over politics has often been seen as a hallmark of Weimar classicism, which, on just these grounds, has been criticized for its political indifference and naivete.¹³ Such a criticism fails to appreciate, however, Schiller’s sources and broader historical context. It is important to stress that Schiller’s fundamental principle— that civil freedom must derive from moral character—ultimately derives from the ¹² All references to the Augustenburg letters are to NA XXVI. ¹³ See, e.g., Georg Lukács, ‘Zur Ästhetik Schillers’, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ästhetik (Berlin: Aufbau, 1954), 16; and L. A. Willoughby, ‘Schiller on Man’s Education to Freedom through Knowledge’, Germanic Review 29 (1954), 163–74.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

125

modern republican tradition, the tradition of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Ferguson.¹⁴ Schiller imbibed this tradition since his early days at the Karlschule, when he read Montesquieu and Ferguson, both of whom he greatly admired.¹⁵ 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. No less than Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Ferguson, Schiller held that moral virtue is the essential support of a fundamental political goal: a stable and enduring republic. In stressing the value of moral virtue, the republican tradition was the very antithesis of modern individualism, the tradition of Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, and Kant. According to that competing tradition, to establish a state nothing more is necessary than the self-interest of its citizens. It is in the self-interest of everyone alike to enter the social contract, because one’s interests are more secure when there is a sovereign power to enforce the law. Since self-interest alone is sufﬁcient to form the state, we do not have to assume that people are virtuous. Hence Kant notoriously wrote in his Zum ewigen Frieden that a republican constitution is possible even for a nation of devils.¹⁶ For Kant, Locke, Mandeville and Hobbes, then, virtue has none of the signiﬁcance that it has for Schiller and the republican tradition. In this regard, as so often in the Briefe, we have to qualify Schiller’s profession of Kantian principles.¹⁷ Although Schiller never developed a detailed theory about the ideal constitution or government, his political views were still broadly republican.¹⁸ While never a champion of radical democracy, he was still an admirer of the classical republics and their ideal of community. Like Montesquieu and Ferguson, Schiller stressed the value of representative institutions and prized a mixed constitution along English lines. While he famously afﬁrmed that the purpose of ¹⁴ On this tradition, see Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and J. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 333–505. ¹⁵ On Schiller’s esteem for Montesquieu, see ‘Zweite Karlschulrede’, NA XX, 33; and on the inﬂuence of Ferguson, see Wolfgang Riedel, Die Anthropologie des jungen Schiller (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1985), 124–6, 159, 180, 188, and Peter-André Alt, Schiller (Munich: Beck, 2000), I, 104–5, 109–11. ¹⁶ Kant, AA VIII, 366. ¹⁷ Pace Hans Reiss, ‘The Concept of the Aesthetic State in the Work of Schiller and Novalis’, Publications of the English Goethe Society 26 (1956–7), 26–51. Reiss articulates a very common view when he maintains that Schiller’s political thinking is ‘best understood if seen as a development of Kantian political thought’ (29). ¹⁸ Concerning the details of Schiller’s political views, see Enlightenment, Revolution & Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 85–98.

126

Schiller as Philosopher

the state is the self-realization of its citizens,¹⁹ he never accepted the liberal individualist doctrine that the state is nothing more than the sum of its members. A state where people pursued only their self-interest he regarded as primitive, the state of mere natural necessity (Naturstaat ); and he placed it on a much lower level than the aesthetic state (der ästhetische Staat ), where people freely give themselves to one another and realize themselves only through civil association.²⁰ Schiller’s belief in the necessity of education went hand-in-hand with his belief in the value of community. Since people are essentially political animals, creatures whose nature is formed only through social and civil life, their education determines their very identity. In conclusion, then, 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.

4. AESTHETIC EDUCATION AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF REPUBLICANISM Schiller’s loyalty to the republican tradition left him, however, with an almost insuperable problem. There is a vicious circle: the foundation of a republic is virtue; but we can create virtue only if there already is a republic. This difﬁculty does not arise in the individualist tradition, and it is indeed one of its main attractions. But it was a persistent problem for the republican tradition. In his Discorsi, for example, Machiavelli stressed how difﬁcult it is to create virtue when the ruler, no matter how crafty or strong, cannot simply legislate the character of the people.²¹ And in Book II, chapter vii of Du Contrat Social, Rousseau asked how the legislator can ever succeed if the laws are heeded only by a virtuous people and if a virtuous people ﬁrst has to be formed by political institutions.²² Schiller too had to struggle with this problem. He ﬁrst raised the issue in his July 13, 1793 letter to Augustenburg by pointing out that the character of the citizens depends on the constitution as much as the constitution upon the character of its citizens (265). In the ninth letter of the Briefe he posed the question anew: If all improvement in politics proceeds from ennobling character, how can ¹⁹ See Schiller to Caroline von Beulwitz, November 27, 1788, NA XXV, 146–7. ²⁰ See esp. Letter XXVII, NA XX, 410–11. ²¹ See Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius, Book I, 18, in Machiavelli, The Chief Works, ed. Allan Gilbert (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), I, 240–3. ²² Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), II, 383.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

127

we ennoble character in a corrupt constitution? (332) In the July letter, Schiller explains that there are two possible ways out of the circle: Either the state must do something without the help of its citizens, or the citizens must do something without the help of the state. Schiller opts for the latter alternative; and he rules out the former on the grounds that no constitution can function independent of its citizens. But his explanation is rather verbal, raising the question why some leaders in the state—a Solon or Lycurgus, say?—cannot take the initiative on their own independent of the citizens. From the beginning Schiller seems to dismiss the possibility of education coming from the state. His hasty explanation leaves the reader wondering why. Part of the explanation is made clear in Letters VI and IX of the Briefe. Here Schiller maintains that the state has been the source of so much of the corruption of the modern world that we cannot expect it to be an incorrupt educator. The main source of this corruption lies in the modern division of labour, which has been imposed and legitimated by the modern state. As far as the education of the people is concerned, then, the state is not the solution but the problem. But Schiller’s reservations about the state go beyond his worries about its corruption. Their ultimate source lies with his own liberal principles, according to which the state should not interfere with the activity of its citizens. If the state were to direct education, then it would begin to take control over the realm of inner conscience, which is sacred and inviolable. These liberal principles are plain enough in Letter IV when Schiller declares: ‘The will of man stands completely free between duty and inclination, and no physical compulsion can or should encroach upon this sovereign right of his personality’ (316). But Schiller’s reservations are most apparent in an earlier essay he wrote in the late 1780s, ‘Die Gesetzgebung des Lykurgus und Solon’. What Schiller writes here is the best testament of his liberal convictions: If our legislators have done wrong in neglecting moral duties and virtues, the Greek legislators have done wrong by inculcating moral duties according to the coercion of the laws. For moral beauty of actions the ﬁrst condition is freedom of will, and this freedom is gone, as soon as one wants to compel moral virtue through civil penalities. The most noble privilege of human nature is to determine oneself and to do the good for the sake of the good. No civil law may command ﬁdelity toward a friend, generosity toward an enemy, gratitude toward a father and mother; for as soon as it does this a free moral feeling becomes transformed into a work of fear and a slavish impulse. (NA XVII, 438)

Having rejected the state as a path out of the circle, Schiller made escape from it all the more difﬁcult. For he also could not rely on the traditional solution of Machiavelli and Rousseau, who had resorted to a virtual deus ex machina: a civic religion. Since a new constitution cannot be imposed by force, Machiavelli argued in the Discorsi, the legislator must rely upon religion, which alone captures the hearts and minds of its citizens.²³ The only way out of the circle, Rousseau wrote ²³ See Machiavelli, Discourses I, 11–5, Works, I, 223–34.

128

Schiller as Philosopher

in Du Contrat Social, is for the legislator to have recourse to an authority of a different order, one which can ‘compel without violence and persuade without convincing’.²⁴ This means having recourse to ‘the intervention of heaven’ and claiming that the wisdom of the legislator derives from the gods. What we need to do, Rousseau claimed, is ‘compel by divine authority those whom human prudence could not move’. Machiavelli’s and Rousseau’s model was the civil religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who made obedience to the state a religious duty. Schiller could not accept this solution for two reasons. First, his liberal principles would not allow the creation of a civil religion, which would inevitably infringe on the rights of conscience.²⁵ Second, living in a more enlightened age, Schiller believed that religion had lost much of its credibility with the public.²⁶ A modern educated European could not believe the old Greek and Roman myths; and the rational criticism of the Aufklärung had undermined faith in the Bible and miracles, the mainstays of traditional Christianity. But if neither the state nor religion are the path out of the circle, what is? The answer, of course, is aesthetic education. Why, though, only aesthetic education? Schiller’s argument begins by laying down two requirements for any successful programme of education. The ﬁrst requirement, he explains in Letter IX, is that it must be free from the corruption of the age (333). The second, he reveals in Letter VIII, is that it must have the power to affect our sensibility, i.e. our desires, feelings and imagination (330). This is because the main source of human action comes from sensibility rather than from reason. Having laid down these requirements, Schiller then argues that only an aesthetic education satisﬁes both. The ﬁrst requirement is fulﬁlled by either a scientiﬁc education, which addresses the intellect, or an aesthetic education, which appeals to sensibility. Either form is free from the corruption of the age, because both art and science have their own autonomous standards that cannot be imposed by government. The second requirement, however, is satisﬁed by an aesthetic education alone. The scientiﬁc education will not help because simply enlightening people’s intellects does not make them act; and even if they knew the principles of reason, it does not follow that they will act on them. Hence what we need is an aesthetic education because, after the decline of religion, this alone enlivens, exercises and educates sensibility (266). For all the reﬁned argument made in its behalf, Schiller’s programme of aesthetic eduation still suffers from insuperable difﬁculties, both intellectually and practically. On an intellectual level, it does not really escape the circle. For it blithely ²⁴ Rousseau, Œuvres, II, 383–4. ²⁵ In the penultimate chapter of Du Contrat Social Rousseau made this danger remarkably plain by proposing some severe civil penalties for persistent heretics: exile or execution! See Œuvres II, 468. ²⁶ It is noteworthy that in his December 3, 1793 letter to Augustenburg, Schiller maintains that religion and art are crutches necessary for humanity as long as it cannot act according to its moral principles (NA XXVI, 331–2). However, it is striking that of these two crutches Schiller prefers art to religion. Religion, Schiller implies, is only for those who have not reﬁned their feelings through taste.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

129

assumes that the people will be receptive to an aesthetic education, which is not likely if they are already corrupt or if the government is repressive. On a practical level, it puts an enormous burden on the artists who would execute it. For they not only have to maintain their integrity throughout the corruptions of the age, but they also have to inﬂuence the public. Furthermore, they must achieve all this without the aid of the government. In a rousing passage at the close of Letter IX Schiller advises the young artist to impart to his age a direction toward the good, which the quiet rhythm of time will bring to eventual fulﬁllment. If we simply make people aware of the eternal principles within themselves, Schiller assures the aspiring artist, they will not be deaf to your message (335). But this was little more than faith and hope. What is to ensure that the rhythm of time will fulﬁl the artist’s message? What, indeed, if the government were repressive, the people corrupt? In one important respect, though, Schiller could claim to have been successful. The young artists—Novalis, Hölderlin, and the Schlegel brothers—were listening. Schiller was indeed, as Nietzsche later called him, ‘the pied piper of Jena’.

5. THE BRIEFE AND THE CRISIS OF ENLIGHTENMENT Another way of understanding Schiller’s intentions in writing the Briefe—and another way of coming to terms with the connection between aesthetics and politics in the work—is to focus upon the problem of enlightenment. Schiller himself introduced and stressed this issue in his July 13 and November 11, 1793 letters to Augustenburg. It is again necessary to place his reﬂections in their broader historical context. Ever since the middle of the eighteenth century in Germany, the problem of enlightenment had been posed chieﬂy in terms of Bildung, the education of the public. The Aufklärer assumed that the philosophers had discovered the fundamental truths of reason. Thus Pufendorf and Grotius had determined the main principles of natural law; Leibniz and Wolff had established the principal proofs of natural religion; and Galileo and Newton had discovered the basic laws of motion. The problem now, however, was how to make the public aware of, and to act according to, these principles. The grand goal of enlightenment was to make the world safe for reason, and so to create a rational society and state. This goal could not be achieved, however, if the principles of reason were locked in an ivory tower, the privilege of an elite few. The challenge facing the Aufklärer, therefore, was how to surmount the gap between speculation and action, theory and practice. This gap could be overcome, they were convinced, only through the education of the public, by spreading enlightenment among the people. In the early 1790s, however, the Aufklärung faced a grave crisis. The source of that crisis was the alarming course of the Revolution in France. At ﬁrst the Revolution seemed to be the triumph of Enlightenment. All the irrational laws,

130

Schiller as Philosopher

privileges and traditions of France were being swept away, and it seemed they could be replaced by a society and state based entirely on the principles of reason. The new French constitution seemed to enshrine the very principles of natural law. But such high hopes soon crashed against the hard cliffs of political reality. The cycles of violence in France seemed unending, with the guillotiners becoming the guillotined; and the danger of anarchy appeared perpetual, with one constitution following another, no one having more worth than the very paper on which it was printed. 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. Rather than sweeping in a heaven upon earth, the sovereignty of reason had ﬁnally become a reign of terror. The whole programme of the enlightenment—once a virtual dogma of the Aufklärer and philosophes—was now thrown into doubt. The merits and fate of the Enlightenment were intensely discussed and debated in the early 1790s in Germany, most notably in the famous theory– practice dispute, which took place mainly, but not exclusively, in the pages of the Berlinische Monatsschrift.²⁷ Among the participants in this dispute were Kant, Fichte, A. W. Rehberg, Friedrich Gentz and Justus Möser. This dispute was essentially about the role of reason in politics, and more speciﬁcally, whether reason could determine the fundamental principles of the state, the guidelines for its constitution and policy, and whether it could provide a sufﬁcient motive for human conduct. These issues were, therefore, essentially a political version of the question that Kant—ironically, only one year before the Revolution—had made central to his second Kritik: ‘Is pure reason practical?’. The left-wing passionately afﬁrmed, just as the right-wing hotly denied, that pure reason can be practical in politics. The left-wing thinkers—Kant and Fichte—held that reason should play a fundamental role in politics because reason determines the basic principles of morality, which are also binding in politics. These principles not only determine the speciﬁc principles of a constitution, but they even lay down guidelines for policy. The right-wing thinkers— Rehberg, Gentz and Möser—objected that pure reason cannot play any signiﬁcant role in politics, because, even if reason can determine the most basic principles of morality, these principles are so general that they have no speciﬁc consequences for political practice. If we are to determine the speciﬁc principles of a constitution, and if we are to decide the speciﬁc policies of a state, we have no recourse but to consider its speciﬁc empirical circumstances. These circumstances are almost always unique, requiring the statesman to adapt himself to them. What is decisive for a constitution and policy is what Möser called Lokalvernunft, the rational thing to do under unique and speciﬁc local circumstances. These right-wing thinkers also stressed that reason could never provide ²⁷ On the details of this dispute, see Enlightenment, Revolution & Romanticism: 38–44, 297–309, 325–6.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

131

a sufﬁcient motive or incentive for human conduct, since such motives come only from imagination, custom, interest and need. Although Schiller never explicitly refers to the theory–practice dispute in the Briefe or in his letters to Augustenburg, he almost certainly knew about it. The questions were too widely discussed for any one to be able to ignore them. In any case, Schiller’s political position in the early 1790s is comprehensible only as a response to them.²⁸ If we place the Briefe in its intellectual context, we can understand it as Schiller’s contribution to this dispute, and indeed as his solution to the crisis of the Aufklärung. It is striking—and one of the most important indictators of Schiller’s deeper intellectual commitments—that throughout the Briefe he remains loyal to the cause of enlightenment and republicanism. Never does he doubt Kant’s argument that reason determines the fundamental principles of morality, and that these moral principles should be binding in politics. And never does he question the importance of enlightenment, the need to disseminate and apply the principles of reason throughout the political world. In Schiller’s view, the problem is not with Kant’s principles, still less with the ideals of the Enlightenment, but only with the application of these principles, the execution of these ideals. Nothing more reveals his allegiance to the cause of enlightenment and republicanism than his emphasis on education as the means of overcoming the gap between theory and practice. Like Mirabeau, Schiller saw education as the key to ensuring the stability and duration of the new French republic.²⁹ It is important to note this point if only because Schiller’s political position in the Briefe has sometimes been taken as evidence for his growing conservatism.³⁰ 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. This becomes clear as soon as we compare it to the conservative publicists: the Hannoverian Whigs and Eudämonisten, who saw the failure of the Revolution in France as reason to question the cause of enlightenment and republicanism itself.³¹ The aim of the Briefe is precisely to rescue the causes of enlightenment and republicanism in the face of such conservative criticism. Regarding the issues raised by the theory–practice dispute, Schiller adopted an essentially moderate position. He took issue with both the conservatives, who would reject republican ideals entirely, and the radicals, who would enjoin ²⁸ Schiller’s most explicit discussion of these issues is in his account of the idealist and realist in Ueber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, NA XX, 491–503. ²⁹ Schiller read and greatly admired Mirabeau’s tract, Sur l’education publique, which he read in late 1792, shortly before writing the Briefe. See to Körner, October 15, 1792, NA XXVI, 159–60. In stressing the importance of education Mirabeau too referred to the ancient republican tradition. See Sur l’education publique (Paris: Imprimiere Nationale, 1791), 9–10. ³⁰ Abusch, Schiller, 192–201. ³¹ On the Hannoverian Whigs and Eudämonisten, see Enlightenment, Revolution & Romanticism, 302–9, 326–34.

132

Schiller as Philosopher

violence as the only means of attaining them. 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. Schiller defends his reformist position most explicitly in Letter III of the Briefe. It is noteworthy that he begins by sanctioning the attempt to change the state of nature (Naturstaat ) into a state of reason (Vernunftstaat ).³² Schiller insists that such a state of nature has no abiding authority: ‘For the work of blind forces possesses no authority before which freedom must bow’ (314). A morally mature people has the right to transform its natural state into a moral one (314). Although the state of nature has no ﬁnal legitimacy, the problem for any attempt to change it is that the natural state exists while the rational state is merely problematic. We should not jeopardize the natural for the sake of the rational state, Schiller argues, because this would be to wager something real for the sake of something merely hypothetical. For all its ﬂaws, the natural state still addresses our physical existence. The mechanism of the state has to be improved, therefore, while it is still operating (314). Here Schiller’s argument is not prudential, i.e. that physical needs should take priority over moral claims; rather, it is moral, i.e. there cannot even be reform for the sake of moral principles if our physical existence is undermined. As it stands, there are obvious problems with this argument. Schiller assumes that at least our physical existence is secured by the natural state. But, of course, this might not be the case. This then raises the question whether revolution is permissable if a government does jeopardize even the physical existence of its citizens. Regarding this crucial issue, it is noteworthy that Schiller, again unlike Kant, did not proscribe revolution in principle or under all circumstances. Indeed, in his 1788 Geschichte des Abfalls der Vereinigten Niederlande, he clearly afﬁrmed the right of revolution (NA XVII, 10–2). He praised the revolt of the Netherlands against the Spanish crown as one of the most illustrious events in all sixteenthcentury history. He wrote this work so that people could know ‘what men risk for a good cause and achieve through unity’. This revolt was justiﬁed, Schiller believes, because the reign of Phillip II was ‘a tyranny without precedent’ which attacked the most basic rights of property and conscience. Schiller responds most explicitly to the crisis of the enlightenment in his July 13 and November 11, 1793 letters to Augustenburg. He notes the enormous ³² It is important to note that ‘the state of nature’ here means not the condition of a people before government but a government that arises from necessity and takes care of merely natural needs. The English phrase ‘state of nature’ is unfortunately ambiguous, since it can mean either. Schiller’s terms are Naturzustand and Naturstaat.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

133

advances that have been made by the Aufklärung in the realm of the intellect. The Aufklärung 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. Schiller’s opening account of the failure of enlightenment seems to place the blame entirely on moral causes, speciﬁcally a weakness of will in carrying out the principles people already know. That diagnosis is fundamentally Kantian, following in the footsteps of Kant’s 1784 essay, ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’. It also ﬁt perfectly with Schiller’s republican principles, which stressed the importance of moral virtue for political reform. It is striking, however, that Schiller did not leave his diagnosis on this moral plane. In his November 11, 1793 letter to Augustenburg, he goes a step further and considers the social and political origins of this moral failure. He notes there that the greater part of humanity is so worn down by the struggle against physical need that they do not have the energy to enlighten themselves (NA XXVI, 298–9). Once they have ﬁnally acquired the bare necessities of life, they want only rest and entertainment. They have no choice but to allow others—their pastor or state ofﬁcials—to think for them. For this reason, Schiller is ready to excuse the working masses for their lack of enlightenment (299). So the problem is not really moral after all; it does not lie with a failure of resolve but with sheer physical exhaustion. Schiller is less willing to excuse, however, those who are better off and freed from physical need. His charge of moral failure seems to be speciﬁcally directed against the upper classes, the aristocracy and higher bourgeoisie. They fear enlightenment because it might undermine the prejudices that support their social advantages, and because they recognize it could be at the cost of their riches (300). Schiller’s harsh criticism of the upper classes, ﬁrst apparent in the Augustenburger Briefe, persists in Letter V of the Briefe (320). Here he charges them with depravity, because, though they do not lack culture, they use it only for their selﬁsh ends. Schiller’s condemnation of the upperclasses is noteworthy if only because he has been accused of accommodating himself to the aristocracy and court circles around the time he wrote the Ästhetische Briefe.³³ ³³ See Abusch, Schiller, 180, 182.

134

Schiller as Philosopher

Although Schiller fully recognized the economic preconditions for enlightenment, it has been argued on just these grounds that he never really intended to include the working masses within his programme of aesthetic education.³⁴ Since Schiller saw that the masses were too exhausted to proﬁt from enlighenment, and since his liberal principles forbade state intervention to alleviate poverty, he had no other recourse—so the argument goes—than to exclude the masses from his programme of aesthetic education. It is striking, however, that in his November 11 letter to Augustenburg, Schiller does recommend that the state take active measures to secure the physical existence of its citizens, which would be a pointless if he intended to exclude the masses from his programme. He insists that ‘the work of enlightening a nation must begin with the improvement of its physical condition’ (299). This leaves the question, however, how such intervention is consistent with his liberal principles. It seems that Schiller confronts a dilemma: he has to choose between either his liberal principles or an ineffective aesthetic education. Though it is nowhere explicitly elaborated by him, Schiller does have a solution to this difﬁculty, one consistent with his general principles. The solution is this: limiting the liberal principle to the ideal state of reason, where everyone has already received an aesthetic education and has been ensured the satisfaction of their most basic physical needs. But, to make progress toward this ideal, it is permissable, indeed obligatory, for the government to intervene. According to this suggestion, then, the role of the government is only temporary and provisional, merely a necessary measure to help it achieve its ideal; it then becomes dispensable once that ideal has been attained. That Schiller did not lay down an unconditional prohibition against state intervention in the economic sphere is evident from his early essay ‘Die Gesetzgebung des Lykurgus and Solon’, where he praised Solon for abolishing debts in Athens and destroying the invidious extremes of wealth and poverty. Although Solon infringed on the rights of property, his policy was still justiﬁed, Schiller argued, because only such a policy would preserve the state (NA XVII, 430–2).

6. THE T WO QUESTIONS So far, the fundamental problem with Schiller’s argument seems more practical than theoretical. Schiller seems to expect too much of art. By making it the chief instrument of education he assumes—all too optimistically—that it will inﬂuence human thinking and acting. It is easy to see why he has been charged with excessive ³⁴ This is the thesis of T. M. Holmes, ‘Property and Politics in Schiller’s Theory of Aesthetic Education’, Oxford German Studies 11 (1980), 27–39. Holmes notes (33) Schiller’s recommendation of state intervention in his November 11 letter to Augustenburg but argues that Schiller later abandoned it in the Briefe because of his liberal principles. There is, however, little evidence for this claim. He also fails to note Schiller’s economic views in ‘Die Gesetzgebung des Lykurgus und Solon’.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

135

idealism. But here, as is so often the case in the Briefe, Schiller is a step ahead of his critics. In Letter X he anticipates this very objection. He asks: How can one expect so much of art that it educates humanity? (334) Schiller had long considered the question of the effect of art on the public. In his early 1782 essay ‘Ueber das gegenwärtige teutsche Theater’ he was even skeptical whether the stage could have a beneﬁcial inﬂuence upon the public. He noted that what people get from a drama very much depends on what they bring to it, and he conceded that no one’s morals had been improved by going to the theatre. In his 1784 essay, ‘Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlich wirken?’, he seemed to overcome his earlier skepticism and made a passionate case for the value of the stage as a civil and moral institution; but even here he was on the defensive, struggling to reply to Rousseau’s critique of the theatre in his 1758 Lettre à M. d’Alembert. So when Schiller returned to this issue in the Briefe, it was after more than a decade of reﬂection upon it. His response to this issue in Letter X is remarkable, and indeed downright surprising for anyone who thinks him an optimist about the arts. Schiller virtually admits Rousseau’s argument in the ﬁrst Discours that cultures decline when the arts ﬂourish. The historical evidence seems to show, he concedes, that devotion to the arts deprives people of the energy necessary for action, and that it distracts them from more important practical concerns. But then he indicates that the real issue does not lie here, in attempting to determine whether the arts have had a beneﬁcial or harmful effect upon morals. Before one assesses such effects, he argues, it is ﬁrst necessary to know whether one has the proper concept of beauty. After all, Rousseau’s many objections against the arts might be directed against, and only valid for, a false conception of beauty. In that case nothing has been decided about the effects of real beauty. Hence, Schiller insists that it is ﬁrst necessary to search for the true concept of beauty, for a concept of beauty that is purely rational and that can determine whether anything in experience is really an instance of beauty in the ﬁrst place. Only when we know from a rational principle what beauty should be are we in a position to determine what effects it has in experience itself.³⁵ This raises the difﬁcult question, of course, how we determine the pure concept of beauty. But here Schiller is ready with an answer. We determine this normative concept of beauty, he maintains, by showing that it is a necessary condition of human nature as such. To know this, we ﬁrst have to abstract from all the peculiarities and contingencies surrounding human nature in its speciﬁc historical manifestations. We have to determine the fundamental or necessary drives of human nature, and then we have to show how these drives reach their end only in and through beauty. These are extremely ambitious goals, to be sure, but Schiller will attempt nothing less in Letters XI to XV. His efforts will culminate in a striking ³⁵ Schiller’s strategy here follows the precedent of K. H. Heydenreich’s System der Äesthetik (Leipzig: Gößchen, 1790), 57–64. On Schiller’s relationship to Heydenreich, see above, 2.2 n16.

136

Schiller as Philosopher

and powerful conclusion: that we make our lives a whole, that we perfect all aspects of our nature, only when we make them into works of art. Before we turn to the argument of Letters XI to XV, we must get our bearings and take stock of what has happened. The whole question has now been transformed. Starting with Letter XI, Schiller is no longer writing about the effects of the arts, about how they reﬁne, enliven or educate sensibility. Rather, he is asking whether human nature, if it were perfectly and fully realized, consists in an aesthetic whole. So the question is no longer causal—‘What effect does beauty have upon us?’—but logical—‘Does human perfection consist in beauty?’.³⁶ It is important to see that these are completely distinct questions. The answer to the ﬁrst question does not answer the second: for even if beauty promotes human perfection, it does not follow that human perfection consists in beauty. Conversely, the answer to the second question does not answer the ﬁrst: just because human perfection consists in beauty, it does not follow that the arts promote that perfection. Schiller is perfectly aware of the distinction between these questions; but he also attempts to connect them to one another systematically. He regards the second question as fundamentally ‘transcendental’ or ‘speculative’, because it abstracts from all experience and treats the nature of the ideal human being; he considers the ﬁrst question to be essentially empirical, because it asks about how the arts can promote the development of this ideal human being in the realm of experience and history. Starting from Letter XI the entire treatise will be dominated by whether it treats one question or the other. In Letters XI to XV Schiller’s chief concern is with the second or transcendental question. Here he analyzes the concept of human nature and shows that it realizes itself only as beauty. In Letters XVI and XVII, however, Schiller returns to the causal question, attempting to determine what effect the different kinds of beauty have in developing the ideal human being. In Letters XVII to XXII he will again make ‘a brief excursion into the realm of speculation’ where he considers the general structure of beauty. Finally, in Letters XXIII to XXVII he will come back to the causal question, showing how beauty plays a fundamental role in the development of humanity. In its general structure, then, the text divides into transcendental or causal, speculative or genetic, episodes. The distinction between these questions is fundamental to the entire work and dominates its structure. It is indeed a more basic distinction than that between treating art as a means to an end and as an end in itself. When Schiller considers the transcendental question he will treat art as an end in itself; and when he treats the causal or empirical question he will treat it as a means to an end. The mere ³⁶ The failure to recognize the precise logical status of this question is the chief shortcoming of purely psychological approaches to Schiller’s aesthetics. See, e.g., Karl Gneise, Schillers Lehre von der ästhetischen Wahrnehmung (Berlin: Weidmann, 1893). Although Gneise notes that Kant had distinguished transcendental from psychological issues (5–6n), he proceeds to read Schiller’s aesthetics entirely in psychological terms.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

137

facts that Schiller is perfectly aware of the distinction between these questions, and that he attempts to relate them systematically to one another, should make the reader suspicious of charges of inconsistency and confusion.

7. THE ANALYSIS OF HUMAN NATURE Schiller begins his transcendental deduction of beauty in the eleventh letter by laying down a basic vocabulary and making several distinctions. His vocabulary and distinctions are both Kantian and Fichtean. Schiller phrases some of Kant’s distinctions along Fichtean lines, following the Fichte’s Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten. While Schiller has a great debt to Kant and Fichte here, it would be a mistake to appraise his argument according to whether it is purely Kantian or Fichtean. What is more important is Schiller’s own purpose in making the distinctions and whether he is justiﬁed in drawing his conclusions from them. What Schiller is trying to capture through his various distinctions is the structure of what he calls our ‘sensible-rational nature’. For Schiller, as for Kant and Fichte, it is a fundamental fact about human beings that they consist in two kinds of natures, one sensible and the other rational. These two sides of our nature can co-operate or conﬂict with one another. But it is characteristic of our humanity, of our status as ﬁnite beings, that we are both. We cannot reduce one to the other because they refer to different activities or aspects of our existence Person and Condition Schiller’s most basic distinction is that between person (Person) and condition (Zustand ) (341). He regards this as synonomous with a distinction between the self (das Selbst) and its properties or determinations (Bestimmungen). This is fundamentally a distinction between that which endures, or stays the same, and that which changes in a human being. The person is that which stays the same, the condition is that which changes. Schiller says that this distinction is characteristic of our ﬁnitude. In an inﬁnite being all determinations would follow of necessity from its person or self. But, in a ﬁnite human being, person and condition are independent of one another, and the condition depends on the external world. If the person were based on the condition, it would never be the same; and if the condition were based on the person, the condition would never change. Schiller reads much more into his original distinction, so that it becomes the basis for several more distinctions. He does not attempt to derive or deduce these additional distinctions from the original one; but it does serve as a fundamental theme around which the others are made. The distinctions are not, therefore, synonomous but co-extensive. Independence and Dependence The distinction between person and condition is also one between the independence and dependence of a human being. Since the person remains the same despite

138

Schiller as Philosopher

all changes in its condition, it is independent of these changes, and so free from the causes affecting them. Hence, Schiller says the person exists because it exists, and not because it thinks, feels or wills. Since, however, the changes in condition take place apart from the person, they are dependent on some external causes (341–2). Hence Schiller says the person does not think, feel or will just because it exists but because there is something else outside it. Noumena and Phenomena Although Schiller does not explicitly phrase his distinction between person and condition as one between noumenon and phenomenon, he does understand his distinction along these Kantian lines. Hence he calls the person the pure intelligence (reiner Intelligenz) in a human being (342, 27 ). This is a Kantian term for the purely rational aspect of the self, its power to act according to the concept of a law.³⁷ Again like Kant, Schiller calls the human being, insofar as it is subject to time, a phenomenon (Phänomen) (342, 27 ). Kant had argued in the ﬁrst Kritik that the noumenal self is not subject to time, even though it can begin a series of events in time, whereas the phenomenal self changes and so does fall within time. Schiller makes the same point here (342). Since the person remains the same throughout all changes, it is not subject to time, and so its acts do not begin in time, although it can start a series of changes in time. Since, however, the condition changes, it is subject to time, and so it has a beginning in time. Form and Matter 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 manifestations.³⁸ Although Schiller makes a sharp distinction between form and content, he also insists upon their interdependence (343). The person alone is ‘nothing but form and empty potential’; the condition alone is ‘nothing but world’ which means ‘the formless content of time’. In order not to be mere world, the person must impart form to matter; in order not to be mere form, it must give matter to form. The ³⁷ Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft V, 125. ³⁸ Cf. Fichte, Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, Werke VI, 296. This point is central and completely ignored by Paul de Man, ‘Kant and Schiller’, in Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 146.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

139

interdependence of matter and form imposes two basic demands on human nature, demands that Schiller calls the ‘two fundamental laws of our sensiblerational 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.³⁹ 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.

8. THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF BEAUT Y After having distinguished between the two fundamental drives of human nature in the twelfth and thirteenth letters, Schiller attempts to reunite them in the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth. Their unity should mean, he explains in the beginning of the thirteenth letter, that the activity of each drive grounds and limits the other, or that each realizes itself only through the other (352). In other words, the two drives must be complementary, opposites that complete and perfect one another. This is what Schiller, borrowing a term from Fichte, calls ‘interchange’, ‘interaction’ or ‘reciprocity’ (Wechselwirkung). Schiller stresses that perfect interaction is merely an ideal, a goal that we can approach only through inﬁnite striving (353). The ideal would be a perfect balance between both drives where each still reaches the maximum degree of its activity. It is difﬁcult to achieve such a goal, however, because there is always the danger that one drive dominates the other. It is the task of culture, Schiller explains, to ensure that each drive remains within its proper limit. Its function is (1) to preserve sense against the tyranny of reason, and (2) to protect reason against the encroachments of sense. It achieves (1) by developing our power of feeling, and (2) by developing our power of reason (348). ³⁹ See K. L. Reinhold, Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens (Jena: Widtmann und Mauke, 1789), 561. More speciﬁcally, Schiller is indebted to Reinhold’s distinction between a Trieb nach Form and a Trieb nach Stoff. It is a commonplace of Schiller scholarship that Schiller’s theory of drives derives from Fichte, though Fichte has no distinction between a form and sense drive, and though Schiller took issue with Fichte’s theory. See Schiller to Fichte, June 24, 1795, NA XXVII, 202.

140

Schiller as Philosopher

To educate the sense drive means (a) giving it the most manifold contacts with the world, and (b) intensifying passivity. To educate the form drive means (a) securing the highest degree of independence from the world, and (b) intensifying activity. The ultimate goal is ‘the greatest fullness of existence with the highest autonomy and freedom’ (349). It is of the ﬁrst importance to note that Schiller thinks that it is the task of culture to preserve the realm of individuality and variety as much as that of universality and unity. He equates the sphere of sensibility with individuality—on the grounds that a person’s individuality shows itself most in their feelings—so that the cultivation of sensibility for its own sake necessarily involves individuality. The importance of the realm of individuality—its intrinsic value and status as an end in itself—is stressed in an esssentially political context in Letter IV. Here Schiller warns that the statesman or political artist must respect the individuality of his materials and not impose ideals that would make everyone alike (316–17). The meaning of this warning needs to be carefully understood. It means not simply that the statesman should respect the freedom of each individual to realize the ideal in his or her own unique manner, as if that freedom were only a necessary means to moral ends; rather, it also means that individuality has an intrinsic value and should be cultivated for its own sake as an end in itself. Such is the implication of Schiller’s famous contrast between two different perspectives on aesthetic education: the moral and anthropological. It is characteristic of the one-sided moral perspective, he explains, that it values universality and unity at the cost of individuality and variety (316). The higher anthropological perspective, however, values both aspects of humanity equally and demands their synthesis in a single living unity. 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. Hence the anthropological perspective gives equal weight to individuality and multiplictity as well as universality and unity; it sees both as having an intrinsic value and as being ends in themselves. It is in this insistence upon the intrinsic value of individuality that Schiller begins to take one of his more important steps beyond Kant, and anticipates the later romantic ethic of Schlegel and Schleiermacher.⁴⁰ If only implicitly, Schiller was taking issue ⁴⁰ It is for this reason that it is necessary to reject Friedrich Meinecke’s important, interesting but ﬂawed critique of Schiller. See his Schiller und der Individualitätsgedanke (Leipzig: Meiner, 1937). Meinecke maintains that in his ethics Schiller failed to give individuality and variety equal weight to universality and unity; he sees Schiller’s ethical views as essentially the same as Kant’s and Fichte’s, as if his goal too were only ‘die Erhebung des Individuums zur Person’, ‘das Individuum zur Gattung zu erweitern’ (11, 12–13). Although Meinecke notes those passages where Schiller wanted to preserve individuality within universality, he plays down their signiﬁcance on the grounds that ‘Schillers Totalität ist noch nicht die volle Individualität, weil ihn das Individuelle an dieser Totalität nur dann interessiert, wenn zur Gattung gesteigert ist und einen allgemeine Wert darstellt’ (15). Surely, however, it is the whole spirit of Schiller’s argument that totality arises only from the interplay of equal opposing forces, that neither should dominate over the other. Indeed, we shall see below, sec. 9, that Meinecke’s reading is completely unable to do full justice to Schiller’s implicit critique of Fichte. Meinecke’s

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

141

with Kant by suggesting that his ethics represented only the one-sided moral perspective.⁴¹ 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. So far, Schiller’s theory of the synthesis of the the two drives seems to be essentially verbal. It seems that he has combined together into a single concept what the synthesis should be without any regard to whether there is anything really corresponding to it. Though we can indeed fault Schiller’s exposition for its abstractness, it does not follow that the concept is merely verbal. It is crucial to keep in mind the context and background of Schiller’s argument in the fourteenth and ﬁfteenth letters. The ideal human being described in these letters is nothing less than the beautiful soul of Anmut und Würde. 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.⁴² It is free from the constraints of sensibility because its character thesis that Schiller’s ‘Grundneigung’ or ‘Grundrichtung’ was the emphasis on universality and unity at the expense of individuality and multiplicity is perhaps true of his aesthetics and philosophy of history; it is very problematic, however, in application to his ethics. ⁴¹ See below, 5.6. ⁴² See NA XX, 287, 21–2; 280, 1; 298, 28.

142

Schiller as Philosopher

is educated and strong enough to counter the temptations of the senses; but it is also free from the constraints of reason because, it has so internalized and identiﬁed with moral principle, that it does its duty with pleasure and from inclination. This sense of lightness or ease, the central characteristic of the beautiful soul, is play. 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.⁴³ 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. What were the origins of Schiller’s concept of play? This raises a difﬁcult question, which we cannot fully answer here. Sufﬁce to note now, however, the most important precedents.⁴⁴ One of these is Lessing, who in his Laocoön wrote about the ‘free play’ ( freies Spiel) of the imagination in aesthetic perception.⁴⁵ This free play refers to the fact that in aesthetic perception thinking and perceiving mutually support one another: the more we see in an object, the more we think about it; and the more we think about it, the more we see. This was essentially the meaning behind Kant’s own more obscure use of the phrase in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, the second and most obvious precedent for Schiller.⁴⁶ It is noteworthy, however, that Lessing and Kant had used the term strictly to describe aesthetic experience, especially the activity of the imagination, whereas Schiller uses the term in a ⁴³ Savile argues that we should not read moral principles into Schiller’s third character, on the very plausible grounds that this character is the stepping stone toward morality, and so cannot already be moral. See his Aesthetic Reconstructions, 236–7. However, Savile’s contention ﬁnds no support from the texts. From Letter XIII onwards Schiller explicitly understands the form drive in moral terms. Here he already discusses the problem of a domineering morality that will leave no place for sensibility. See, e.g., NA XX, 346, 348–50. The problem of circularity that troubles Savile does not arise here because Schiller is only sketching his ideal rather than his means of attaining it. Only later in the text, Letters XXIII to XXVII, does Schiller turn to the educational issue. Schiller’s exposition is the source of some of the confusion, because, as many have noted, there is some ambiguity in the idea of a third character, which can be both means and end. ⁴⁴ Fania Oz-Salzberger has suggested that one of these precedents was Adam Ferguson. See her edition of An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xxv. While this is an interesting suggestion, it is not plausible. Even assuming that Schiller read the German translation of the Essay—Versuch über die Geschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Junius, 1768)—there is still little afﬁnity between Ferguson’s and Schiller’s use of the term ‘play’. To be sure, Ferguson insists that human beings engage in activity for its own sake, regardless of their achievement of speciﬁc ends; but he seldom uses the term ‘play’ to characterize that tendency and instead uses it more to mean something like ‘amusement’. Never does Ferguson use the term in an aesthetic sense. ⁴⁵ Lessing, Laocoön, sec. III; cf. VI. ⁴⁶ Kritik der Urteilskraft §§9, 43, 51; V 217, 304, 322.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

143

broader sense, applying it to a person as a whole. The standard view is that Schiller simply extends Lessing’s and Kant’s concept of play, making an essentially psychological concept into something more ethical and anthropological. While this is correct, it still leaves out of account the third important precedent, which has gone entirely unnoticed in studies of the Ästhetische Briefe. This is Friedrich Wilhelm von Ramdohr’s Charis, a work which, not coincidentally, Schiller read just before writing the Briefe.⁴⁷ Ramdohr’s work anticipates Schiller by applying the concept of play in a broader ethical and anthropological sense. Ramdohr maintains that human beings are subject to two fundamentally different kinds of drive: the drive to satisfy our basic physical needs; and the drive to become free of these needs, the drive toward freedom itself. What satisﬁes the ﬁrst kind of drive we call good; and what satisﬁes the second we call beautiful. This second drive, Ramdohr explains, originates in a more primtive and fundamental need, one that can be observed in animals and children: the drive for play. Although Schiller heartily disapproved of Ramdohr’s empirical aesthetics, there is a clear afﬁnity in their concepts of play. Both Schiller and Ramdohr give play a fundamental role in human psychology; both use it to explain beauty; and both see it as integral to human freedom itself. The difference between Schiller and Ramdohr is that between an essentially empirical and transcendental concept of play. It was a difference that would later become explicit, but we should not allow this to obscure their basic afﬁnity.⁴⁸ 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. The deduction seems to derive its plausibility from a very abstract and banal concept of beauty, which is understood to be nothing more than the unity of form and content. Even worse, Schiller introduces the concept of ‘living form’ from virtually nowhere, so that the whole deduction appears to be Taschenspielerei. Here again Schiller’s conclusion becomes more plausible when we place his argument in the context of his earlier writings. The crucial background now is the concept of beauty in the Kallias Briefe. If we accept Schiller’s argument there that ⁴⁷ Friedrich Wilhelm von Ramdohr, Charis oder Ueber das Schöne und die Schönheit in den nachbildenden Künste (Leipzig: Dyck, 1793), I, 37–42, 48–54. On Schiller’s reaction to Charis, see to Körner, October 4, 1793, NA XXVI, 289; and to Goethe, September 7, 1794, NA XXVII, 39–40. ⁴⁸ On Ramdohr’s reaction to the Briefe, see Wilkinson and Willoughby, ‘Introduction’, cxxxiv–v; and on Schiller’s response, see Xenien 119, NA I, 323.

144

Schiller as Philosopher

beauty consists in freedom in appearance, then it is easy to see why the activity of the play drive consists in beauty. Since the play drive frees a human being from the constraints of both sensibility and reason, its achievement will consist in the appearance of freedom, and therefore beauty. It is important to see here, however, that Schiller is now using the term beauty to describe not how something appears to the senses but the manner of a person’s action and their general character. In Anmut und Würde Schiller had already described grace in terms of beauty, basing his description upon the deﬁnition of beauty in Kallias Briefe. On the basis of this brief and schematic deduction, Schiller now reaches his pivotal conclusion that reason demands the creation of beauty. In one brief paragraph (356), he generalizes and summarizes his conclusions into the following argument, which we can present in syllogistic form: (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. ⬖ Reason demands that we should create beauty. One could object to each step of this argument. Sufﬁce it to say for now that it is at least plausible. At the very least it should be clear that it is not simple jargon or a juggling with words. The argument makes perfect sense provided that we place it within the context of Schiller’s earlier writings. The problem of understanding it is that Schiller presupposes the central themes and arguments of these writings without explaining or even summarizing them for his readers. It is as if Letters XI to XV were written for one person alone, the only person who knew all Schiller had written before the Briefe: Körner. If Schiller dedicated the Briefe to Augustenburg, he really wrote them for his closest friend. We would do better to call them the Körner Briefe.

9. INTERLUDE: THE HIDDEN DISPUTE WITH FICHTE One of the central and characteristic contentions of the Ästhetische Briefe is Schiller’s claim, most prominent in the fourth and thirteenth letters, that the task of culture is to protect the rights of sensibility against reason as much as the rights of reason against sensibility. It was an old theme of Schiller’s, one dating back to the second dissertation. There he attempted to ﬁnd a middle ground between stoicism and epicureanism, between the ascetic view that the body is only the prison for the mind and the hedonist view that the end of life is only pleasure (XX, 40). The same theme returns, now in more Kantian dress, in the Briefe. Against the rationalism of his age, Schiller warns that there is as great a danger of reason dominating sensibility as there is of sensibility dominating reason. The fundamental task of culture, he argues in

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

145

letter XI, is to establish an interchange or reciprocity between reason and sensibility, where both faculties are co-ordinate with one another. If there is subordination at all, it must be mutual (348n). As one might expect, Schiller’s statement about the role of culture is intentionally polemical. However, it is not so easy to determine just who was his target. Schiller leaves us few explicit clues. One’s ﬁrst suspicion is that the new target must be Kant, given Schiller’s implicit critique of Kant in Letter IV. Schiller puts us off the scent here, however, by explaining in a footnote that the spirit of the Kantian teaching does not oppose reason and sensibility (348n). While Schiller is indeed correct that Kant does not exclude sensibility as a motive for moral action, he underplays his deeper difference with Kant here: that the highest good consists in the equal cultivation and synthesis of sensibility and reason, individuality and universality. He then puts us further off the scent by appealing to Fichte’s concept of Wechselwirkung, according to which there is a mutual interaction between reason and sensibility, where their activity and passivity are in an inverse ratio to one another (348n). Prima facie, then, it seems that Schiller’s ally is Fichte, and that his sole target Kant. Such a conclusion would ﬁt well with one interpretation of the Ästhetische Briefe, which has especially stressed its Fichtean dimension.⁴⁹ We know that Schiller used Fichte in his study of Kant,⁵⁰ and that he uses Fichtean concepts in his deduction of beauty. Moreover, the Briefe contains two very positive references to Fichte’s works, the 1794 Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre and 1793 Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (316n, 348n). It is not surprising, therefore, that the foundation of Schiller’s aesthetics has been seen as essentially Fichtean, and the Ästhetische Briefe as ‘the unwritten Fichtean aesthetic’.⁵¹ The Fichtean interpretation of the Ästhetische Briefe has been pushed much too far, however. Nowhere are its limits more clearly evident than in the fourth and sixteenth letters where Schiller formulates his concept of culture. A close reading of these passages shows that Schiller was not applying Fichte’s principles but actually taking issue with them. Schiller’s concept of culture is really the antithesis of Fichte’s, and indeed it was probably developed in reaction against it. This becomes evident as soon as we consider Fichte’s concept of culture and compare it with that of Schiller. In his 1794 Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, Fichte teaches that the goal of culture is to develop our rationality to such an extent that all individuality disappears and we become one single inﬁnite being. We must realize our absolute independence from nature, Fichte declares, and we do so only when we ⁴⁹ See Hans-Georg Pott, Die Schöne Freiheit (Munich: Fink, 1980). Pott has generalized and articulated an assumption common to almost all Schiller scholarship: that Schiller made uncritical use of Fichte’s principles and concepts in the Briefe. This assumption is apparent in, e.g., Wilkinson and Willoughby, 227. ⁵⁰ See Schiller to Körner, July 4, 1794, NA XXVII, 20. ⁵¹ Pott, Schöne Freiheit, 7, 16.

146

Schiller as Philosopher

learn ‘to suppress and eradicate’ (zu unterdrücken und auszutilgen) the inclinations of sensibility.⁵² Furthermore, in the third part of his Grundlage, Fichte casts the ego in an endless struggle against nature, which he sees only as an obstacle to its inﬁnite striving. In both these texts—the very ones Schiller cites so approvingly— Fichte states just the views Schiller chastises in the fourth and thirteenth letters. It is scarcely credible that Schiller, who knew both works so well, was not aware of such a fundamental difference. To be sure, Fichte formulated the concept of Wechselwirkung, which Schiller uses and explicitly acknowledges in developing his own position. Still, these facts alone are not so signiﬁcant; more signiﬁcant is the use Schiller made of the concept. Schiller gave this concept a very different meaning from Fichte, who was very far from regarding Wechselwirkung as the ideal state for a human being. The highest goal of the Fichtean ego is not the harmony of our rational and sensible natures, as it was for Schiller, but the complete development of our rationality, the total realization of our power of freedom so that we overcome all nature and sensibility. In the ﬁrst part of the Grundlage Fichte explores in depth his concept of Wechselwirkung, only to reject it in the end because it does not explain the passivity of sensibility or the activity of reason. The heart of Fichte’s argument in the 1794 Wissenschaftslehre really rests with his concept of inﬁnite striving, according to which the ego forever struggles against nature, attempting to dominate and destroy it. Once we consider all these points, Schiller’s appeal to the concept of Wechselwirkung proves to be an implicit internal critique of Fichte. Schiller seems to be saying that Fichte, by continuing to understand reason as dominating sensibility, has failed to follow through the implications of his own concept. Although they have opposing concepts of culture, it does not follow that Schiller was actually taking issue with Fichte. A difference in principle is one thing, but awareness of it, let alone a dispute about it, is quite another. There is strong evidence, however, that Schiller was keenly aware of his differences with Fichte, and that they had become a bone of contention between them. The evidence comes from Schiller’s June 24, 1795 letter to Fichte, where he explained his reasons for rejecting Fichte’s essay ‘Ueber Geist und Buchstab in der Philosophie’ for the Horen.⁵³ This letter sparked a bitter—and all too explicit—quarrel between Schiller and Fichte, which essentially concerns the qualities of philosophical writing.⁵⁴ Understandably, it is usually in this regard that this dispute has been studied. However, there were other issues in this dispute, and one is especially revealing in the present context. This issue concerns philosophical psychology, or more speciﬁcally the theory of human drives. In his essay Fichte sets forth a general taxonomy of the basic drives or forms of volition. Fichte recognizes fundamentally only one kind of drive, of which all ⁵² Fichte, ed. I. H. Fichte Werke (Berlin: Veit, 1845), VI, 298. ⁵⁴ See Appendix 1 below.

⁵³ NA XXVII, 200–3.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

147

more speciﬁc drives are only an application. He understands drive in general as the most primitive form of the striving to be independent, to become a completely rational being.⁵⁵ He distinguishes three more speciﬁc drives, all of which are variations of this single drive. There is the drive toward knowledge, which arises when we strive to know an object independent of our representations; there is the practical drive, which comes from the attempt to make the object conform to our representations; and there is the aesthetic drive, which consists in the interest in the representation as such, regardless of whether it conforms to the object or is used to change the object. Fichte insists that all drives are in the strict sense practical, arising from the attempt to determine ourselves in the world (279); and he understands aesthetic pleasure as arising from the contingent harmony between the world and our own striving for independence (282). Schiller ﬁnds Fichte’s classiﬁcation of drives to be arbitrary and artiﬁcial. The whole basis for these distinctions, he complains, is left vague and mysterious (NA XXVII, 202). He notes that Fichte’s classiﬁcation does not allow for a sensible drive. What he especially dislikes, however, is that it makes the aesthetic drive only a function of the single fundamental drive toward independence. For Schiller, this is far too reductionist; the central faculty in the Ästhetische Briefe had now been limited to a subordinate role. On all these grounds, then, it is necessary to reject the view that Schiller derived his theory of drives from Fichte.⁵⁶ We can now better understand Schiller’s reluctance to publish Fichte’s essay in the Horen. He had already chosen the Horen as the vehicle for the Ästhetische Briefe. But Fichte’s understanding of aesthetics, and the realm of culture, was completely opposed to his own. Fichte had made aesthetics into an epiphenomenon of practical reason alone, whereas Schiller had insisted that it is the source of harmony between reason and sensibility. Schiller could not publish Fichte’s essay, then, without also undermining his own.

10. THE T WO FORMS OF BEAUT Y Having engaged in a very abstract transcendental argument from Letters XI to XV, Schiller steps down to a more concrete level in Letters XVI and XVII. The deduction of beauty in Letters XI–XV considered human nature as such, the ideal form of humanity, which consists in the perfect balance of its powers. But, as Schiller reiterates at the beginning of XVI, this is only an ideal or goal, a regulative rather than constitutive principle. Letters XVI and XVII will now consider the human being as he is in reality, under speciﬁc empirical conditions. When we consider human nature under such conditions, Schiller explains, we always ﬁnd ⁵⁵ Fichte, ‘Über Geist und Buchstab in der Philosophie’, Werke VIII, 277. ⁵⁶ Pace Von Wiese, Schiller, 487.

148

Schiller as Philosopher

an imbalance, a ﬂuctuation or oscillation (Schwankung), where one drive dominates over the other (360). The argument from Letters XVI and XVII shifts from the transcendental to the causal plane, moving from the speculative question about the beauty of human nature to the empirical question about the effects of beauty on human nature. The shift in argument is self-conscious, explicit and deliberate. Schiller explains in Letter XVI that he is now considering the causal question to see how an actual human being, who lives under speciﬁc circumstances, approaches the status of ideal beauty (364). This shift is also the attempt to fulﬁll an implicit promise in Letter X to resolve the dispute about the effects of beauty. Schiller said there that he could resolve this dispute only after clarifying the nature of beauty itself; now, having dispatched that task, he duly turns to the dispute itself. But if the shift in question is careful and deliberate, the same cannot be said for Schiller’s answer to it. His attempt to settle this issue proves to be—for reasons we shall now see—one of the most confused sections of the Briefe. To resolve this dispute, Schiller distinguishes in Letter XVII between two different kinds of beauty and discusses the effect of each of them. There is a melting or relaxing beauty and a tensing or energetic beauty. Relaxing beauty prevents each power from overstepping its limits, and tensing beauty stretches each power to its limits. Since they have such opposing effects, the opposing faculties stay in balance and there is an equal interchange between them (361). The task of relaxing beauty is to make us less tense; the task of tensing beauty is to make us less relaxed. While the decadent or languid need tensing beauty, the stiff or stressed need relaxing beauty. Schiller’s account of the forms of beauty and their different effects is essentially an application of the medical theories of John Brown, which were very popular in Germany in the eighteenth century, and which Schiller probably studied in the Karlschule.⁵⁷ According to Brown, health consists in ﬁnding a balance in the nervous system beween stimulation and relaxation; there are two kinds of diseases, sthenic and asthenic, which arise from disturbing this balance, from either overor under-stimulating the nervous system. The medical background behind Letter XVII shows that Schiller understood aesthetic education as a kind of therapy, as a cure for nervous ailments. Schiller believed that the application of his aesthetic therapy would allow a person to approach the ideal of humanity. He explains in letter XVII that there are two general ways in which a speciﬁc empirical person will fail to match the ideal of humanity. Perfection consists in the energetic harmony of his sensibility and reason. Hence we can fail to meet that ideal in two ways: (1) there is a lack of harmony or (2) there is a lack of energy. Both of these problems are resolved through beauty. It restores harmony to those who are tense, and it restores energy ⁵⁷ See Kenneth Dewhurst and Nigel Reeves, Friedrich Schiller: Medicine, Psychology, Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 79, 359.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

149

to those who are languid (364). There is something akilter in Schiller’s explanation here. In Letter XVI both relaxing and tensing beauty were means of restoring harmony; in Letter XVII, however, relaxing beauty alone is the means of restoring harmony while tensing beauty is the means of restoring energy. Schiller laid great stress on his distinction between the forms of beauty, so much so that in Letter XVI he even claims that it resolves the dispute about the inﬂuence of beauty (362). Since, however, Schiller does not explain this dispute, it is difﬁcult to determine how the distinction resolves anything. He says that the dispute arose because people took one form of beauty alone and generalized from it as if it held for beauty in general. From this remark one can infer that some people think that all beauty is melting, so that it prevents someone from exerting their powers, and that other people think that all beauty is energetic, so that it stimulates people to some form of excess. In this case, the point of the distinction would be to show that the effects of beauty cancel each other and so restore balance to human nature. It is necessary to stress, however, that this is only a hypothetical reconstruction, because Schiller provides no explicit account of how the distinction resolves any dispute. Unfortunately, the Augustenburger Briefe do not shed much light on Schiller’s meaning. In his November 11 letter to Augustenburg, Schiller does explain in much more detail a dispute about the effects of the arts; but it is not the same dispute that he seems to have in mind in Letter XVI of the Briefe. In the November 11 letter the dispute is between those who defend beauty because it tames and reﬁnes sensibility, and those who attack beauty because it weakens energy of character. The resolution of the dispute, Schiller explains, consists in determining the speciﬁc need or faculty one is talking about. The relaxing effect of beauty is beneﬁcial for sensibility, because it tempers its urges; but it is deleterious for reason, because it weakens its guard against temptation. In the November 11 letter Schiller does not develop a distinction in the kinds of beauty but regards all beauty as melting or relaxing; he makes it the role of the sublime to have a stimulating or arousing effect on our reason. It is clear, though, that the role of the sublime is later assumed by tensing or energetic beauty. These kinds of vascillations and ambiguities are characteristic of Schiller’s discussion of the kinds of beauty in Letters XVI and XVII. The worst is still to come. In the ﬁnal paragraph of Letter XVI Schiller declares that in the course of his enquiry he will discuss the effects of melting beauty on those who are tense, then the effects of energizing beauty on those who are relaxed. After explaining these two kinds of effects, he will then ascend to consider the generic concept of beauty, dissolving both kinds of beauty into a single ideal beauty (363). But, as many scholars have pointed out, nowhere in the Briefe does Schiller deliver on his promise. He does not consider the speciﬁc effects of each kind of beauty, but joins them together at the beginning of Letter XVIII under the general head of beauty (365). Letters XVII to XXVII in the ﬁrst edition in the Horen originally had the title ‘Melting Beauty’, but Schiller removed this in the second edition. Here we

150

Schiller as Philosopher

have some of the clearest evidence how Schiller’s plan for the work changed in the course of writing it.⁵⁸

11. FREEDOM AS BEAUT Y After his brief descent into the depths of concrete empirical reality, Schiller returns to ‘the realm of speculation’ in Letter XVIII. Once again his focus is upon the general concept of beauty. The point behind this new transcendental excursion, which begins with Letter XVIII and does not end until Letter XXI, is to determine how the arts have their special effect on the mind. More speciﬁcally, Schiller explains that he wants to make sense of how melting beauty can relax the constraints of both sensibility and reason. Although Schiller is never so explicit, what he is attempting to do now is connect the genetic and transcendental questions. The argument from Letters XVIII to XXI is transcendental, showing us the conditions for the possibility of beauty; the enquiry from Letters XXI to XXII, however, is genetic, determining how the arts act upon us and realize these conditions. 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. In letter XVIII Schiller begins his transcendental enquiry by pointing out that beauty consists in a middle state, or mediating condition, between matter and form, passivity and activity. But the question arises how such a middle state or mediating condition is possible, because matter and form, passivity and activity, are opposites (366). The concept of beauty, understood as a mediating condition or middle state, seems contradictory, because there is an inﬁnite distance between sensing and thinking, passivity and activity (366). The question now confronting Schiller takes on a paradoxical form: How is a unity of opposites possible? How is it possible to unite opposites without contradiction? Schiller lays down two requirements to explain such a unity. First, it is necessary to maintain the opposition in all its strictness and determinacy; otherwise, we do not unite opposites. Second, it is necessary to establish an indivisible unity, so that both opposites disappear in an indivisible third term; otherwise, the opposites are not united (366). Both points together mean that we must not stress unity at the expense of difference nor difference at the expense of unity. The problem is how to preserve and cancel the differences as parts of a single whole. We must preserve the differences because there is a real distinction between them; but we must also cancel them because they are completely opposed and cannot as such ⁵⁸ Even Wilkinson and Willoughby, the staunchest defenders of the integrity of the text, themselves admit that this is ‘a major ﬂaw’. See their ‘Introduction’, lviii.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

151

be united (366). It has often been remarked that Schiller’s problem here, and the requirements he laid down for its solution, anticipate the later German idealists.⁵⁹ It is difﬁcult to determine how much Schelling, Hölderlin and Hegel were actually inﬂuenced by Schiller, but the parallels are indeed remarkable. Schiller stresses that this problem is crucial, indeed ‘the point on which the whole question of beauty must ultimately turn’ (366). If we can resolve this apparent contradiction—if we can think through the idea of a unity of opposites— we will ﬁnd ‘the thread that guides us through the whole labyrinth of aesthetics’. The problem of aesthetics so far, he maintains, is that aestheticians stress one aspect of the unity of opposites at the expense of the other. They emphasize unity without difference or difference without unity. While the empiricists stress the aspect of unity by appealing to feeling, they underrate the importance of difference because they fear an analytical intellect. The rationalists, for their part, emphasize the aspect of difference in appealing to the analytical intellect; but they underplay the role of unity because they fear the confusion of intellectual distinctions by feeling (367). As Schiller has explained his problem so far, it seems to be entirely aesthetic, simply a question of determining the conditions of beauty. But in Letter XIX Schiller considers another important issue, which from now onwards plays a decisive role in his reﬂections. This is nothing less than the problem of freedom itself. He introduces this problem in reﬂecting on the claim—crucial to his programme of aesthetic education—that beauty makes the transition from sensing to thinking. He worries that this would seem to give sensibility an inﬂuence upon reason, and so undermine the possibility of freedom. Schiller’s ﬁrst response to this worry is to reafﬁrm that there is a basic difference between sensibility and reason. When we say that beauty makes the transition from sensing to thinking, this does not mean ﬁlling in the gap between them, which is inﬁnite (369–70). He stresses that thinking operates autonomously insofar as it excludes all sensibility acting upon it (370). Beauty can provide the transition between these faculties, he continues, only insofar as it stimulates thinking to follow its own purely rational laws independent of sensibility. He holds that the senses have only a negative power vis-á-vis thinking, i.e. if we remove the matter of thinking supplied by sensibility, we have nothing to think about; but they do not affect how we think about this material once it is given. The power of thinking is affected by sensibility only in the respect that its activity decreases as that of sensibility increases; but there is no change in the nature of its activity or the laws according to which it operates. This might stave off worries about determinism.⁶⁰ But, if so, Schiller still admits that he has solved one problem only to create another. For it seems that he ⁵⁹ See, e.g., Richard Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel (Tübingen: Mohr, 1924), II, 45–53; and Walter Kaufmann, Hegel (New York: Anchor, 1966), 18–31. ⁶⁰ We will investigate these issues in more detail in chap. 7.6.

152

Schiller as Philosopher

has stressed the independence of reason at the cost of the unity of the mind, its stature as an indivisible whole (370). He has emphasized the aspect of difference at the expense of unity, falling into one of the very pitfalls he has warned against. How, then, are we to conceive the unity of the mind amid this opposition? Contrary to his earlier claim in Letter XIII that these drives are not opposed in their objects (347), Schiller now states that both drives do strive for different objects (371). But insofar as they both aim at opposing ends, their effects cancel one another and the will maintains a complete freedom between them. It is the will (Wille), he now proclaims, that relates as a single power to both of these drives. Neither of them can act as a power toward the other on its own (372). Schiller then declares that ‘There is in man no other power than his will’ (372). As if to underline its importance, Schiller will repeat the same declaration later in Letter XX (374). According to Letter XIX, then, the will is the mediating power between sense and reason. It allows each of them to have the effect it does, because neither can operate on its own. They work, as Schiller later says, only insofar as the will allows them to do so. We also know from Letter XIX that unity will be achieved by the will holding both drives in balance, by allowing them to neutralize one another. The fundamental source of unity therefore proves to be the will. It is the will that stands above both drives, making unity between them possible; and it is the will that protects each drive by preventing one from dominating the other, also making difference possible. During his reﬂections on the unity of opposites in Letter XIX, Schiller makes an important qualiﬁcation to his theory, one of general signiﬁcance for understanding his philosophy as a whole. Following Kant, Schiller insists that, as a transcendental philosopher, he has the power to explain only the possibility of experience, and not how things themselves are possible (371). Since experience consists in both the moment of unity and opposition, he has to show how such unity-in-opposition is possible; and to show its possibility means distinguishing the mind itself from both drives, which are only its parts (371). But Schiller stresses here, and in several other passages (cf. 371, 356, 372), that he is not a metaphysician who has the power to provide a metaphysical explanation of the interaction of mind and body. This distinction between the transcendental and metaphysical is one of the most important dividing markers between the young and mature Schiller; and it should make us pause carefully before adopting a metaphysical interpretation of his thought. The chief problem with such interpretations is that they ride roughshod over Schiller’s explicit observance of Kantian regulative constraints in the Briefe. Whatever the precise status of Schiller’s argument, his reﬂections on the unity of opposites in Letters XVIII and XIX now reach a very important result, which is very easy to overlook because it is tucked away in a footnote at the end of Letter XIX (373). The result is Schiller’s new concept of freedom, one implicit in his

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

153

thinking ever since Anmut und Würde, and which now appears explicitly for the ﬁrst time. In this footnote he explains that 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.

154

Schiller as Philosopher 12. THE AESTHETIC CONDITION

In Letter XX Schiller introduces his difﬁcult concept of the aesthetic condition (375). This concept plays two pivotal roles in the Briefe: it explains the unity of opposites; and it resolves the dispute about the effects of beauty. Schiller explains that the aesthetic condition is that state or condition of mind (Stimmung) where reason and sensibility stimulate yet limit one another, where they perfectly balance one another through mutual opposition. The aesthetic condition is therefore a unity of opposites. Each opposite is preserved yet cancelled within a whole: preserved, as one necessary part of the whole; cancelled, in its claim to be the entire whole. In Letter XXI Schiller describes the aesthetic condition as one of active determinability. In explaining this concept, Schiller ﬁrst focuses upon its genus, determinability. There are two forms of determinability. One is where the mind is not determined by anything at all because it is completely abstract, excluding all determination; and another is where it is not determined by anything at all because it is completely concrete, including all determination (276–7). The ﬁrst abstract kind of determinability is characteristic of sense before any sense impression, and of rationality after it has abstracted from all conditions of sensibility. The second concrete kind of determinability is aesthetic. It is the whole of both kinds of determination, and so it includes the determinations of both reason and sensibility. It is indeterminate insofar as it is not exclusively one determination rather than another; but it is concrete insofar as it includes both within itself. It is unlimited not because it excludes but because it includes all determination; in other words, it is not an empty but a concrete inﬁnity. Schiller then explains the species of the genus, or what he means by active determinability. Passive determinability is the state of the mind before the impressions of sense, before it receives its determinations from outside, from an object acting upon it. Active determinability is the state of the mind after the will has so controlled its powers that no one has dominance over the other and there is no exclusive direction to its activity. As a condition of active determinability, therefore, the aesthetic condition stresses the central role of the will as the power that imparts balance to a human being. It is important not to confuse Schiller’s concept of the aesthetic condition with that of the beautiful soul. While the aesthetic condition is only a state of mind, the beautiful soul is the human being as a whole. The aesthetic condition is an attribute of will, whereas the beautiful soul is an attribute of character. We cannot equate the aesthetic condition with the beautiful soul for one fundamental reason: unlike the aesthetic condition, the beautiful soul acts with grace, which cannot be regarded as completely indeterminate regarding the speciﬁc direction of our activity. When we act with grace we have incorporated moral principles within our character and make a habit out of virtue. We therefore impart a speciﬁc direction to our activity, namely a moral one. We should not attempt to conﬂate these concepts by claiming

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

155

that grace does not involve any speciﬁc kind of moral action. For Schiller attributes a much wider freedom to the aesthetic condition, which might not act morally at all. Hence, he gives the will the freedom to act or not act on either of its drives, the form as well as sense drive. The will is not determined by the law that governs the form drive but stands above it, having a complete freedom from both (371, 35) It is indeed precisely by its standing above both drives, and not being committed to either, that the will achieves its work of limiting and balancing them. Schiller’s argument here mirrors that in his earlier 1793 essay, ‘Über das Pathetische’, where he stressed that aesthetic experience derives its essential quality simply from the exercise of freedom, from an act of choice alone, whether that is moral or immoral.⁶¹ Having analyzed the aesthetic condition in Letter XXI, Schiller now returns to the causal question in Letter XXII. He again considers the effects that works of art have upon us. The chief point now is that a work of art acts on us to produce the aesthetic condition (380). If a work of art has aesthetic value, it will produce within the mind a state of harmony and equilibrium, the state of mind characteristic of the aesthetic condition. It should now be clear that Schiller’s concept of the aesthetic condition is analogous to Kant’s account of aesthetic contemplation in the Kritik der Urteilskraft. Kant understands aesthetic contemplation as a state of play between sensibility and understanding, which is indeterminate because we cannot identify our aesthetic experience with any determinate concepts of the understanding. 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. In Letter XXII Schiller applies these results to the dispute about beauty. Just as those are right who say that beauty is fruitless, because it leads to no speciﬁc result, so those are correct who say that beauty is fruitful, because it can lead to any speciﬁc result (379). Insofar as beauty does not favor any speciﬁc function of humanity exclusively, it is favorable to all of them. The defenders and detractors of beauty both measure beauty by the wrong standard, attempting to justify or ⁶¹ This text will be analyzed in more detail below, at 6.9.

156

Schiller as Philosopher

condemn it according to the results it produces, the speciﬁc direction it gives to our activity. But the aesthetic condition is indeterminate, and for just this reason we cannot identify it with any speciﬁc result whatsoever. 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. We can now see that Schiller’s defense of beauty in terms of freedom involves two distinct senses of that concept. We have seen how, at the end of Letter XXI, Schiller maintains that freedom consists in beauty, where freedom means acting according to our whole nature, the complete self-realization of all our human powers. But in the course of his argument in Letter XXII Schiller applies another concept of freedom when discussing the aesthetic condition. This is freedom understood as choice, the indeterminate power to stand above all courses of action and to select one or the other. We cannot equate this concept of freedom with the earlier one because it does not necessarily imply acting according to our moral and sensible natures; it might even involve acting contrary to one or the other. Schiller’s argument in defense of beauty as freedom is complex because it implies either of these concepts. Summa summarum, there are three concepts of beauty in the Ästhetische Briefe: moral freedom, which consists in moral autonomy, the power to act according to reason alone; anthropological freedom, which is the power of self-realization, of acting according to our totality of our rational and sensible powers; and indeterminability or choice, which is the power to choose between alternative courses of action, whether they are rational or sensible.

13. THE CRITIQUE OF ROUSSEAU Crucial to Schiller’s defense of art in the Ästhetische Briefe is his protracted and complex anthropological argument that art constitutes the crucial transitional stage between natural and civilized man. Schiller gave this argument a pivotal role in the

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

157

Briefe: its exposition is the central purpose of Letters XXIII to XXVII. He announces its central thesis in a single sentence in Letter XXIII: ‘there is no other way to make sensible man rational except by ﬁrst making him aesthetic’ (383). Seen in broader historical terms, Schiller’s argument attempts to supersede Lessing, making art rather than revelation the crucial force in the education of humanity. Yet Schiller’s chief quarrel in these letters is not with Lessing but a much more formidable adversary: Rousseau. Though it is never made explicit, throughout his argument Schiller takes issue with Jean Jacques, whose indictment of the arts in the ﬁrst and second Discours was a severe and inescapable challenge.⁶² Schiller’s argument takes on point and meaning only when it is seen as a response to Rousseau’s cultural pessimism. In the beginning of Letter XXIV Schiller sketches the basic theory of human development behind his argument. He explains that there are three stages in the development of the individual and species that must be gone through in sequence. In his physical stage, man suffers under the power of nature; he lives strictly according to his physical desires. In the aesthetic stage, he begins to transcend the power of nature by taking pleasure in his own activity and the qualities of pure forms. And in the moral stage, he ﬁnally surmounts the power of nature and acts according to rational principle (388). Although it refers to stages of growth, it is important to see that Schiller’s argument is not really historical. The stages of growth do not intend to describe actual periods of history; still less do they assume that there is progress in history. Schiller is explicit in Letter XXIV that his stages are really only a philosophical construction to make the growth of culture and rationality comprehensible (389–90). Human beings never existed entirely in one of the stages; there are elements of them all in everyone, so that there are remnants of nature in the most civilized man, foreshadowings of civilization in the most natural man. Schiller also warns us that the state of nature, which cannot be found among any particular people at any particular time, never really existed; it is only an idea, though one that corresponds exactly with nature in some respects (389–90). Schiller’s attempt to explain the transition from the physical to the moral stage is signiﬁcant in itself because it addresses an outstanding problem with Rousseau’s theory of human development. In the second Discours, Rousseau had the greatest difﬁculty in explaining the transition from the state of nature to civil society. He made natural man live in such a state of happiness and perfection that there seemed no reason for him to ever leave it for civil society. In the end, Rousseau resorts to natural disasters—ﬂoods, droughts and hardwinters—to explain why natural man is eventually forced to abandon his idyllic independence and to rely upon the aid of others.⁶³ ⁶² Although Schiller does not mention Rousseau by name, there is an allusion to him in Letter X, NA XX, 337, 17, and an even more unmistakable one in the November 11, 1793 letter to Augustenburg, NA XXVI, 302, 10–21. ⁶³ Rousseau, Œuvres, III, 171.

158

Schiller as Philosopher

It was this very problem for which Schiller believed he had a solution. Ironically, the solution lay in recognizing the signiﬁcance of the arts, the very force Rousseau had seen as the source of the problem of civilization. Schiller begins his argument in Letters XXIV–XXVI by an account of man in his physical stage or the state of nature. He maintains that in this condition man is fundamentally selﬁsh, concerned entirely with his own self-preservation. Not knowing human dignity, he does not honour it in others; and knowing only his own selﬁsh desires, he fears others because he assumes they have similar desires (389). Although man lives in unity with nature in the physical stage, he also exists in complete dependence upon it, because he depends on nature to provide him with the means to satisfy his desires (394). ‘What is man without all culture?’, Schiller asks rhetorically in his November 21 letter to Augustenburg (314). And he answers: he is the most perverse egoist among the animals, a pathetic creature completely enslaved by his sensible needs. Not having the power to restrain himself, he immediately snatches whatever nature offers him; but, not having developed his intelligence to know how to get what he wants, he also suffers when nature provides nothing. In stressing the egoism and dependence of natural man, Schiller takes a position diametrically opposed to Rousseau. First and foremost, Rousseau had stressed the independence and self-sufﬁciency of man in the state of nature, his power to satisfy all his desires on his own without needing to rely upon others. Nowhere in Schiller’s account, however, do we ﬁnd a place for Rousseau’s concept of natural freedom. For Schiller, freedom is fundamentally and necessarily an acquisition of culture and moral development. The point is worth stressing because Schiller is so often regarded as subscribing to an idealistic conception of man’s natural state, as if the task of culture were to return to a primitive paradise that we have lost.⁶⁴ Schiller’s emphasis upon man’s natural selﬁshness is also noteworthy because it shows that he does not share Rousseau’s belief in natural goodness. Rousseau’s concept of natural goodness essentially rests upon his belief that pity is natural, that human beings have a natural disposition to sympathize with the suffering of others. Schiller admits in his November 11, 1793 letter to Augustenburg that there are such feelings, and he even calls them ‘the most effective spring in the clockwork of humanity’ (308). In the ﬁrst edition of the Briefe Schiller had even cited Rousseau’s famous statement ‘Si c’est la raison qui fait l’homme, c’est le sentiment, qui le conduit’.⁶⁵ Nevertheless, despite agreeing with Rousseau about the existence and important role of these passions, Schiller does not draw the same conclusion from them. The mere fact that these feelings are natural, he argues, means that they have no moral merit.⁶⁶ Here, to prove his point, Schiller invokes a ⁶⁴ Most notably, see Wilkinson and Willoughby, ‘Introduction’, lxxxvi. ⁶⁵ Rousseau, La Nouvelle Héloïse, III, vii, Œuvres III, 319. ⁶⁶ On these grounds it is necessary to reject R. D. Miller’s interpretation of the Ästhetische Briefe as an apology for the ‘pure nature’ of humanity, which consists in feelings of sympathy innate in human

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

159

fundamental Kantian principles: For an act to have moral value, it must proceed from an act of will or choice and not from an implanted natural disposition. In effect, then, Schiller was saying against Rousseau: If there is no merit to the feelings, there cannot be any such thing as natural moral goodness. Assuming that the state of nature is one of selﬁshness and dependence, how does natural man ever emerge out of it and discover his independence according to moral laws? The transition seems to demand something miraculous, a complete transformation of human nature. This was indeed the crux for all modern natural law theories, which had to explain the reasons for leaving the state of nature and entering civil society. In Letter XXIII Schiller begins by noting the problem. He clearly states the basic challenge confronting his argument: explaining the transition from the natural to the aesthetic stage. It is much more easy for man to move from the aesthetic to the moral stage, he admits, than from the natural stage to the aesthetic. In the aesthetic stage man has already raised himself above nature because he has learned the love of form and the need for restraint; but in the physical stage the might of nature still prevails because he has not learned this love or restraint. Hence, Schiller states that aesthetic man can act rightly if he only wants to, but physical man becomes aesthetic only through a transformation. If aesthetic man only needs the right stimulus and inspiration to become moral, physical man needs nothing less than to acquire a new nature (384–5). Given such a gap between natural and moral man, one wonders how it is possible to bridge it at all. Without yet providing a detailed explanation, Schiller assures us that the transition is possible because it does not violate the laws of his natural existence, and indeed already takes place within their limits (386). He notes that what counts in the realm of nature is what one does rather than how one does it; nature determines only the content, not the form of his actions. This means that in the aesthetic stage natural man does not have to renounce his desires; but he will learn how to execute them in a more pleasing way. What, then, is the precise mechanism of this transition? How does natural man move to the aesthetic stage? The crux of Schiller’s explanation appears in Letters XXVI and XXVII, a denser version of the much clearer account in his November 21 letter to Augustenburg. The savage ﬁrst announces his entrance to humanity, he declares, through his love of decoration, his pleasure in illusion. When the savage decorates himself, he for the ﬁrst time takes pleasure in mere form for its own sake, and so he ceases to value things solely because they satisfy his physical needs. The pleasure he takes in decorating himself also marks the ﬁrst exercise of his creative powers, which are no longer employed solely to ﬁnd the means for his subsistence. Once the savage discovers decoration, he begins to consider the effect that his appearance has upon others; and he ﬁnds that he can better win the object beings. Interpreting Schiller along Rousseauian lines, Miller understands these feelings as providing an independent and sui generis source of moral value independent of the moral law. See his A Study of Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Harrogate: The Duchy Press, 1986), 15, 35, 37, 42, 53, 56.

160

Schiller as Philosopher

of his sexual desire through his appearance rather than through brute force. Now that he takes pleasure in his form, he also takes pleasure in the form of others, and he begins to choose others according to their appearance rather than according to his needs. This pleasure in appearances, Schiller argues in Letter XVII, marks the very beginning of polite society. What happens between sexual partners becomes the model for all society. We ﬁnd that we are more likely to get what we want from others by pleasing rather than coercing them. Hence, Schiller’s account of the mechanism of transition from the physical to the aesthetic stresses several factors: (a) the activation of our active powers in creating pleasing forms; (b) the exercise of choice and personal preference in choosing one form over another; and (c) the elevation beyond the realm of sheer utility in taking pleasure in forms for their own sake. These factors are all decisive, he maintains, in the development of rationality, in recognizing the signiﬁcance of the realm of form, which will eventually become moral principles. As early as in his second dissertation, Schiller developed a concept to account for man’s transition from the physical to moral stage. There he already sketched a short ‘universal history’ about how the most spiritual drives in a human being grow gradually and inevitably from the development of his physical drives and the means to satisfy them. Schiller explains that the mechanism by which natural man becomes civilized rests upon what he calls ‘transference’ (Uebertragung) (XX, 51). Transference occurs when what is originally a mere means to the satisfaction of physical needs becomes through repetition and habit an end in itself. Originally, natural man takes pleasure only in what satisﬁes his physical desires; he values intellectual activity only because it helps him to determine the means to satisfy these desires. Soon, however, he begins to take pleasure in the mere exercise of his intellectual powers, which becomes an end in itself. This pleasure in the exercise of his own intellectual powers ﬁrst takes an aesthetic form, Schiller implies, because natural man is excited by beauty (51). Though it is still not a general theory, he anticipates his later doctrine that the arts are the crucial transition from natural to civilized man (54–5). Whatever the precise mechanism of transition, Schiller’s argument again reveals its point and meaning through contrast with Rousseau. Its general thesis is anti-Rousseauian: that through the arts, man does not lose but gains his freedom. Schiller’s account of the mechanism of transition from man’s physical to moral stage stresses how he, through the development of his taste, escapes his dependence on nature and develops his active moral powers. The description of how natural man takes pleasure in appearances is reminiscent of nothing more than Rousseau’s theory of the origins of amour-propre in the second Discours. This pleasure in appearances values people not for what they are but what they seem; and people cultivate appearances because they enjoy the esteem of others. But, despite these afﬁnities, there is a clear contrast in the conclusions Schiller and Rousseau draw from the rise of amour-propre. Rousseau sees amour-propre as the starting point for natural man’s loss of freedom; rather than remaining content

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

161

with his own natural independence, man begins to depend on others for his selfesteem. For Schiller, however, the rise of amour-propre is a crucial stage in the development of the love of pure form, which will eventually become human autonomy itself. Although Schiller’s argument in Letters XXIII–XXVII is a polemic against Rousseau, it is important to put it in perspective, to place it in the broader context of the work as a whole. Schiller does not completely deny Rousseau’s critique of culture; nor does he absolutely afﬁrm the value of the arts and sciences, as if freedom grew in direct proportion to their progress. For Schiller knew all too well that the rise of the arts and sciences had done as much to thwart as to realize freedom and civic virtue. The essential thrust of Letter VI is that the modern division of labour, which is the indispensable basis of all artistic and scientiﬁc progress, poses a grave threat to freedom and self-realization. As a student of Ferguson, Schiller keenly appreciated that the division of labour emasculates human beings, and that the transition from luxury to corruption is almost inevitable. So Rousseau had a point after all: insofar as it rests on the division of labour, the progress of the arts and sciences does pose the danger of corruption and servitude. But if Schiller concedes this much to Rousseau, what was the source of his quarrel with him? The basic difference came from their competing views of history. While Rousseau is a gloomy pessimist, Schiller is a cautious optimist. For Schiller, the ultimate problem with Rousseau’s theory is its implication that there is a direct proportion between luxury and corruption, its assumption that the progress of the arts and sciences must lead to slavery and vice. Like Ferguson, Schiller questions whether the progress of the arts and sciences necessarily leads to this result; he thinks that they might or might not, depending on the use that people make of them, the value they lay upon them.⁶⁷ The danger lies not in the sheer existence of the arts and the sciences but in making them tools for the pursuit of luxury alone.

14. THE AESTHETIC STATE The Ästhetische Briefe closes in Letter XXVII with Schiller’s remarkable utopian vision: the aesthetic state.⁶⁸ It is a surprise ending because nowhere in the Letter does Schiller prepare his reader for it. The vision appears suddenly in the ﬁnal pages, after a long discussion of aesthetic education. Previously, Schiller devoted much effort to explaining the ideal human being, but he treated this being in isolation, as if it were a self-sufﬁcient unit. Now we learn that this being will realize its nature only in an aesthetic society and state. For all Schiller’s liberalism, his ⁶⁷ Ferguson, Essay, Part IV, Sec. I, 172–5; Part V, Sec. III–IV (203–20); Part VI, Sec III, 235–41. ⁶⁸ On the history of the concept, see Josef Chytry, The Aesthetic State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), xxxi–lxxiv.

162

Schiller as Philosopher

mistrust of the powers of government, he still held that the individual is a political animal, a being that realizes its nature only within the community and state. In this regard too, we should place Schiller in the republican tradition. Prior to Letter XXVII Schiller has very little to say about his ideal state. We learn that the ideal state must respect the individualities of its citizens (317), that the realm of conscience is sacred for it (316), and that it excludes privilege and autocracy (411). But nowhere does Schiller say anything speciﬁc about its constitution and institutions. We must not infer from this lack of detail, however, that Schiller excluded such detail in principle, as if his ideal were only poetic rather than political.⁶⁹ For, in a note in the original Horen edition, Schiller remarked that it is legitimate to demand that there should be a constitution for his aesthetic state; but he deferred the attempt to specify one for a later occasion (XXI, 247). 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. The fundamental law of the aesthetic state, Schiller says, is to give freedom through freedom (410). Such freedom is not simply the freedom of acting according to moral laws—rational freedom—but the freedom of acting according to our whole natures, the unity of reason and sensibility. To make sense of Schiller’s aesthetic state, it is necessary to examine more closely each of its opposing terms, the dynamic and ethical state. The dynamic state is essentially the natural state that Schiller portrayed in Letter III. He describes the natural state as a state of rights because each person demands the right to pursue their self-interest without interference from others. These rights are enforced through laws, by punishing those who would act contrary to them. Schiller calls this state ‘dynamic’ because it deals with physical forces. There are two such forces: the needs driving individuals to relate to one another, and the coercion used to enforce the law. The dynamic state concerns only the external actions of individuals, not their intentions or character. It is striking that this concept corresponds neatly with the liberal ‘watchguard state’. Since Schiller places the dynamic state at the bottom of his hierarchy, we can see how he is from endorsing traditional laissez-faire liberalism. Schiller’s ethical state is basically what Kant calls ‘the kingdom of ends’. As Kant deﬁnes this concept in the Grundlegung,⁷⁰ ‘a kingdom’ consists in ‘a systematic union of different rational beings under common laws’ (433). There are two fundamental principles of the kingdom of ends. First, the second formulation of ⁶⁹ Cf. Reiss, ‘Aesthetic State’ 39–40. Reiss’s claim that the aesthetic state is not Schiller’s political ideal—that he distinguishes the aesthetic state from the ideal republic—lacks textual support; indeed, is if ﬂatly contrary to the thrust of the ﬁnal pages of Letter XXVII. ⁷⁰ See AA IV, 433–5, 438–9.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

163

the categorical imperative, the principle that each person should be treated always as an end, never as a means. Second, the third formulation of the categorical imperative, the principle of autonomy. This principle states that each person should create the laws by which he lives, i.e. he should will to act according to universalizable maxims alone. Since each person in this kingdom makes these laws, everyone is a co-legislator. The principle of autonomy both liberates and restrains us: liberates us, because we are bound only by laws of our own making; and restrains us, because we are subject to these laws, i.e. obligated to obey them just as everyone else. This kingdom of ends differs from the dynamic state in at least three respects: (1) it considers intentions, not only actions; (2) it considers people as co-legislators, not simply as subjects of rights; and (3) it considers people as ends in themselves, never simply as means in the pursuit of self-interest. 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. Here again Schiller’s political thought is best understood in the republican tradition. The importance of patriotism—some affective basis of social and civil

164

Schiller as Philosopher

association—was much stressed by Machiavelli, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Ferguson. In Book 5, chapter 2, of the Esprit des lois, for example, Montesquieu is explicit that in a republic virtue consists in love of the republic and that such love is a feeling and not the result of knowledge.⁷¹ In Sur le Gouvernement de Pologne Rousseau stresses the importance of an education that instills love of the fatherland in all its citizens.⁷² And in his Institutes of Moral Philosophy Ferguson insisted that ‘The happiness of a people consists in the love of their country’.⁷³ The concept of an aesthetic state has been charged with having irrationalist and totalitarian implications.⁷⁴ It would seem that Schiller is indeed heading in this direction when he makes sentiment the basis of social bonds. For cannot sentiment be manipulated and controlled? And if it can be, does not Schiller’s aesthetic state justify, or ultimately lead to, the Fascist state? Such a criticism is unfounded, and for two basic reasons. First, it commits the classic mistake of seeing Schiller’s sentiments and feelings as natural and pathological rather than acquired and practical. It fails to see, in other words, that the sentiments of Schiller’s beautiful soul arise from internalizing and habitualizing moral laws, whose ultimate basis lies in reason. It is important to see that Schiller thinks that affection should not replace but support reason as the foundation of the state. Second, it confuses the reason or justiﬁcation of the laws with the impulse or incentive for executing them. Schiller already made this distinction in Letter VIII when he declared that reason is necessary to discover and establish the law while feeling is necessary to execute it (330). We confuse this distinction, however, if we think that Schiller holds feeling to be a sufﬁcient justiﬁcation for the law, i.e. if we think that whatever someone feels, or is made to feel, somehow justiﬁes the law. In the ﬁnal paragraph, Schiller asks whether his aesthetic state exists (412). He answers that the aesthetic state exists now as a need in every well-tuned soul, and as a reality in a few select circles, so that it has a status like the pure church and the pure republic. This has been read as a kind of elitism, as resignation to a grim political reality. But it is better read as a kind of realism, as recognition of the ideal’s purely regulative status. While Schiller realizes that his ideal will never become a reality, he still thinks that we ought to strive toward it. It is not elitist because it exists in need in every ﬁnely tuned soul, and because the select circles are those charged with educating all humanity toward this state.⁷⁵ To regard it as poetic ﬁction rather than a political ideal fails to recognize that the aesthetic state is an imperative based on Schiller’s fundamental ethical principles.⁷⁶ ⁷¹ Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), II, 274. ⁷² Rousseau, Œuvres III, 966. ⁷³ Ferguson, Institutes of Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh: Kincaid and Bellm 1769), Part VII, chap. Iii, sec. 3, 289–91. ⁷⁴ See de Man, ‘Kant and Schiller’, 154–5. From a different angle, see Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998), VII, 469–70. ⁷⁵ For a more detailed criticism of the elitism charge, see Steven Martinson, Harmonious Tension, The Writings of Friedrich Schiller (Newark: University of Deaware Press, 1996), 191–2. ⁷⁶ Pace Reiss, ‘Aesthetic State’, 39–40.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

165

15. THE UNIT Y OF THE WORK Now after our long examination of the content of the work we are ﬁnally in a position to resolve the protracted dispute about its unity. To do so, we must ﬁrst consider the most powerful argument against the work’s coherence. That case was made by Hans Lutz in his inﬂuential 1928 Schillers Anschauungen von Kultur und Natur. Lutz’s starting point was an observation made by many others before him: that in the Briefe Schiller treats the aesthetic both as means and end, both as an instrument to educate us toward reason and as an ideal that includes but supersedes reason.⁷⁷ But Lutz went much further with this observation than his predecessors, proposing a diagnosis for it and tracing its development in Schiller’s texts. Lutz ﬁnds the chief source of this tension in Schiller’s vascillation about his basic ethical ideals. According to Lutz, Schiller is sometimes a strict Kantian who gives reason authority over sensibility; but at other times he attempts to go beyond Kant’s rigorism with a more holistic ideal that unites reason and sensibility. Ambivalence about this basic issue, Lutz contends, made Schiller waver about many other issues in the Briefe, such as the meaning of freedom, beauty and the ends of history. Hence, Schiller vascillates between whether freedom is acting according to reason or acting according to our whole nature; whether beauty is a step toward perfection or the goal of perfection; whether the end of history is the state of reason or the aesthetic state; and so on. So, in Lutz’s view, the incoherence is pervasive and profound. Corresponding to Schiller’s basic ambivalence, Lutz ﬁnds two different layers or stages of the text, one deriving from the Augustenburger Briefe, where he says Schiller was a strict Kantian, and the other deriving from Anmut und Würde, which expounds his more holistic ideal. Although this ambivalence surfaces everywhere in the work, Lutz maintains that in some letters one aspect is more dominant then the other. The ﬁrst layer consists of letters II, III, V, IX, X, and XVI; and the second layer consists in letters IV, VI, VII, IX, XI–XV, XVII–XXII, and XXIII–XXVII.⁷⁸ Because these layers are so distinct and reﬂect incompatible ideals, Lutz concludes that it would be more accurate to speak of two texts rather than one.⁷⁹ Although Lutz pretends that his argument for the incoherence of the text is strictly inductive, deriving entirely from a close and detailed reading of all Schiller’s writings, the truth of the matter is that it is fundamentally deductive, beginning from one insufﬁciently examined assumption: that there is a basic conﬂict in Schiller’s ethical ideals. Proceeding according to this assumption, Lutz ⁷⁷ See, e.g., Kuno Fischer, Schiller als Philosoph (Leipzig: Fues Verlag, 1868), 79. The same point was later promulgated by Hermann Hettner in his inﬂuential Geschichte der deutschen Literatur im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin: Aufbau, 1979), II, 444. This work was ﬁrst published in 1862–70. ⁷⁸ Lutz, Schillers Anschauungen von Kultur und Natur, 221. ⁷⁹ Ibid., 224.

166

Schiller as Philosopher

reads the texts accordingly. But the crucial question is whether this assumption is tenable, at least on the grounds Lutz’s gives for it. There can be no doubt that, throughout the Ästhetische Briefe, Schiller does write from two perspectives, sometimes treating the aesthetic as a means toward morality and sometimes as an end in itself. This is essentially the difference between the moral and anthropological perspectives that Schiller alludes to in Letter IV. But is there really a contradiction between these perspectives? Surely, it is possible to treat the aesthetic as both means and end; some goods in life, viz. education and health, are valuable both as means and as ends. It is remarkable that Lutz provides very little argument for his central assumption. His case for a contradiction between Schiller’s ethical ideals ultimately boils down to his interpretation of Schiller’s beautiful soul as a form of moral sentimentalism.⁸⁰ If the beautiful soul acts morally simply because of its natural and spontaneous feelings, there is indeed a conﬂict with Kant’s ethics of duty, which ﬁnds the ground of moral action in the rational will alone. But such an interpretation, we have already seen (3.2; 3.10), is the classic mistake regarding the beautiful soul. Like so many others, Lutz simply conﬂates pathological and practical feelings, tempermental and moral virtue. On this slender and frayed thread, Lutz’s philological castle perilously hangs. Lutz’s belief that there is a fundamental tension, not only a difference in perspective, in the Briefe, arises from his confusing several issues that Schiller himself had clearly separated in Anmut und Würde. There Schiller distinguished between three questions: ‘What are the basic principles of morality?’, ‘What are the conditions of moral action?’, and ‘What is the ideal human being?’. Schiller stressed that he was entirely Kantian regarding the ﬁrst two questions, but that he went beyond Kant in his answer to the third. He agreed with Kant that the categorical imperative is the basic principle of morality, and that duty alone is the sole motive for a moral action; but he believed it necessary to go beyond Kant in accounting for what makes an ideal human being. Schiller made it clear that an answer to the second question is not sufﬁcient to answer to the third. The second concerns the morality of particular actions, but the third concerns moral character or virtue itself. Now this distinction is of central importance to understand Schiller’s two perspectives in the Ästhetische Briefe. Sometimes Schiller does write from a strictly moral point of view, where his central concern is the motives and incentives for moral action; but sometimes he writes from a larger anthropological perspective, where his main interest is in what makes a whole human being. It should be no surprise that beauty is the central theme from both these perspectives. It is both what motivates people to moral action; and it is also the best way to explain what uniﬁes the two sides of the ideal human being. But there is no reason to think that there is a contradiction here. Beauty can be both means and end. It all ⁸⁰ Lutz, Schillers Anschauungen von Kultur und Natur, 133, 142, 172.

Argument and Context of the Ästhetische Briefe

167

depends upon the perspective we take, the interests we have, the issues we address. Furthermore, it should be clear by now that Schiller himself was fully self-conscious of the difference between them, both in Anmut und Würde and Ästhetische Briefe. Lutz’s claim that Schiller had somehow subconsciously forgotten Anmut und Würde in writing the Augustenburger Briefe is scarcely credible, apparently even to Lutz himself.⁸¹ It should now be clear that Lutz’s fundamental mistake was philosophical, not philological. All Lutz’s detailed philological labours to trace the genesis of Schiller’s incoherence were in the service of a philosophical confusion. It is pointless, therefore, to pursue the case against Lutz on philological or stylistic grounds. This has been just the approach, however, of Wilkinson and Willoughby in the Introduction to their edition and translation of the Ästhetische Briefe. Pointing to its complex circular, concentric or cyclical structure, they argue in great detail for the unity of Schiller’s work on stylistic grounds. While the work might indeed have such a structure, this has no bearing against Lutz, whose central claim is that the work is vitiated by a philosophical confusion. All the evidence about the work’s baroque structure is irrelevant, for Schiller could have ever so carefully and skillfully elaborated his confusion into interweaving circles and cyles. Regarding the basic philosophical issues, however, Wilkinson and Willoughby have next to nothing to say; the central premise of Lutz’s interpretation remains unaffected. It therefore must be said that, despite all their detailed polemics against Lutz, and despite all their ingenuous efforts in defense of the treatise’s integrity, they really missed the point. Resting entirely on irrelevant philological and stylistic grounds, their case for the work’s unity is fundamentally ﬂawed and misconceived. Although Lutz never proves his case that the Ästhetische Briefe is an incoherent work, it still does not follow, of course, that it is a complete and integral whole. There can be no doubt that the work suffers from serious deﬁciencies. We have already seen that at crucial points Schiller’s exposition is vague and schematic, that his argument often presupposes knowledge of his earlier works, and that his distinctions between forms of beauty are hopelessly confused. None of these deﬁciencies is fatal, however, because Schiller’s argument remains plausible enough when its context is supplied. There is still some sense, however, to the claim that Schiller’s work is fundamentally divided. We have already seen that its structure revolves around two very different questions and kinds of claim about beauty. There is the transcendental question about the role of beauty in human perfection, and there is the genetic or causal question about the role of beauty in human education. These two very different questions correspond to Schiller’s own vacillation in planning the treatise, his uncertainty whether to include the analytic of beauty along with his treatment of aesthetic education. ⁸¹ Ibid., 140, 142, 167. Lutz concedes that it is ‘seltsam’ that Schiller should forget the argument of Anmut und Würde (167); but it is so only for his starting assumption. In any case, Lutz is forced to admit that Schiller did not entirely forget it (136).

168

Schiller as Philosopher

However, this division in the logical structure of the treatise scarcely entails its incoherence. On the contrary, one of the philosophically more interesting aspects of the treatise is Schiller’s attempt to interrelate these questions systematically. We have seen how, time and again, Schiller connects them, and not in any artiﬁcial and contrived manner. As different as these questions might be, they both come together in a single fundamental concern: the attempt to vindicate the realm of beauty. The transcendental enquiry shows beauty to be a necessary condition of human perfection; the genetic enquiry shows it to be central to human development and education. Seen in its entirety, then, the Ästhetische Briefe is not a treatise on education but an apology for beauty. As such, it was the culmination of Schiller’s main preoccupations since the 1780s.

5 Dispute with Kant 1. TRADITIONS OF MISINTERPRETATION The recent renaissance of Kant’s moral philosophy in the Anglophone world has been remarkably successful in clearing away some traditional misunderstandings of Kant, and in making philosophers re-examine some of Kant’s central principles. One respect in which the new neo-Kantians have been very busy explaining and defending Kant concerns the role of feeling in moral conduct.¹ Some scholars have been keen to dispel the popular image of Kant as a hard-bitten ascetic who denies any moral value to feeling. They point out that Kant’s ‘purity thesis’ about the moral worth of actions—that an action has a moral worth only if it is done for the sake of duty alone—does not mean that moral actions must be done without, or even contrary to, inclination and feeling. Perfectly correctly, they argue that, on Kantian premises, it is possible for duty to be the sole reason for my action and for me to be inclined to do my duty. Some of these scholars go even further: they insist that Kant not only permits but demands a role for feeling in moral life, for he stresses that it is a duty to cultivate feelings of sympathy, and he makes pleasure in doing one’s duty a sign of virtue. Defending Kant against the charge of asceticism has made many neo-Kantian scholars reconsider—though usually only en passant—an old dispute between Kant and Schiller which took place in 1793. They mention this dispute because they see Schiller as the source of the classic objection against Kant’s ‘asceticism’. Supposedly, Schiller was the ﬁrst to accuse Kant of neglecting the role of feeling in moral action, and so he started a whole tradition of misunderstanding. According to the neo-Kantian interpretation,² Schiller understands Kant to be saying that an ¹ See, e.g., Barbara Herman, ‘On the Value of Acting from Duty’, in The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993), 1–22; Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 107–28; 162–79; Marcia Baron, Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 117–226; Paul Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 335–93; and Tom Sorrell, ‘Kant’s Good Will and our Good Nature’, Kant-Studien 78 (1987), 87–101. ² See H. J. Paton, The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant’s Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 47. Paton’s interpretation has been especially inﬂuential, and it has set the precedent for most neo-Kantian commentators, who constantly cite him. See, e.g., Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 110; Baron, Kantian Ethics almost without Apology, 147; Herman,

170

Schiller as Philosopher

action has moral worth only if the agent does not want to do it, or only if he or she has no inclination to do it. So if someone does their duty from a feeling of sympathy it has no moral worth; but if they do it with no feeling at all, or even in a begrudging manner, it does have a moral value. Hence Schiller attributes to Kant—or so the interpretation goes—the paradoxical view that it is morally desirable not to want to do the action you morally ought to do. Such, at any rate, seems to be the main point behind Schiller’s infamous epigram, which is cited constantly in the neo-Kantian literature: The Scruple of Conscience ‘Gladly I serve my friends, but alas I do it with pleasure. Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not virtuous.

The Verdict For that there is no other advice: you must try to despise them, And then do with aversion what your duty commands.’³

Some of these scholars assert, or at least imply, that Schiller holds the very opposite view he attributes to Kant: namely, that an action has a moral worth only if the agent wants to perform it. They assume that, for Schiller, a truly moral action is one where duty ceases to be a constraint, and where the agent acts on ‘duty from inclination’. There seems to be some evidence for this view, given that Schiller himself once said ‘man not only may but ought to bring desire and duty in harmony; he should obey his will with joy.’⁴ The chief aim of the present chapter is to show that the neo-Kantians have completely misunderstood Schiller’s dispute with Kant.⁵ As a result, they have neglected the important issues raised by it. Usually, they have interpreted this controversy in very narrow terms as a dispute about the conditions for the moral worth of actions, as if all that were at stake were whether feeling adds to, or detracts from, moral conduct. Yet it must be stressed: this was never really an issue during Schiller’s dispute with Kant. Throughout this dispute, Schiller reafﬁrmed The Practice of Moral Judgment, 2 n1; J. B. Schneewind, ‘Autonomy, Obligation and Virtue: An Overview of Kant’s Moral Philosophy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 327, 338 n34; Roger Sullivan, Kant’s Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 122–4, 336; Allen Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 11, 28–9; and Robert Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 77, 203. ³ Schiller, Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. Julius Petersen and Friedrich Beißner (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1943ff.), I, 357. All citations of Schiller will be to this now standard edition, designated ‘NA’; roman numerals refer to volume numbers, arabic numerals to page numbers, and italicized arabic numerals to line numbers. All translations of Schiller are my own. ⁴ See Anmut und Würde, XX, 283, 35–7. Allison interprets this sentence along the lines suggested here. See Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 181. ⁵ The honorable exception here is Paul Guyer, who rightly sees that Schiller’s intention in Anmut und Würde is more to defend than attack Kant. See Experience of Freedom, 351–5.

Dispute with Kant

171

two of Kant’s fundamental theses about moral actions: that moral obligations should be justiﬁed on the basis of reason alone, and that duty should be the sole motive for moral conduct. My task here is essentially historical and exegetical: to explain the basic points at issue in the Kant–Schiller dispute. This is no easy task for several reasons. First, the notorious obscurity of the texts, both Kant’s and Schiller’s. Second, Kant and Schiller themselves never achieved complete clarity about the issues dividing them. They sometimes expressed their complete agreement about fundamental principles, only to return to criticizing one another. Third, there is a long history of misinterpretation and controversy about the dispute. There is disagreement not only about how to interpret the main issues, but also about whether there was really a dispute at all. Some scholars have argued that Kant and Schiller never really disagreed about fundamentals, and that Schiller only wanted to supplement or develop Kant’s principles.⁶ Regarding this last issue, I will argue that there was indeed a great deal of agreement between Kant and Schiller, and much more than has been assumed by the neo-Kantians; nevertheless, there were still fundamental disagreements between them. The source of their disagreement concerned nothing less than the classical question of the highest good or the end of life itself. But my task has not only been to set the record straight. For I have come not to bury Schiller but to praise him. I will attempt to defend Schiller on several grounds. First, I shall argue that his concept of moral grace, or duty from inclination, is perfectly consistent, and compatible with some of the demands of Kant’s moral rigorism. Second, I shall contend that Schiller was not the hopeless idealist about human nature that he is often taken to be, and that he was not guilty of the charge of ‘moral fanaticism’ which has recenty been levelled against him.⁷ Third, and most importantly, I want to argue that Schiller has a broader and more satisfactory account of the highest good or the ends of life than Kant. While Kant’s concept of the highest good is narrowly moralistic, making morality alone the sole supreme good, Schiller’s leaves room for other non-moral values while not compromising the integrity of morality itself. ⁶ This was the thesis of Karl Vorländer, ‘Ethischer Rigorismus und sittliche Schönheit’, Philosophische Monatshefte XXX (1894), 225–80, 371–405, and 534–77; and Eugen Kühnemann in the introduction to his edition of Schillers philosophische Schriften und Gedichte (Leipzig: Meiner, 1922), 31–7, 41–51. Vorländer and Kühnemann were sharply criticized by Hans Reiner in his Pﬂicht und Neigung (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1951) (reprinted and translated as Duty and Inclination (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983) ). Reiner argued that Vorländer’s and Kühnemann’s attempt to stress the continuity from Kant to Schiller had overlooked the fundamental differences in their ethics. Though Reiner had a point, he does not really specify precisely the central issue at stake between Kant and Schiller; it is unclear whether he thinks Kant and Schiller disagree about the moral worth of actions, the justiﬁcation of moral principles, the ends of life and the highest good, or the role of emotions in morality. ⁷ This criticism has been suggested by Gerold Prauss, Kant über Freiheit als Autonomie (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983), 247–8. It has been endorsed by Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 183–4.

172

Schiller as Philosopher 2. THE SPIRIT AND THE LET TER

The main evidence cited on behalf of the neo-Kantian interpretation of Schiller is, almost always, nothing more than Schiller’s epigram. Unfortunately, most contemporary Anglo-American Kant scholars have almost entirely ignored Schiller’s main ethical works—Anmut und Würde and Über die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen—which are pivotal for any accurate and complete understanding of his dispute with Kant.⁸ As a result, Schiller’s epigram is taken out of context and given an importance it scarcely deserves. First of all it is important to stress that Schiller’s epigram is really only a joke. Some scholars take it as serious criticism;⁹ but this is unlikely. Schiller’s epigram appears as part of a series—the so-called Xenien—which were intended as witticisms and caricatures. Other scholars recognize the epigram as a joke; but, because there is truth in jest, they see serious criticism behind it. So the question is then: What is the point behind the joke? If we consider Schiller’s other works and correspondence, there can be only one answer. The aim of the epigram was not to ridicule Kant’s doctrine but only to spoof one common misunderstanding of it. That Schiller intended it in this sense is clear from Anmut und Würde and his June 13, 1794 letter to Kant where he states explicitly that his aim is to criticize a widespread misinterpretation of his theory.¹⁰ While Schiller did hold that Kant’s exposition or wording was vulnerable to jest, he never believed that this was the case for his doctrine or meaning. The central weakness of the neo-Kantian interpretation is that it drastically underrates the depth and breadth of Schiller’s agreement with Kant. Precisely where these scholars think that Schiller is taking issue with Kant, Schiller was desperately trying to defend him. The irony here is very rich: Schiller wanted to vindicate Kant against the very objections which the neo-Kantians think Schiller made against Kant! That Schiller was a Kantian on some of the basic principles of ethics there cannot be any doubt. On several occasions,¹¹ Schiller expressly stated that he is a Kantian regarding the foundation of ethics. More speciﬁcally, he is explicit that he accepts at least two of Kant’s central theses: (1) that the principles of morality must be based upon reason rather than happiness, and (2) that an action has moral worth only if it is done for the sake of duty. In other words, Schiller endorsed ⁸ Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 180–4, rightly stresses the signiﬁcance of Anmut und Würde, which he takes as the main text for Schiller’s views. However, Allison focuses his attention entirely on this work without placing it in its wider context. ⁹ Paton, Categorical Imperative, 48, indignantly dismissed the epigram as ‘poor poetry and worse criticism’. Lewis White Beck rightly saw that it was only a joke. See his A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 231n63. ¹⁰ See NA XXVI, 13, 2–6; and XX, 284, 21. ¹¹ See Anmut und Würde, XX, 282–3; Ästhetische Briefe XX, 310, 348n. Also see the December 3, 1793 letter to Augustenburg, XXVI, 322 (cited below).

Dispute with Kant

173

Kant’s fundamental propositions about the justiﬁcation of moral principles and the moral worth of human actions. That Schiller accepts the ﬁrst thesis is clear and uncontroversial. He is explicit that it is Kant’s great contribution to ethics to have shown against the eudemonists that happiness cannot justify moral principles or establish the morality of human conduct (XX 282–3). That he also endorses the second thesis is far less clear and far more controversial, at least if we consider the common neo-Kantian interpretation of Schiller. There can be no doubt, however, that Schiller is a strict Kantian in this regard too. He is perfectly clear about the point in Anmut und Würde. Regarding the morality of an action, he places himself ﬁrmly on the side of the ‘moral rigorists’ who insist on strictly following the moral law, and against the ‘latitudinarians’ who relax its requirements (XX, 283, 16–22).¹² He then explains very explicitly that such rigorism means excluding happiness as a motive for human action and making the moral law alone its sole motive: ‘Even if the drive toward happiness does not assert any blind power over human beings, it still wants to have its voice in moral decisions, and thus it damages the purity of the will, which ought to follow only the laws and never its drives’ (282, 32–6; my italics). To put the whole matter beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is worthwhile citing Schiller’s December 3, 1793 letter to Prince von Augustenburg, where he states his Kantian credo in the most explicit and emphatic terms: Immediately and provisionally, I confess that in the chief points of moral doctrine I think completely like a Kantian. I believe and am convinced that only those of our actions are called moral to which we are determined merely by the respect for the law and not by inclinations, however reﬁned these inclinations might be, and whatever imposing names they might carry. I accept with the most rigorist moralist that virtue must rest upon itself, and cannot be dependent upon some end different from it. The good is (according to Kantian principles, which I completely endorse in this regard) what happens because it is good.¹³

It is also noteworthy that Schiller then goes on, here and elsewhere, to endorse Kant’s thesis in all its detail and variations. He is clear that actions done from benevolent inclinations alone, where there is no recognition of moral principle, have no moral worth.¹⁴ He also praises moral actions that follow moral principle contrary to inclination: it is precisely these actions that have dignity, which alone ¹² Of course, Schiller also says that he is a latitudinarian regarding the execution of the moral law in the sensible world. But, for reasons we shall see below, this does not contradict his rigorism. Schiller’s terms ‘rigorist’ and ‘latitudinarian’ come from the ﬁrst edition of Kant’s Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, VI, 22–23n. All references to Kant will be to the now standard Akademie edition, Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1902ff.). ¹³ See Schiller, Werke, XXVI, 322, 14–24. In his ‘Schiller und Kant’, Kant-Studien 47 (1955/56), 113–47, Paul Menzer maintains that this letter represents an earlier position that Schiller discarded when he made his objection against Kant’s rigorism (see 128). But this is untenable, because Schiller had written Anmut und Würde in the Summer of 1793. In any case, as the above citations show, Schiller’s position in Anmut und Würde is entirely consistent with the letter to Augustenburg. ¹⁴ He illustrates this point with a fable in the December 3, 1793 letter to Augustenburg, XXVI, 327.

174

Schiller as Philosopher

reveals the sublimity of the human soul.¹⁵ Finally, and most importantly, he denies that actions must exhibit grace if they are to have moral worth. Consider these lines from Anmut und Würde: So much appears to be certain: that the approval of sensibility, even when it does not make the morality of an action suspicious, is at the very least still not in a position to conﬁrm (zu verbürgen) it. The sensible expression of this approval in grace never provides a sufﬁcient and valid proof of the morality of an action; and from the beautiful conduct of a disposition one will never experience its moral worth.¹⁶

These lines make it clear that Schiller does not hold the view, so commonly attributed to him, that actions have moral worth only if they show grace or are done from inclination. So far was Schiller from holding this view that he went to great pains to warn against it. In two essays published in Die Horen in 1795—‘Ueber die nothwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schöner Formen’ and ‘Ueber den moralischen Nutzen ästhetischer Sitten’¹⁷—he distinguishes sharply between the realms of the moral and the aesthetic, arguing that taste oversteps its proper boundaries whenever it attempts to provide a basis for moral maxims and motives. Schiller ﬂatly denies that taste should have a legislative function in morals, i.e. it cannot justify our duties; and although he concedes it an executive role, i.e. it can help us to perform our duties, he does so only under very limited conditions. While taste helps to promote moral action, because it is the ﬁrst stage in the education of our sensibility, it cannot create moral action, which demands that we act from motives of reason alone (XXI, 28). Indeed, taste poses a threat to the purity and autonomy of morals, Schiller observed, because its purpose is to cultivate feelings of pleasure, which might tempt us from the path of duty (32). The very nature of taste involves a danger for morality, he further argued, because its purpose is to unite the intellectual and the sensible sides of a human being; but morality demands that we separate these aspects of ourselves, because it requires that we act from reason alone (3, 21–2). The dangers of the aesthetic realm for morality are especially clear in the case of love, Schiller insists, because love can be a source of self-deception: we think that we are acting purely selflessly, and so according to moral principle, when ultimately a deeper selﬁshness is at play (24–5). In general, Schiller’s argument in these essays reveals his continuing adherence to Kantian principles, at least concering the justiﬁcation of moral principles and the conditions of moral action. While Schiller does go a step further than ¹⁵ This is the argument of the second half of Anmut und Würde. See esp. XX, 289, 298–9. It is important to note that Schiller does not take the view that moral action as such must involve the co-operation of sensibility. He realizes all too well that moral action sometimes demands sacriﬁce and suffering. Cf. Jeffrey Gauthier, ‘Schiller’s Critique of Kant’s Moral Psychology’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (1997), 513–44, esp. 533, 535–6. Gauthier’s reconstruction of Schiller’s theory is false because it leaves no place for dignity. ¹⁶ Anmut und Würde, XX 283, 7–15. ¹⁷ NA XXI, 3–27, 28–37. Both essays were written in 1793, shortly after Anmut und Würde. Concerning Schiller’s distinction between the aesthetic and moral, see also his discussion of aesthetic and moral appraisal in ‘Ueber das Pathetische’, NA XX, 213–21.

Dispute with Kant

175

Kant in making the aesthetic unify reason and sensibility, he stresses in true Kantian fashion that this must never compromise the purity and autonomy of morals.¹⁸ For all his agreement with Kant, Schiller does have one bone to pick with him. In Anmut und Würde he complains that Kant has overstated his case by drawing too sharp a contrast between duty and inclination (XX, 284–5). Kant’s contrast is so drastic and exaggerated, Schiller says, that he makes it appear as if doing our duty must be contrary to our inclinations, or as if a moral action must exclude all feelings of sympathy and benevolent inclinations. Schiller then makes his notorious barb that Kant seems to be preaching ‘a dark and monkish asceticism’ (einer ﬁnstern und mönchischen Ascetik) (XX, 284, 19 ). No other remark had such a stinging effect upon Kant, who will soon go to great pains to show that his ethics is not guilty of it. Nevertheless, it is important to see that Schiller does not think that Kant is really guilty of this charge. He insists that Kant does not mean to banish all inclination and feeling from moral action, though he admits that his words do lend themselves to that interpretation. The sharp contrast between duty and inclination, Schiller maintains, is really only a fault of Kant’s exposition rather than his doctrine (XX, 284, 31–6 ). He then states explicitly that the point of Kant’s contrast is not to provide a general analysis of the conditions of moral worth but only to show the cases where it is possible to know that an action is done from duty alone.¹⁹ By focusing on actions done from duty contrary to inclination, Kant does not mean to exclude all inclination from moral action, but only to demonstrate that moral action does not require inclination. These actions illustrate pure moral motivation because there cannot be any doubt that there is another sensible motive for them. This last point is noteworthy if only because Schiller has been accused of ignoring it, as if he held that Kant meant to exclude all inclination from moral action.²⁰ Schiller is such a Kantian that he even goes on to exonerate Kant’s exposition, which, he thinks, was a necessity for his time and place. Kant made such a sharp distinction between duty and inclination, he explains, to combat the inﬂuence of ¹⁸ In his editorial comments to ‘Ueber den moralischen Nutzen’, Benno von Wiese points out that the similarity in content between this essay and Schiller’s December 3, 1793 letter to Prince von Augustenburg, but notes that Schiller drops his Kantian confession of faith, XXI, 324, 325. Wiese argues that this is evidence for Schiller’s increasingly self-conscious departure from Kantian principles. Whatever Schiller’s reasons for omitting the confession, the content of the essay is perfectly Kantian. Regarding Kant’s rigorism, Schiller never changed his essentially afﬁrmative position. This point was rightly stressed long ago by Karl Tomaschek, Schiller in seinem Verhältnisse zur Wissenschaft (Vienna: Gerold, 1862), 238. ¹⁹ See Anmut und Würde, XX, 282–3, 37–9, 1–2: ‘Um also völlig sicher zu seyn, daß die Neigung nicht mit bestimmte, sieht man sie lieber im Krieg, als im Einverständniß mit dem Vernunftgesetze, weil es gar zu leicht seyn kann, daß ihre Fürsprache allein ihm seine Macht über den Willen verschaffte.’ ²⁰ That Schiller is guilty of confusing these issues is the heart of Paton’s defense of Kant. See his The Categorical Imperative, 48–9. Remarkably, Hans Reiner, who is otherwise sympathetic to Schiller, cites the above lines out of context to make the same criticism of Schiller. See his Duty and Inclination, 31. In the lines cited above he omits the crucial opening phrase: ‘Um also völlig sicher zu seyn’.

176

Schiller as Philosopher

the prevalent materialism and eudemonism, which constantly confused morality and happiness (XX, 284–5). His age had been so corrupted by these doctrines that it required shock treatment rather than gentle persuasion. Hence Kant became ‘the Draco of his age’.

3. DUT Y FROM INCLINATION Schiller’s endorsement of Kant’s purity thesis regarding the morality of action— that an action should be done for the sake of duty alone—appears to raise a serious problem of consistency. Namely, how can Schiller square his allegiance to this thesis with the central concept of Anmut und Würde: moral grace? According to that concept, morality not only permits, but requires us to do duty from inclination (XX, 283). In other words, we should do our duty not reluctantly but happily, not with resentment but with pleasure. But such a concept seems to add an impure motive of sensibility to human action, undermining Kant’s demand for moral purity. For if we do our duty from inclination, it seems that the object of inclination either mixes with or even replaces duty as the motive for action. Even worse, this concept appears to undermine the whole idea of moral obligation; for, as Kant would later tirelessly insist against Schiller, there is no point to an imperative unless we could have the temptation not to act on it. Because of these apparent implications of Schiller’s concept of moral grace, some neo-Kantian scholars have assumed that Schiller did not, and indeed could not, accept Kant’s moral purity thesis. If, however, we keep in mind the context of assumptions behind Schiller’s concept, it becomes clear that there is no real contradiction with the Kantian thesis. Furthermore, it becomes obvious that Kant’s criticism of Schiller misses the point. There are three assumptions to the context, each of them requiring some explanation. ¶ First, an obvious but often overlooked point: the inclination toward duty in moral grace is not innate or natural but acquired and moral. It arises from moral education, and it consists in nothing less than virtue, the habit of acting on moral principle. It is important to stress that Schiller does not think that people naturally and spontaneously, without a moral education, act according to the principles of morality. Here again it is necessary to stress that Schiller was not a champion of Shaftesbury’s or Rousseau’s view that people are naturally good, innately equipped with good sentiments. No less than Kant, Schiller holds that some natural desires and feelings are selﬁsh and directed toward pleasure,²¹ and that it is necessary for the will to struggle against them if it is to act on moral principle.²² Furthermore, ²¹ See Ästhetische Briefe, NA XX, 315, 4; 392, 20–1; 388, 30; 389, 25–30. This point ﬁnds its strongest conﬁrmation in Schiller’s picture of the Naturstand in Letter XXIV, 388–9. ²² See Anmut und Würde, XX, 293.

Dispute with Kant

177

he does not think that we ever will, even with a sufﬁciently long and intense moral education, transform all the desires of sensibility so that they conform perfectly to morality. He recognizes that there are many natural desires and feelings that are, and forever will be, resistant to the forces of moral education and the power of the will to control them.²³ Following Kant, Schiller stresses that, for human beings, the holy will is an ideal which we should strive for but which we cannot ever attain.²⁴ Hence the portrayal of Schiller as a moral fanatic—someone who thinks that moral principles are completely dispensable because people naturally and spontaneously act according to them—is groundless. If we keep in mind Schiller’s distinction between natural and moral inclinations, and his realism about the conﬂict between some natural drives and duty, then it becomes clear that Schiller is not undermining the concept of moral obligation. While moral imperatives are indeed pointless in the case of moral inclinations and feelings, simply because the person would already have incorporated moral principles into his will in creating them, they are still necessary to restrain natural inclinations and feelings, which are never completely eradicated and remain a constant source of temptation. Schiller could perfectly well acknowledge, then, Kant’s insistence that moral imperatives apply only when a person has some inclination to act against them. ¶ Second, the concept of an inclination (Neigung) is ambiguous. It might refer to a motive, which involves the reason or end of an action; or it might refer to some disposition, which consists in the manner or style of action. Of course, it could also refer to both of these. But Schiller’s concept of grace uses the term exclusively in the latter rather than the former sense. In other words, it describes not why someone does something but how they do it, that is, whether they do it gladly or reluctantly, with great effort or with ease. In Anmut und Würde Schiller is very explicit about this point. He explains that the concept of grace concerns not the purpose of the action but the manner of its performance, and he remarks that one and the same purpose can be achieved in many different ways (267). He also states clearly that he intends to defend the role of sensibility regarding not the justiﬁcation but only the execution of the moral law (283). The implications should be clear: if Schiller uses the concept of inclination in this more limited adverbial sense, then an inclination to duty does not imply a competing reason for action to moral principle; it is then possible to do an act gracefully while doing it only for moral reasons. ¶ Third, Schiller thinks that moral grace is a requirement not of the morality of an action but only of the morality of a person. He maintains that a person can perform individual moral actions even though he or she does not have a ﬁxed or settled moral character. Someone might recognize his moral duty, and act for this reason alone; yet he or she could still lack a moral character because they act in a ²³ See ibid., XX, 289, 35–8; 291, 25–8; 293, 14–9, 28–37. ²⁴ See Ästhetische Briefe, XX, 352–3, 360; and Anmut und Würde, XX, 289–90.

178

Schiller as Philosopher

begrudging and perfunctory spirit. There is no conﬂict, then, between Schiller’s concept of moral grace and Kant’s moral purity thesis since each performs a distinct task. While the moral purity thesis establishes the conditions of moral action, the concept of grace determines the conditions for moral character. Schiller made the distinction between these tasks perfectly clear in the following pivotal passage from Anmut und Würde: As much as I am convinced—and just because I am so—that the share of inclination in a free action proves nothing about its pure dutifulness, for just this reason I also believe myself to be able to conclude that the share of inclination in an action can reveal the moral perfection of a person. The human being is not designed simply to perform single moral actions but to be a moral being. Not virtues but the virtue is prescribed for him, and virtue is nothing less than ‘an inclination to duty’. (283, 23–31)

This passage is crucial because it states, if only implicitly, Schiller’s main intention in Anmut und Würde. In introducing the concept of moral grace his aim is not to correct Kant’s doctrines but to support and supplement them. While Schiller completely accepts Kant’s account of the morality of an action, he is convinced that Kant still needs a theory of the morality of a person. In Anmut und Würde Schiller’s main reservation about Kant’s ethics is that the Kantian account of the morality of actions could be mistaken for an account of the moral worth of the person. It might then seem as if a person who acts morally, yet begrudgingly and perfunctorily, might still be virtuous. This would be not only a non sequitur but a completely false account of moral virtue. As Schiller put the point: ‘It does not give a good opinion of a person if he can so little trust the voice of his feelings (Triebe) that he is forced on every occasion ﬁrst to judge them by the moral law’ (287, 2–5). Schiller does not think that Kant intends to provide an account of virtue in the Grundlegung or second Kritik; but he does think that he needs one if he is to avoid obvious objections. He fears that if Kant’s thesis were mistaken for a theory of moral character, then it would become vulnerable to the charge of monasticism. Kant could avoid this objection, Schiller believes, only if he supplements his thesis about moral action with an account of moral virtue and character. Such an account would provide a place for moral feeling and inclination, and thus show the possibility of performing moral action from inclination and with feeling. If this could be clearly explained, then it would remove the most common objection against Kant’s rigorism, and so make his doctrine more acceptable to the public. Hence, far from endorsing the common objection about Kant’s monasticism, Schiller really wanted to refute it, because he saw it as the main obstacle to the general reception of Kant’s ethics.²⁵ We now can better appreciate the rich irony behind the neo-Kantian criticism of Schiller: for Schiller was on the side of the neo-Kantians, the ﬁrst in their tradition to provide a sympathetic reconstruction of Kant. ²⁵ See Schiller’s account of his motives in his June 13, 1794 letter to Kant, XXVII, 13.

Dispute with Kant

179

That Schiller did not think he was providing a competing account of moral virtue to Kant in Anmut und Würde becomes clear as soon as we recall one basic historical fact: that, when Schiller was writing Anmut und Würde in the early Summer of 1793, Kant had still not published his own account of moral virtue, which would appear only in the Summer of 1797 as the second part of the Metaphysik der Sitten. Since the 1780s Kant had announced his plans to publish a Metaphysik der Sitten, which would contain a Tugendlehre, and rumors about its imminent publication were rife.²⁶ The buzz reached a crescendo in Jena in early 1793—only months before Schiller wrote Anmut und Würde—when Kant told J. B. Erhard, a member of the Reinhold circle, that he was now ﬁnishing his Tugendlehre.²⁷ Having direct contacts with Reinhold and his circle, Schiller was fully informed about the situation; and, like many of his contemporaries, he too eagerly awaited the appearance of Kant’s work.²⁸ Under the circumstances, then, he could not attack Kant’s theory on virtue—for he knew that Kant still did not have one—but only anticipate it. He could only hope that Kant’s theory would follow along the lines he suggested in Anmut und Würde. But, as we shall soon see, his hopes were not to be entirely fulﬁlled; for Kant, an attentive reader of Schiller’s work, proved to be very ambivalent about it.

4. AESTHETIC CHARACTER IN KANT What was Kant’s reaction to Schiller’s Anmut und Würde? Given Schiller’s Kantian principles and sympathies, it is not surprising that Kant’s initial response was, at least superﬁcially, positive. In a long footnote appended to the second edition of his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, Kant praised Schiller’s essay on grace and dignity as ‘composed with a master’s hand’, and he even declared that ‘we are at one on the most important principles’ (VI, 23n). While he was irked by Schiller’s ‘objection’ that his account of moral obligation seems to involve ‘a monastic frame of mind’, he still maintained that their apparent disagreement could be easily resolved simply by clarifying the issues. Despite his eagerness to reach agreement with Schiller, Kant’s footnote betrays his underlying ambivalence about Schiller’s project for an aesthetic of morals. On the one hand, Kant distances himself from the project because he fears that it can undermine the integrity and purity of moral motivation. If there can be an ²⁶ Kant ﬁrst announced his plans in the preface to the Grundlegung, IV, 391. For the history of the publication of this work, see Karl Vorländer’s introduction to his edition of the Metaphysik der Sitten (Hamburg: Meiner, 1966), IX–XIII. ²⁷ See Kant to J. B. Erhard, December 21, 1792. Kant writes about ‘meiner unter Händen habenden Metaphysik der Sitten’. ²⁸ Schiller’s involvement in the rumour grist is apparent from his October 28, 1794 letter to Erhard, NA XXVII, 72. Strangely, Schiller states here that he has heard from Kant himself that his work will soon appear; yet Kant ﬁrst wrote Schiller in March 30, 1795. It seems that Schiller was reporting indirectly what Kant had told others.

180

Schiller as Philosopher

inclination to duty, then inclination will either replace or diminish duty as a motive for action. Hence Kant reminds Schiller that ‘when duty alone is the theme, the graces keep a respectful distance’ (VI, 23n). The very idea of duty excludes the possibility of grace, Kant argues, because the concept of duty involves necessity, a constraint on our desires and feelings, while the concept of grace implies spontaneity, freedom from constraint. There would be indeed no point at all to a moral imperative or obligation, Kant argues, unless the agent could have the temptation not to perform the action.²⁹ On the other hand, however, Kant embraces Schiller’s project insofar as he has to concede his point that it is better to do one’s duty gracefully rather than resentfully (24n). Thus he admits that there is ‘an aesthetic character’ to virtue, which consists in a courageous and cheerful rather than a fearful and dejected frame of mind. Kant even goes on to argue that ‘a heart which is happy in the performance of duty’ is ‘a sign of the genuine virtuous disposition’, because such a heart shows that a person has attained a love of the good, and so has made the moral law the ultimate maxim of all his actions (24n). Kant’s reply to Schiller is puzzling because he seems to give with one hand what he takes with the other. It appears both to forbid and to allow Schiller’s central thesis that it is possible to do duty from inclination, or that it is possible to take pleasure in acting on moral obligations. Kant’s ambivalence reﬂects his underlying dilemma. If he accepts Schiller’s thesis, he seems to undermine moral purity and autonomy; but if he rejects it, he endorses a fanatical rigorism and monasticism which regards it as immoral even to want to do one’s duty. While Kant never explicitly resolved the tension, he did have implicit within his ethics the resources to do so. The neo-Kantians are perfectly correct in their contention that Kant not only permits but requires some element of feeling and inclination in his account of moral action and virtue. That Kant could at least allow for the possibility of moral grace—of doing duty from inclination—is apparent when we consider three general points about his moral philosophy. ¶ First, there is nothing preventing Kant from following Schiller’s strategy of distinguishing between the reason for an action and the manner or style of its execution. Again, the reason for the action would be the principle which justiﬁes it, or the motive for which it is done, while its manner of execution would be how it is done in speciﬁc circumstances; how it is done would involve inter alia the speciﬁc temper and attitude of the agent. It is obvious that one and the same action performed purely for the sake of duty can still be done with opposing attitudes and feelings; for example, both Bloggs and Jones want to do their duty by visiting a sick friend, but Bloggs does it resentfully while Jones does it happily. Provided Kant makes this distinction, there no danger to the purity of morals in admitting an inclination toward duty, for such an inclination concerns only the manner ²⁹ See the Vorarbeiten zur Religionsschrift, XXIII, 98–101. These pages seem to be a draft for a more extensive reply to Schiller; their content and tone are more critical.

Dispute with Kant

181

rather than the motive for action; hence it does not involve a temptation, a conﬂicting reason for my conduct. ¶ Second, it is important to recall the reason Kant denies moral worth to benevolent feelings, and placed them on a footing with selﬁsh inclinations. This is because he saw both as ‘gifts of nature’, as purely given and natural characteristics which involve no effort of will on the part of the agent. The premise behind his theory of moral worth is the famous opening proposition of the Grundlegung: that the good will alone has unconditional moral value (IV, 393). If the will alone is the source of moral merit, those agents who act from purely natural inclinations— whether selﬁsh or benevolent—deserve no credit for their actions, because their inclinations do not arise from any effort of will. Yet, clearly, such an argument leaves open the possibility of crediting actions done from moral feelings and inclinations, for these are a component of virtue, and as such the product of a steady resolve of the will. ¶ Third, Kant distinguishes between desires and feelings that are natural and sensible and those that are acquired and rational. He ﬁrst made such a distinction in the Grundlegung in explaining the role of benevolence and love in morals. Here he distinguishes between a pathological feeling, which is natural and given, and whose acquisition therefore cannot be made a duty, and a practical feeling, which is artiﬁcial and created, and whose acquisition can therefore be commanded or achieved through the will.³⁰ Such a distinction could easily resolve the tension in Kant’s reply to Schiller. While the argument about moral constraint would still apply to pathological inclinations and feelings, his insistence upon the aesthetic character of virtue would apply to practical inclinations and feelings. Kant himself came closest to seeing this point in the preface to his Metaphysik der Sitten, where he is explicit that someone can do their ‘bitter duty’ and yet still ﬁnd themselves ‘in a state that could well be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of soul in which virtue is its own reward’ (VI, 377–8). Such an admission does not undermine the purity of morals, he then argues, as long as we make a distinction between pathological and moral pleasure. While pathological pleasure is possible apart from the moral law and precedes it according to the order of nature, moral pleasure is acquired only by acting for the sake of the moral law and succeeds it according to the moral order (VI, 377–8). All these points make it possible for Kant to permit Schiller’s concept of duty from inclination. It is important to see, however, that, for Kant, aesthetic character is not a pale possibility, a mere concession to Schiller, which he could tack onto his ethics as a kind of afterthought. Rather, it became a dire necessity for him, indeed an integral part of his doctrine, especially in the Metaphysik der Sitten.³¹ ³⁰ See Grundlegung, IV, 399, and Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, V, 83. ³¹ The role of aesthetic character is apparent in several respects in the Metaphysik der Sitten. First, in the emphasis upon the concept of moral pleasure or feeling (VI, 378, 399–400). Second, in the introduction of a ‘duty of humanity’, which consists in the obligation to develop our natural feelings so that they become moral virtues (VI, 456–7; §34–5). Third, in the addition of an Epicurean temperament

182

Schiller as Philosopher

The reason for this is not hard to fathom. From the very beginning Kant had recognized that the demands of moral action require an agent to cultivate virtue, for it is only if an agent is virtuous that he or she has the strength of character to conquer temptation.³² Kant increasingly realized, however, that the most powerful aid to, and the most reliable sign of, virtue is nothing less than its aesthetic character, that is, the inner contentment of moral character and the pleasure in acting for the sake of duty. The more a person felt pleasure in acting morally, the more likely he or she would live by, or constantly fulﬁll, the demands of the moral law. Though the evidence is circumstantial,³³ it is very possible that Kant came to appreciate the value of aesthetic character under Schiller’s inﬂuence. The imputation of monasticism, which Schiller saw as a danger in Kant’s theory if it were driven to extremes, undoubtedly smarted Kant. Such a charge would have offended any Aufklärer of the late eighteenth century, who saw monasticism, along with enthusiasm and dogmatism, as one of the forces of darkness. But Kant had special reason to bristle, for such an accusation ﬂew in the face of one of his most cherished values: moral autonomy. Sure enough, in his Religionsschrift he reacted sharply to the implications of the charge. Monasticism implies ‘a slavish frame of mind’ and ‘a hidden hatred of the law’, he wrote, because the agent saw the law as a hostile and alien force (VI, 24n). Kant stressed that he was not guilty of this charge, for monasticism was contrary to his central concept of moral autonomy.³⁴ This concept means, he insisted, that the moral agent is not only the subject but also the creator of the law. To avoid this misunderstanding of his theory, Kant began to stress the aesthetic dimension of moral life. For the concepts of moral pleasure and of moral feeling stress the satisfaction of the agent in recognizing his own powers of moral autonomy: the agent ﬁnds satisfaction in acting morally because he has achieved self-mastery over his inclinations and because he has acted according to self-imposed principles. Respect for the law consists not only in fear and self-abasement, when it strikes down sensible desire, but also in pleasure and self-elevation, when the agent realizes that he has a power of will to control his desires and to will the law.³⁵ to ethical virtue, when Kant insists that the stoic ethic of self-denial and acquiescence must be supplemented by ‘the ever cheerful heart, according to the idea of the virtuous Epicurus’ (VI, 485). ³² This point is well argued by Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, 107–20, and Sorrell, ‘Kant’s Good Will’, 87–101. Both take issue with Herman, ‘On the Value of Acting from the Motive of Duty’, 1–22, who is intent on a sharper distinction between action and virtue. ³³ There is evidence that Kant has Schiller in mind in some passages of the Metaphysik der Sitten. Section §53 makes points similar to those in the footnote to the Religionsschrift; and the argument of the preface takes issue with a program of aesthetic education in a manner similar to the Vigilantius lectures, where Kant explicitly mentions Schiller (cf. VI, 376–7 & XXVII, 623). I do not mean to suggest that Kant had no doctrine of aesthetic character before his reply to Schiller. In the second Kritik Kant had already argued that practical love, which is a moral ideal, consists in a liking to do our duty (V, 83). ³⁴ See esp. Kant’s reply to Schiller in the Vigilantius lectures, XXVII, 623–4. ³⁵ Kant had already stated as much in the second Kritik, V, 78–9; but there the emphasis is more upon the fear of the law rather than the joy in acting according to it. In the Metaphysik der Sitten Kant emphasizes the positive side of moral feeling, especially the idea of moral pleasure and the inner tranquility involved in the moral disposition.

Dispute with Kant

183

5. A TRUCE VIOL ATED Now that we have examined Schiller’s and Kant’s positions in a little detail, it is easy to see that they are indeed very close to one another after all. Both stress that the sole motive for moral action must be the moral law, and both insist that morality not only permits but requires aesthetic character or grace. While Schiller uphold’s Kant’s purity thesis because he thinks that it is compatible with moral grace, Kant concedes Schiller’s concept of grace, at least in substance if not in name, because he thinks that it is compatible with purity. Furthermore, both Kant and Schiller combine the purity thesis with moral grace in essentially the same way: by making grace an attribute of moral character and style rather than of moral actions and their motives. Hence it was not simple self-deception, and still less just politesse, when Kant and Schiller reassurred one another that they were at one on fundamental principles.³⁶ They were indeed agreed about some very basic points, not least about those that are so often thought to divide them. No doubt, though, other motives played a role in their expressions of amity. Kant and Schiller were eager to avoid a public dispute. Because he was so old and busy, Kant had no time for polemics; and Schiller felt himself no match for Kant’s formidable dialectical skill. In any case, such a dispute would surely have been an embarrassing spectacle for both: Germany’s greatest living dramatist locked in battle against its greatest living philosopher! This would cast a spotlight on both which would never give them any privacy or peace. Despite all their points of agreement, Kant and Schiller had really only made a truce with one another. As in any truce, sources of conﬂict remained. If they stressed their common principles to one another, they expressed their reservations to others. Thus in his 1793 lectures on ethics—the so-called Vigilantius lectures—Kant did not hesitate to criticize Schiller openly and severely. As in his drafts for the Religionsschrift, Kant continued to argue that there cannot be grace in the fulﬁllment of duty, and he warned that the idea of aesthetic character could be detrimental to morality itself.³⁷ For his part, Schiller confessed to his friends that he had swept much under the carpet. Thus he wrote L. F. Huber in February 1795 that he was not satisﬁed with Kant’s reply to Anmut und Würde in the Religionsschrift (XXVI, 144); he confessed to Jacobi in June 1795 that he was a Kantian only when he was defending Kant against misunderstandings, but that when he was developing his own views he was opposed to Kant (XXVII, 206); and, ﬁnally, he told Goethe in October 1795 that, though Kant much admired his Ästhetische Briefe, he had tried to refute him on several points in that work (XXVIII, 90). ³⁶ See Schiller to Kant, June 13, 1794, NA XXVII, 12–3; and Kant, Religionsschrift, VI, 23n. ³⁷ XXVIII, 490, 623–4. Yet here too the old ambivalence appears, since Kant also argues that ‘we must couple virtue with graciousness’ (707), and that we have a duty to make virtue conform to the rules of taste (706).

184

Schiller as Philosopher

Schiller’s confession to his friends shows that there were indeed basic differences between himself and Kant after all. To explain these differences, it is necessary to take a close look at Schiller’s major work on ethics and aesthetics, his 1795 Ästhetische Briefe. It was in the course of writing this work that Schiller became more fully aware of some of his differences with Kant. As Schiller’s confession to Goethe reveals, there is an implicit critique of Kant running throughout this work. Although Schiller continued to express his agreement with Kant in the Briefe,³⁸ he still took silent issue with him in several places. Because his departures from Kant are only implicit, it is necessary to make them explicit and to reconstruct them in some detail.

6. THE BREAK WITH KANT The best way to come to terms with Schiller’s break with Kant in the Ästhetische Briefe is to consider his implicit contrast between the moral and anthropological standpoints. It is clear from Schiller’s exposition that this is a contrast between his own ethics and Kant’s. While Kant’s represents the narrow moral standpoint, Schiller’s ethics champions the broader anthropological standpoint. The problem with the ‘one-sided moral perspective’ (einseitigen moralischen Schätzung), Schiller claims, is that it sacriﬁces individuality and sensibility for the sake of morality: they are either repressed or become means for the sake of moral ends. The value of the ‘complete anthropological perspective’ (vollständigen anthropologischen Schätzung), however, is that it incorporates individuality and sensibility into a more complete ethical ideal (316–17). They cease to be means to moral development and become ends in themselves. The distinction between these standpoints becomes clearer when Schiller contrasts the moral education of the Kantian standpoint with the aesthetic education of his own anthropological standpoint. While moral education cultivates the will to comply with rational norms, aesthetic education addresses the person as a whole, developing the greatest possible harmony of our rational and sensible powers (376–7n). On several occasions Schiller warns against the extremes of a moral education that represses feelings and desires, and which extinguishes individuality for the sake of compliance with universal rules (317, 348, 349–50n). He explains that a person can be in conﬂict with himself in two ways: as a savage whose emotions rule over his principles, or as a barbarian whose principles destroy his feelings (318). The purpose of a complete aesthetic education is to avoid both evils: it should free sensibility from the constraint of reason as well as reason from the constraint of sensibility (367, 376). An aesthetic education will not only increase the activity of reason, giving it the greatest possible independence from sensibility, but it will also cultivate the passivity of sensibility, giving it the widest ³⁸ Hence Schiller reafﬁrms the principles of Kant’s moral philosophy (310, 6–15 ), and he says his differences with it concern its letter rather than its spirit (348n, 41–3).

Dispute with Kant

185

exposure and sharpest sensitivity to all the stimuli of the world (349). The two fundamental aspects of human character, reason and sensibility, should be in an active interchange with one another, where each stimulates and limits the other (348, 352–3). In such an interchange sensibility is not simply subordinate to reason, as in moral education, but reason and sensibility are co-ordinate with one another, so that they both have equal rights; indeed, they are interchangeably subordinate to one another, reason to sensibility as much as sensibility to reason. It should be clear that Schiller’s ideal of human perfection in the Briefe is very far from Kant’s ideal of the holy will. Schiller’s ideal has sometimes been identiﬁed with Kant’s, as if Kant and Schiller held the same goals but simply differ about the means of their realization.³⁹ There is some justiﬁcation for this identiﬁcation because Schiller’s concept of moral grace shares a clear afﬁnity with Kant’s holy will: in both moral grace and the holy will the moral law ceases to be a constraint since a person acts immediately and by nature according to the moral law. Yet the afﬁnity between these concepts really goes no further. Schiller’s ideal of human perfection is a perfect harmony between reason and sensibility, where no faculty dominates over the other; because they have an intrinsic value, feelings and desires are not simply an instrument for the execution of moral ends. In Kant’s ideal of the holy will, however, desire and feeling disappear entirely because a person has no sensibility but becomes completely rational, acting of necessity according to the moral law. Schiller’s differences with Kant regarding his ethical ideals becomes fully apparent in Letter XIV when he states that the interchange between reason and sensibility provides ‘the idea of our humanity’, which is a goal that we should approach through inﬁnite striving (352–3). In Letter XXIII he admits Kant’s doctrine that the highest ideal of morality is a holy will; but he then adds that this shows only that the highest ideal of human perfection goes beyond morality (387n). These differences between Kant’s and Schiller’s ethical ideals emerge especially clearly from Kant’s own program of aesthetic education in Metaphysik der Sitten §§34–5.⁴⁰ That Kant formulated such a program is signiﬁcant, not least because it shows that his concept of moral development is not simply one of restraining and repressing natural desires and feelings.⁴¹ No less than Schiller, Kant too states that our natural feelings of sympathy should be fostered and cultivated so that they become an element of moral virtue and character. He goes so far as to advise visits to poor houses, so that people develop feelings of sympathy for those less fortunate than themselves. Nevertheless, Kant gives his program of aesthetic education a very different twist from that of Schiller. According to Kant, the purpose of ³⁹ See, e.g., Willy Rosalewski, Schillers Ästhetik im Verhältniß zur Kantischen (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1912), 6, 11, 58. ⁴⁰ Kant does not describe his ideal as ‘aesthetic education’ but he does speak about the cultivation of ‘aesthetic’ feelings, and of the development of a humanitas aesthetica, which consists in our receptivity to the feeling of joy and sadness of others (VI, 456, 21, 30). ⁴¹ See too Kant’s critique of the stoical ethic in Religion, VI, 58, where he argues that it is not only futile but reprehensible to extirpate natural desires.

186

Schiller as Philosopher

aesthetic education is strictly the development of moral character; according to Schiller, however, it is the development of the whole personality. It is important to see that this basic difference between Kant and Schiller is not diminished by the fact that Kant too acknowledges something like a duty to develop our whole personality. In the Metaphysik der Sitten Kant explains in detail that perfection is one of our fundamental duties to ourselves, and that perfection includes the development of all our powers, which include powers of spirit (intellectual or rational), powers of soul (imagination and memory) and powers of the body (physical health and strength) (19; VI, 444–5). But this apparent similarity with Schiller evaporates, and their real differences re-emerge, as soon as we consider how Kant and Schiller would justify such a self-regarding duty. For Kant, the selfregarding duty to perfect myself is derived from the categorical imperative, the realm of morality alone; for Schiller, it is derived from the end of humanity, of which morality is only a part. The differences between Kant’s and Schiller’s ethical ideals become even more apparent when we consider their diverging concepts of freedom. Both Kant and Schiller think that the purpose of an aesthetic education is to develop a person’s autonomy, their powers to think and act for themselves apart from external authority. Yet there are several passages in the Briefe where Schiller gave the concept of freedom a very different meaning from Kant, and others where he implies that Kant’s own concept is unduly narrow.⁴² Famously, Kant understands freedom as moral autonomy, which consists in independence of the will from nature, and which is achieved by acting on the laws of practical reason. Schiller, however, sees freedom as aesthetic harmony, as acting according to the laws of one’s whole nature, where both sensibility and rationality complement one another. True freedom arises, Schiller argues, only through the interchange between reason and sensibility, where each faculty both limits and stimulates the other. Such an interchange frees the whole person from constraint, because neither faculty dominates the other. Hence Schiller insists that freedom consists not only in independence from the constraint of sensibility and nature, as Kant saw it, but also in independence from the constraint of reason and moral law (365, 367, 373, 375). Nowhere are his differences with Kant more fundamental than when he implies that the Kantian concept of freedom is too narrow because it is compatible with a form of constraint: the domination of reason over sensibility. All these differences between Kant’s and Schiller’s ethical ideals—their contrasting conceptions of freedom, of the ends of aesthetic education, and of the basis of self-regarding duties—permit the following generalization about the basic difference between them. Kant subordinates humanity to morality whereas Schiller subordinates morality to humanity. The relation of subordination here is not that of ⁴² See, e.g., NA XX, 365, 5–6; 367, 30; 373, 17–20; 375, 23. In many passages of the Briefe, however, Schiller retains Kant’s more narrow concept of freedom as moral autonomy. See, e.g., XX, 342, 6–7; 345, 25; 348, 6, 16, 19; 349, 10, 20; 352, 12; 353, 18; 354, 7; 356, 10.

Dispute with Kant

187

a means to an end but of a part to a whole. As it stands, however, this generalization is very crude and tentative. We still have to pin down its precise meaning and the basic issue behind it.

7. THE MAIN STICKING POINT Given this general difference between Kant and Schiller, it is tempting to interpret their dispute as a conﬂict between an ethics of duty and an ethics of perfection. When Schiller stresses the need to develop the whole personality, to realize all one’s characteristic powers as a human being, he adopts some of the fundamental concepts and values of the ethics of perfection. He seems to be reviving the old perfectionist doctrine of Leibniz, Wolff and Mendelssohn, which had dominated ethics before Kant. Schiller’s account of human perfection gives more emphasis to emotive development than his rationalist forbears, perhaps, but the basic value underpinning his ethics still seems to be the same: human perfection. While there cannot be any doubt that, in some respects, Schiller has an ethics of perfection, it would be a serious mistake to interpret it along traditional lines. There are two problems with such an interpretation. First, Schiller himself explicitly rejects any ethics based upon the concept of perfection alone.⁴³ He denies that the concept of perfection provides a sufﬁcient foundation of morality; furthermore, he afﬁrms Kant’s fundamental criticism of the ethics of perfection: that it is no better than hedonism in making morality into a means toward an end. Second, Schiller, no less than Kant, believes that the pre-eminent value in life is freedom; it is indeed the primacy of freedom in Kant’s phiosophy that attracts him to it in the ﬁrst place.⁴⁴ Schiller sees clearly, however, that an ethics of perfection does not necessarily incorporate freedom because a person could achieve perfection through the laws of necessity alone.⁴⁵ There is nothing preventing the perfectionist from adopting Spinoza’s concept of freedom: that which acts according to the necessity of its own nature alone. For Schiller, as for Kant, this was no better than ‘the freedom of the turnspit’. For these reasons, it would be misleading to describe the issue dividing Kant and Schiller in terms of the classic dispute between an ethics of duty and one of perfection. This is essentially a dispute about the foundation of morality, about the justiﬁcation of moral obligation; but, as we have already seen, Schiller does not disagree with Kant about that foundation. He accepts Kant’s claim that pure reason alone provides a sufﬁcient foundation for the moral law, and he endorses his point that the concept of perfection involves a principle of heteronomy that undermines the autonomy and integrity of moral obligation. ⁴³ See Anmut und Würde XX, 285, and the ﬁrst of the Kallias Briefe, the January 25, 1793 letter to Körner, XXVI, 175–6. ⁴⁴ See Schiller to Körner, February 18, 1793, XXVI, 191. ⁴⁵ Ibid., February 23, 1793, XXVI, 210.

188

Schiller as Philosopher

The most accurate formulation of the issue dividing Kant and Schiller is in terms of one of the oldest questions of ethics. Namely, ‘What is the summum bonum or highest good?’. Of course, this question was central to the ethics of antiquity and the Middle Ages; but it had lost none of its vitality in late eighteenth-century Germany, where the vocation of man (Bestimmung des Menschen) was still a very popular topic.⁴⁶ To understand what is at stake with this question, we do best to return to the classical analysis of the concept of the highest good provided by Aristotle.⁴⁷ According to Aristotle, the highest good must satisfy two conditions: ﬁrst, it must be complete, that is, it must be an end in itself, and so never a means to any higher end; second, it must be self-sufﬁcient, that is, nothing can be added to it to make it better. In the second Kritik Kant himself follows a similar distinction. He maintains that the concept of the highest good is ambiguous: it can refer to either the supreme good—that unconditional good which is not good upon the condition of anything else—or the perfect good—that whole which is not part of a larger whole (V, 110). Now, expressed in these terms, Schiller’s central claim is that the highest good, both complete and sufﬁcient, is the development of aesthetic character, the whole personality. If morality is an end in itself, a supreme good, it is is still not the perfect good because there is something that can be added to it to make it better: namely, the development of the whole personality, the cultivation of sensibility and individuality as well as rationality. To be sure, Kant too does not think that morality alone is the perfect or self-sufﬁcient good but only the supreme good; he maintains that the perfect good is happiness in accord with virtue (V, 110–1). Indeed, in the second Kritik and Religionsschrift he argues against stoicism that personal happiness—that deriving from our natural desires—is a necessary component of the highest good.⁴⁸ Nevertheless, Kant’s concept of the highest good remains much more moralistic than Schiller’s. For Kant stresses that happiness is to be apportioned according to moral virtue alone, and that virtue alone is the supreme good.⁴⁹ Hence, Schiller’s fundamental disagreement with Kant ultimately concerns the role of virtue in the highest good, or the place of morality in the ends of life: Kant afﬁrms and Schiller denies that morality is the sole supreme good. What Schiller is trying to do in the Ästhetische Briefe, then, is to place Kantian morality in a broader perspective, so that it becomes only one of the ends of life. He fears that if virtue alone were taken as the supreme good, then it would lead to a narrow moralism which places all human worth in the performance of moral duties alone. But such a moralism would leave no room for two fundamental human values: ﬁrst, the development of the senses as ends in themselves; and, ⁴⁶ See above, 1.2 ⁴⁷ See Nicomachean Ethics, I, 7, 1097a1–1098a1. ⁴⁸ Cf. VI, 58n and V, 127. ⁴⁹ This claim, so central to Kant’s moralistic world view, is explicitly afﬁrmed in Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, V, 110. It is also implied by Kant’s famous opening statement in the Grundlegung that the only conceivable unconditional good is a good will (IV, 393). See also the Collins’ lectures, where Kant maintains that the ﬁnal purpose of mankind is the achievement of moral perfection (XXVII, 470); and the Kritik der Urteilskraft §86, where he states that the highest good consists in ‘the existence of rational beings under moral laws’ (V, 444).

Dispute with Kant

189

second, the realization of human individuality. If moral virtue is the sole supreme good, then sensibility has value only insofar as it is cultivated for moral ends; and if virtue consists in acting according to universal norms, then it gives no room for the development of individuality. Schiller believed that he could avoid these unwelcome consequences of moralism with his ‘broader anthropological perspective’, which would give equal weight to virtue, individuality, and sensibility in a single conception of the highest good. That single conception is the idea of a harmonious unity of opposites, which, for Schiller, went by the name of beauty. Once we formulate Schiller’s dispute with Kant in these terms, it is easy to see some of the disadvantages of Kant’s position. It suffers from two serious difﬁculties. First, it is unduly moralistic, giving supreme value to morality alone in its conception of the highest good. This means that the charge of moralism against Kant still has its value, though it should be understood as a criticism not of his account of moral action but of his theory of the highest good. Second, Kant’s account of the highest good as happiness in accord with virtue amounts to an attempt to revive and rationalize the traditional Christian view of providence. In this regard, Schiller proves himself to be much more resolutely secular and modern than Kant.⁵⁰ His conception of the highest good is entirely this-worldly and humanist. 8. A FINAL DIFFICULT Y This is not, however, the end of the story. If Kant’s theory of the highest good has its difﬁculties so does Schiller’s. His problems are indeed so severe that Kant’s theory seems to be more attractive after all. Any theory of the highest good that postulates two supreme goods immediately runs into problems whenever these goods conﬂict with one another. It then becomes necessary to choose one over the other, so that there is ultimately really only one supreme good after all. Schiller’s theory seems to be a classic case in point, because he gives supreme value to both reason and sensibility, to both the demands of morality and those of sensibility. What are we to do, however, in those cases where these demands conﬂict? As Kant constantly reminds us, these conﬂicts are eternal and inevitable, so that it is not always possible to do our duty with grace. Sometimes it is necessary ‘to grin and bear it’, repressing not only selﬁsh inclinations but even the kindest promptings of the heart. It seems that, in these cases, Schiller must admit with Kant that morality alone is the supreme good after all. Schiller was acutely aware of this problem, and his answer to it is the concept of dignity which he develops in the second half of Anmut und Würde. No less than ⁵⁰ Schiller never explicitly examined Kant’s concept of the highest good. Yet his attitude toward it can be inferred from his February 28, 1793 letter to Körner, where he sharply criticizes Kant’s Religionschrift for propping up church orthodoxy (NA XXVI, 219). Schiller scorned the Christian faith in supernatural rewards for virtuous conduct on earth; but it was just this idea that Kant had defended with his concept of the highest good. On Schiller’s attitude toward this aspect of Christian faith, see his poem ‘Resignation’, NA I, 168.

190

Schiller as Philosopher

Kant, Schiller stresses that there are many cases in this life where the conﬂict between reason and sensibility, or duty and inclination, is insuperable because the self can do its duty only with the greatest suffering. In these cases we do not expect a person to do their duty with joy, and we would indeed become suspicious if they did so, because the demands of duty stretch anyone to their limits. For Schiller, these kinds of cases are especially evident in tragedy, where the self can do its duty only by the greatest personal self-sacriﬁce. He recognizes that in these extreme cases the commands of duty remain paramount (291), and so he implicitly admits Kant’s point that there can be only one supreme good after all. No sooner does Schiller make this admission, however, than he stresses that it holds only for the extreme case of tragedy. He insists that the ideal of complete humanity demands harmony rather than conﬂict, so that it is indeed incompatible with dignity (298). While dignity is sometimes required in a less than perfect world, grace alone represents the ideal for human nature (289, 298). Hence, Schiller’s concession to Kant remains very limited. If he has to admit that morality alone is the supreme good in the extreme case of tragedy, he does not have to make this concession for our normal lives where duty usually does not demand such great sacriﬁce. As long as we are not so unfortunate, it is possible, and indeed desirable, to give equal value to the demands of morality, individuality and sensibility, so that they are all supreme goods. Here it is only necessary to recall that the concept of the highest good speciﬁes only an ideal life, which by its very nature cannot be realized in all circumstances.⁵¹ Schiller’s response to this difﬁculty is complicated by his further claim that human perfection demands that a person show both grace and dignity (300, 35–8). It then appears as if grace alone, and the unity of grace and dignity, is his ideal of humanity. The apparent contradiction disappears, however, if we consider that the unity of grace and dignity is still not the ideal of humanity or the highest good; rather, it is the best disposition for a person in the real world who has to deal with all kinds of contingencies. If we accept Schiller’s response to this difﬁculty, then we are ﬁnally in a position to appreciate his ethics as a whole. Schiller’s great achievement in ethics lay in his preserving some of Kant’s central insights within the framework of a broader humanism. Schiller upheld two of Kant’s cardinal principles—that moral worth depends upon the will, and that reason must play a central role in the justiﬁcation of norms—yet he did not take them to the extreme of a narrow moralism which sees virtue alone as the supreme good. His humanism never compromises Kant’s rigorism; yet it also does not limit the end of life to morality alone. These features of Schiller’s ethics should make him more attractive to those contemporary moral philosophers who are searching for a synthesis of Kant and Aristotle.⁵² Whatever one thinks of that elusive ideal, it should be clear from the above that, at the very least, we need to rethink Schiller’s famous dispute with Kant. ⁵¹ See above, chap. 3.11. ⁵² See the interesting collection of essays Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics, ed. Stephen Engstrom and Jennifer Whiting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

6 Autonomy and Enlightenment 1. A TROUBLING QUESTION Most authors crave fame; only a rare few question whether they deserve it. The young Schiller was among that rare few. His play Die Räuber had been a hit on the Mannheim stage, but he tormented himself about the merits of the piece. He knew that the writing was unrealistic and overblown in places, but, worst of all, he feared that its content was morally questionable. How is it possible to justify a play whose hero is a criminal? Karl Moor, the hero of the piece, leads a band of robbers, abandons his ailing father and murders his mistress. Plagued with self-doubts, Schiller found himself compelled to justify his play; he did so on several occasions, sometimes inconsistently, and never to his complete satisfaction.¹ Whatever the merits of Die Räuber, its success posed a question that would trouble Schiller for the rest of his life: What is the justiﬁcation of art? Does it have an intrinsic value? Or must we justify it in moral and political terms? This issue preoccupied Schiller more than any other, for it challenged him to justify his main vocation and passion in life: literature. Schiller’s attempts to justify himself began with his defense of Die Räuber in 1782; they continue throughout the 1780s in his essays on the theatre, in his didactic poems, and in his Briefe über Don Karlos; they become more philosophical in the early 1790s with his aesthetic essays; and they reach their climax with his 1794–5 Ästhetische Briefe, his most systematic and thorough treatment of the topic. Whether from an historical or contemporary standpoint, Schiller’s reﬂections on the value of the arts remain of great interest. From an historical perspective, they are a response to the challenge of Plato and Rousseau, whom Schiller turns upside down. He argues that, far from being a danger to the republic, the arts alone secure its moral foundation. From a contemporary standpoint, Schiller attempts to square two very modern and apparently conﬂicting demands: aesthetic autonomy and ¹ See ‘Die Räuber. Der Autor an das Publikum’; ‘Die Räuber. Ein Schauspiel, von Friedrich Schiller’; and the ‘Vorrede’ to the play itself, in Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. Julius Petersen et al. (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1958f ), XXIII, 88, 115–31, and III, 5. The inconsistency arises in Schiller’s attitude toward Karl Moor, whom he describes as both a Robin Hood and an ‘Ungeheuer’ (XXIII, 116, 120).

192

Schiller as Philosopher

moral relevance. It was one of Schiller’s main merits as an aesthetician that he saw the value of both demands and persistently struggled to reconcile them. While Schiller is very modern in stressing the primacy of form and aesthetic autonomy, he foresaw the pitfalls of elitism and moral irrelevance that has characterized so much aesthetic formalism. Though they are of lasting relevance, Schiller’s reﬂections on the value of art pose a special challenge to the philosophical historian. They are not found complete in any single work; they are not always consistent; and they undergo constant development. While the Ästhetische Briefe is the climax of Schiller’s efforts, it is not easily comprehensible by itself but yields its meaning only in the light of its context and history. Because of its changes, complexity, and obscurity, Schiller’s thinking about the value of the arts is best approached genetically by tracing its origins and development. This is the approach we will adopt in this chapter. The history of Schiller’s thinking about the value of the arts is essentially a story about his struggle to resolve the tension between the demands for aesthetic autonomy and moral relevance. There are two schools of opinion about this history: those who ﬁnd continuity, a progression toward an eventual resolution of the dilemma; and those who see discontinuity, an early period that emphasizes the institutional role of art and a later period that stresses its autonomy.² The trend of much contemporary scholarship is to stress the discontinuity and to charge the later Schiller with idealism and elitism, with attempting to remove art from the social and political world.³ The present chapter is a defense of the former school, though a somewhat qualiﬁed one. The more we examine Schiller’s development in detail, the more we ﬁnd that its tensions disappear; indeed, we also see that Schiller was well aware of, and responded to, many of the objections his critics later made against him. However, while Schiller’s development is progressive and cumulative, it is not always entirely consistent. Some themes are abandoned, others modiﬁed or transformed. Against the charge of idealism and elitism, we shall ﬁnd that the later Schiller was not removing art from the social and political world but attempting to address its problems through a new conception of aesthetic autonomy. ² The chief spokesman of the former school is Karl Berger, Die Entwicklung von Schillers Ästhetik (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1894). Though somewhat dated, Berger’s study is still the most thorough account of Schiller’s philosophical development. ³ See Martha Woodmannsee, ‘Rereading the Aesthetic Letters’, in The Author, Art and the Market (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995 ), 57–86, esp. 72–3, 86; Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Blackwell: Oxford, 1990), 109, 112; Peter Bürger, Zur Kritik der idealistischen Ästhetik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983), 64; and Christa Bürger, Der Ursprung der bürgerlichen Institution Kunst im höﬁschen Weimar (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977), 119–39, esp. 132. For a more detailed critique of Christa Bürger, which comes to conclusions similar to my own, see Dieter Borchmeyer, ‘Ästhetische und politische Autonomie; Schillers Ästhetische Briefe im Gegenlicht der Französischen Revolution’, in Revolution und Autonomie: Deutsche Autonomieästhetik im Zeitalter der französischen Revolution, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990), 277–96.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

193

2. EARLY DOUBTS One of the most common objections against Schiller’s aesthetics is that it suffers from a naive idealism about the value and effect of the arts. It is as if Schiller believes that mankind could improve itself simply by listening to music, reading novels, and going to plays. No one was more skeptical of such idealism, however, than the young Schiller himself. This is clear from his ﬁrst writing explicitly devoted to the role of the arts, his 1782 essay ‘Ueber das gegenwärtige Teutsche Theater’.⁴ This essay is essentially a sarcastic lament about the present state of the German theatre. Schiller shows himself to be very skeptical, even cynical, about the claims made for the theatre by the Aufklärung. Such Aufklärer as Gottsched and Lessing held that the theatre could be an instrument for the enlightenment of the public, a platform for the people to learn the fundamental principles of morality and the state. The stage could be a more effective means of education than philosophy, they believed, because its sensible images would appeal more directly to the heart and the imagination than abstract concepts and general principles. Schiller alludes speciﬁcally to Lessing’s version of this doctrine, which regards the theatre as a dramatic podium for the enlightenment, ‘a public mirror of human life’ (79). No sooner does Schiller present the ideals of the Aufklärer than he begins to debunk them. He points to the glaring gap between ideal and reality. If the stage should be the educator of humanity, it is very far from executing its task. Even if a stage production is successful, even if it has a powerful effect upon the passions, Schiller argues, it still might not have a beneﬁcial moral effect upon the public. What does such an effect amount to other than ‘a bright play of colours on a surface, the sweet shimmering of the sunlight on a wave’? (80). Are fewer maids seduced after Sara Sampson pays for her mistake with poison? Is a future Macbeth likely to lose his ambition, or to admit his crime, after seeing his counterpart on stage? Is a single husband likely to be less jealous because of Othello’s tragic error? Schiller implies that, given the present state of German theatre, all this is very unlikely. The contemporary theatre is more a form of entertainment than of instruction, a diversion for the boredom of the public, a stage for the vanity of actors (81). As long as the theatre languishes in this condition, Schiller concludes, the playwright should renounce the patriotic pretense that he is an educator of the people. Despite such skepticism, Schiller does not break with the Aufklärung ideal. His doubts concern less that ideal itself than the present attempts to realize it. They are directed less against the stage as such than the contemporary stage, whose present practices make it impossible to attain such a lofty ideal. Schiller ﬁnds the chief source of the problem in contemporary writing and acting. Modern writers ⁴ See NA XX, 79–86.

194

Schiller as Philosopher

commit two extreme errors: either they imitate the French, whose dramas are artiﬁcial and affected, or they follow the English, whose plays are wild and chaotic. The true writer has to ﬁnd the middle path between these extremes: he should capture the essence of a character, pruning away all affectation; but he should also keep his portrait within proportion, restraining the display of passion (82–3). For their part, modern actors fail to walk the ﬁne line between the opposing demands necessary for all good acting: living entirely in one’s role yet remaining self-conscious how one is acting it. The actor should be like a sleepwalker, who, though unconscious and living entirely in a ﬁctional world, still knows well enough how to avoid the precipices around him. Although Schiller’s complaints are chieﬂy directed against the practices of the present German stage, his polemic sometimes boils over, questioning the Aufklärung ideal itself. He sometimes doubts whether its ideal could be achieved even with the best writing and acting (86). All that good writing and acting can do, he admits, is move or arouse people; but that does not mean it will have beneﬁcial moral consequences. Indeed, in his most cynical mood, Schiller doubts whether the effect of good writing and acting would ever amount to anything more than that ‘bright play of colours’. While in this mood he raised a powerful objection against the whole Aufklärung project: ‘Before the public is educated for its stage, it is very difﬁcult for it to educate the public’ (82). This circularity seemed to doom the whole programme of aesthetic education, making it either useless or superﬂuous.⁵ Still, despite such cynicism, Schiller does not entirely lose faith. Although he admits that even the best writing and acting might fail to educate the public, he does not advise closing the theatres. Writers and actors will simply have to content themselves with less. The theatre will have to console itself with imparting whatever it can of morality and religion, even if it is not appreciated by the ‘silly and dirty masses’ (blöden und schmutzigen Haufens). The theatre will still be worthwhile if ‘some friend of truth and healthy nature’ sees his own fate in those onstage, if he acquires courage from scenes of misery, and if he discovers his own sentiments in some scene of unhappiness (86). ‘A noble and incorrupt soul’ (ein edles unverfälschtes Gemüth) might still leave the theatre with an ‘animating warmth’, and perhaps the ‘cruder masses’ will feel some elements of their neglected humanity. The air of resignation concluding the essay shows that Schiller had not answered his own doubts. The fundamental question remained: How does the stage educate if the people must be already educated to appreciate it? Much of Schiller’s later thinking about the arts will be an attempt to quell these early doubts. Whether he succeeds in resolving them or not, it should now be clear: not naive idealism but cynical skepticism was the starting point of his reﬂections. ⁵ Schiller could well have gathered this objection from Rousseau, who made it in his Lettre à D’Alembert. See Œuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), V, 17–8, 21–2.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

195

3. THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE THEATRE Some two years after his ﬁrst essay on the theatre, Schiller returned to the question of the value of the stage in an address delivered June 26, 1784 to the Kurfürstliche Deutsche Gesellschaft in Mannheim.⁶ Schiller’s lecture was his response to a very topical issue: Whether Germany should have a national theatre funded at public expense? Following in the footsteps of Lessing, Schiller defended such a project. His defense was written against an indictment of a similar project proposed for Geneva, Rousseau’s notorious 1758 Lettre à Mr. d’Alembert.⁷ In defending a national theatre Schiller puts forward a classic statement of the Aufklärung program. Despite his earlier doubts, he now declares the stage to be nothing less than ‘a school of practical wisdom, a pathﬁnder through civil life, an infallible key to the most secret recesses of the human soul’ (95). More speciﬁcally, it is the channel from which the light of the educated elite ﬂows down to the lower classes, dispelling superstition, ignorance and barbarism. Any Aufklärer would glow warm with approval in reading lines like these: The stage is the common channel in which the light of truth from the thinking part of the nation ﬂows downwards and spreads itself in mild rays throughout the entire state. Corrected concepts, reﬁned principles, purer feelings ﬂow from there through all the veins of the nation; the fog of barbarism, the darkest superstition disappears; night gives way to the triumphant light. (97–8)

The justiﬁcation for the theatre, Schiller argues, is the same as that for religion: the insufﬁciency of the law to control all aspects of human activity (91). Laws at best prevent unsocial actions and they control only outward behavior; but they cannot motivate moral actions or inﬂuence character. It is precisely in this respect, however, that the theatre can have its greatest effect. It has an immediate impact upon inner character because it addresses the heart and imagination of the spectator. It makes virtue seem attractive and vice repellent by using concrete images which appeal to the imagination and feeling, and which are much more effective in inﬂuencing conduct than all the abstract precepts of the philosopher and legislator (93). The theatre now becomes something like a moral tribunal where the spectator sees virtue rewarded and vice punished. What the law cannot achieve by correcting external actions, that art will accomplish by addressing the inner heart: ‘The jurisdiction of the stage begins where the domain of worldly laws ends’ (92). The stage will have this effect by damning thousands of vices that the law tolerates, and by praising thousands of virtues that the law ignores (93). ⁶ NA XX, 87–100. The essay was originally entitled and published as ‘Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlich wirken?’; it was greatly revised and later published under the title ‘Die Schaubühne als eine moralische Anstalt betrachtet’. ⁷ Schiller alludes to Rousseau at NA XX, 89, 22.

196

Schiller as Philosopher

Throughout this essay Schiller never questions his premise that the theatre must be justiﬁed in moral and political terms. Indeed, in outlining his argument he is perfectly explicit that the justiﬁcation for the theatre must be civic. The ﬁrst and last demand that the philosopher can make of any public institution, he writes, is that it promote the general happiness (88). Hence, to show that the stage deserves to be such an institution, the philosopher must establish its role in promoting the public good. Nowhere in the essay is there any conception of the autonomy of art, any suggestion that aesthetic contemplation is an end in itself. The sole principle Schiller uses to defend the arts is their effect on public and civil life. Only in one passage does he seem to depart from this principle by suggesting that aesthetic sense, the feeling for beauty, unites reason and sensibility (90). Here it seems as if Schiller thinks art can serve individual and personal ends rather than just public ones.⁸ The discrepancy disappears, however, as soon as we recognize that, for the young Schiller, there is simply no distinction between personal and public values: to become a more whole person is to make oneself a more effective part of the social organism.⁹ There is a striking discrepancy between Schiller’s later and earlier essay on the theatre. The pessimism and doubts of the early essay contrast sharply against the optimism and conﬁdence of the later one. The tension diminishes somewhat, perhaps, when we recognize that the argument of the second essay is hypothetical: it assumes that all the vices of the theatre exposed in the early essay have disappeared; in other words, it presupposes that the playwright provides good scripts, that the actors play well, and that the public is already educated.¹⁰ Still, the tension does not entirely disappear. For in the ﬁrst essay, Schiller doubted the moral effects of the stage even when all the conditions for good theatre had been met. At one crucial point in the later essay, Schiller does seem to address his earlier doubts (95–6). For the sake of argument, he admits that the corrupt state of public morals might frustrate the efforts of the best writers and actors. Moliére’s Harpagon might not improve any usurer; Beverly’s suicide might not discourage any gambler; and the fate of Karl Moor might not make the highways of Germany any safer. Nevertheless, Schiller insists, the stage will still be of the greatest beneﬁt. Why? Because, he answers, even if it has no effect on moral action it will still increase our moral knowledge. Even if the stage does not increase virtue and decrease vice it will still make us aware of their consequences. But such a reply is only a weak answer to the earlier doubts. It assumes that having such knowledge will ultimately lead to morally beneﬁcial consequences, which is precisely the issue at dispute. Furthermore, it presupposes that the public is already educated and moral enough to appreciate and act upon the lessons put before them. ⁸ Cf. Berger, Die Entwicklung von Schillers Ästhetik, 34–5, who complains that Schiller equivocates about the purpose of art: that he sees its end as morality and the creation of harmony of our sensible and intellectual powers. ⁹ See the early speech ‘Die Tugend in ihrer Folge betrachtet’, NA XX, 31, 32, 35; and Philosophie der Physiologie, NA XX, 11. ¹⁰ Thus Berger, Entwicklung, 30.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

197

Nowhere does Schiller address the difﬁcult point that such moral knowledge might be of value to the wicked. Evidently, then, the Mannheim lecture was something of a salto mortale, a leap of faith against Schiller’s own lingering doubts.

4. THE DISCOVERY OF AUTONOMY The late 1780s mark an important change in Schiller’s views about the status and value of art.¹¹ Three years before his study of Kant in 1791, Schiller began to form his own conception of the autonomy of art. It now seemed to him that art must have its own intrinsic value apart from its social and political purposes. This development was precipitated by the hostile reception of his most controversial poem, ‘Die Götter Griechenlands’, which appeared in the Teutsche Merkur in March 1788.¹² Schiller’s poem was a lament for the lost gods of Greek antiquity, who, he imagined, made the world a more humane and beautiful place than the abstract and remote God of Christian dogma. To some, Schiller’s poem seemed to celebrate the polytheism, materialism and hedonism of paganism, a brazen affront to Christian belief and ethics. The most provocative review was by Leopold Graf von Stolberg in the Deutsches Museum.¹³ In a stern and indigant tone, Stolberg accused Schiller of perverting the true purpose of poetry. The end of poetry is to show the truth, which has been revealed to humanity by Christianity. The poet should therefore support Christian belief and practice. To portray the pagan beliefs of the ancient Greeks in a pleasing light, as Schiller had done, was simply to serve the cause of idolatry and vice. Schiller planned a reply to Stolberg, but never wrote it, perhaps not least because Körner came to his defense with an essay in the Thalia.¹⁴ His attitude toward Stolberg’s critique appears only in a few lines in his December 25, 1788 letter to Körner (NA XXV, 166–8). In his defense Schiller swore that he never meant to attack the god of the philosophers, still less that of the common people; his only target was ecclesiastical dogma. Schiller then took exception to Stolberg’s conception of the poet’s task, which would limit the poet to reporting facts and supporting conventional morality and religious orthodoxy. It is never the purpose of the artist to portray the truth exactly as it appears in nature and history, Schiller further argued, since the poet must idealize his subject matter, selecting from it those features that make a pleasing aesthetic whole. Hence, the Greek gods of his poem are ¹¹ Karoline von Wolzogen described the year 1788 as a ‘Wendepunkt für seinen [Schillers] eignen Geist’. See her Schillers Leben (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1830) I, 271. ¹² On the controversy surrounding Schiller’s poem, see Wilhelm Frühwald, ‘Die Auseinandersetzung um Schillers Gedicht “Die Götter Griechenlands” ’, Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 15 (1969), 251–71. For the sources, see Oscar Fambach, Schiller und seine Kreis (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957), 40–73. ¹³ Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg, ‘Gedanken über Herrn Schillers Gedicht: Die Götter Griechenlands’, Deutsches Museum, Stück 8, August 1788, 97–105. ¹⁴ Christian Körner, ‘Ueber die Freiheit des Dichters bei der Wahl seines Stoffes’, Thalia II (1789), 59–71.

198

Schiller as Philosopher

not those of history but only an idealized version of them; they represent the ideals or values behind the Greek religion, which are distinguishable from their particular historical manifestations. More signiﬁcantly, Schiller questioned Stolberg’s view that the artist should be the servant of religion and morality. Why should the artist measure the value of his work strictly according to such external criteria? Did not every work of art have its intrinsic standards? As Schiller told Körner: ‘In short, I am convinced that every work of art may account only for itself, i.e. its own rule of beauty, and it should not be subject to any other demand’ (167). Although Schiller had now afﬁrmed a principle of aesthetic autonomy, he continued to believe in the moral and political signiﬁcance of art. Rather than abandoning his earlier doctrine, he now attempted to combine it with his new principle. Even if the artist creates his work according to strictly aesthetic criteria, even if he lays aside all moral and political ends, Schiller claimed, his work will still have beneﬁcial moral and political consequences. Thus he assurred Körner: The poet who makes beauty his sole purpose, but follows it religiously, will in the end have attained, as a reward, without knowing or intending it, all other goals that he seemed to neglect; . . . he who wavers unsteadily between beauty and morality, or whatever it might be, or he who attempts to woo both, will easily ruin both of them. (XXV, 167–8)

Why aesthetic intentions should have beneﬁcial consequences, why the poet should receive such a reward, Schiller did not further explain. For now, such a claim was a mere act of faith, a mere gesture to the importance of morality; he will later be compelled to explain the basis for such a mysterious pre-established harmony. For all Stolberg’s bluster, his review had raised another important question: What kind of morality, state, or religion should the artist serve? Schiller had never confronted that question in his earlier essays but simply assumed that the value of the dramatist’s work depends on his supporting morality and the state, whatever these might be. It had always been clear to the author of Die Räuber, however, that the artist was not to be a mere spokesman for the morals and religion of his day; at the very least, the artist had to have some freedom to serve the truth as he saw it. It was precisely here that the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy would have its value. This principle had proven itself to be a useful weapon in defending the rights of the poet against the claims of orthodox religion and conventional morality. Ironically, the great value of aesthetic autonomy for Schiller is political: it frees the artist from the demands of religious orthodoxy and political conservativsm.

5. IN TRANSITION The transition in Schiller’s thinking in the late 1780s is even more apparent from ‘Die Künstler’, a long didactic poem published March 1789 in Der Teutsche Merkur.¹⁵ ‘Die Künstler’ is essentially a defense of the arts, a peaen to their role in ¹⁵ Text NA I, 201–14, and commentary NA II/2A, 178–203.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

199

the development of culture. Taking silent issue with Lessing, Schiller sees the arts rather than religion as the guiding force behind the education of mankind. Since they express the truth in symbols, the arts were the ﬁrst form of science; and since they taught mankind taste and decorum, the need to restrain cruder feelings and desires, they became the basis for morality. In seeing the arts as a preparatory stage in the development of morality and science, Schiller hardly abandons his earlier views about the moral signiﬁcance of art. Indeed, he described the basic theme of the work as ‘the shrouding of truth and morality in beauty’ (die Verhüllung der Wahrheit und Sittlichkeit in die Schönheit).¹⁶ Yet these views are now deepened from the perspective of history, which was the main source of Schiller’s interests in the late 1780s. While Schiller had already suggested such an historical perspective in his second dissertation,¹⁷ his chief aim there was not to defend the arts; and the essays on the theatre never looked at the arts from such a viewpoint. So ‘Die Künstler’ adopts a new strategy in defense of the arts: it looks at not what they can do but what they have actually done. Those who dismiss the role of the arts, Schiller implies, suffer from amnesia: they ignore the very ladder that has allowed them to scale their present heights. But how does this historical perspective square with Schiller’s new principle of autonomy? To see the arts as a stage in the development of science and morality seems to give them a purely instrumental value. That was just the objection raised by Schiller’s new friend in Weimar, C. M. Wieland, who had read some of the early drafts of the poem. This Nestor of the German literati, whose tastes were very classical, did not much like what he saw in these drafts, either in their form or content. What he especially disliked about their content is the idea that the arts are the servants of a higher moral and scientiﬁc culture. For Wieland, this was a perversion of the true order of values: the sciences are below beauty and have value only insofar as they form an aesthetic whole. Having already declared a principle of aesthetic autonomy, Schiller was receptive to Wieland’s criticism and used it in revising the poem.¹⁸ Rather than simply seeing art as a stage in the development of science and morality, Schiller would now add that science and morality were in turn a stage in the development of a higher aesthetic culture, which is an end in itself. This higher aesthetic standpoint is apparent in the ﬁnal stanzas of the poem: Der Schätze, die der Denker aufgehäufet, wird er in eurem Armen erst sich freun, wenn seine Wissenschaft, der Schönheit zugereift, zum Kunstwerk wird geadelt seyn (I, 212, 402–5).¹⁹ ¹⁶ To Körner, February 9, 1789, NA XXV, 199. ¹⁷ NA XX, 50–6, §§10–1. ¹⁸ See Schiller to Wieland, February 4–5, 1789, NA XXV, 194–5; and to Körner, February 9, 1789, NA XXV, 199–200. David Pugh has argued convincingly that the drafts of the poem already implicitly contained the theme that art is an end in itself, and that Wieland only encouraged Schiller make it more explicit. See his Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schiller’s Aesthetics (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1996), 209–14. ¹⁹ ‘The treasures that the thinker accumulates/he will only be pleased in your arms/ when his science, ripend to beauty/ is ennobled to a work of art.’

200

Schiller as Philosopher

Wieland’s criticism again raised the question of how the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy could be squared with its moral and social value. Of course, it is possible to maintain that art has both instrumental and intrinsic value; in that respect, it would be like many goods in life, such as education or health. But the question of consistency ran deeper than this, for, as Schiller had already stressed, the artist who writes for only moral and political ends creates second-rate works. If, however, he writes according to aesthetic criteria alone, what guarantees that his work will have beneﬁcial consequences? It seemed as if the artist were caught between the horns of a dilemma: writing second-rate moral art or ﬁrst-rate amoral art. In face of this predicament, Schiller could do nothing more than reafﬁrm the article of faith he had stated to Körner: Die Schwester, die euch hier verschwunden, Hohlt ihr im Schoos der Mutter ein; was schöne Seele schön empfunden muß treﬂich und vollkommen seyn (I, 214, 462–5).²⁰

It should be clear from this brief look at Schiller’s thinking in the late 1780s that he did not learn his doctrine of aesthetic autonomy from Kant.²¹ To be sure, Kant would reinforce his belief in aesthetic autonomy, but he was far from having created it. There were three inﬂuences behind the development of Schiller’s doctrine in the late 1780s. One of them, as we have already seen, was Wieland. Another was Schiller’s friend Körner, who reafﬁrmed the principle in defending ‘Die Götter Griechenlands’.²² Yet a third was Karl Phillip Moritz, whom Schiller had met in Leipzig in 1785. Schiller had read approvingly his tract, Ueber die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen, in December 1788,²³ the very month he declared his principle of aesthetic autonomy to Körner. Indeed, Schiller himself had acknowledged the importance of his conversations about Moritz’s book for the writing of ‘Die Künstler’.²⁴

6. AUTONOMY AND POPUL ARIT Y Despite the increasing importance he gave to aesthetic autonomy, Schiller never abandoned his earlier program of aesthetic education. This is apparent from his ²⁰ ‘The sisters that have escaped you/you will catch again in the lap of your mother;/what the beautiful soul has felt to be beautiful/must be spendid and perfect.’ ²¹ The point is an old one, but perhaps bears repeating in view of the still persistent belief that Schiller got the doctrine from Kant. The point has been argued clearly by Berger, Entwicklung, 57–71, who notes that Schiller was already ‘in vielen Dingen Kantianer vor seiner Bekanntschaft mit diesem’. ²² See Körner, ‘Ueber die Freiheit des Dichters’: ‘The merit of the artist shows itself not in the dignity of his material but in the manner of his treating it . . . He fails in his vocation if he, to promote a moral end, sacriﬁces a higher aesthetic perfection’ (66). ²³ To Caroline von Beulwitz, January 3, 1789, NA XXV, 177; and to Körner, February 2, 1789, NA XXV, 193. ²⁴ To Caroline von Beulwitz and Charlotte von Lengefeld, February 12, 1789, NA XXV, 203–4.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

201

last important aesthetic writing before his study of Kant, his review of Bürger’s poetry, ‘Über Bürgers Gedichte’, which he wrote in late 1790.²⁵ Just as the earlier essays regarded the theatre as a channel of enlightenment, so Schiller now sees a similar role for lyric poetry. Resuming a theme adumbrated in his second essay on the theatre, Schiller declares that the central vocation of the lyric poet is to unite the various powers that have been fragmented in the modern world, and so to restore ‘the whole person in us’ (den ganzen Menschen in uns) (245). To perform such an elevated function, the poet must progress with his age and make all its achievements his own (246). Poetry must mirror ‘the whole wisdom of its time’ (die ganze Weisheit ihrer Zeit) so that it can provide ‘a model for its century’ (ein Muster für das Jahrhundert) (246). Since an educated public expects the poet to be its guide through life, the poet must know all the latest developments in philosophy and the sciences. It is the task of the poet, therefore, to take the most sublime philosophy and to resolve it into feelings, and to make the most obscure results of science into images appealing to the imagination (249). In seeing poetry as an instrument of enlightenment, Schiller continues to afﬁrm its moral importance; indeed, he explicitly maintains that the ideals of the artist ultimately derive from morality (262–3). Schiller now sees more clearly than before, however, the problems facing the poet in the modern age. He worries that the public is too uncultivated and too divided to appreciate poetry. Our age is no longer that of Homer or the troubadors, he laments, when the poet could express the feelings of an entire age because his public was much more homogeneous. Modern society is divided into distinct classes, where there is a great gulf between elite and masses. In the face of this problem, Schiller says, the modern poet faces a difﬁcult choice: either he addresses the masses and ignores educated taste, or he tries to bridge the distance between himself and the masses through the quality of his art. It is the latter option that Schiller recommends (248). He does not claim that the poet should write for the educated elite, regardless of the public; still less does he think that the poet should write to be popular, regardless of criteria of aesthetic excellence. Rather, the poet should ﬁnd a middle path between the demands of aesthetic excellence and popularity; he must strive for popularity through achieving standards of aesthetic excellence. ²⁵ Here I take issue with Woodmansee, ‘Rereading the Aesthetic Letters’. She argues that Schiller’s review of Bürger represents a complete departure from his earlier more popular and utilitarian program, a reaction against the emancipatory and egalitarian values of Bürger, and a turn toward an elitist art of the ideal whose values are measured independently of social and political ends (72, 73, 75). It is simply false that Schiller abandons the program of enlightenment with the Bürger review, because he reafﬁrms it not only afterwards in the correspondence with Augustenberg and in the Aesthetische Briefe but even in the Bürger review itself. Woodmansee arrives at her exaggerated reading by underplaying Schiller’s own insistence on the value of popularity, which is also clear from the Bürger review. It is also false that the Bürger review puts the artist in a more elite role, since the essays on the theatre also made art the channel by which the elite educates the masses. In general, Woodmansee shows little sympathy for Schiller’s attempt to mediate between the demands of autonomy and enlightenment, and little awareness of the nuances of his philosophical development.

202

Schiller as Philosopher

It is striking that Schiller does not reject popularity but embraces it. He insists that the poet should be a Volksdichter, ‘Wortführer der Volksgefühle’ (249). Popularity is indeed a necessity if the artist is to achieve his goal of enlightenment. The only question that remains for Schiller is how the poet is to achieve such popularity. The problem with Bürger’s poetry, in Schiller’s view, is that it drops aesthetic standards for the sake of popularity; intrinsic quality disappears in the face of the attempt to create an effect on his audience. Where Bürger fails is not in attempting to be popular, but in making popularity the very criteria of excellence, the test of intrinsic quality (249–50). Schiller’s defense of a middle path between elite and popular poetry is part of his continuing struggle to resolve the tension between aesthetic autonomy and enlightenment. To follow strictly aesthetic criteria in writing a poem, regardless of the public, is to limit oneself to an elite audience and to forfeit enlightenment; to write for the sake of popularity alone is to disregard these aesthetic criteria and to surrender autonomy. In the face of this tension Schiller offers some concrete guidelines. The middle path between the demands of aesthetic excellence and popularity resides in a good choice of subject and the highest simplicity of its treatment (248). The poet must choose a subject that concerns man as such; and he must express it in a direct and natural manner. Schiller insists, however, that this does not mean that the poet should simply portray his individual feelings as they are given to him; rather, he must idealize feelings, selecting from them their universal human aspects. We idealize feelings when we portray not what one person feels under certain circumstances, but what everyone must feel under the same circumstances (260–1). One of the problems of Bürger’s poetry is that it simply reﬂects the surface level of feelings without trying to get to the broader human dimension underlying them. 7. KANTIAN TRANSFORMATION AND NEW MEDIATING EFFORTS Schiller’s study of Kant in the early 1790s entirely transformed all his thinking about the arts, which would now take place in essentially Kantian terms. Not least affected by this transformation were Schiller’s views about the value of art. The basic problem in his thinking about this issue—the tension between the demands of autonomy and enlightenment, between intrinsic value and popularity—had already been posed in the late 1780s, before his intensive study of Kant. But Kant not only gave this issue a sharper focus; he also made its solution more urgent and difﬁcult. It now seemed more impossible than ever to reconcile these conﬂicting demands; for, although Kant had suggested interesting ways of uniting morality and art, the main thrust of his system is sharply to separate the two domains. Kant divorces morality and art in two fundamental respects. First, he advocates a severe version of aesthetic autonomy, according to which aesthetic judgment must be

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

203

completely independent of moral ends. Second, he insists on moral purity, according to which there should be no sensible motivation for moral actions. Hence, the programme of aesthetic education faced a double challenge: it seemed to violate not only aesthetic autonomy but also moral purity. Throughout the early 1790s Schiller will struggle to make his programme consistent with the demands of Kantian aesthetic autonomy and moral purity. Schiller’s ﬁrst essays written under Kant’s inﬂuence apply his critical ideas to the theory of tragedy, an area of aesthetics almost completely ignored by Kant. It is in the context of thinking about tragedy that Schiller now attempts to resolve the tension between aesthetic autonomy and enlightenment. One of these essays, his 1791 ‘Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen’, immediately begins with a declaration of the principle of aesthetic autonomy. Taking issue with Gottsched and the Aufklärer, Schiller ﬂatly rejects the attempt to justify art by its utility. The demand that art serve the ends of morality, he argues, has imposed alien demands upon it and only resulted in so much mediocre art (134). In some lines it is even possible to detect a hint of self-criticism, an admission that the argument of his earlier essay on the theatre is problematic: To give the arts stature, to earn for them the favour of the state and the respect of everyone alike, one drove them out of their proper domain and imposed upon them a vocation alien and entirely unnatural to them. (134)

Although Schiller now proclaims aesthetic autonomy, he does not think that art should be above giving pleasure to its audience. Rather, he maintains that there is something profoundly correct about the common view that the purpose of art is to give pleasure (133). The aim of art is to give pleasure, and indeed to do so immediately; it is just in this respect that art is unlike the sciences, where pleasure is only the result of much labor. But Schiller, contrary to Rousseau, refuses to reduce aesthetic pleasure down to mere entertainment.²⁶ Aesthetic pleasure is sui generis, he insists, so that it cannot be identiﬁed with sheer amusement. Aesthetic pleasure is free because it arises entirely from the laws of the mind where a feeling is excited by some representation; it differs from sensual or physical pleasure where a sensation arises of necessity according to natural laws from some stimulus in the external world (135). No sooner does Schiller banish morality from the aesthetic realm than he reinvites it through the back door. He refuses to deny the moral content and signiﬁcance of art, which he thinks is still consistent with the principle of autonomy. There is no contradiction in claiming both that the aim of art is to create pleasure and that it promotes morality, he argues, for the free pleasure characteristic of the arts arises from moral conditions alone (134). Just how morality is the condition of aesthetic pleasure becomes clear from Schiller’s analysis of the pleasure we take in tragedy. Such pleasure seems paradoxical because it arises from the sight of ²⁶ Lettre à D’Alembert, Œuvres complètes V, 15–6.

204

Schiller as Philosopher

suffering, which is usually the source of displeasure; yet in tragedy we still feel pleasure because we see that our rational nature stands above our sensible nature, which alone suffers displeasure. What we see in tragedy is the sublime struggle between duty and inclination, where the hero acts on his duty at the cost of his self-interest and physical pleasure. We take pleasure in his struggle because it afﬁrms our own power of will, the capacity of a human being to rise above all the pleasures and pains of the natural world. It is especially in tragedy, therefore, that we become aware of our moral vocation (138). Schiller attempts to do justice to the demands of both autonomy and morality by making a distinction between the appraisal (die Würdigung der Kunst) and perfection of art (die Vollkommenheit der Kunst) (134–5). For aesthetic appraisal, it is indifferent whether morality is the means or end; all that matters is that the content of the work complies with moral principles. For aesthetic perfection, however, it is of the ﬁrst importance that morality not be the end of the artist, the intention behind his creation. If the end is moral, art loses the source of all its charm and power, namely its freedom, because it then must comply with moral ends (134–5). Schiller’s essay on tragic pleasure shows a greater sophistication than his earlier work in dealing with the tension between autonomy and morality. Still, it remains doubtful whether it resolves the underlying tension, which is simply reinstated in a new form. On the one hand, Schiller insists that the free pleasure of tragedy would be diminished from compliance with moral ends, and that the tragedian should not write with moral ends in mind. On the other hand, however, it is also a basic premise of his theory that all pleasure comes from ﬁnality (Zweckmäsigkeit ), from the conformity with some end (136); and in the case of free pleasure this is nothing less than the ends of morality. Schiller indeed claims that there is no ﬁnality more important for us than the moral, and that there is no higher pleasure than that of the moral faculty, because it is based upon our inner nature, ‘an inner principle of our autonomous reason’ (ein inneres Princip unserer autonomischen Vernunft ) (139). His examples of tragic characters are always heroes who act on the principles of duty contrary to the needs and pleasures of sensibility (140–1). The only case that we take pleasure in the hero not acting on the moral law is when his conscience troubles him for his misdeeds (142–3). The theory seems to claim, therefore, that free pleasure is somehow both independent of ‘yet dependent upon’ moral conditions. Furthermore, Schiller insists that the poet should not write with moral ends in mind, but that he should also somehow satisfy them to create aesthetic pleasure. That still leaves the nagging question: Should the artist simply leave matters to chance, or rely on his subconscious, to ensure the morally beneﬁcial results of his activity? In the end, Schiller has nothing more to offer than his old faith in a pre-established harmony between aesthetic autonomy and morality. The need to provide some basis for this faith grew more urgent than ever.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

205

8. A PERSISTENT TENSION Schiller’s thinking about this issue underwent some important transformation in his letters to Körner in early 1793, the so-called Kalliasbriefe.²⁷ This work has often been seen as central to Schiller’s aesthetics, as the foundation for all his later views.²⁸ While this is certainly true regarding Schiller’s account of beauty, the Kalliasbriefe plays a more transitional role in his thinking about the issue of autonomy versus enlightenment. In these letters, Schiller’s main aim is to develop an objective theory of beauty against Kant’s subjective theory, which had limited the reality of beauty to the feeling of pleasure in the perceiver. Schiller wants to provide a general characterization of those properties in the sensible world that are essential for beauty. While it is not his intention to address the tension between aesthetic autonomy and morality, his theory still has important implications for this issue. The heart of the Kalliasbriefe consists in Schiller’s deduction of his deﬁnition of beauty. Beauty, Schiller maintains, is nothing less than freedom in appearance, the appearance of freedom in objects in the sensible world. Objects in the sensible world appear beautiful for us, he explains, when they seem to act for their ends and according to their own laws, independent of any ends or laws that might be imposed upon them. While such objects indeed act according to laws and the necessity of nature, such laws appear to be created by them or to ﬂow from their own inner nature. Hence, beautiful objects in nature are the sensible analogues of the idea of moral autonomy, an idea which we read into appearances: Hence the realm of taste is a realm of freedom—the beautiful sensible world the happiest symbol of how the moral ought to be, and every beautiful natural being outside me is a happy witness, who proclaims to me: Be free as I am. (XXVI, 216)

The results of Schiller’s deﬁnition are paradoxical. It both divides and unites morality and art. On the one hand, it separates these realms, because the freedom of beauty presupposes independence from all ends or laws, not least moral ends or laws. Aesthetic pleasure no longer consists in conformity to purposes and laws— whether moral or natural—but in the appearance of freedom from all purposes and laws. On the other hand, however, Schiller’s deﬁnition also unites these realms because it makes beauty the appearance of freedom, which he equates with the autonomy of the moral law. The freedom that appears in the sensible world has a moral source because it is the analogue of the freedom that arises from acting according to the moral law or categorical imperative. In the Kalliasbriefe, Schiller ²⁷ See NA XXVI, 170–83, 190–229. ²⁸ See, e.g., Berger, Entwicklung, 107. I cannot agree with Berger’s argument that Schiller completely overcomes his earlier identiﬁcation of morality with art in the Kalliasbriefe (138–9). He ignores the crucial fact that Schiller still identiﬁes freedom with the moral law.

206

Schiller as Philosopher

explicitly identiﬁes freedom with moral autonomy (182, 195); he indeed argues, much as Kant had done in the second Kritik, that a person who acts immorally loses their freedom because they then follow motives of sensibility subject to natural causes. Aesthetic pleasure therefore derives entirely from a moral source since it comes from reading the principles of practical reason into appearances in the sensible world. This tension in Schiller’s position was not lost on his friend Körner, who complained that Schiller had betrayed his principle of aesthetic autonomy by subordinating the aesthetic to the moral.²⁹ In his reply to Körner, Schiller protested his innocence, stressing that he did not intend to derive beauty from morality. Rather, his essential aim was to connect them under a common principle (190–1). Schiller did not explain, however, the nature of this common principle, leaving the matter for some future discussion. Körner’s objection had a formative effect upon Schiller. In the months following the Kalliasbriefe he continued to search for an answer to it. Somehow, he had to show that his deﬁnition of beauty does not subordinate art to morality; yet at the same time he did not wish to deprive art of all moral signiﬁcance, as if the only pure beauty were one of pure form. According to Schiller, Kant’s aesthetics inclines dangerously in the direction of such an empty formalism. For it was Kant who saw the purest case of beauty in the arabesque. To Schiller, this was almost a reductio ad absurdam of Kant’s theory, a problem he would have to avoid in developing his own views.

9. THE GERM OF A SOLUTION The germ of the solution to the problem dogging Schiller ﬁnally came in his essay ‘Ueber das Pathetische’, which he probably wrote in May 1793. This essay marks an important turning point in Schiller’s thinking about the tension between aesthetic autonomy and moral signiﬁcance. The nub of Schiller’s solution came from redeﬁning the freedom involved in beauty or aesthetic pleasure. Moving away from his position in the Kalliasbriefe, Schiller now ceased to deﬁne freedom strictly in moral terms, as if it were one and the same with the moral law. There is not only the freedom of moral autonomy, Schiller now realizes, but also the freedom of choice.³⁰ This power of choice cannot be identiﬁed with morality alone because it is compatible with acting morally or immorally. As Schiller sometimes put it, freedom of choice is simply the capacity to act morally, not the actualization of that capacity in speciﬁc virtuous actions. If this is the kind of freedom involved in aesthetic pleasure, then it is possible to satisfy at once both the demands of ²⁹ Körner to Schiller, February 15, 1793, NA XXXIV/1, 229. ³⁰ Schiller makes this distinction more clearly in his Anmut und Würde, which he wrote shortly after ‘Ueber das Pathetische’. See NA XX, 291.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

207

aesthetic autonomy and morality. For it is now possible to say that aesthetic pleasure is free from moral ends, given that it is independent of moral principles; but it is also possible to hold that aesthetic pleasure has a moral signiﬁcance, given that it involves our recognition of freedom of choice, which is the precondition of all moral responsibility and action. It is this new concept of freedom that guides Schiller’s argument in ‘Ueber das Pathetische’. Thanks to it, Schiller is able to make a much clearer distinction between the moral and the aesthetic. He is now perfectly explicit that something can be of aesthetic interest even if it does not comply with the rules of morality (212–3). An object can be sublime, he explains, even if a person does not act on his duty; it is enough if he simply shows his power of will, his capacity to act morally. From the aesthetic perspective it sufﬁces if the conditions or circumstances (Zustände) of an action show the moral power of the agent; but it is not necessary that the character reveals this power (212). From the moral perspective, however, what matters is not just this capacity but the particular use of this capacity; the person must not only have the power to choose to act on moral principles but must actually do so. The ﬁnal half of ‘Ueber das Pathetische’ then consists in Schiller’s explication of the difference between the moral and aesthetic. The difference between them, he maintains, consists not in their objects but in their forms or criteria of judgment (Beurtheilungsweise). The same object can fall under both forms, but it also might satisfy just one. If the same object satisﬁes both, then it will do so for very different reasons (213). The criterion of moral judgment rests upon a command of reason: that we act morally or on universalizable principles. The criterion of aesthetic judgment, however, is based upon the needs of the imagination, which does not command but only desires. The interest of imagination is to be unconstrained by laws in free play (214). This ‘inclination to lack of constraint’ (Hange zur Ungebundenheit) is anything but conducive to moral obligation, Schiller remarks, because it is satisﬁed even if we should act contrary to the demands of duty. Hence Schiller notes that some of the most aesthetically interesting characters in tragedy are morally evil, for example Medea, because they show as much power of will in achieving their evil ends as a good character does in attaining his good ones (220). Schiller is now perfectly explicit that moral and aesthetic judgment should not interfere, still less support, one another (217). For morality demands ﬁrst and foremost conformity to law, whereas art demands freedom from the law (Ungebundenheit). Hence the more an object has a moral value the less it has of an aesthetic value, because its moral value consists in conformity to the law, which limits that complete freedom that is the purpose of art to reveal. From the aesthetic viewpoint we would rather see freedom triumph over morality than morality triumph over freedom, Schiller says, because in acting against morality we demonstrate even more clearly our power to be free of all rules (220). The proper concern of the poet is to show only our power of will, not the rule that governs it (217). He is not at all concerned with its speciﬁc direction, the determinate

208

Schiller as Philosopher

precepts that bind it, but only with our capacity of freedom as such. It would be a good thing, Schiller says in some obvious self-critical lines, if the poet could improve people morally and if he could create a national feeling among them; but what would make poetry good indirectly would not be good for it directly, for it does not attempt to improve mankind in any speciﬁc direction and it loses its aesthetic power precisely when it does so (219). Prima facie the argument of ‘Ueber das Pathetische’ buys aesthetic autonomy at the price of moral value. Schiller seems to limit the moral signiﬁcance of art down to something as abstract and remote as the concern with freedom as such. This freedom involves only the possibility of moral action, and by that very token also the possibility of immoral action. Schiller could no longer claim, therefore, that the effect of drama is to reward virtue and to punish vice. Indeed, he had to admit Rousseau’s old complaint: that the poet could paint such a fascinating picture of evil that he might inspire his spectator to imitate it.³¹ Yet if Schiller had weakened the conception of morality in one respect he had strengthened it in another. For toward the close of his essay he immediately notes that the great value of art lies in its addressing our whole being. It would be wrong for the poet to promote certain moral principles because these would limit our wholeness and push our activity in a speciﬁc direction. Hence, the realm of moral signiﬁcance is deﬁned no longer in narrow moral terms but in broader holistic ones. Of course, that holism was already apparent in Schiller’s earlier essays; but he had now found a way of combining it with his new conception of aesthetic freedom. Thus Schiller had set the stage for the argument of his major work, the Äesthetische Briefe.

10. AUTONOMY AND MORALIT Y IN THE ÄSTHETISCHE BRIEFE From the perspective of Schiller’s philosophical development in the 1780s, the Ästhetische Briefe seems less a climax than a relapse. Schiller seems to return to his old faith in the moral and political signiﬁcance of art that he had in his earliest writings; and he appears to forget the principle of aesthetic autonomy that he had forged in the 1780s. The programme of aesthetic education Schiller outlines in the Briefe seems a patent violation of this principle. The reafﬁrmation of the moral and political signiﬁcance of art seems extraordinary, given Schiller’s insistence only a few months earlier in ‘Ueber das Pathetische’ that moral and aesthetic judgment are completely distinct. The reinstatement of a programme of aesthetic enlightenment appears no less astonishing after Schiller’s polemic against Gottsched’s utilitarian aesthetics in ‘Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenstände’. ³¹ Lettre à D’Alembert, V, 27, 30.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

209

Yet if the Briefe reafﬁrms the moral and political signiﬁcance of the arts, it also insists upon their autonomy, their complete independence from moral and political ends. It is one of the apparent paradoxes of the Briefe that it both links the aesthetic with, and separates it from, the moral and the political. Any adequate interpretation of the work requires specifying the precise respects in which Schiller unites and distinguishes these domains.³² Anything less results in a failure to grasp Schiller’s central theses and a repetition of the usual superﬁcial objections. Although it is never explicitly proclaimed, the principle of autonomy appears in several guises in the Äesthetische Briefe. Ironically, the principle plays a crucial role in Schiller’s general argument for the moral and political signiﬁcance of art. In letter IX he addresses a fundamental problem facing his program of aesthetic education: the state cannot attain the ideals of reason unless it has responsible and educated citizens; but the state cannot educate such citizens because, in its present form, it is the source of their ruin and corruption (332). The only solution is for there to be some means of education that is free of corruption; Schiller ﬁnds that means in the arts. They alone have the power to educate the people in a manner independent of the powers of the state (332–3). While the politician can indeed repress aesthetic activity, he cannot be its legislator; for he cannot determine what counts as good or bad art. Hence art has its independence from the state in virtue of its autonomy, in virtue of its independence from the rules of morality and politics. It is this which gives it immunity from the uses of corrupt politicians, and which makes it an incorruptible source of education (333, 7 ). Another respect in which the autonomy principle resurfaces in the Briefe is in the guise of Schiller’s formalism, his claim that the speciﬁcally aesthetic dimension of a work of art consists in its form rather than its content. While the artist accepts his content from his culture and age, the form is characteristically his own, the realm where he is free to create according to his own imagination and conception of the truth (333–4). The formalist credo could not be put in clearer terms: ‘In a truly beautiful work of art the content should do nothing, the form everything . . . The real secret of art of the master consists in destroying the content through the form’ (382).³³ This was something of a rhetorical exaggeration given that Schiller ³² This is, I believe, the main shortcoming of the literature cited above, note 3. In charging Schiller with idealism and elitism, these scholars do not begin to come to terms with Schiller’s attempt to square the demands of aesthetic autonomy with enlightenment in Letters XVIII–XXII. As a result, their criticisms of Schiller simply beg the question against him. This criticism cannot be made of Eagleton, who does consider Schiller’s attempt to square these demands. See his Ideology of the Aesthetic, 109–12. Eagleton argues that just because the aesthetic condition is indeterminate, it is of no value for social and political practice. But, in a different way, this too begs the question against Schiller, who explicitly states that we should not value the aesthetic condition for its determinate results. See XXI (XX, 377–8) and XXIII (XX, 384). ³³ Cf. Schiller’s ‘Über Matthissons Gedichte’, NA XXIII, 266: ‘As one knows, it is never the matter but the manner of treating it that makes the artist and poet.’ It is important to see, however, that Schiller, unlike modern formalists, never abandoned the representative function of art. This point is rightly stressed by Walter Sokel, ‘Die politische Funktion botschaftloser Kunst’, in Revolution und Autonomie, 265–72.

210

Schiller as Philosopher

had already stated in the Bürger review that a poet could succeed in addressing his audience only through a wise choice of subject matter. But if Schiller restates his principle of autonomy in the Briefe, how does he reconcile it with his demand for social and political relevance? The answer lies with Schiller’s reinterpretation of the moral and political signiﬁcance of the arts, his reconception of the aims of the program of enlightenment. In the Briefe Schiller reinterpreted the moral and political relevance of the arts so that it was not only consistent with, but even dependent upon, the principle of autonomy. The basis of Schiller’s reinterpretation was a theme already suggested in some of his earlier works,³⁴ though it had remained largely undeveloped. According to this line of thought, the speciﬁc function of art is not to teach the citizen speciﬁc moral and political duties—as if the artist were a moralist or propagandist—but to restore human wholeness, to unite reason and sensibility so that all our powers work in harmony with one another. Art must overcome all forms of constraint and inner division, resolving the battle between reason and sensibility, so that reason does not force itself upon the desires and feelings of sensibility, and so that these desires and feelings do not overwhelm reason. Beauty consists in that state of moral grace where reason and sensibility are in such accord that the self does its duty from inclination. Since all forms of constraint disappear in grace, it is nothing less than the highest form of freedom. In Letters XIX–XXII Schiller gives a more exacting analysis of the organic whole that constitutes human perfection, or what he calls the aesthetic condition (Zustand ). He explains that in this organic whole all human functions are interactive, so that each part is alternately passive and active (352, 361, 375). When the self is in such a harmonious state, no faculty dominates the others because each limits the others; hence the self suffers no constraint, and it is therefore free (354, 367, 373). Schiller describes the aesthetic condition as one of active indeterminability (375–77). It is indeterminable not in the sense that it is void of determinations—an empty inﬁnity—but in the sense that it is the whole of all determinations—a complete inﬁnity; and it is active in the sense that it is self-determining, having the power to determine its order and structure without determination by external causes. Armed with his analysis of the aesthetic condition, Schiller then reinterprets the moral and political signiﬁcance of the arts in Letters XXI–XXIII. He now readily admits that the arts do not lead to any moral and political results. We must concede to the critics of the arts, Schiller says, that they do not help us to clarify a single concept, motivate us to a single good action, or inspire us to obey any particular law (377). ³⁴ See, e.g., ‘Was kann eine Schaubühne wirken?’, XX, 90, and ‘Über Bürgers Gedichte’, XXIII, 245–6. To be sure, Schiller developed his holistic ideal in systematic form in Anmut und Würde, which he wrote only shortly before the Briefe; but there he has little to say about the speciﬁc role of the arts in promoting his ideal.

Autonomy versus Enlightenment

211

But to expect such results, he responds, is to fail to understand the precise nature of the aesthetic condition. The arts cannot lead to any determinate result, they cannot impart any speciﬁc direction to our activity, precisely because the aesthetic condition is by its very nature indeterminate; just because this condition is one of balance and harmony, where one activity checks another, it does not enable us to do anything speciﬁc. For just this reason, however, the arts also give us something of inﬁnite value: the freedom from all constraints, the power to engage in any form of activity (378, 379). Although art does not actualize any speciﬁc function, it gives us the capacity to actualize all functions. While it determines nothing about the actual use of our faculties, it does give us the power to use them in any way we choose (384). In short, the great value of art is that it makes us aware of our power of choice, and energizes, motivates, and inspires us to do whatever we choose; it does not, however, prescribe what choices we should make. A good work of art, Schiller is saying, always respects the freedom of the subject, his right and power to make choices for himself; it is precisely this that separates him from the moralist and propagandist. This doctrine was already implicit in ‘Ueber das Pathetische’ when Schiller argued that the speciﬁc function of tragedy is to make us aware of our power of choice. In the Briefe Schiller now integrates that doctrine with his new holistic ethics, so that the aesthetic condition is one which promotes our freedom of choice, our power to act freely. Schiller’s argument in letters XIX–XXII allowed him to have his moral cake and to eat it with autonomy too. Since the arts aim at wholeness of character, they have a moral and political importance; but since they do not intend to give any determinate direction to our activity, they are autonomous independent of speciﬁc moral and political ends. The essence of Schiller’s reconciliation of aesthetic autonomy with moral signiﬁcance ultimately lies with his concept of freedom. Throughout the Briefe he assumes that the speciﬁc function of the arts is to make us self-conscious of our freedom.³⁵ But if the arts only do this, they are ipso facto both autonomous and moral. They are autonomous because they do not have to follow any speciﬁc moral purposes or principles; and they are moral because, even though they do not attempt to impart any moral content, they show our power to choose, which is the basis of all moral responsibility. It is of the ﬁrst importance to see, however, that the freedom in question is not moral autonomy—the power to act on moral laws, but the power to choose—to act or not act on the moral law. Only in this later sense is the artist free from speciﬁc moral and political ends. This was the central insight of ‘Ueber das Pathetische’, which ﬁnally allowed Schiller to combine autonomy with moral signiﬁcance. ³⁵ See esp. NA XX, 380: ‘This lofty equanimity and freedom of spirit, combined with power and vigour, is the mood in which a genuine work of art should leave us; and there is no more certain touchstone of true aesthetic worth.’

212

Schiller as Philosopher

In the end, then, Schiller’s reconciliation of aesthetic autonomy with moral signiﬁcance is somewhat ironic, indeed paradoxical. Art now has its moral force by virtue of its independence from moral ends! The paradox disappears, however, as soon as we see that such independence from moral ends derives from respecting the highest moral value of all: freedom of choice. With this insight Schiller’s long struggle to reconcile aesthetic autonomy with morality ﬁnally came to a close.

7 The Philosophy of Freedom 1. THE PRIMACY OF FREEDOM On January 18, 1827, in one of his many conversations with his biographer and amanuensis J. P. Eckermann, Goethe tried to explain how his writing differed from that of his late friend Schiller. He stated that Schiller’s productive talent lay in the ideal, whereas his own lay more in the close observation of nature. He then remarked, almost en passant, that the basic idea behind all Schiller’s works is freedom. The idea had changed shape in Schiller’s development, he added, because he was concerned in his early years with physical freedom and in his later years with ideal freedom.¹ What exactly Goethe meant by this interesting distinction he never explained. Whatever one makes of the distinction between ideal and physical freedom, Goethe’s obiter dictum was accurate. Freedom is indeed the central theme behind all Schiller’s writing. Whether it is implicit or explicit, whether it appears in a poem, a play, an historical narrative or a philosophical treatise, the theme always plays a decisive role. For Schiller, freedom is the paramount value in life, the highest good. It is the fundamental concept of not only his ethics but also his aesthetics, which saw beauty as the appearance of freedom. For all its importance, Schiller’s ideal of freedom remains relatively understudied in the vast corpus of secondary literature. There are only a few articles and monographs which address the subject in speciﬁcally philosophical terms.² It is not difﬁcult to understand why: the topic is so broad and complex that it is virtually ¹ Johann Peter Eckermanns Gespräche mit Goethe (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1949), 171. ² Among the most important early studies of the topic are Bruno Bauch, ‘Schiller und die Idee der Freiheit’, Kant-Studien X (1905), 346–72; the chapter on Schiller in Ernst Cassirer’s Freiheit und Form (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1916), 269–302; and Käte Hamburger, ‘Schiller und Sartre’, in Philosophie der Dichter (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966), 129–77. The most detailed treatment of the topic remains R. D. Miller, Schiller and the Ideal of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). Miller surveyed the development of the concept of freedom in all Schiller’s aesthetic writings of the 1790s. Though Miller’s work is often insightful, it does not consider Schiller’s central problem: how to maintain freedom after the collapse of the Kantian dualisms. Schiller’s concept of freedom, especially with regard to issues of aesthetic autonomy, has been getting increasing attention. See the important collection of articles by Wolfgang Wittkowski, Revolution und Autonomie: Deutsche Autonomieästhetik im Zeitalter der Franzöische Revolution (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1990).

214

Schiller as Philosopher

intractable. Schiller gave the concept of freedom many meanings, few of them explicitly deﬁned, almost all of them elusive. Furthermore, Goethe was right to say that the concept changed in meaning. It did so often, and then in very subtle ways which can escape even the most careful reader. Because of its many meanings, and because of its many changes, any fruitful examination of the concept must restrict itself to one period of Schiller’s writing. Indisputably, one of the most important periods for Schiller’s thinking about freedom came with his study of Kant in the early 1790s. What had once been an essentially social and political concept in his early poems and plays now assumed a moral and metaphysical meaning. Schiller now began to investigate the meaning of that ideal which he had simply presupposed in his earlier literary and historical works.³ That Kant would inspire Schiller to think about freedom is not surprising, given that he became attracted to Kant’s philosophy in the ﬁrst place because of the central importance it assigned to human freedom. As Schiller declared in some famous lines to his friend C. G. Körner in his letter of February 18, 1793: Certainly, no greater words have ever been spoken by a mortal human being than these Kantian ones, which at the same time are the content of his whole philosophy: determine yourself! (XXVI, 191)⁴

Given Schiller’s many debts to Kant, and given his many declarations of allegiance to Kantian principle, one might think that his concept of freedom offers nothing new and that it is only an application of Kant’s. There are indeed many passages in Schiller’s aesthetic writings where he closely follows Kant and treats him as if he were almost an authority. Yet, for at least two reasons, it would be wrong to conclude that Schiller’s concept of freedom is strictly and entirely Kantian. First, as we shall soon see, Schiller’s thinking about freedom also contains Fichtean and Spinozist themes, which are incompatible with Kantian doctrine. Second, in the early 1790s Schiller gradually developed a conception of freedom that, in fundamental respects, is a reaction against Kant’s. Essentially, he supplemented the Kantian conception of freedom as moral autonomy with a conception ³ Here I have to take issue with Helmut Koopmann, ‘Bestimme Dich aus Dir Selbst: Schiller, die Idee der Autonomie und Kant als problematischer Umweg’, in Friedrich Schiller, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982), 202–16. It is the great merit of Koopmann’s provocative article to stress that Schiller had a social and political ideal of freedom before his encounter with Kant. Koopmann also contends, however, that Schiller’s preoccupation with Kant and questions of aesthetics was ‘beinahe schon ein Abweg’ (212), and ‘eine Aporie’ (213), because it diverted him from his program of enlightenment. But this drastically underrates the signiﬁcance of aesthetics for Schiller’s program of enlightenment: Schiller held that art is central to enlightenment, and the purpose of his aesthetics was to demonstrate just this belief. For similar reasons, Schiller’s reﬂections on freedom in the early 1790s was no diversion, but the explication and justiﬁcation of the central ideal of his program of enlightenment. Schiller’s program of enlightenment raised questions of philosophical legitimacy that could not be ignored; hence Schiller’s philosophical period was more a pressing necessity than an idle diversion. ⁴ All references within the text are to Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe, ed. Julius Petersen et al. (Weimar: Böhlausnachfolger, 1943f ). Roman numerals indicate volume numbers, arabic numerals page numbers, and italicized arabic numerals line numbers.

The Philosophy of Freedom

215

of freedom as aesthetic self-determination. According to the Kantian conception, freedom consists in the independence of our rational nature, in willing and acting according to the laws of morality, which are determined by pure reason alone. According to Schiller’s conception, however, freedom consists in acting according to our whole nature, in the harmony of reason and sensibility. The topic of freedom is another case in point where it is necessary to revise the conventional picture of Schiller as the amateur philosopher. Schiller’s reﬂections on the subject took place in Jena and Weimar in the early 1790s in the the context of technical discussions about Kant’s moral philosophy. Schiller either took part in, or was well informed about, these discussions; and many of his own views were formed in response to the issues raised by them. When Schiller began his study of Kant in early 1791, Weimar and Jena had already become the epicenters of the Kantian revolution in philosophy. K. L. Reinhold had been lecturing on Kant’s philosophy for years; and C. G. Schütz had made the Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung, one of the main literary reviews of the day, into a forum for the discussion of Kant’s philosophy. The atmosphere was further enlivened by a group of students surrounding Reinhold,⁵ who passionately discussed issues raised by Kant’s philosophy. Among these students were J. B. Erhard, Immanuel Niethammer, C. F. Diez, C. F. Schmid, P. J. A. Feuerbach and F. K. Forberg; the young Hölderlin, Novalis and Schlegel were later on the fringes of this circle. Schiller soon found himself in the very centre of these philosophical discussions. He had met Reinhold on several occasions; and in the Summer of 1791 he dined with Reinhold’s students on an almost daily basis, both mornings and evenings, when Kant’s philosophy was a favorite topic of discussion.⁶ The pivotal role of freedom in Schiller’s writing is alone a sufﬁcient reason to investigate its meaning. Yet the importance of the topic transcends the boundaries of Schiller scholarship. For at least two reasons, Schiller’s investigation of the problem of freedom deserves a central place in any history of philosophy after Kant. First of all, it was Schiller’s concept of freedom, and not Kant’s, which had the most pervasive and lasting inﬂuence upon his idealist and romantic successors. The young Hegel, Hölderlin, Novalis, Schleiermacher, and Friedrich Schlegel endorsed Schiller’s holistic ethics, and they developed some of his implicit criticisms of Kant’s concept of moral autonomy, which they found too narrow and moralistic. Second, Schiller was the ﬁrst to struggle with, and propose interesting solutions to, a problem that would later plague post-Kantian philosophy: namely, how is freedom possible if the Kantian dualisms are untenable? Seen in the most ⁵ On this circle, see Dieter Henrich, Konstellationen: Probleme und Debatten am Ursprung der idealistischen Philosophie (1789–95) (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991), 7–46; Wilhelm Baum, ‘Der Klagenfurter Herbert-Kreis zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 50 (1996), 483–514; Marcello Stamm, Systemkrise: Die Elementarphilosophie in der Debatte (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2002); and Manfred Frank, ‘Unendliche Annäherung: Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik’ (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998). ⁶ Karl Berger, Die Entwicklung von Schillers Ästhetik (Weimar: Böhlau, 1894), 84–5.

216

Schiller as Philosopher

simple light, this was the old problem of determinism: How can the self be free if all events in nature take place of necessity according to scientiﬁc laws? Yet this problem took on a new, more complicated, and especially troublesome, form in the context of post-Kantian philosophy. One of the fundamental criticisms of Kant’s philosophy in the 1790s was its problematic dualisms, such as those between reason and sensibility or noumena and phenomena. Because they seemed to make all knowledge and action mysterious, philosophers of virtually every stripe objected to these dualisms; they were indeed eager to unify the very faculties that Kant had so drastically sundered. But the programme of reunifying the Kantian dualisms raised anew the very problem for which Kant had created them in the ﬁrst place: the problem of freedom. For if we connect the noumenal will with its actions in the phenomenal realm, so that there is some necessary connection between them, then the will again becomes subject to the natural laws that hold for all phenomenal events. Thus the dualism is overcome only at the price of surrendering freedom. It was Schiller’s great merit to have seen this problem and to have attempted several solutions to it. No one was more intent on unifying Kant’s problematic dualisms; yet no one saw more clearly that their uniﬁcation posed anew the problem of determinism. Some of the most important—and neglected—passages of Schiller’s Ästhetische Briefe and Anmut und Würde are devoted to the solution of this problem. While Schiller’s solutions are ultimately ﬂawed, they are still interesting, not least because they bred a concept of the ﬁrst importance for the later history of German philosophy: identity-in-difference, the unity of opposites. The original purpose of this apparently bizarre concept was to ensure the possibility of freedom while surmounting Kant’s problematic dualisms. The task of the following sections is to examine the development of Schiller’s thinking about freedom in the major works of the 1790s: the Kalliasbriefe, Anmut und Würde, and the Ästhetische Briefe. We will examine in some detail Schiller’s treatment of the problem of freedom, and those factors that eventually led to his break with Kant. Before we survey this development, however, it is worthwhile to consider, in at least general and provisional terms, what is characteristic of Schiller’s concept of freedom, and how precisely it differs from Kant’s. 2. SCHILLER VERSUS KANT ON FREEDOM In the second Kritik and Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten Kant had developed a conception of freedom as moral autonomy. A person is free, Kant had argued, only if he wills and acts according to the moral law that has been prescribed by practical reason. Such moral autonomy requires not only that a person act according to the moral law, he further insisted, but also that he do so for the right reason; he must act on moral principle because it is a moral principle, and not simply because it happens to coincide with his self-interest. In other words, he must do his duty for its own sake, simply because it has been prescribed as a

The Philosophy of Freedom

217

universal law by his reason. For Kant, moral action is fundamentally a question of having the right intentions or motives, for it is the will alone that has unconditional moral value. Schiller does not question the basics of Kant’s concept of moral autonomy, which he regards as fundamental to any full account of freedom. He thinks that Kant is fundamentally right to think that we are autonomous moral agents, who are obligated only by those laws that we will as rational beings. Furthermore, he also accepts Kant’s thesis that an action is moral only to the extent that it is done for the sake of duty.⁷ Nevertheless, he thinks that Kant’s account of moral autonomy cannot provide a complete analysis of freedom. If it is a necessary condition of such an analysis, it is still not a sufﬁcient condition. The main limitation of Kant’s account is that it determines the nature of freedom only for our rational nature, but it leaves out of account our whole nature, which is both rational and sensible.⁸ The shortcoming of Kant’s conception becomes apparent, in Schiller’s view, as soon as we see that moral autonomy alone is compatible with a form of constraint. A person can do his duty for its own sake yet still feel an inner reluctance, a deep resistence within himself. In this case, though his action is autonomous, though he wills it as a rational being, the person is still not entirely free. While he is free as a rational being, he is not free as a whole being, for the simple reason that part of his self is under the domination of his reason. It is this thesis—the very idea that reason can dominate or create a lack of freedom—that is completely alien to Kant’s moral philosophy, and that plays a fundamental role in Schiller’s thinking about freedom. A ﬁrst Kantian response to Schiller’s contention is likely to be that moral laws limit nothing more than license, which is the right and power to do whatever we want or like. Although moral laws are indeed a constraint on sensibility, they limit only natural impulses and inclinations, and therefore nothing more than the right to satisfy our appetites whenever we want. Such license is not, however, freedom in any signiﬁcant sense, so that to limit it is not to curtail freedom. It is important to see, however, that it is not license, not natural or animal freedom, that Schiller defends; still less does he criticize the constraint of moral laws upon inclinations. What Schiller advocates is the possibility of doing our duty from inclination, where these inclinations are moral rather than natural, the result of a steady resolve of the will and the habitual performance of good actions. What he criticizes in the Kantian conception is the idea that a person could be completely free even if they perform their duty with an inner reluctance, or even if they have never acquired the habits of virtue. For Schiller, freedom is never simply a matter of acting for the right reasons; it is also a matter of how we act,whether we do so with ⁷ See chap. 5, sec. 2. ⁸ Schiller never explicitly states this; but it is the implication of his account of freedom in the all important footnote to Letter XIX of the Ästhetische Briefe, XX, 375–6n.

218

Schiller as Philosopher

grace and pleasure or with difﬁculty and reluctance. Alternatively, freedom is not simply an attribute of individual actions but of the whole person. Schiller’s departures from Kant regarding the nature of freedom become more apparent when we consider his more naturalistic and historical views about the origin of virtue. While Schiller never doubts Kant’s view that reason must be autonomous, creating and applying laws independent of motives of sensibility, he still refuses to place it in a self-sufﬁcient noumenal realm which exists apart from the natural world. Freedom is an ‘effect of nature’ (eine Wirkung der Natur), as he put it in the Ästhetische Briefe, because it can be helped or hindered through natural means (XX, 373, 23–7 ). It consists in the ‘highest inner necessity’ (höchste innere Nothwendigkeit ) because it follows from the laws of our own nature (XX, 367, 31). Moral virtue does not arise from pure reason alone, from the resolve of a purely noumenal will, but it has its ultimate origins in human nature, and indeed in the desires and feelings of our sensibility. Our moral desires and feelings are only a reﬁnement, development, or sublimation of our natural desires and feelings, so that the difference between these kinds of feelings is only one of degree rather than one of kind. The priority of sensibility over reason, the fact that we have sensible desires and feelings before we develop our powers of reasoning, is crucial, ‘the key to the whole history of human freedom’ (den Aufschluß zu der ganzen Geschichte der menschlichen Freyheit ) (374, 14–5 ). This means that we can develop our powers of reason only through the education of our sensibility, and that our freedom too grows from its cultivation: ‘still in his passivity, still within his sensible limits, must man’s independence and rational freedom begin’ (noch in seinem Leiden muß er [der Mensch] seine Selbständigkeit, noch innerhalb seiner sinnlichen Schranken seiner Vernunftfreyheit beginnen) (387, 4–7 ). It is precisely because Schiller thinks that there is a continuity between our rational and sensible natures that he regards a severe moralism as a threat to human freedom. To be sure, Schiller too wants us to place constraints upon our natural desires and feelings; but insofar as we regard these desires and feelings as only a danger to morality, insofar as we see them as only a source of temptation, we fail to see that they are also the ultimate source of moral desires and feelings. We then divide human nature into two warring camps, a domineering reason and a rebellious sensibility, where each side attempts to constrain the other. For Schiller, this state of internal conﬂict, of moral schizophrenia, is the very opposite of freedom. It has often been maintained by neo-Kantian scholars that Kant does not neglect history, and that he does have an historical and naturalistic account of the genesis of human freedom. This account appears especially in Kant’s historical writings, and more speciﬁcally in his conception of unsocial sociability, according to which humanity develops its rational powers and freedom from competition between selﬁsh agents. While these scholars have indeed a point— Kant does have an account of the origins of reason—they also tend to neglect the deeper problem of consistency raised by his apparent naturalism and historicism.

The Philosophy of Freedom

219

The hard truth of the matter is that Kant’s philosophy of history does not jibe well with his general architechtonic: Kant’s architechtonic forbids phenomenal causes from having noumenal effects; and the sphere of history is phenomenal.⁹ Kant’s own dualisms therefore render any naturalistic or historical account of the origins of human reason problematic. It is precisely here that we can again see the philosophical interest and merits of Schiller’s own thinking about freedom. For Schiller faces the very problem of consistency that Kant ignores: how is it possible to maintain the autonomy of reason within a general historical account of the genesis of human rationality? We shall examine below how Schiller attempts to resolve this problem.

3. FREEDOM IN THE KALLIASBRIEFE It was only with the greatest difﬁculty that Schiller formed his own aesthetic conception of freedom. He developed this concept very gradually, and then when he was unaware of, or unwilling to admit, its departures from Kantian orthodoxy. Even when Schiller eventually conceded his differences with Kant, he underplayed them to avoid controversy.¹⁰ As a result, there are often two conﬂicting conceptions of freedom in Schiller’s writings: the Kantian conception of moral autonomy and Schiller’s own conception of aesthetic self-determination. The presence of these conﬂicting conceptions reﬂect Schiller’s own ambivalent relationship to Kant in the early 1790s. While Schiller sometimes stressed his allegiance to Kantian principles, at other times he admitted his departures from Kant and even his eagerness to criticize him.¹¹ In the Kalliasbriefe Schiller’s concept of freedom appears to be purely and entirely Kantian. More speciﬁcally, Schiller’s deﬁnition of the concept closely follows Kant’s position in the second Kritik, ignoring his later reformulations and reﬁnements in Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft.¹² Like Kant, Schiller identiﬁes freedom, which he also calls self-determination (Selbstbestimmung),¹³ with acting according to ‘the form of practical reason’, that is, the categorical imperative, the demand that a maxim be universalizable. Hence in his February 8, 1793 letter to Körner, Schiller writes: ‘Pure self-determination in general is the form of practical ⁹ On Kant’s concept of history as phenomenal, see ‘Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht’, AA VIII, 17. ¹⁰ See chap. 5, secs. 2 and 4. ¹¹ Cf. Schiller’s confession of his Kantian principles in his December 3, 1793 letter to von Augustenburg, NA XXVI, 322, with his admission in his October 1795 letter to Goethe, NA XXVIII, 90, that he was criticizing Kant in the Ästhetische Briefe. See too his statement to Jacobi, June 29, 1795, NA XXVII, 206, that he is critical of the positive aspects of Kant’s teaching. ¹² Why Schiller ignored Kant’s reformulation in the Religionsschrift is something of a mystery, since he had read this work in February 1793 when writing the Kalliasbriefe. See Schiller to Körner, February 28, 1793, NA XXVI, 219. ¹³ Schiller uses the terms ‘Freyheit’ and ‘Selbstbestimmung’ as virtual synonyms. See, for example, XXVI, 200: ‘Frey sein und durch sich selbst bestimmt seyn . . . ist eins’.

220

Schiller as Philosopher

reason’.¹⁴ Since maxims conforming to the demand of the categorical imperative are moral, Schiller virtually equates freedom with moral action, just as Kant had done in the second Kritik. This equation is explicit in a passage from his February 18 letter to Körner: ‘Practical reason demands self-determination. Self-determination of someone rational is pure rational determination, morality.’¹⁵ There is no recognition in the Kalliasbriefe of Kant’s later insight in Die Religion that freedom consists not only in moral autonomy but also in the power of choice, the power to act morally or immorally. Schiller makes no distinction between Wille—the power of practical reason to determine and prescribe moral maxims—and Willkür—the choice to act or not act on such maxims. Rather, he recognizes only a concept of Wille, which he identiﬁes with the moral law, stating explicitly that ‘a pure will and the form of practical reason are one’ (ein reiner Wille und Form der praktischen Vernunft ist eins) (182). So closely does Schiller follow Kant’s position in the second Kritik that he repeats its central argument: that if we do not act according to the demands of practical reason, we forfeit our autonomy and become heteronomous (181). The conception of freedom in the Kalliasbriefe is Kantian not only in its identiﬁcation of freedom with the moral law but also in its adherence to the dualism between the noumenal and phenomenal, the intelligible and sensible. Like Kant, Schiller places freedom entirely in the noumal and intelligible sphere (182), and he maintains that everything in the phenomenal or sensible sphere is determined according to natural laws so that it acts of necessity (193). Schiller endorses Kant’s argument in the second Kritik that since freedom exists only in the noumenal realm, an agent must act according to the laws of reason to escape the determinism prevalent in the phenomenal realm (181). While writing the Kalliasbriefe, Schiller had not yet formed the more naturalistic and historical concept of freedom of the Ästhetische Briefe. Nevertheless, for all its explicit Kantianism, the Kalliasbriefe contains, if only implicitly, another conception of freedom completely at odds with Kant. This new conception of freedom ﬁrst appears when Schiller states that acting according to the demands of practical reason is sometimes a form of constraint. If a person acts according to the demands of practical reason only by repressing all desires and feelings, if they cannot do their duty from inclination, Schiller argues, then they act under constraint. Schiller is explicit in his February 19 letter to Körner: ‘We never want to see constraint, even if reason itself executes it; even the freedom of nature we want to see respected’ (198). The statement that reason too can be a source of constraint is of the ﬁrst signiﬁcance, for it means that freedom cannot be simply moral autonomy, that is, it cannot consist only in acting according to the demands of practical reason. It implies that there is another higher form of freedom where all constraint disappears, whether it is that of sensibility against reason ¹⁴ ‘Reine Selbstbestimmung überhaupt ist Form der praktische Vernunft’ (XXVI, 182). ¹⁵ ‘Praktische Vernunft verlangt Selbstbestimmung. Selbstbestimmung des Vernünftigen ist reine Vernunftbestimmung, Moralität ’, NA XXVI, 195.

The Philosophy of Freedom

221

or that of reason against sensibility. Hence, Schiller states that just because ‘freedom is the highest’ (Freyheit das Höchste ist), we also want to see the freedom of nature respected, and we become offended when moral purposes are imposed upon it (198). While Schiller does not explicitly deﬁne his higher concept of freedom in the Kalliasbriefe, he does set forth the moral ideal that lies behind it. This is what Schiller calls ‘moral beauty (moralische Schönheit). A person has moral beauty, he explains, when he not only acts according to moral principle but also follows his desires and feelings in doing so. In the case of moral beauty, Schiller says, duty has become our second nature (die Pﬂicht einer Natur geworden ist) because we acquire the habit of acting virtuously and take pleasure in doing so (198). To make this concept clear, Schiller imagines the case of a man who has been robbed and left to die on a highway. Five travellers respond to his plight, each in a different way. The ﬁrst offers aid from mere spontaneous feeling alone; the second will help but only if he receives compensation; a third helps from motives of duty alone, contrary to self-interest; a fourth provides aid, even though the victim is his enemy, but he too does not go beyond the limits of mere duty; only a ﬁfth immediately and spontaneously helps regardless of personal cost, and even though he is not asked. Schiller states that only the action of the ﬁfth has moral beauty, because, without even being asked to help, he performed ‘his duty with an ease . . . as if he merely acted from instinct’ (seine Pﬂicht mit einer Leichtigkeit . . . als wenn bloß der Instinkt aus ihm gehandelt hätte) (198). Although Schiller is never so explicit, he implies that the moral beauty of the ﬁfth traveller represents a higher ideal of freedom. Since in his case all constraint disappears, not only that of sensibility against reason but that of reason against sensibility, it follows that he is more free than someone who does their duty contrary to inclination. Hence, Schiller implies that complete freedom is not simply moral autonomy, which fulﬁlls only the rational side of our nature; rather, it is something like the unhindered development and co-operation of all human powers, both sensible and rational, where neither serves as a constraint upon the other. He explicitly identiﬁes a free action with a beautiful one where both forms of constraint disappear: ‘a free action is a beautiful action when the autonomy of the mind and the autonomy of appearance coincide’ (eine freie Handlung ist eine schöne Handlung wenn die Autonomie des Gemüths und die Autonomie in der Erscheinung coincidieren) (198). There is still another concept of freedom within the Kalliasbriefe, which is not reducible to either Kantian moral autonomy or the aesthetic ideal implicit within moral beauty. This third concept is involved in Schiller’s famous deﬁnition of beauty, ‘freedom in appearance’ (Freiheit in der Erscheinung), which is ﬁrst put forward in the Kalliasbriefe. As Schiller introduces this deﬁnition in his February 8 letter to Körner, it appears as if the freedom involved in beauty is only that of moral autonomy. Thus Schiller deﬁnes freedom in terms of self-determination according to the laws of practical reason, and he states that the essence of beauty

222

Schiller as Philosopher

consists in symbolizing this freedom in the sensible world (181–3). It soon becomes apparent, however, that more than moral autonomy is at stake. For in his February 18 letter, Schiller explictly argues that, in some cases, a morally autonomous action can appear heteronomous in the realm of appearances. If, to perform a moral duty, someone imposes constraint upon themselves—if they can perform it only with the greatest effort—then their action ceases to appear autonomous. Paradoxically, appearances in nature can symbolize moral autonomy only if they possess their own form of autonomy independent of morality. The question remains: what kind of autonomy must the object possess? What form of freedom must it have to be a symbol of moral autonomy? Schiller devotes two of the central letters of the Kalliasbriefe—those of February 18 and 23—to answering this question. Using the terms as virtual synonyms, he begins by identifying freedom with self-determination: ‘To be free and to be determined through oneself, determined from within, are one and the same’ (Frey seyn und durch sich selbst bestimmt sein, von innen heraus bestimmt sein, ist eins) (200). This seems to be only his generic concept of freedom, which is as applicable to moral autonomy as well as any other form of freedom. Yet there is something new that Schiller now adds to his concept of self-determination that distinguishes it from moral autonomy. He maintains that self-determination means the internal determination or development of a thing, its ‘determination from within’ (Voninnenbestimmtsein) or, more negatively, its ‘not being determined from without’ (Nichtvonaussenbestimmtseyn) (202). He explains that the concept in the sensible world that corresponds to freedom in the noumenal world is the concept of the nature of a thing. The nature of a thing consists in ‘the inner principle in the existence of a thing’ (das innere Prinzip der Existenz an einem Dinge), its distinctive characteristics, its unique properties, what makes it just this thing and nothing else (202). The autonomy of a thing in the sensible world consists in its acting according to its nature alone, free from all moral constraints, and free from the inﬂuence of all external objects. Of course, all objects in the sensible world act according to laws, so that their actions occur of necessity; but in the case of beautiful objects these laws derive from the inner nature of the object rather than from forces outside it. Schiller calls this special form of freedom or autonomy ‘heautonomy’ (Heautonomie) (208, 210). While autonomy is selfdetermination in the negative sense of not being determined by external causes, heautonomy is self-determination in the positive sense of acting from internal causes. Alternatively, if autonomy means self-government, self-determination according to the form of the law, heautonomy means that these laws derive from one’s inner nature.¹⁶ What is indeed most striking about Schiller’s concept of heautonomy is that it joins the concepts of freedom and necessity in virtually Spinozist fashion. We are very far here from Kant’s concept of freedom in the second Kritik, where freedom ¹⁶ It is false to assume, therefore, that for Schiller moral autonomy is freedom through law while heautonomy is freedom from laws. Cf. Miller, Schiller and the Ideal of Freedom, 96–7.

The Philosophy of Freedom

223

and natural necessity are completely at odds with one another. According to Schiller’s notion of heautonomy, freedom and necessity do not oppose but imply one another insofar as freedom consists in acting according to the necessity of one’s own nature. Hence, Schiller stresses that beautiful objects in nature conform to rules, and that they obey the principle of causality of the understanding (201–2); what distinguishes them from other objects is simply that their rules are self-given, because they follow from their inner nature; in other words, the causes acting upon them come from within rather than from without (208). For these reasons it follows that there is no choice involved in heautonomy, as if an object somehow had the power to act otherwise; instead, the object must follow the laws of its inner nature. Schiller himself brings out the connection of heautonomy with necessity when he describes the nature of a thing as ‘the inner necessity of the form’ (die innere Notwendigkeit der Form) (207). Hence heautonomy is virtually Spinozist in meaning, following Spinoza’s deﬁnition of freedom in the Ethica: ‘acting from the necessity of one’s own nature alone’.¹⁷ In the Kalliasbriefe Schiller applies his concept of heautonomy only to the realm of appearances, to natural objects in the sensible world. Heautonomy is that speciﬁc form of autonomy in the phenomenal world that makes some natural objects an appropriate symbol for moral autonomy in the noumenal world. Schiller does not extend the concept to the noumenal world, however, for all too Kantian reasons: this would jeopardize moral autonomy by making moral actions necessary, the enacting of some inner nature. Hence, in the Kalliasbriefe, Schiller assumes a distinction between moral autonomy and heautonomy: moral autonomy consists in self-determination according to the laws of practical reason; and heautonomy consists in self-determination according to the laws of one’s inner nature. True to the Kantian dualism between the noumenal and phenomenal realms, Schiller applies the ﬁrst concept to the noumenal, the second to the phenomenal realm. While Schiller will continue to assume a distinction between these concepts in his Ästhetische Briefe, there is also an important change in use.¹⁸ The concept of heautonomy, which was once limited to the phenomenal or sensible realm, is extended to the noumenal or intelligible realm, so that it applies to human nature as a whole. Freedom is then acting according to my whole nature, my nature as both a rational and sensible being. In other words, the concept of heautonomy now becomes equivalent in extension to the concept of moral beauty. When a person does his duty from inclination he will be heautonomous, acting from the necessity of his own nature, though here his nature is not equivalent to only his ¹⁷ Spinoza, Ethica, Pars I, def. 7, Opera, ed. C. Gebhardt (Heidelberg: Winter, 1925), II, 46. ¹⁸ This shift in usage of the concept of heautonomy in the Briefe is implicit but unmistakeable. While Schiller does not explicitly mention the concept, it tacitly reappears in its old role. For the original purpose of the concept was to designate the aesthetic perspective, what it is about objects in nature that makes us regard them as beautiful; and it is just this aesthetic perspective that in the Briefe describes human nature as a whole.

224

Schiller as Philosopher

natural or phenomenal being but also comprises his rational or noumenal being. It is that “second nature” that a person acquires when his moral duty has become a habit with him, when it becomes natural and easy for him to do his duty. The application of the concept of heautonomy to the noumenal realm raises, however, a serious question: In what sense are moral actions free if we are acting from the necessity of our own nature alone? Does the concept of aesthetic selfdetermination, now understood as heautonomy, obliterate the very possibility of freedom of choice and moral responsibility? We will soon see how Schiller attempted to resolve this thorniest of problems.

4. FREEDOM IN ANMUT UND WÜRDE The ambiguities and uncertainties in Schiller’s treatment of freedom resurface in his treatise Anmut und Würde, which was written in May and June 1793, only three months after the Kalliasbriefe. On the one hand, Schiller retains a strictly Kantian or moral conception of freedom; yet, on the other hand, he also takes steps toward his new aesthetic conception. While the move away from Kant becomes more deliberate and self-conscious, it still does not result in the statement of a new concept of freedom. Schiller’s concept of freedom in Anmut und Würde still follows along essentially Kantian lines. Schiller’s persistent Kantianism appears in his account of the concept of personality (die Person), which is the Kantian term for the human being understood as moral agent or subject of moral responsibility.¹⁹ Schiller deﬁnes personality in terms of the Kantian concept of spontaneity: a person is a being that is the ultimate cause of its own actions, a ﬁrst cause that is not determined by some prior cause (262). That Schiller understands freedom essentially in these Kantian terms becomes especially clear when he identiﬁes personality with ‘the free principle in a human being’ (das freye Principium im Menschen) (263, 29). Although Schiller sometimes suggests a new holistic concept of freedom, there are also many passages where he persists in using the concept in the stricter Kantian sense. Thus he writes that when nature conforms to rational laws it falls under ‘the reign of freedom’ (das Regiment der Freyheit) (263, 9), that when reason breaks the force of desire a person proves their ‘independence’ (Selbstständigkeit) (292, 26 ), and that grace is beauty ‘under the inﬂuence of freedom’ (unter dem Einﬂuß der Freyheit) (264, 13–4 ). Still following Kant, in spirit if not letter, Schiller now distinguishes the will (der Wille) from practical reason and the moral law (291). While the Kalliasbriefe followed Kant’s position in the second Kritik, where freedom means acting according to morality, Schiller now comes closer to Kant’s position in Die Religion, where ¹⁹ See Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, AA V, 886–7; and Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, AA VI, 26, 27.

The Philosophy of Freedom

225

Kant distinguishes between Wille und Willkür.²⁰ Though Schiller does not follow Kant’s terminology, he does adopt the chief point underlying it. It is entirely up to the will (der Wille), he says, whether it follows the laws of reason or sensibility. The will is free as a ‘natural power’ (Naturkraft) to choose one or the other; but it is not free as a ‘moral power’ (moralische Kraft) because, even though it can choose to act contrary to duty, it ought not to do so. In other words, it is not bound or constrained (gebunden) to one or the other even when it is obligated (verbunden) to follow its duty. Although Schiller’s term ‘Naturkraft’ is very misleading, because it suggests that the will is part of nature, his underlying point remains clear enough: that the will cannot be deﬁned in moral terms alone because it consists in the power to choose between moral or non-moral action.²¹ Although Schiller appears to follow a strictly Kantian conception of freedom in Anmut und Würde, he still departs from him in at least one important respect. He repeats the point already made in the Kalliasbriefe that constraint occurs not only when sensibility overwhelms reason but also when reason dominates sensibility (280). But now this point is explicitly directed against Kant himself. Schiller explains that, in his polemic against the pervasive and corrupt inﬂuence of eudemonism, Kant stressed the purity of moral actions by contrasting actions done from the sake of duty with those done from inclination. It then seemed as if moral actions had to be done contrary to inclination; Kant then neglected the point that sometimes moral duty can also be done gracefully or from inclination. Such was Kant’s emphasis upon the severity and strictness of moral principle, that he seemed to banish even these moral inclinations and to be preaching ‘a dark and monkish asceticism’ (einer ﬁnstern und mönchische Ascetik) (284). So, for all his emphasis upon autonomy, his moral principles had ‘the appearance of an alien and positive law’ (den Schein eines fremden und positiven Gesetzes). So far, Schiller impugns Kant’s exposition more than his principles. But his deeper differences with Kant emerge when he asks how complete freedom is compatible with such a severe moralism. Thus Schiller asks how ‘the sentiments of beauty and freedom’ (die Empﬁndungen der Schönheit und Freyheit) are compatible with an austere moralism that imposes itself more with fear than with reassurance (286, 15–7 ). And he remarks that a severe moralism runs the risk of making ‘the most powerful expression of moral freedom’ (die kraftvollste Äußerung moralischer Freyheit) into ‘a laudable kind of servitude’ (eine rühmlichere Art von Knechtschaft) (285, 33–5 ). Finally, he insists that only in a beautiful soul does nature too have freedom (288, 6 ). As in the Kalliasbriefe Schiller implies—though he never explicitly states—that freedom consists in acting with ²⁰ As Schiller reveals in a footnote (291n), he was indebted to Reinhold for making this distinction. See Reinhold, Briefe über die kantische Philosophie (Leipzig: Göschen, 1790–2), II, 182. ²¹ In her ‘Schiller und Sartre’, Philosophie der Dichter (151, 153, 155), Käte Hamburger takes Schiller’s distinction between the will and the moral law as evidence for his distance from Kant and afﬁnity with Sartre. But she fails to note that the distinction is also Kantian in provenance.

226

Schiller as Philosopher

one’s whole nature. Thus he praises the Greeks because they acted from their whole humanity, and because their freedom is realized not only in their reason but also in their sensibility. ‘He [the Greek] led the freedom, which is only at home in Olympus, into the realm of sensibility; and for that reason one will let it pass that he transposes sensibility into Olympus’ (254–5). Furthermore, he states that taste mediates between reason and sensibility by elevating intuitions into ideas and bringing the sensible world into ‘a realm of freedom’ (ein Reich der Freyheit) (260). These suggestive, though undeveloped, lines express the whole thrust of Schiller’s new concept of freedom: the senses too are to be ennobled, so that they are part of the Olympus of freedom. While Schiller is still very far in Anmut und Würde from formulating his new aesthetic concept of freedom, it is noteworthy that he anticipates the main problem facing such a concept. The difﬁculty arises from the fact that Schiller wants to retain a Kantian conception of freedom as spontaneity while still joining moral action with the phenomenal realm of beauty. The question then arises: How is such freedom possible if it is connected with the phenomenal realm, where there are no ﬁrst causes, or where every event is determined into action of necessity? According to Kant, the answer to the question is very simple: under these conditions such freedom is simply impossible. In the ﬁrst Kritik he argued that the possibility of freedom in the sense of spontaneity requires that there be a sharp dualism between the noumenal and phenomenal realms; for the will can be a ﬁrst cause of all our actions only if it stands outside the realm of natural causality, where every event is determined into action by some prior cause. On these grounds it seems that Schiller, by connecting reason with sensibility, is undermining the very possibility of freedom. In Anmut und Würde Schiller explicitly raises this problem, which he even calls ‘the great difﬁculty’ (die grosse Schwierigkeit) (277). He puts the problem in the following form. A graceful action must be both mimic and beautiful. It is mimic if it reveals the agent’s moral character; and it is beautiful if it pleases the senses. Insofar as it is mimic its source lies in the will, which is beyond the sensible world; and insofar as it is beautiful its sources are within the sensible world. It seems, then, that a graceful action is contradictory, because its conditions lie both beyond and within the sensible or phenomenal world. Schiller’s solution to the problem attempts to retain the Kantian distinction while still ﬁnding some bridge over it. Schiller insists that it is a supersensible ground that makes an action mimic, while it is a sensible ground that makes it beautiful (279). Nevertheless, he also stresses that these grounds are also connected insofar as the moral will produces the conditions for the possibility of a beautiful action. The thrust of the argument is compressed in a single complex sentence: That the mind (according to a law which we cannot fathom), through the condition in which it ﬁnds itself, prescribes its nature to the [phenomenal] nature accompanying it, and that the condition of moral accomplishment is [also] that through which the sensible condition of

The Philosophy of Freedom

227

beauty is brought to fulﬁllment, these make the beautiful possible, and that alone is its [the mind’s] action.²²

Schiller then adds that while the will creates the possibility of beauty, it is nature that establishes its reality by complying with the conditions laid down by the will. It is difﬁcult to understand, however, how Schiller’s theory solves the problem. It is hard to see how the moral will produces the conditions for beauty if its activity is supersensible while the conditions of beauty are sensible. All that Schiller has done is postulate a pre-established harmony for which he offers no real explanation. Furthermore, the sharp separation between the supersensible grounds of the mimic and the sensible grounds of the beautiful makes it mysterious how one and the same action could combine both qualities. The obvious inadequecies of Schiller’s solution to this problem in Anmut und Würde compelled him to rethink the whole issue in the Ästhetische Briefe.

5. A FICHTEAN THEME Schiller’s mature statement of his concept of freedom appears in his Ästhetische Briefe, which he wrote throughout 1794 and completed in 1795. Here many tensions are resolved, many obscurities explained; Schiller’s thinking about freedom becomes richer and subtler. But with this richness and subtley come new tensions and obscurities. Schiller’s account of freedom in the Ästhetische Briefe is complicated by the introduction of an important Fichtean theme absent from his earlier writings. In Letter XI Schiller deﬁnes freedom as ‘the idea of absolute being grounded in itself ’ (die Idee des absoluten, in sich selbst gegründeten Seyns) (342, 6–7 ). He explains that the ego, person or self consists in its power to be a cause of itself. The same theme reappears in Letter XXI when Schiller states that freedom consists in the power of a person ‘to make out of itself what it wills’ (aus sich selbst zu machen, was er will ) (377–8, 36–7 ). Schiller’s language and thinking here is fundamentally Fichtean, reﬂecting the concept of freedom Fichte had developed in his 1794 Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten and his 1794 Grundlage des gesammten Wissenschaftslehre. The afﬁnity is not accidental, because Schiller had read these works while writing the Briefe; he even cites them with warm approval.²³ Schiller’s statement that freedom involves the idea of absolute being recalls Fichte’s claim in the Vorlesungen that the character of the ego consists in its ‘absolute being’ (absoluten Seyn), its power to make its own existence the very purpose or meaning of its existence.²⁴ ²² ‘Daß nun der Geist (nach einem Gesetz, das wir nicht ergründen können) durch den Zustand, worinn er sich selbst beﬁndet, der ihn begleitenden Natur den ihrigen vorschreibt, und daß der Zustand moralischer Fertigkeit in ihm gerade derjenige ist, durch den die sinnlichen Bedingung des Schönen in Erfüllung gebracht werden, dadurch macht er das Schöne möglich, und das alleine ist seine Handlung’ (278). ²³ See NA XX, 316n, 348n; and Schiller to Körner, July 4, 1794, NA XXVII, 20; and to Erhard, September 8, 1794, NA XXVII, 41. ²⁴ See Fichte, Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, Werke VI, 295.

228

Schiller as Philosopher

Prima facie Schiller’s account of freedom as absolute being does not amount to anything new beyond the Kantian idea of spontaneity, i.e. the power of the will to be a ﬁrst cause, to determine itself into action without determination by some prior external cause. But it is important to see that Schiller, following Fichte, is taking a radical new step beyond Kant. The Kantian concept of spontaneity means that the self is the cause of its own actions, but not of its own existence, still less its own essence. The Fichtean concept of freedom implies, however, just that: that the self is the cause of itself, both its own essence and existence. This is what Fichte means when he famously declares that the self is only what it posits itself to be. This statement means that the self does not exist, or have a ﬁxed identity, apart from its own creative activity. On this score Fichte would eventually quarrel with Kant, accusing him of hypostasizing the self by making it into an unknowable noumenon. It becomes clear from Schiller’s argument in the Briefe that he follows Fichte rather than Kant on this important point. Schiller argues in Letter XI that the person makes itself what it is, creating itself through the activities of the form and sense drive. Hence, he stresses that self exists only in and through its individual actions, and that prior to its determination in concrete actions it is nothing more than an abstract possibility or disposition.²⁵ In making such an argument Schiller was endorsing Fichte’s point that the pure self exists only in and through its determinate actions in the sensible world.²⁶ Both Fichte and Schiller reject, therefore, the Kantian concept of a noumenal self that exists apart from and prior to its self-conceptions and actions in the empirical world. The inﬂuence of Fichte becomes all the more evident when, in Letter XIII, Schiller virtually acknowledges Fichte’s 1794 Grundlage as the source of his concept of interchange (Wechselwirkung) (348, 19–24). This concept is central to Schiller’s account of aesthetic harmony, and therefore of freedom itself. According to this concept, there is a dynamic interplay between reason and sensibility, form and matter, where each acts upon the other. Both elements are co-ordinate to one another because both are equally active and passive; but they are also subordinate to one another, because one is passive to the extent that the other is active and conversely. Yet, for all the inﬂuence upon Fichte, there is still a profound difference, even a conﬂict, between them. Schiller and Fichte are completely at odds regarding the concept of human perfection or the end of human action. As Fichte explains this end in his 1794 Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, the purpose of our inﬁnite striving as ﬁnite beings is to dominate nature and to become completely one as rational beings. All empirical and individual characteristics will ²⁵ See NA XX, 342, 25–30; 343, 5–6, 30–3. The point is perfectly explicit in the following lines: ‘Seine Persönlichkeit, für sich allein und unabhängig von allem sinnlichen Stoffe betrachtet, ist bloß die Anlage zu einer möglichen unendlichen Ausserung; und solange er nicht anschaut und nicht empﬁndet, ist er noch weiter nichts als Form und leeres Vermögen’ (XX, 343, 19–23). ²⁶ Fichte, Werke VI, 296.

The Philosophy of Freedom

229

disappear as the self takes control over nature and makes it conform to the requirements of his purely rational will; if all rational selves were per impossible to achieve this goal, they would become one and the same, the divine. For Schiller, however, the end of the form drive is not to dominate nature but to create harmony with it (345, 26 ). In the state of aesthetic harmony empirical and individual differences are not to be negated but preserved (316, 20–7; 317, 4–9; 348, 1–10). Freedom is not complete rational self-determination where no trace of sensibility remains; rather, it is aesthetic self-determination where reason and sensibility are in perfect harmony with one another. These differences between Schiller and Fichte are so evident for any careful reader of Fichte’s Die Bestimmung des Gelehrten that it is possible to to see an implicit polemic against Fichte in several passages of the Ästhetische Briefe.²⁷ When Schiller criticizes the excesses of a rational education that would destroy all sensibility and individuality for the sake of conformity to universal laws, he appears to be countering Fichte’s doctrine of striving, which explicitly states that all sensibility and individuality should disappear for the attainmnent of a purely rational freedom.

6. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM IN THE ÄSTHETISCHE BRIEFE From the perspective of his earlier writings, the most important development in the Ästhetische Briefe is that Schiller not only recognizes that he has two concepts of freedom, but he also engages in an elaborate attempt to explain the possibility of both. Following the precedent set by the Kalliasbriefe and Anmut und Würde, Schiller continues to use the concept of freedom in the Kantian sense of rational autonomy, where to be free is to act on the principles of reason.²⁸ But now he is much more explicit in propounding his own concept of freedom, according to which a person is free only if he lives and acts as a complete human being, or only if he develops all his characteristic powers as both a rational and sensible being. Furthermore, Schiller is also fully aware that he is using the concept of freedom in both these senses. In a lengthy and signiﬁcant footnote attached to Letter XX he distinguishes between the freedom which belongs to man as a rational being (als Intelligenz) and that which belongs to his ‘mixed nature’ ( gemischte Natur). We prove our freedom in the former sense, he says, when we act rationally; and we show our freedom in the latter sense, he claims, when we act rationally within the limitations of matter (in den Schranken des Stoffes) (373, 28–7 ). He gives his best general statement of his new concept of freedom when he writes: ‘Every exclusive predominance of one ²⁷ See esp. NA XX, 316, 20–7; 317, 4–9; 348, 1–10. This point is developed in detail above at 4.9. ²⁸ See, e.g., NA XX, 345, 25; 348, 6, 16, 19; 349, 10, 20; 352, 12; 353, 18; 354, 7; 356, 10.

230

Schiller as Philosopher

basic drive [over another] is a condition of constraint and force; and freedom lies only in the co-operation of both natures.’²⁹ Though Schiller ﬁnally makes this important distinction, he continues to blur it, even to underplay its signiﬁcance. He remarks in the footnote to Letter XX, for example, that the freedom of our mixed nature can be explained as a ‘natural possibility’ (eine natürliche Möglichkeit) of the freedom of our rational nature (373, 36–7 ). He seems to mean that the former concept is only a limiting case or practical application of the latter. Hence he writes that the freedom of our mixed nature acts according to rational laws under the limitations of some content (in den Schranken des Stoffes). Schiller’s remark is very misleading, however, because it obscures the deeper difference underlying the two conceptions. The holistic conception cannot be simply a limiting case or application of the rational conception when some of its implications are opposed to the rational conception. According to the holistic conception, rational self-governance, if pushed to extremes, can be a form of constraint, and so a limitation upon freedom. This was just the point that Schiller had made against Kant in Anmut und Würde, and it reappears elsewhere in the Ästhetische Briefe. Thus in Letter IV he explained that there could be two forms of constraint: that of the savage (Wilder) whose sensibility rules over reason, or that of the barbarian (Barbar) whose reason destroys feeling (318, 17–26 ). It is a sign of a limited education, he argued, when our moral character is developed only at the cost of our sensible character (316–17). It was essentially Schiller’s critique of Kant that forced him to develop a completely new concept of freedom in the Ästhetische Briefe. If rational self-governance can become a form of tyranny, then it alone cannot provide a sufﬁcient account of freedom. It is therefore necessary to formulate a new conception of freedom that excludes all forms of constraint, one that forbids the domination of reason over sensibility as well as sensibility over reason. This need was already apparent in the Kalliasbriefe and Anmut und Würde; it is only in the Ästhetische Briefe, however, that Schiller ﬁnally takes steps toward satisfying it. He turns to this all important task in Letters XVIII–XXII. The immediate context of Schiller’s discussion of freedom in Letters XVIII–XXII is an investigation into the nature of beauty itself. In Letter XVIII Schiller raises the question how the very concept of beauty is possible (366, 1–16 ). The general concept of beauty is that of a mediating condition (mittleren Zustand ) between passivity and activity, content and form, sensing and thinking. Yet such a concept seems contradictory because these terms are opposed to one another. The difference between passivity and activity, content and form, sensing and thinking, is ‘inﬁnite’, so that is seems impossible to unite them. The basic problem here is how to think a unity of opposites. Schiller insists that this problem is central to aesthetics: ‘This is the very point on which the whole question of beauty ultimately ²⁹ Cf. 367, 28–31; 373, 17–20.

The Philosophy of Freedom

231

rests’ (366, 17–8). A solution to this problem will indeed provide ‘the thread that will lead us through the whole labyrinth of aesthetics’ (366, 19–20). Past aesthetics has failed, Schiller argues, because it has not appreciated the depth and complexity of this problem. There are two fundamental desiderata for solving it. First, it is necessary that the opposition between the terms be maintained ‘in all its purity and strictness’. Second, it is also crucial that there is a real unity between the opposing terms, so that the opposition between them disappears in some mediating third term (366, 21–38). In sum, the opposition between the terms must be, somehow, both afﬁrmed and negated, both preserved and destroyed. Prima facie the subject of discussion in Letters XVIII–XXII is beauty alone with only a peripheral connection with freedom. That this cannot be the case, however, is clear from both Schiller’s concept of beauty and the wider context. Schiller’s concept of beauty as freedom in appearance, which is explicit in his Kalliasbriefe but still implicit in the Briefe,³⁰ immediately establishes the connection with freedom. The context makes the connection even more evident when Schiller states that freedom consists in the same unity of opposites as beauty itself (365, 3–6 ). Just like beauty, freedom unites matter and form, sensing and thinking, passivity and activity. Freedom is indeed nothing less than that state of aesthetic harmony where these opposites balance and interact with one another. Hence the general problem of the possibility of beauty—how to think a unity of opposites—is also the crucial problem for the possibility of freedom itself. In thinking about the problem of freedom, in Letters XVIII–XXII Schiller considers the possibility of freedom in both its moral and holistic sense. Schiller’s immediate aim is to show the possibility of his holistic or aesthetic freedom, which is a unity of opposites. But of no less importance to him is the question of the possibility of moral freedom: how is it possible to attribute autonomy to practical reason, its independence from sensible motives and the causality of the natural world? This question had already troubled Schiller in Anmut und Würde, because it seemed to clash with his attempt to join reason and sensibility in the concept of grace. The same problem returns in the Ästhetische Briefe, though for slightly different reasons.³¹ In the Ästhetische Briefe Schiller is especially committed to a program of aesthetic education, which will cultivate and ennoble sensibility so that it acts according to the principles of reason. Aesthetic education presupposes that it is possible to educate humanity to rationality, to form their power of rational autonomy by acting upon and developing their sensibility. It is just this possibility, however, that the Kantian architechtonic excluded to protect the possibility of ³⁰ Schiller’s deﬁnition in the Kalliasbriefe reappears in a note in Letter XXIII: ‘Schönheit aber ist der einzig mögliche Ausdruck der Freyheit’ (386, 37–8). ³¹ In his The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), Terry Eagleton notes accurately how the problem of freedom arises in the Ästhetische Briefe from Schiller’s programme of aesthetic education. He then claims that Schiller does not solve the problem but only replaces one riddle with another (112–13). However, he provides no argument for this claim, and ignores entirely Schiller’s attempt to address the difﬁculty.

232

Schiller as Philosopher

freedom. Kant had permitted reason to act on sensibility, or for noumenal intentions to take place in the phenomenal world; but he had prohibited the converse, motives of sensibility acting upon reason or phenomenal causes effecting noumenal intentions, for this would undermine freedom in the sense of spontaneity. Somehow, then, Schiller had to show that his program of aesthetic education would not undermine Kantian autonomy by making the will subject to determination by sensibility and the natural causes of the sensible world.³² Hence, Schiller faced an especially paradoxical predicament in Letters XVIII–XXII. On the one hand, he had to unite reason and sensibility, activity and passivity, matter and form, to show the possibility of aesthetic freedom; on the other hand, he had to separate these same terms to establish the possibility of moral autonomy. In other words, he had to negate and preserve the opposition between reason and sensibility, activity and passivity, matter and form. This is the very problem which Schiller identiﬁes as the unity of opposites.

7. AESTHETIC FREEDOM IN THE ÄSTHETISCHE BRIEFE So much for Schiller’s problem. How does he solve it? The heart of his solution appears in Letters XIX and XX. Schiller bluntly begins Letter XIX with some very dry and abstract distinctions which are crucial for his argument, though their point is not immediately clear. He states that it is possible to distinguish in a human being a condition (Zustand ) of active and passive determinability (Bestimmbarkeit) as well as a condition of active and passive determination (Bestimmung). The condition of passive determinability is that of sensibility before receiving any determinate content from the senses; it is the empty inﬁnity of the forms of space and time before there is any speciﬁc object in space or speciﬁc event in time (368, 10–7). The condition of passive determination is that of sensibility after receiving some determinate content from the senses (319, 1–6 ). Through determination by external objects sensibility gains a determinate content, but it also loses its inﬁnity, since one acquires determination only through negation, only by limiting one thing in contrast to others (369, 7–15 ). The condition of active determination is the act of judging or thinking of the understanding, which determines a speciﬁc content by negation, by contasting one ³² Schiller’s concern with this problem appears unmistakably and repeatedly in the course of the argument in Letters XVIII–XXII. Hence he stresses that the interaction between sensibility and reason does not destroy the separation between these faculties (369, 33–8), that beauty energizes reason without determining it to any speciﬁc result (377, 27–3; 384, 6–11), and that the action of sensibility upon reason stimulates rather than overwhelms its independent activity (370, 6–14; 374, 29–32). His concern with the freedom of rational autonomy is most explicit in Brief 19 where he is anxious to maintain that the transition from sensing to thinking does not obliterate the ‘chasm’ between these activities (369, 35–8), and that it does not jeopardize ‘die Freyheit der Denkkräfte’ (370, 15), ‘die Selbständigkeit des Gemüths’ (370, 34 ).

The Philosophy of Freedom

233

thing with another (369, 16–23). The condition of active determinability is that act of reason by which it negates all the passivity of the senses. For reason to come into its own as a distinctive power, Schiller argues, it must react against, or oppose itself to, all determination of sensibility (370, 7; 374, 25–8). This is a state of active determinability for two reasons: it is active insofar as it reacts against all determination from sensibility; and it is determinable insofar as it still does not act according to any speciﬁc concept, principle, or law of reason. The state of active determinability of reason differs from the passive determinability of sensibility in one crucial respect: the active determinability of reason contains the determinations of sense. It is not the complete negation of the determinations of sense, as passive determinability, but only a partial negation because it both preserves and cancels these determinations within itself (375, 1–14). The determinations of sense are preserved in their content but they are also negated insofar as they are not simply passively received but appropriated or assimilated according to the laws of reason. Schiller’s distinctions between active and passive determinability and determination appear to mirror Kant’s own distinction between a passive sensibility and an active understanding. Hence, Schiller makes passive determinability and determination a property of sensibility, and active determinability and determination a property of reason. Yet, as so often with Schiller, these appearances of Kantian orthodoxy are very deceptive and mask his real innovations. Schiller does not think that passivity is the sole and exclusive property of sensibility, nor that activity is the sole and exclusive property of understanding or reason. Rather, he maintains that sensibility and reason interact with one another, so that they are both passive and active. It is characteristic of a ﬁnite mind, he writes in Letter XIX, that it is only active through passivity; that it imposes a form only when it reacts against determination from sensibility (371, 2–9). Schiller does not stress the passivity of reason in the course of his argument, chieﬂy because he is so anxious to preserve the independence of reason; but he is very explicit about the activity of sensibility. He is eager to avoid the view that sensibility is a completely passive faculty, whose only function is to register the effect of objects upon the senses; hence, in Letter XIX he explicitly criticizes those who think that the mind is active only when it is following the laws of reason (371, 25–9 ). In place of Kant’s faculty of sensibility Schiller writes of the sense drive (Sinntrieb), whose function is to limit life in some determinate way, to give it some speciﬁc shape within space and time (344–5). Armed with these distinctions and this caveat, we are now in a position to understand Schiller’s account of the possibility of freedom. In the holistic or aesthetic sense, freedom is nothing less than the condition of active determinability. Though Schiller makes no explicit equation, it is obvious from his statements that freedom arises when two opposed drives are active but limit one another (373, 17–20; 365, 3–10 ). More speciﬁcally, active determinability consists in three elements: (1) both sensibility and reason are interactive, so that each acts only through the stimulus of the other; (2) each limits the other by opposing it

234

Schiller as Philosopher

and restricting it to a speciﬁc function; and (3) all constraint disappears because neither faculty dominates the other but each performs its speciﬁc function by limiting the other. Hence active determinability involves reciprocal causality or mutual interaction where each faculty performs its characteristic function only by opposition to the faculty that acts upon it. Such a condition is the highest freedom, because neither faculty acts as a constraint upon the other when it is limited to its proper function by its opposite. It is crucial to see here, however, that aesthetic freedom is not the property of any one faculty, taken singly and separately. Rather, it is the property of the whole person, whose entire being is now free from all forms of constraint, and who can now develop unhindered according to the laws of its entire nature. It is possible to explain how opposite drives co-exist within one and the same person, Schiller argues, only if we distinguish between these drives and the person itself. Both drives exist and act within him, but the person itself is neither one nor the other (371, 20–5). He implies that the person is the whole of which these drives are only aspects or parts. The apparent contradiction involved in a unity of opposites is then resolved—in true proto-Hegelian fashion—by distinguishing between a whole and its parts. We are now ﬁnally in a position to understand how Schiller can reconcile his Fichtean concept of freedom with his Spinozian concept of heautonomy, according to which freedom consists in self-realization and acting according to the necessity of one’s own nature. These concepts appear to be contradictory, because the Fichtean concept gives the self freedom to form its own essence or nature, whereas heautonomy implies that it already has an inner nature and that its freedom consists only in realizing it. Schiller’s concept of active indeterminability is something of a compromise between these concepts. When Schiller claims that aesthetic freedom is indeterminable he means that it remains open to the self to give the speciﬁc content to its drives; although it is free only if it realizes and balances both drives, it still has the power to determine by itself the speciﬁc manner in which it does so. Hence, Schiller stresses that aesthetic indeterminability does not give a speciﬁc direction to the activity of the self (377–8). While the form of active determinability is predetermined—it must balance and mutually limit two opposing drives—its content stays open, leaving it to the choice of the self how it balances and limits them. While this resolves the tension, it also limits the extreme claims of both concepts. It means that the self is not so radically free as it ﬁrst seems: it is not free to be whatever it wants to be, if only because there is a speciﬁc structure to its activity. On the other hand, it also does not predetermine everything in the self, as if even the speciﬁc direction of its activity were also predetermined by its nature alone. While Schiller thinks, like Sartre, that we make ourselves who we are, he admits this only to a limited extent: that we have the power to choose only how we balance and limit our fundamental drives. He does not maintain that we are completely free to create our identity, because its structure is ﬁxed by our form and sense drives.³³ ³³ To this extent it is very misleading to claim, with Käte Hamburger, that Schiller’s concept of freedom is akin to Sartre’s. See her ‘Schiller und Sartre’, Philosophie der Dichter, 129–77.

The Philosophy of Freedom

235

8. MORAL FREEDOM IN THE ÄSTHETISCHE BRIEFE The question of the possibility of moral freedom is much more difﬁcult. No other question troubled Schiller more in Letters XIX and XX. It is a special problem for him because his programme of aesthetic education stresses that we can develop our powers of rationality only by beginning from sensibility, whose development precedes that of reason in nature. The sensible drive develops before our reason, because we ﬁrst have to receive data from the senses and the impulses of nature before our reason awakens in reaction against them (374, 6–16 ). The education of our reason must ﬁrst take place, therefore, through the pathway of the senses. But if this is the case, do we not act upon our rationality through the senses, forfeiting the autonomy of reason and thus moral freedom itself? For just this reason, Schiller is anxious to stress that the transition from sensibility to reason does not forfeit the independence of reason. He argues that aesthetic education still does not ﬁll ‘the gulf ’ that separates sensing and thinking, and that it therefore does not imperil ‘the freedom of our thinking powers’ (die Freyheit der Denkkräfte) or ‘the independence of mind’(die Selbständigkeit des Gemüts) (370, 15, 34 ). Schiller insists that thinking is so far from losing its independence that it even ‘excludes all alien inﬂuence’ (schließt jede fremde Einwirkung aus) (370, 7–8). Why is this so? Schiller explains that the transition from sensing to thinking does not mean ﬁlling in the gap between them, which is inﬁnite (369–70). Sensibility and thinking will still be like two opposing poles of a spectrum, even if there is a continuum between them. Schiller insists that thinking still operates autonomously insofar as it excludes all sensibility acting upon it (370). Thinking maintains its independence by virtue of the fact that it develops its characteristic activities only by opposing, or reacting against, determination by the senses (370, 6; 374, 25–8). Beauty can provide the transition between these faculties, he continues, only insofar as it stimulates thinking to follow its own purely rational laws independent of sensibility. Schiller further explains that the senses have only a negative power vis-á-vis thinking, i.e. if we remove the matter of thinking supplied by sensibility, we have nothing to think about; but it does not affect how we think about this material once it is given. The power of thinking is affected by sensibility only in the respect that its activity decreases as that of sensibility increases; but there is no change in the nature of its activity or the laws according to which it operates. So rather than being a mere epiphenomenon of sensibility, reason exerts its own form of causal activity which is not reducible to, or a mere effect of, the activity of the senses. We might admit these points, however, and still wonder how the activity of reason has complete independence—how it ‘excludes all alien inﬂuence’—when, according to Schiller’s aesthetic concept of freedom, reason and sensibility mutually limit one another. The interplay of reason and sensibility is not simply an inverse ratio in quantity, where one increases as the other decreases, but also an interaction

236

Schiller as Philosopher

where they have a causal inﬂuence on one another. The concept of interaction (Wechselwirkung) implies nothing less. Schiller himself realizes that he cannot completely separate the two faculties, because that would undermine the moment of unity so necessary for a unity of opposites. Sure enough, immediately after insisting upon the independence of thinking from sensing, he warns that the independence of the mind cannot be maintained at the expense of its unity (370, 32–8), and he remarks that it is the characteristic of a ﬁnite mind that its activity is possible only through its passivity (371, 1–5). It should be clear, then, that the independence of reason does not mean the same thing for Schiller as it does for Kant. For Schiller, the independence of reason does not imply the complete absence of all determination by sensibility, as it does in Kant, but simply the distinctive, non-reducible functioning of reason within an organic whole. As one part of a whole, the activity of reason is determined by and dependent upon the whole and all other parts within it; but as the distinct part of a whole, which is unlike all other parts and enjoys its own distinctive form of functioning, its activity determines the other parts and is also independent of them. The question still remains, however, whether Schiller’s account of independence is sufﬁcient to preserve the freedom required by moral responsibility. Kant would maintain that Schiller’s concept of independence is too weak to make anyone accountable for their actions. According to Kant, an agent is morally responsible for an action only if he or she can do otherwise; and an agent can do otherwise only if he or she are the spontaneous causes of their own actions, that is, only if they begin a series of events without determination by some prior cause. Schiller’s concept of independence does not permit such spontaneity. Even if the part of a whole is independent in the sense that it performs some distinctive function, and even if it is not only an effect but also a cause, its causal activity is still reactive, i.e. it acts only insofar as it is acted upon. It is one of the more striking—though, again, virtually unanounced—features of the argument in Letters XIX and XX that Schiller is fully aware of the deterministic consequences of his aesthetic concept of freedom. In the very beginning of Letter XX he states that it follows from his analysis of the aesthetic state that freedom is ‘an effect of nature’ (eine Wirkung der Natur), which can be stimulated or restrained by natural means (373, 22–7 ). As usual, however, the idea is not explored and Schiller provides little reason for thinking how moral freedom is compatible with the determinism of the natural world. The long footnote appended at the end of Letter XX also contains a remarkable ﬁnal comment: that though in the aesthetic condition the mind is free from all constraint, it still acts from necessity because it acts entirely according to laws. Aesthetic freedom differs from the logical necessity of thinking and the moral necessity of willing only in that there is no representation, or self-consciousness, of the laws behind its activity (376, 34–41). Schiller’s line of thinking here went back to his Kalliasbriefe: that freedom is not something within nature, because everything in nature is determined, but something that we read into nature. In other words, freedom in the sense of spontaneity is only an aesthetic ﬁction.

The Philosophy of Freedom

237

Hence, in the eternal dilemma between freedom and determinism, Schiller opted more for determinism than freedom. He had rescued freedom only in the minimal sense that he made reason an autonomous part of an organic whole; but, as he fully realized though did not entirely admit, he had not saved it in the stronger sense of the spontaneity required for moral responsibility. The weakness of Schiller’s solution is that it cannot save freedom in the stronger sense required by moral responsibility; its strength is that it preserves some element of freedom without compromising natural necessity, and without lapsing into a reductive materialism that would make the mind simply an epiphenomenon of the physical. For better or worse, in all these respects, the post-Kantian and romantic generation would eventually follow Schiller’s precedent.

8 Theory of Tragedy 1. SIGNIFICANCE AND CONTEXT After completing Don Karlos in 1787, Schiller stopped writing for the stage for ten years. The composition of Don Karlos had been a torment for him. He had rewritten, and even reconceived, the play several times; and he never succeeded in giving it a form that ﬁnally pleased him. Some reviews only seemed to conﬁrm his discontent. Several critics had faulted the play for its lack of unity and structure; Wieland, for example, recommended that the author learn ‘the laws of Aristotle and Horace’.¹ Such criticisms, and the difﬁculties of writing the play, led Schiller to rethink his ideas about tragedy and his entire practice of composition. And so, in the late 1780s, he turned to the study and translation of Greek drama, and eventually to the theory of tragedy itself. The ﬁrst fruit of these efforts was Briefe über Don Karlos, a defense of the play against some of its critics, which appeared in Der teutsche Merkur in 1788. By the summer of 1790, Schiller started to write more general essays on the theory of tragedy. In the next four years he would write no less than ﬁve essays on the subject: ‘Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen’ (1792), ‘Ueber die tragische Kunst’ (1792), ‘Vom Erhabenen’ (1793), ‘Ueber das Pathetische’ (1793) and ‘Ueber das Erhabene’, which was probably written sometime in 1793 or 1794, though only published in 1801.² Together, these essays compose nearly one-third of Schiller’s mature writings on aesthetics. Though treated perfunctorily even by specialists, Schiller’s essays on tragedy are among his most important contributions to aesthetics. His theory of tragedy is innovative, a major step beyond the major German dramatic theorists of the eighteenth century, viz. Lessing, Nicolai, Herder, Gottsched, Lenz and Sulzer. Indeed, Schiller’s theory deserves to be placed alongside those of Hegel and Nietzsche, which so often overshadow it in the history of aesthetics. Here, after all, is a theory of tragedy written by one its major practitioners, someone who knew the craft itself, which cannot be said for Hegel or Nietzsche. In this respect, ¹ C. M. Wieland, Anzeiger des Teutschen Merkur, September 1787, cxxiii–cxxv, repr. in NA VII/2, 518. ² The precise date of its composition is uncertain. See Benno von Wiese’s commentary NA XXI, 328–9.

Theory of Tragedy

239

only Lessing compares to Schiller, though Lessing’s theory of tragedy, which never got beyond a defense of Aristotle, does not have Schiller’s originality or depth. The central theme of Schiller’s theory of tragedy is that the purpose and content of tragedy consists in the self-awareness of freedom. What we experience through tragedy, Schiller believes, is nothing less than moral freedom, our power to act as responsible agents, independent of all motives of sensibility. When we see the tragic hero act on his or her ideals despite suffering and sacriﬁce we afﬁrm our own power to act on higher ends; we see that we belong to a higher supersensible order. Here again we see the leitmotif of the Kallias Briefe: tragedy is another case in point of freedom in appearance. Such a view of tragedy is the very antithesis of Nietzsche’s. Both Schiller and Nietzsche wrote under the inﬂuence of Kant’s dualism; both believed that tragedy provides metaphysical insight into a supersensible realm behind sense experience. But they had completely conﬂicting views about the nature of that realm. Whereas Schiller saw it as an essentially rational or noumenal world, the sphere of law and personal responsibility, Nietzsche regarded it as a fundamentally irrational world, the sphere of blind instinct and energy. Schiller held that tragedy afﬁrmed our personal identity as moral agents; Nietzsche countered that it did just the opposite, making us one with the comos by breaking down the principium individuationis. It comes as no surprise when, in Der Geburt der Tragödie, Nietzsche complained that Schiller had no conception of the dionysian.³ Whose theory of tragedy is superior—Schiller’s or Nietzsche’s—is a question we cannot possibly pursue here. But the interesting contrast between them shows that Schiller’s theory deserves to be considered alongside that of his more famous antipode. Prima facie Schiller’s theory of tragedy seems to be little more than an application of Kant’s concept of the sublime to drama. The theory makes no sense apart from the Kantian ethics of duty, the Kantian dualism between reason and sensibility, and the Kantian concepts of freedom. Still, it would be a grave mistake to reduce the theory down to its Kantian parameters alone. For Schiller’s theory is at its most innovative and interesting precisely when it breaks outside the conﬁnes of Kant’s ethics. It does so in two very signiﬁcant respects. First, Schiller did not cast the tragic hero in a Kantian mould, as if the tragic hero were only someone who did their duty at the cost of personal sacriﬁce and suffering. In ‘Ueber das Pathetische’, he taught that the tragic hero could be immoral, for what we admire in tragedy is simply the exercise of freedom, whether it is for good or evil. Second, Schiller held that tragic conﬂict sometimes arose from a clash between duties, that both colliding sides had a justiﬁable claim to have right on their side.⁴ This tragic ³ See Nietzsche, Geburt der Tragödie, sec. 3, Sämtliche Werke I, 137. Elsewhere Nietzsche has high praise for Schiller’s conception of the chorus, sec. 7, I, 54. ⁴ See ‘Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen’, NA XX, 143, and ‘Ueber die tragische Kunst’, NA XX, 156.

240

Schiller as Philosopher

conception of the world could not ﬁt into the tighter mould of Kant’s ethics, which, notoriously, held that a conﬂict of duties is impossible.⁵ From both these points it is easy to see that a Kantian ethics was not the ideal framework for the understanding of tragedy. When it came to a choice between tragedy or Kant’s ethics, Schiller’s instincts as a tragedian made him lean to the former. If it is a mistake to read Schiller’s tragic theory simply as an exercise in Kantian ethics, it is no less of an error to see it as an appendage to Kantian aesthetics. We cannot fully reconstruct or individuate Schiller’s theory merely by noting his borrowings and departures from Kant. It has to be placed in a much wider context: the German search for a national theatre, which began in the 1730s with Gottsched and continued throughout the eighteenth century. This quest, which was in turn one part of the much broader demand for a characteristic German culture, naturally led to the question of the proper form of tragedy for the German public. Hence the great importance of the theory of tragedy to German aesthetics in the eighteenth century. Long before Schiller turned to the topic in the 1790s, there had been several intense disputes about the nature of tragedy: the fascinating exchange of letters between Lessing, Mendelssohn and Nicolai in the 1750s; Lessing’s famous attack on Gottsched and the French tragedians in the 1760s; and the battle between the Sturmer und Dränger and the neo-classicists in the 1770s. Schiller’s ﬁrst essays on the theatre—the 1782 ‘Ueber das gegenwärtige Teutsche Theater’ and 1784 ‘Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlich wirken?’—were his own contributions to these debates. Schiller’s later essays of the 1790s must be seen in the same light, despite their late date of publication, and despite their dense Kantian form, which makes them seem like timeless exercises in pure reason. Though it is never explicit, Schiller’s essays on tragedy have a polemical subtext, where they take issue with Gottsched, Lessing, Mendelssohn and Sulzer. We can understand them fully only if we reconstruct them as contributions to these forgotten conversations. It is convenient to treat Schiller’s later essays on tragedy as a unity, as if they were all parts or reformulations of a single theory. But this is really an expository ﬁction, which it would be hazardous to take too literally. Even though all the tragedy essays were written within a four year period, there are some remarkable discrepancies between them. Schiller’s thinking was very much in ﬂux; the essays present so many different, and not necessarily progressive, stages in his thinking, which never came to a complete and consistent conclusion. On the basic issue of the purpose of tragedy Schiller’s views change radically. He ﬁrst thinks that its aim should be emotive: to arouse pity in the spectator; but then he maintains that its aim should be cognitive: to give us insight into the supersensible. Schiller’s views on the tragic hero were especially volatile and vacillating. At ﬁrst he held that the tragic hero should be a person of virtue who suffers misfortune; but he then ⁵ This point was made by Lukács, ‘Zur Ästhetik Schillers’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ästhetik (Berlin: Aufbau, 1954), 50–1.

Theory of Tragedy

241

claimed that the hero need not be a person of virtue at all, provided that they showed remorse for their misdeeds; and, ﬁnally, he maintained that the tragic hero could be even an unrepentent villian, provided that he acted with spirit, courage and conviction. On the all important issue of his attitude to Aristotle’s Poetics, Schiller reached some degree of clarity only in the late 1790s, several years after the essays were written.

2. ARISTOTLE’S SHADOW Although Aristotle had little authority for the baroque drama of the seventeenth century,⁶ the same cannot be said for the bourgeois drama of the eighteenth century. In mid-eighteenth-century Germany, the theory of tragedy very much lay under the shadow of the Stagirite. Aristotle’s loss of authority in the natural sciences had no parallel in the realm of the arts. The Germans appealed to him no less than the French. Whether one afﬁrmed or denied the value of French classicism—the canonical status of the plays of Corneille, Racine and Molière— the Stagirite’s stature remained undiminished. The bitter dispute between Lessing and Gottsched in the 1750s about the proper form of the new German tragedy was never really about the authority of Aristotle but only about how to interpret him. The crucial question was simply whether the French dramatists faithfully followed Aristotle’s guidelines. Gottsched afﬁrmed it, Lessing denied it. But both believed in the necessity of going back to the sources, the very fount of dramatic wisdom itself: the Poetics. It is indeed touching how Gottsched tells us in the preface to his Sterbenden Cato that he was at a loss about how to proceed with the German theatre until he went back to the source of it all and read his Aristotle.⁷ In the Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Lessing too would appeal to Aristotle time and again in his battle against the French models. The problem with Corneille—the source of all his affectation and artiﬁciality—lay with his confused interpretation of Aristotle.⁸ Aristotle had such authority for Lessing because he believed the Poetics to be a canonization of countless Greek masterpieces. Although Lessing denied that the Poetics is infallible, he still held its basic principles to be as true as Euclid’s Elements. Tragedy could not take a single step away from Aristotle without straying from perfection itself.⁹ ⁶ See Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, in Gesammelte Schriften, eds. R. Tiedemann and H. Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), I/1, 240–2. ⁷ Johann Christian Gottsched, Schriften zur Literatur, ed. Horst Steinmetz (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1972), 200. ⁸ See Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Stücke 81–3, in Lessing, Werke und Briefe, ed. Helmuth Kiesel (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1988) VI, 587–99. ⁹ Ibid., Stück 100–4, Werke VI, 685–6. On Lessing’s attitude toward Aristotle, see also Stück 38, Werke VI, 368–9. It is noteworthy that Lessing would indeed criticize Aristotle, esp. his view that the tragic hero must be a person of average virtue. See Lessing to Mendelssohn, December 18, 1756, Werke XI/1, 151.

242

Schiller as Philosopher

By the 1760s, however, the shadow began to dispel. This decade marks the birth and growth of the Sturm und Drang, which revolted against the French neoclassical model and the Aristotelian poetics that inspired it. The wise legislator of the 1750s had become the terrible tyrant of the 1760s. Hamann, Herder, Gerstenberg, Lenz, Klinger and the young Goethe all bristled and bridled against the constraints of neo-classical rules, which to them seemed to be so many fetters upon the expression of feeling and the creativity of genius. The Sturmer und Dränger were especially critical of the so-called ‘three unities’, the unity of time, action and place, which obliged the dramatist to write about a single action, taking place in a single location and lasting no longer than one day. The young Goethe wrote about these unities as if they were a damp and dark prison, so many ‘chains upon the imagination’.¹⁰ One could well question, of course, whether these unities really are in Aristotle, a line of argument that Lessing would pursue in his critique of French classicism. The Sturmer und Dränger, however, were much more rebellious than Lessing and ready to question Aristotle himself. They were happy to abolish all the rules and to trust pure genius, whereas Lessing never ceased to stress the value behind the rules, even if he construed them in a broader sense than Gottsched and the French classicists. By the late 1760s, however, Lessing was ﬁghting a rearguard action, well aware that he was no longer reﬂecting the new wilder currents of the age. He would end the Hamburgische Dramaturgie with some well-aimed barbs against the new cult of genius, though admitting that his old legs needed the crutches provided by rules.¹¹ The Sturmer und Dränger took their rebellion against French neo-classicism to its very source: the citadel of Aristotle itself. For them, the task was not how to interpret Aristotle but how to topple him. They started to chip away at his pedestal by questioning whether his rules are really applicable to modern drama. In 1766 Gerstenberg began the attack with a defense of Shakespeare, a favorite whippingboy for neo-classical censure.¹² It is absurd, Gerstenberg argued, to judge Shakespeare according to the rules of Greek tragedy, because he was not trying to do the same thing as the Greeks. Gerstenberg conceded that Aristotle was right about Greek tragedy: its main purpose was to arouse fear and pity. But he then asked: Why does that have to be the goal of all serious drama? Why do literary works have to be judged according to ﬁxed genres? Although Shakespeare’s works did stir the passions, their main aim was very different from Greek tragedy: to provide ‘a living portrait of moral nature’. And Gerstenberg was convinced that no one could fault Shakespeare for his faithful imitation of nature. His picture of man, his ¹⁰ ‘Zum Shakespears Tag’, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Friedmar Apel (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1998), XVIII, 10. ¹¹ Lessing’s famous complaint about the Sturmer und Dränger is in Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Stück 96 and Stücke 101–4, Werke VI, 655–60, 685–7. ¹² Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg, Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Literatur (Heilbronn: Henninger, 1888), 109–14. See esp. Briefe 14–18, 109–66.

Theory of Tragedy

243

passions and his times was so accurate and compelling that it more than justiﬁed all the infractions against the Aristotelian rules. Gerstenberg then cheekily suggested that that no modern dramatist ever really wrote according to Aristotle’s precepts anyway. Greek drama was closely connected with ancient religion, he claimed, so there is no reason that it should now apply to us, who do not accept their religion. Does not every nation, he asked, think and write in its own manner? If so, why was our own way of doing drama less valid than the Greeks? What Gerstenberg merely asserted or suggested, Herder developed into a powerful argument. His 1773 Shakespeare essay laid pure dynamite under the Aristotelian fortress.¹³ The essence of Herder’s strategy was simple: relativize and historicize Aristotle, so that he would be valid only for his own culture. While this would recognize his indisputable merits, and so not offend his many followers, it would also free contemporary playwrights from his tyranny. Aristotle was indeed a superb aesthetician, Herder conceded, because he articulated and rationalized the methods of Greek tragedy. He saw the great merits of Sophocles’ tragedies and rightly made them a worthy model for his contemporaries. Seen in their historical context, Aristotle’s rules were not artiﬁcial and arbitrary fetters, for they grew out of the natural practice of ancient Greek drama, which was mainly based on fables. The unities of action, time and place made perfect sense then, because these fables were all very simple, dealing with a single action taking place on a single day and in a single place. But, Herder concluded, what was valid for the ancient Greeks, who had their own unique culture, should no longer be valid for us, who have a very different culture all our own. Drama, Herder implied, should be the unique expression of a culture, one form of its way of life, the product of its characteristic values, traditions and language. This means that the modern poet should write in a manner appropriate for his own time and age, and that he should shun the poetics formulated for another. Nothing is more ridiculous, Herder noted, than to see what the French made of the ancient Greek heroes: they turned them into effete dandies! Their plays are caricatures of the Greeks, and indeed of the French themselves, because they do not grow out of their own life but attempt to imitate the life of another age. Herder was convinced: If Aristotle had only lived in Elizabethan England, he would have written a completely different poetics. What he did for Sophocles in the ﬁfth century BC he would have done for Shakespeare in the sixteenth century AD. The attacks of Gerstenberg and Herder were reinforced by Lenz, who now opened the battle on a different front. Although his 1774 Anmerkungen übers Theater, a preface to a translation of Love’s Labour Lost, is a bewildering rhapsody, it makes up for its lack of coherence with its many fertile suggestions.¹⁴ Like Gerstenberg and Herder, Lenz too contended that Aristotle’s doctrine had its ¹³ Herder, Werke, ed. Günter Grimm (Frankfurt: deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993) II, 498–521. ¹⁴ Jacob Michael Lenz, Werke und Schriften, eds. Britta Titel and Hellmut Lang (Stuttgart: Govert, 1966), I, 329–62.

244

Schiller as Philosopher

validity only for his time and place. Aristotle stressed the importance of action over character, he claimed, only because the ancients were more concerned with fate than with personality. More importantly, in another passage Lenz questioned one of Aristotle’s most fundamental claims: that ‘the life and soul’ of tragedy lies in its action and therefore in its plot.¹⁵ Lenz argued that this doctrine unduly underestimated the importance of character. Surely, he asked, does not the whole interest of the plot, its drama and force, come from its revelation and development of character? For Lenz, the heart of tragedy lay more in the portrayal of character rather than in the construction of a plot, which by itself would be mechanical, tedious and boring. In thus stressing the central role of character, Lenz suceeded in articulating and rationalizing one of the central features of Sturm und Drang drama, which would revolve more around character than action. The favorite battering ram of the Sturmer und Dränger in their assault on the Aristotelian fortress was, of course, Shakespeare. Gerstenberg’s defense of Shakespeare was only the beginning. It was no accident that other Sturmer und Dränger—the young Goethe, Herder and Lenz—later announced their revolt against classicism by invoking the ghost of the English bard. Here was a modern poet who captured the imagination, who spoke to the heart, who faithfully portrayed nature, but who never observed the Aristotelian rules. Goethe confessed that it was Shakespeare who ﬁnally opened his eyes to the world, which had been blinded by the dungeon of Aristotelian rules. Shakespeare was indeed a serious problem for the modern Aristotelians. While Gottsched was happy to condemn Shakespeare’s wildness, crudity and barbarism, he was also, by unwisely siding with the French and by closing his eyes to Shakespeare’s growing popularity, ﬁghting a losing battle. Lessing, for his part, was happy to appeal to Shakespeare in his battle against Gottsched and French neo-classicism; and he even afﬁrmed that Shakespeare was—at least in spirit if not in letter—more in accord with the rules of ancient tragedy than Corneille.¹⁶ But this was stretching it, and Lessing knew it. In the Hamburgische Dramaturgie he had the most difﬁcult time in trying to square English genius with Greek rules. What could he say, for example, about Richard III, whose hero was a monster and not the man of virtue recommended by Aristotle? After struggling with the question long and hard, Lessing had to admit in the end that the play really did not have the required virtues of a tragedy.¹⁷ This was virtually to accept Gerstenberg’s argument, to concede that there could be other forms of drama beside Aristotelian tragedy. Under the strain of this tension, Lessing’s tragic theory would ultimately collapse, posing a daunting challenge for all his successors. Somehow, they would have to tame Shakespearian power with classical restraints. ¹⁵ Aristotle, Poetics, chap. 6, 1450a, 15–40. ¹⁶ See Briefe die neueste Literatur betreffend, Brief 17, February 16, 1759, Werke IV, 500–1. ¹⁷ See Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Stücke 74, 79, Werke VI, 551–6, 575–80.

Theory of Tragedy

245

3. BET WEEN NEO-CL ASSICISM AND STURM UND DRANG Where did Schiller stand in all this? What was his attitude toward the battle between Sturm und Drang and classicism? In the 1780s, the crucial decade for his development as a dramatist, Schiller was still ﬁnding and ﬁghting his way through all these issues. In fundamental respects he sided with the Sturm und Drang. He too was intoxicated by Shakespeare, he too rebelled against the artiﬁcial constraints of French classicism, and he too was inspired by the ideal of freedom, the rebellion against the fetters of aristocratic privilege, princely despotism and social conformity. His ﬁrst play, Die Räuber, is very much, though not entirely, in the tradition of the Sturm und Drang. Like Lenz and Goethe, Schiller believed that the dramatist should portray ﬁrst and foremost character, the inner depths and workings of the heart. Hence, he described Die Räuber as a ‘dramatic history’ whose aim was to fathom ‘the most secret operations’ of the soul (NA III, 5). Such an aim could not be achieved by constructing a plot according to the three unities; but, then, so much the worse for them. The complex interweaving facets of nature, ‘the richness of interpenetrating realities’, he wrote, never really could ﬁt into ‘the all too narrow pallisades of an Aristotle or Batteux’ (5). For this reason Schiller conceded that his play was really not ﬁt for the stage; but he defended it by giving it a genre all its own: he called it ‘a dramatic novel’ rather than ‘theatrical drama’ (NA III, 244). Schiller’s greatest departure from neo-classicism in Die Räuber did not lie solely in his emphasis on character, and still less in his willingness to lay aside the three unities. Die Räuber was more daring that that, chieﬂy because its central protagonists—Franz and Karl Moor—are utterly immoral, completely incapable of arousing the admiration that neo-classicists recommended. Franz is a cowardly monster, who rationalizes his vices according to a materialist philosophy; and though Karl is the brave leader of a robber band, he is no Robin Hood because he is motivated more by a personal grudge than social justice. Schiller was very aware of his bold break with neo-classical doctrine. According to Aristotle, a tragedy can arouse fear and pity only if the hero of the action is someone of average virtue who suffers from misfortune.¹⁸ This tenet Gottsched and Lessing never doubted; they quarrelled simply about how best to apply it. But when Schiller attempted to explain Die Räuber he brought it into question.¹⁹ To evoke fear and pity, he argued, the hero need not be virtuous. Karl Moor was an outcast, an outsider, a misﬁt; but we have a natural sympathy for such characters. Furthermore, though he had wrong principles, Karl Moor also had passion, courage, and a sense of honor; and our natural sense of fairness will grant even a villian his virtues. The ¹⁸ Aristotle, Poetics, chap. 13, 1453a, 7–10. ¹⁹ See Schiller’s dramatic justiﬁcation for his characters in the ‘Unterdrückte Vorrede’, NA III, 244–5 and ‘Selbstkritik’, NA XXII, 118–9.

246

Schiller as Philosopher

pyschology of human sympathy is much more complex, Schiller claimed, than Aristotle or the neo-classicists ever imagined. Despite all his sympathies with the Sturm und Drang, it would be wrong to typecast Schiller as a model of the movement.²⁰ His differences with the Sturmer und Dränger are many and glaring. Unlike them, he never lost sight of the social importance of the arts, their role in educating the individual to live in society and the state, a concern to which he gave voice in his 1784 essay, ‘Was kann eine Gute Stehende Schaubühne eigentlich wirken? (NA XX, 86–100). Furthermore, Schiller never had a naive faith in the power of genius; he was never opposed in principle to art having rules. When he admitted that Die Räuber was not really ﬁt for the stage, he virtually conceded that proper drama requires more restrictions and restraint. He then defended his dramatic novel on the grounds that, though not written according to the rules of the stage, it was still composed according to ‘the universal laws of art as such’ (NA III, 244). More signiﬁcantly, in his ‘Selbstkritik’ Schiller censured Die Räuber according to neo-classical criteria; he faulted its excesses and exaggerations, its simplisitic characters whose passions are too extreme (NA XXII, 124–5). The whole piece should have shown more ‘decency and moderation’, he wrote, a telling allusion to Lessing’s and Winckelmann’s neo-classicism (130). Such censures were not without effect on his dramatic writing; they would soon push him in a more neo-classical direction, toward the greater unity, simplicity and stylization of Fiesko and Don Karlos. Last but not least, it is surely signiﬁcant that, even in the early 1780s, Schiller was self-consciously attempting to ﬁnd some middle path between the extremes. The 1782 essay, ‘Ueber das gegenwärtige teutsche Theater’, is remarkable for its critique of the extremes and excess of both French and English taste in the theatre (NA XX, 82–3). While the French heroes were dainty gallants, who coldy dissected their passions, the English heroes were raging giants, who stormed and screamed across the stage. There needed to be some middle course between French decency, which verged on artiﬁciality and affectation, and English wildness, which came close to grating the nerves. In attempting to formulate that middle path, Schiller reafﬁrmed a thesis of Lessing’s classicism: that the task of the artist is not simply to reproduce nature but to idealize it, so that even evil and suffering must appear according to the constraints of organic form.²¹ 4. STAKING OUT THE MIDDLE GROUND Given Schiller’s development in the 1780s, it should not be surprising that, in his essays on tragedy of the early 1790s, he attempts to strike a balance between ²⁰ For a compelling case against doing so, see Hans Borcherdt, Schiller, Seine Geistige und kunstlerische Entwicklung (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1929), 25–36. ²¹ Cf. Schiller’s essay NA XXII, 82–3 with Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Stück 70, Werke VI, 531–6. Although Lessing is criticizing Wieland in this piece, the same argument applies mutatis mutandis to the Sturmer und Dränger who, like Wieland, appealed to nature to justify Shakespeare’s extreme characters.

Theory of Tragedy

247

the extremes of neo-classicism and Sturm und Drang. When Schiller wrote these essays he was reﬂecting on a battle that had already died down. By the 1790s the Sturmer und Dränger were either mad, dead, grown up or burned out, having consumed themselves in the ﬁres of their passions. Only their demi-god, Goethe, came through the ﬂames unsinged. But by the late 1780s, Goethe had begun to experiment with classical form in his Iphigenie auf Taurus, a play he set in classical Greece, wrote in verse, and constructed loosely according to the three unities. There could be no more telling sign that the happy and heady heydays of the Sturm und Drang were over. Now it was time to weigh, coolly and carefully, the strengths and weaknesses of both parties. In its simplest terms, Schiller’s task was to combine the neo-classical values of restraint and moderation with the Sturm und Drang’s insistence on character development and psychological depth. There would have to be some rules, pace the champions of genius; but these rules would also have to be large and plastic enough to include characters like Karl Moor and Richard III, pace the rigid and stuffy neo-classicists. Schiller’s efforts to ﬁnd a middle path are reminiscent of no one more than Lessing, who described his own aesthetic in just these terms.²² It would be a mistake, however, to conﬂate his project with Lessing’s.²³ For, as we shall soon see, Schiller not only had a broader conception of the rules, of the kinds of character it is permissable to treat in a tragedy; he also had a very different conception of the purpose of tragedy itself. Schiller’s more liberal position is most evident in his ﬁrst essay on tragedy, his 1791 ‘Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen’. Here Schiller argues, ﬂatly contrary to Lessing and the Aristotelian tradition, that the suffering of a criminal can be as tragic as that of a virtuous man (NA XX, 141–3). While Aristotle had argued that only a good man who suffers misfortune can be tragic, Schiller insisted that the same is the case for a bad man, and in some respects even more so. He noted that we are often deeply moved by a person who suffers a bad conscience, or who falls into self-censure and despair because of past misdeeds. Such self-inﬂicted torment is just as deeply touching as the misfortune of a good person, Schiller argued, because in both cases their suffering is all too human and the majesty of the moral law is still upheld. As Schiller neatly put it: ‘Regret and despair over a crime show the power of the moral law only later, but not weaker’ (143). There is indeed nothing more tragically sublime, he contended, than when a person suffering from a guilty conscience punishes himself with his own suicide (142–3). This is even more moving than when a virtuous character sacriﬁces himself for the cause of justice, he claimed, because the virtuous character at least dies with the comfort of an easy conscience. ²² See Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Stück 101–4, Werke VI, 686–7. ²³ I take issue here with Benno von Wiese, who stresses Schiller’s afﬁnities with Lessing at the expense of his differences. See his Schiller, 440–5, and commentary on the tragic essays in NA XXI, 179, 181, 189, 191.

248

Schiller as Philosopher

Schiller’s argument here reﬂects the legacy of the Sturm und Drang, speciﬁcally its doctrine that the proper subject of drama should be character rather than action. But now, in the 1790s, Schiller gives this doctrine a Kantian twist. The representation of character should consist not merely in portraying the character’s actions, as Aristotle would have it, but also in revealing the tumult of the inner soul: the conﬂict between duty and inclination, the struggle of the will to overcome temptation, the deliberations and motives behind decisions, and the difﬁcult choices between opposing principles. This shift away from the outer realm of action into the inner realm of the soul very much reﬂects Schiller’s new Kantian ethics. For Kant had insisted that the source of morality lies not in what we do but in why we do it, in the intentions of the agent and the motivations of the will. The difference between Schiller and Aristotle here is the difference between Kant’s and Aristotle’s ethics. Aristotle would stress action in the Poetics because he believed that virtue consists in character which is formed by actions; actions are indeed the expression and embodiment of the soul, which is nothing more than the form of the body, the moving principle behind its actions.²⁴ But if Schiller is happy to break with some aspects of the Aristotelian tradition, he is eager to uphold it in others. His essay, ‘Ueber die tragische Kunst’, is remarkable not least because it lays down, in true neo-classical spirit, what he calls ‘the rules of tragedy’ (NA XX, 168, 32). Perhaps reﬂecting his ﬁrst reading of Aristotle,²⁵ Schiller’s attempt to determine these rules is reminiscent of nothing more than chapters 13–15 of the Poetics, those where Aristotle determines the best plots and most suitable characters of tragedy from its essential purpose: to arouse fear and pity in the spectator. Schiller’s argument here has a very similar structure. It begins from a similar premise about the purpose of tragedy; it then lays down the necessary or most effective means to achieve these ends. The rules are simply prescriptions about the means necessary for the tragedian to achieve his end: the arousal of pity. Schiller lays down four fundamental rules. First, a tragedy should not narrate its actions in words but directly represent them through imitation; in other words, the best form of a tragedy is not a novel or epic poem but actions presented on a stage (159, 164, 165). Schiller claims that, because it eliminates the need for a narrator between spectator and action, drama has a much more direct and powerful impact on the imagination. Second, if the spectator is to have pity on the hero, he must have something in common with him; these universal aspects of human nature are pre-eminently its moral aspects (160). Third, the tragedy should also present a complete account of an action, its context and all the causes behind it (162, 165). If we are to sympathize with the agent, we need to know if we would ²⁴ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, chap. 2, 1103b; and De Anima, Book II, chaps. 1–2. ²⁵ Caroline Beulwitz testiﬁes that Schiller read Aristotle sometime between mid-May to the end of July 1790 in preparation for his lectures on tragedy. See NA XLII, 129. He also would have taken into account Lessing’s many discussions of Aristotle in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie. See, e.g., Stücke 38, 74–8, 89–91, Werke VI, 368–73, 551–75, 623–36.

Theory of Tragedy

249

make the same decision under the same circumstances; we know this, however, only if we also know the causes and context of the action. Fourth, we must present the suffering of the hero in a persistent, though interrupted, manner (163). To arouse pity, the poet must fasten the spectator’s attention on the sequence of events, prohibiting his natural tendency to avert his eyes from suffering; but he must do this with some breaks to prevent overstimulation and exhaustion, and so that he can eventually return to the original theme with an even stronger emphasis. The great secret of the tragic art, Schiller believes, lies in creating an interplay between stimulating and relaxing the sympathetic response of the spectator, leaving the most moving moments for the climax (164). After laying down these four rules, Schiller then ventures, in true Aristotelian fashion, a general deﬁnition of tragedy: ‘a poetic imitation of a connected series of events (a complete action) which shows we human beings in a state of suffering, and whose intention is to arouse our pity’ (164). Schiller was not content, however, simply to lay down speciﬁc rules. He took his argument a step further and now generalized it, explaining not only why rules are necessary but why there must be distinct genres of poetry (168–9). He now realized, as many a Sturmer und Dränger did not, that the rules of tragedy are not antiquated codes of classical practice, and still less arbitrary or artiﬁcial conventions devised by effete Frenchmen. Rather, the rules are simply statements about the necessary or most effective means to achieve the end of an art. They are, in Kantian lingo, ‘hypothetical imperatives’, i.e. if we wish the end, then we must choose the means. If the end of tragedy is to arouse pity, then it is just a hard fact that there are only so many ways to do this. It is not as if we have complete freedom about which means to choose; some ways of doing this are better than others; still others are simply necessary. Since different arts have different ends, there will be different means for their ends, and so different genres (169). The most perfect work of a genre will be that where the means are best used to achieve their end. Though more by implication than intention, Schiller’s argument here takes issue with two opposing views. First, the Sturmer und Dränger’s contention that the quality of a work rests solely upon genius, who has the right to break the rules. Second, Herder’s thesis that the ancient rules derive from, and are valid only for, ancient Greek practice. Schiller held that there were indeed universal rules for tragedy based upon our common moral nature, which is the same in all times and places (160–1). Even if it permits a broader range of tragic heroes, the theory of tragedy in ‘Ueber die tragische Kunst’ is essentially neo-classical in purpose and structure. One of the main inﬂuences behind the essay is Lessing, whose theory of the purpose of tragedy—the arousal of pity—Schiller had clearly, if only implicitly, adopted. It is important to see, however, that on this point Schiller would soon part company with Lessing, and indeed the whole neo-classical heritage. In ‘Ueber das Pathetische’, which he published in 1793, he developed a completely new conception of the purpose of tragedy. Schiller began his essay with the ringing

250

Schiller as Philosopher

declaration: ‘The ﬁnal aim of art is the presentation of the supersensible, and the tragic art achieves this preeminently’ (NA XX, 196). The purpose of tragedy, Schiller now believed, is to make us self-conscious of our supersensible power of freedom, our capacity to act independent of the forces of the natural world. The shift from the earlier conception becomes evident when Schiller explains that the aim of tragedy is not to arouse feelings, to make us feel pity through portraying suffering. If this were the case, he warns, tragedy could degenerate into sentimentalism, a mere catharsis of emotion. Rather, tragedy should give us an experience of the sublime, which elevates us above the sensible world and reveals the higher world of freedom (201). The problem with sentimental novels and dramas, he now complained, is that they fail to give us an experience of the sublime (199). Though they empty our tear ducts, they also leave us empty inside. Though Schiller never mentions Lessing by name, his differences from him are evident. By insisting that the sole purpose of tragedy is to evoke pity, Lessing came too close to sentimentalism in Schiller’s view. Indeed, it is not an entirely unfounded suspicion. Lessing saw the production of tears as a criterion of dramatic success.²⁶ He also wanted to banish all admiration (Bewunderung) from tragedy, insisting that it is really really the task of epic poetry to make us admire heroes.²⁷ But it was precisely through admiration, Schiller contended, that the playwright could arouse the experience of the sublime (NA XX, 217n). Schiller’s new conception of the purpose of tragedy was, however, only the beginning. There is another more dramatic departure from Lessing and the neoclassical tradition in ‘Ueber das Pathetische’. A true dramatist, Schiller leaves his most radical move to the end, though he prepares his reader well in advance, so that the ﬁnal stunning blow seems inevitable. The ﬁrst step toward the conclusion is an unproblematic distinction between aesthetic and moral appraisal (215–8). A moral interest, Schiller explains, is concerned with obligations, or a speciﬁc exercise of the will, namely one where a person chooses to do their duty. An aesthetic interest, however, is concerned with freedom in general, not with speciﬁc exercises of the will but simply with the capacity to choose between good and evil. The next step is also unobjectionable: that the foremost interest of the dramatic poet should be aesthetic rather than moral (217–19). Having taken these two steps, Schiller draws his inevitable but still surprising conclusion: that the dramatic poet has a legitimate interest in portraying evil characters as well as good ones, and indeed in making somone evil the protagonist of his play (220). This is because the freedom, power and virtue involved in doing evil actions can be just as great as those in doing good ones; just like the good hero, the evil hero can show courage and strength, and undergo suffering and sacriﬁce for his principles. What really inspires us aesthetically, Schiller insists, is the freedom of the hero, regardless of ²⁶ See Lessing to Nicolai, November 29, 1756, Werke XI/1, 135. ²⁷ See Lessing to Mendelssohn, November 28, 1756, Werke XI/1, 132, and December 18, 1756, XI/1, 144–5.

Theory of Tragedy

251

whether he chooses good over evil. Indeed, in his most daring step of all, Schiller avers that we would rather see freedom prevail over morality than morality prevail over freedom (220). We admire the evil person who must sacriﬁce life and happiness for his ends more than a moral person who does his duty but does not have to make such a sacriﬁce. Of course, in ‘Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens’, Schiller had already sanctioned making an evil character the center of the drama; but he was now taking an additional step beyond this. For in the earlier essay the evil character had to show conscience and contrition, but now Schiller does not think that even that is necessary. He insisted that we derive aesthetic pleasure from any exercise of freedom, be it for evil or good. Examples were not hard to come by. Schiller mentioned Medea (230), though he might well have added Lessing’s old stumbling block, Richard III. The advance in the theory of tragedy expounded in ‘Ueber das Pathetische’ is that Schiller could allow and explain the aesthetic qualities of evil heroes, which had been such a problem for neo-classical aesthetics. Now, with no scruples or hesitation, these heroes had been ﬁrmly placed on centre stage.

5. SET TLING ACCOUNTS WITH THE STAGIRITE Although Schiller most probably read Aristotle in 1790,²⁸ he did not mention him explicitly or take issue with him until much later in the decade. It was only in the Spring of 1797, several years after writing his essays on tragedy, that Schiller ﬁnally settled his accounts with the Stagirite. In April of that year Goethe had studied the Poetics in a German translation, which he soon lent to Schiller. After studying the work, Schiller explained his reaction in some detail to Goethe and Körner. The reaction is extraordinary, the very opposite of what one should expect. For it is necessary to say: Schiller never understood Aristotle, still less his relationship to him. Where he censures Aristotle, he follows him; and where he praises him, he really violates him. Schiller recounts his reaction in two letters, his June 3, 1797 letter to Körner and his May 5, 1797 letter to Goethe. He confessed to Körner that his reading of Aristotle was the opposite experience of what he had expected (NA XXIX, 82). Aristotle’s work did not depress and restrain him; it had strengthened and relieved him. He had expected to ﬁnd in Aristotle what the French had found: ‘a cold, illiberal and stiff legislator’; but he encountered the very opposite: a wise and moderate advisor. Aristotle is really only concerned with essentials, the spirit of a drama, and he has very little interest in ‘externals’. What Aristotle ²⁸ The evidence is not entirely conclusive. One could question Beulwitz’s testimony, note 25 above. When Schiller wrote Goethe and Körner in 1797 it sounds as if he is reading Aristotle for the ﬁrst time. He writes to Körner, for example, of how surprised he is by the book. See NA XXIX, 82. It could well be that Schiller ﬁrst read him in the early 1790s but only carefully studied him in the late 1790s, or that he ﬁrst knew him entirely from secondary sources and only later studied him directly.

252

Schiller as Philosopher

demands is what any poet should demand of himself. The letter to Goethe is written in similar positive terms, though it goes into more detail and is more critical of Aristotle (NA XIX, 72–5). Schiller described Aristotle as ‘ein wahrer Höllenrichter’ for everyone who clung too slavishly to the rules and for everyone who wanted to overthrow them. Aristotle was very liberal because he was more concerned with substance than the external form; but he also was not too lax because his rules derived from the very essence of tragedy. Only now has he fully understood, Schiller confessed, how the French have misunderstood Aristotle. His previous reaction to ‘Aristotle’s pallisades’, he implies, was only a reaction against a ghost of his own making. Acknowleding an old claim of Lessing,²⁹ Schiller now declares that Shakespeare was more in accord with Aristotle than Corneille. Still, Schiller says that he is glad that he did not read Aristotle before. It is better to know one’s craft before reading him than to start one’s craft after reading him. It would be indeed ‘dangerous’ to read him before learning to write oneself. One would assume from Schiller’s positive reaction to the Poetics that he had now become an Aristotelian himself—not, of course, a French Aristotelian but at least a more liberal Lessingian one. This impression is strengthened when we read of Schiller’s new resolve to play by the Aristotelian rules. He seems delighted to ﬁnd vindication for his poetic practice in Aristotle’s Poetics. He told Körner that reading Aristotle made him satisﬁed with his work on Wallenstein; he believed the play conformed to Aristotle’s rules and he would work more on it to make sure of that (NA XXIX, 82). And he wrote to Goethe, December 8, 1797 that he would put Die Maltheser into ‘a Greek form according to Aristotle’s schema’ (NA XXIX, 165). Finally, he wrote Goethe June 18, 1799 that his Maria Stuart shows all the fear and pity of Aristotle (NA XXX, 61). From all these letters does it not seem that Schiller had become a new-found Aristotelian, pure and simple? But such a conclusion would be much too simplistic. Schiller’s discovery of Aristotle was ﬁlled with self-deception and contradiction. For he believed that he was following his new master precisely where he had departed from him most. In his May 5, 1797 letter to Goethe he claims that Aristotle had hit the nail on the head with his contention that the chief weight of a drama should rest on the plot (NA XXIX, 333). This reﬂects Schiller’s own increasing appreciation of the need to focus on the development of the plot in writing drama; but it does not reﬂect his actual practice, still less his own intellectual history. True to the legacy of the Sturm und Drang, Schiller’s dramas had always focussed more on character than plot; they were indeed un-Aristotelian insofar as plot revolved around character rather than character around plot. The difﬁculty of squaring his own practice with ²⁹ See Lessing, Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend, Siebzehnter Brief, Febrary 16, 1759, Werke IV, 500. Schiller does not mention Lessing, but his celebrated view would have been too well known to require acknowledgement.

Theory of Tragedy

253

Aristotle became evident in his August 24, 1798 letter to Goethe, when he confesses that he allows his characters to speak a lot and to explain themselves (NA XXIX, 265–6). He admits that this is not so necessary to the plot, and that it is also not very realistic. Still, he tries to justify it on the grounds that there is ‘a higher poetic law’ according to which all poetic characters are symbolic, representing something universal in man. The fact that they have this symbolic meaning allows him to depart from realism. But such a law is not to be found in Aristotle; and, as Schiller virtually admits, its lack of realism and its emphasis on character are contrary to his spirit. Schiller attempts to justify his practice by placing it under the rubric of Aristotle’s ‘dispositions and opinions’ (Gesinnungen und Meinungen);³⁰ but given the other points of tension, this was to stretch these terms beyond their limits. Schiller’s relationship to Aristotle is even more twisted, however, because he also followed Aristotle precisely where he thought he departed from him. For all his praise of Aristotle in his May 5, 1797 letter to Goethe, he is also very critical of him (NA XXIX, 73–4). Although he states that Aristotle had penetrated to the very essence of tragedy, he also complains that his method was much too empirical and haphazard. Such was the standard Kantian charge against Aristotle’s methodology, which Schiller dutifully repeats. He complains that Aristotle had simply generalized about an immense number of tragedies he found in the Greece of his day. As a result, if his rules are valid, it is not because Aristotle gave them a satisfactory a priori basis; it is simply because of luck, because he happened to generalize from works that were truly worthy of canonical status. This is, however, a misrepresentation of Aristotle’s method in the Poetics. Rather than generalizing on an inductive basis, Aristotle’s argument is much more normative, based upon his premise that the purpose of tragedy is to arouse fear and pity. If this is the purpose of tragedy, Aristotle argues, then these rules are the necessary or most effective means to attain it. The irony here is that Schiller himself uses an argument of just this form in ‘Ueber die tragische Kunst’, as we have already seen (8.4). The inspiration for this argument came from no less than Aristotle himself, if perhaps only indirectly from Lessing’s own account of Aristotle in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Ironically, then, Schiller had been most true to his new master precisely where he believed it was most necessary to depart from him.

6. THE SOURCES OF TRAGIC PLEASURE Schiller’s ﬁrst two essays on tragedy—‘Über den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen’ and ‘Über die tragische Kunst’—are largely devoted to a ³⁰ Schiller appears to refer to Poetics, chap. 19, 1456a; and also to have in mind chap. 6, 1450b, where Aristotle allows characters to speak to explain their actions.

254

Schiller as Philosopher

classical problem in aesthetics. Namely, why do we take pleasure in tragedy? The question was ﬁrst raised by Aristotle,³¹ then discussed through the ages; but it had become especially important in the age of Enlightenment. In Britain, Addison, Hume and Burke, to name a few, devoted much attention to it. In Germany, Gottsched, Nicolai, Sulzer, Lessing and Mendelssohn all treated this question; and their answers to it form the context for Schiller’s own reﬂections. His theory was only one part of a much longer conversation that had been going on for nearly a half century. According to most eighteenth-century theorists, the pleasure we take in tragedy is not limited to the theatre; it is not simply an aesthetic phenomenon but one aspect of a very strange and paradoxical feature of human behaviour.³² Namely, that we take pleasure in witnessing events that are intrinsically unpleasant or even horrible. We have an irrepressible curiosity in watching human suffering, even though the sight of it is dreadful. The locus classicus for this observation was Lucretius lines in De rerum natura about how sweet it is to watch a shipwreck from a safe and distant shore. Most eighteenth-century theorists were happy to supply some vivid examples all their own. In his 1761 Rhapsodie, Mendelssohn noted that though people would do everything in their power to prevent a disaster, once it had happened they would do everything in their power to see it.³³ After the bloody battle at ***, he writes, one witness gladly waded through blood to survey the carnage, even though he would have happily given his own life for it never to have happened. Burke made a similar observation in a no less telling, even if less ghoulish, form. No man is so wicked, he wrote in his Enquiry, to wish to see all of London destroyed by an earthquake or ﬁre. But if such an event did happen, ‘what numbers from all parts would croud to behold the ruins, and amongst them many who would have been content never to have seen London in its glory?’³⁴ Not to be outdone in this macabre contest, Schiller began ‘Über die tragische Kunst’ by pointing out a similar, though more macabre, phenomenon (NA XX, 148–9). ‘How great is the crowd’, he exclaims, ‘which follows a criminal to the showplace of his execution!’ We cannot explain this from the desire for revenge or to see justice done, he argued, for the unfortunate victim might be excused by the spectators; nevertheless, they have an insistent curiosity to watch his execution all the same. No one in eighteenth-century Germany devoted more thought to the problem of tragic pleasure than Moses Mendelssohn. This problem was especially ³¹ Aristotle, Poetics, chap. 4, 1448b, 10–12. ³² Addison had contended that tragic pleasure would disappear when we see it at ﬁrst hand. See The Spectator, no. 418, June 30, 1712, ed. Donald Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), III, 568–9. But Burke refuted him in a spectacular manner: a crowd would immediately desert the best theatrical production to witness an execution in a neighboring square. See Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. James Boulton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), Part I, sec. XV, 47. ³³ Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe, ed. Fritz Bamberger et al. (StuttgartBad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1929), I, 383–4. ³⁴ Burke, Enquiry, Part I, sec. XV, 47–8.

255

Theory of Tragedy

troublesome for Mendelssohn because it seemed to refute his own aesthetic theory, which he had so elegantly and painstakingly outlined in his 1755 Über die Empﬁndungen. According to his theory, all forms of pleasure, and not least aesthetic pleasure, essentially consist in the clear but indistinct perception of a perfection.³⁵ But such a theory has difﬁculty in explaining the pleasure we take in tragic events. For these events are not perfections; they are indeed obvious imperfections; yet it is also a fact that we take pleasure in them. At the close of Über die Empﬁndungen Mendelssohn devised a hasty explanation to address the difﬁcuty: tragic pleasure is based upon our love for someone who suffers undeserved misfortune.³⁶ As such it is a mixed emotion, which consists in both pleasure and displeasure. The pleasure derives from love, which is based upon a perfection, the qualities of the tragic character; the displeasure comes from seeing the character suffer when he or she does not deserve it. Mendelssohn stressed that these components reinforce one another: we take pleasure in witnessing this misfortune because it makes the loved one seem all the dearer. Mendelssohn soon became dissatisﬁed with this explanation, however. He felt that he had not sufﬁciently distinguished two things that are easily confused: the object of a sensation and the sensation itself. When we have witnessed something evil, he explained, our aversion is directed not to the sensation itself but to the object of the sensation. We would gladly prevent the evil; but we still enjoy watching it. We want to have the experience of the object, even if we disapprove of its very existence. To take this into account, Mendelssohn revised his whole theory of pleasure. In his 1761 Rhapsodie he went back to the very basics, analyzing the nature of perception or representation itself. Every representation, he explained, has a double reference: ﬁrst, to the object that it represents; and, second, to the subject who has it.³⁷ While the object of a perception can be imperfect, the subject in having it can still be exercising his powers and so enjoying a perfection. When we take pleasure in tragedy, we are still taking pleasure in something within ourselves, even though we are not really aware of it. We are taking pleasure in the exercise of our powers of approval and disapproval, whose functioning is a perfection and therefore a source of pleasure for us. This is a subtle move, perhaps, but also a futile one, because it did not really rescue the original theory. For the pleasure no longer comes from the perception of a perfection but from a perfect perception. Mendelssohn’s reﬂections on the problem of tragic pleasure form the essential context for Schiller’s own theory, which borrows from, and takes issue with them. It is striking that in ‘Über den Grund’ Schiller begins with Mendelssohn’s analysis of pleasure. The universal source of pleasure, both physical and intellectual, he declares, arises from purposiveness (Zweckmäßigkeit) (NA XX, 136). Since purposiveness consists in something performing its function well, or in being an effective means to an end, this is as much to say that the object is perfect in its kind. Schiller ³⁵ Mendelssohn, Über die Empﬁndungen, Schriften, I, 252. ³⁷ Ibid., 383–6.

³⁶ Ibid., 307–8.

256

Schiller as Philosopher

is endorsing, therefore, Mendelssohn’s original theory that pleasure consists in the awareness of a perfection. Again like Mendelssohn, Schiller notes that tragic pleasure is a mixed feeling, one which consists in pleasure and pain (NA XX, 138). The pleasure that we take in tragedy is unique, he remarks, because it creates pleasure through displeasure. Although he begins along Mendelssohnian lines, Schiller quickly moves in an independent direction. His analysis of this mixed feeling proves to be anything but Mendelssohnian. He maintains that the principal source of tragic pleasure lies not in love alone, as Mendelssohn ﬁrst suggested, but even deeper in the soul, in the awareness of freedom itself. The reason that we take pleasure in tragedy, Schiller maintains, is because it conﬁrms our stature as free beings, our power to act on principle independent of the determination of the sensible world. What we witness in tragedy is the struggle between reason and sensibility, the conﬂict between the demands of moral principle and those of personal happiness. The hero is faced with a predicament where he can fulﬁll his principles only by suffering, or only at the cost of his happiness or life; his choice to act on principle, contrary to his own inclinations as a natural being, proves our power to act as free beings independent of the natural world. Hence the mixed feeling so characteristic of tragedy. We feel pain because we see in the hero’s suffering the subjugation of our sensibility to the forces of the natural world; but we also feel pleasure because we see in his acting on principle the power we have to act independent of all causes in the world of sense. The ultimate source of tragic pleasure therefore lies in a realm where Mendelssohn never placed it: in the supersensible realm of freedom. Schiller’s disagreement with Mendelssohn comes to the surface in some passages in ‘Über die tragische Kunst’ where Schiller, without mentioning names, refers to the theory that the pleasure of tragedy comes from the activation of our faculty of desire, the powers of approval and disapproval (NA XX, 152). Almost certainly, this is a reference to Mendelssohn’s later theory in the Die Rhapsodie.³⁸ The problem with Mendelssohn’s theory, Schiller argues, is that it is simply incomplete and too vague. It does not really explain why or how these higher powers are activated, or why witnessing tragic events stimulates them into operation. What we need to know, he contends, is the speciﬁc form of this activity and what causes it. What is it that we approve and disapprove? And why do we approve and disapprove them? As Schiller puts it: it is not simply ‘the activity of the faculty of desire in general’ that is involved in tragedy but ‘a speciﬁc form of activity of this faculty created by reason’ (153). Thus Schiller thinks that Mendelssohn was on the right track in his reference to the will and the faculty of desire, in taking into account the highest powers of the soul; but he did not go far enough in explaining the speciﬁc form and operation of these powers and their moral causes. Schiller now ³⁸ This could also be a reference to Sulzer, whose theory of tragic pleasure is very similar, and probably indebted to Mendelssohn’s. See the article ‘Leidenschaften’, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1793), III, 234a–b.

Theory of Tragedy

257

believed that he had just such an explanation: the reason that we approve the tragic hero, and take pleasure in his actions, is that his actions afﬁrm our stature as moral beings; we perceive in his actions the appearance of freedom, which is the essence of all beauty. 7. THE THEORY OF THE SUBLIME Schiller’s account of tragic pleasure led him to explore a popular concept of eighteenth-century aesthetics: the sublime. This concept would soon play a crucial role in Schiller’s tragic theory. He wrote two essays explicitly devoted to the subject, his 1793 ‘Vom Erhabenen’ and 1794 ‘Ueber das Erhabene’. The essays ‘Ueber den Grund . . .’, ‘Ueber die tragische Kunst’ and ‘Ueber das Pathetische’ also contain key sections discussing the concept of the sublime. Schiller’s reﬂections on the concept of the sublime always took place within the context of his theory of tragedy. While he realized that the concept of the sublime is broader than the tragic, he made his special concern the sublime in tragedy. Still, since tragedy is only a speciﬁc form of the sublime, Schiller also recognized that he had to analyze the concept of the sublime as such; hence, his general treatment of this concept in ‘Vom Erhabenen’ and ‘Ueber das Erhabene’. Schiller accepts the common eighteenth-century distinction between the sublime and beautiful, though in ‘Ueber das Erhabene’ he casts it according to his own ethical theory (NA XXI, 41–2, 44–5). The beautiful arises from the harmony between reason and sensibility, from when we do our duty from inclination; but the sublime arises when reason and sensibility are in conﬂict, when we have to act on duty contrary to inclination, at the cost of personal happiness. Each gives us a sense of our freedom, but in quite distinct ways. The beautiful makes us aware of ourselves as self-determining agents, as beings who act according to their nature as a whole; but the sublime makes us conscious of our moral autonomy, our power to act on moral principle independent of the determinations of the natural world. Schiller stresses, however, that it is only the sublime that gives us knowledge of ourselves as rational beings, as beings belonging to a supersensible order that is beyond the causality of the natural and phenomenal world. For only when someone shows that he can act contrary to all motives of sensibility do we know that he truly respects the moral law and is willing to act for rational ends alone. Only the sublime, therefore, fulﬁlls the true function of tragedy: it gives us an awareness of the supersensible. Beauty does not give us such an awareness because, by wedding reason with sensibility, it attaches us too closely to the sensible world. Beauty is very much like Calypso, enchanting the brave son of Ulysses; but the sublime is more like Mentor, who teaches us our true vocation in a higher world (NA XXI, 45). Following the distinction between the sublime and beautiful, in ‘Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens . . .’, Schiller divides the arts into two classes according to whether one or the other is their main concern or subject matter (NA XX, 136–7).

258

Schiller as Philosopher

He is careful to explain that the arts cannot be neatly divided into the different kinds of aesthetic pleasure, since one and the same art can show different kinds. Still, insofar as one or the other is the main interest of the art, one can still distinguish between different perspectives (Ansichte) on works of art, if not between different works themselves. There are the ﬁne arts (schöne Künste), whose interest is the beautiful; and there are the touching or affecting arts (Rührende Künste), whose object is the sublime. There are two affecting arts: the epic and tragedy. Of all the arts, Schiller would soon give pre-eminence to tragedy. The purpose of all art, he writes in the opening lines of ‘Ueber das Pathetische’, is to reveal the supersensible (NA XX, 196). Given its devotion to the sublime, tragedy fulﬁlled that role better than any other art. When Schiller made the sublime the special subject matter of tragedy he was following not Aristotle, who measures tragedy by the standards of beauty,³⁹ but common eighteenth-century practice. The usual examples of the sublime were objects of nature, such as majestic mountains, rushing torrents, a stormy sea; but it was customary to apply the concept to human actions, and especially tragic ones, whether real or ﬁctional. In his 1758 ‘Ueber das Erhabene und Naive in den schönen Wissenschaften’, for example, Mendelssohn declared that there was no more sublime spectacle than when the artist depicted a hero willing to sacriﬁce life and happiness for the sake of duty.⁴⁰ And in his 1763 Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen, Kant explained that tragedy differs from comedy because it moves us through the sublime while comedy moves us through the beautiful (AA II, 212). We feel the dignity of our own nature in tragedy, Kant wrote in some suggestive lines, because we see people acting virtuously in the face of misfortune. For his part, Sulzer used the concept of ‘the sublime of disposition’, which he especially applied to tragic characters, to people whose noble actions far exceeds normal expectations.⁴¹ Interestingly, Sulzer stressed, as Schiller would later do, that there was no need for the person of sublime disposition to act according to moral principles; as long as he showed conviction and courage in the pursuit of his ideals, no matter how wrong he might be, his character was admirable and therefore sublime.⁴² It seemed all too natural to apply the concept of the sublime to tragedy because of the very similar structure between them. The sublime was said to arouse fear and wonder, just as the hero of a tragedy. We admire the hero—hence the wonder—but we also fear for him because of his fate, and indeed for ourselves should a similar fate befall us. When Schiller ﬁrst introduced the concept of the sublime into his tragic theory in ‘Ueber den Grund . . .’, he immediately drew attention to just this similarity (NA XX, 137). What they have in common, he noted, is that peculiar quality of arousing pleasure through displeasure. When we ³⁹ Aristotle, Poetics, chap. 7, 1450b34–40. ⁴⁰ Mendelssohn, Schriften I, 462. ⁴¹ See the article ‘Erhaben’, in Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, II, 100a–b. ⁴² Ibid., II, 100b–101a. Von Wiese overstates Schiller’s originality in this regard; see his Schiller, 441.

Theory of Tragedy

259

see a sublime object in nature—the starry sky, a mountain range, a storming sea— we experience a mixture of fear and wonder, dread and admiration. The same happens when we see tragic events on stage, because we admire the hero but also fear for him. The experience of tragedy is therefore very much in accord with Burke’s description of the sublime as ‘delightful horror’.⁴³ Schiller’s analysis of the sublime owes a great debt to Kant, which he conspicuously acknowledged by subtitling ‘Vom Erhabenen’ with the phrase ‘Zur weitern Auführung einiger Kantischen Ideen’. His chief precedent is sections §§27–8 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft where Kant attempts to explain the peculiar ‘delightful horror’ involved in the experience of the sublime. Like Burke and Mendelssohn before him, Kant held that the feeling of the sublime arises from a feeling of pleasure and displeasure, attraction and aversion. These mixed feelings derive from the fact, Kant argues, that when we see a sublime object in nature we measure it against two very different standards. One standard is that of our physical power or worth, the other is that of our moral power or worth. While nature is vastly superior to our physical powers, it is vastly inferior to our moral ones. Nature is superior to our physical stature, because its power is so great that it could easily destroy us; but it is inferior to our moral stature, because we have an inﬁnite worth against which nothing in nature has a value at all. The mixed feeling in the experience of the sublime derives from these two sources. The unease or displeasure arises from the sense of our physical impotence, the fear or dread in face of an object that could destroy us; but the pleasure arises from the awareness of our moral omnipotence, from our self-respect in recognizing that we have a worth that transcends everything within nature. The fundamental insight behind Schiller’s ﬁrst essay on tragedy is that the Kantian analysis of the sublime can explain the problem of tragic pleasure. Kant himself never formulated a theory of tragedy in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, limiting the experience of the sublime to objects within nature. Schiller, however, saw the explanatory value of Kant’s analysis of the sublime and simply applied it to objects on stage. When we witness a tragedy, he argues in Kantian fashion, we apply to the suffering hero the same dual standards that we have in the experience of the sublime. Since the hero suffers and cannot prevent the misfortune befalling him, he shows his limited powers as a physical being; but since he, despite the suffering, continues to act on moral principle, he shows his greater powers as a moral being. The application of these two very different standards is the source of the mixed pleasure of tragedy. When we see in suffering the limits of our physical being, we feel displeasure, in the form of fear, horror or dread; but when we see our greater stature as moral beings, we feel pleasure, the afﬁrmation of our inﬁnite value above all that happens in nature. Though Schiller’s general analysis of the sublime is greatly inspired by Kant’s analysis in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, it contains many formulations and insights ⁴³ Burke, Enquiry, Part II, sec. 7, 73.

260

Schiller as Philosopher

all its own. In ‘Vom Erhabenen’ he begins from some perfectly Kantian premises. He states that the sublime makes our sensible nature feel its inferiority to the physical world and our rational nature its superiority, its freedom from all physical limits (171). The sublime makes us feel limited as physical beings, because we feel fear before the superior power of nature, its capacity to destroy us; but it elevates us as moral beings, because it makes us aware of our power to act for moral ends, contrary to all the feelings and desires of our sensible nature. So far the account is perfectly Kantian.⁴⁴ Schiller adds, however, an interesting point about the nature of the moral power. The moral power that we feel over nature must not be confused, he warns, with the physical power that we sometimes have over it (176). The physical power that we have over nature—the capacity to make it conform to our ends—has nothing sublime about it, he contends, because, however great, it is still a limited power within nature. All the means by which we have power over nature really belong to us as physical or natural beings; they assist us physically, not morally (177). The feeling of the sublime actually requires that our physical nature be vanquished, that we are deprived of every capacity for resistance against nature. It therefore demands that we do not have power over nature, that on the contrary it has power over us (177). Like Kant, Schiller introduces a distinction between the mathematical and dynamical sublime, though he explains it in different terms. The sublime makes us feel dependent on nature as physical beings, and independent of nature as rational beings (171). Both are necessary for us to have the characteristic mixed feeling of the sublime, he argues (178). If there is no dependence, there is no fear, and hence no displeasure; and if there is no independence, there is no afﬁrmation of our moral stature, and hence no pleasure. The analysis of this dependence and independence then provides the basis for his distinction between the two forms of the sublime. As physical beings we are dependent on nature in two respects: we know only what is within our experience; and we must satisfy our basic needs, what is necessary for our subsistence. As rational beings, however, we are independent of nature, and in just the opposite respects: we can think beyond the limits of our experience; and we can act contrary to our natural needs. An object that makes us feel the ﬁrst kind of independence—our power to think beyond what is given to the senses—is theoretically great, the theoretically sublime or sublime of knowledge (Erhabenes der Erkenntniß ); and an object that makes us feel the second kind of independence—our power to act independent of the sensible world—is practically great, the sublime of practice or disposition (Erhabenes der Gesinnung). In the ﬁrst case the sublime is an object that would widen our knowledge; and in the second case, it would widen our sphere of actions. This is ⁴⁴ De Man thinks that Schiller departs from Kant in seeing a threat to our physical existence in Kant’s practical sublime. See his ‘Kant and Schiller’, Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 129–62, esp. 139–42. But de Man’s claim that there is no concept of ‘physical danger’ in Kant’s treatment of the sublime (139) is simply false. See Kritik der Urteilskraft §28, V, 262–3.

Theory of Tragedy

261

essentially Kant’s own distinction between the mathematical and dynamical sublime. Schiller chooses the terms theoretical and practical sublime over Kant’s mathematical and dynamical because he thinks Kant’s terms do not suggest an exhaustive division (171). So far, Schiller’s distinction seems perfectly in order. However, his further analysis uncovers a hidden problem, one that Kant himself did not face. Both kinds of the sublime, Schiller explains, reveal to us a power that is independent of nature. In the case of the theoretical sublime it is the power to think beyond what is given to the senses; in the case of the practical sublime it is the power to act independent of the motives of nature (174). While both kinds of sublime have the same relation to our power of reason, they have very different relations to our sensibility. The theoretical sublime contradicts the power of sensibility to know it, because, as an inﬁnite object, it transcends every attempt to grasp it according to the understanding or imagination. The practical sublime, however, contradicts the desires of sensibility, and indeed it can demand the ultimate sacriﬁce, life itself (174). Hence, Schiller thinks that the practical sublime is much more serious and important for us. While the theoretical sublime only threatens my power to know something, the practical sublime can threaten our very existence (174). An unsuccessful attempt to know something creates displeasure (Unlust); but, insofar as it does not threaten to destroy us, it does not create pain. Since, however, the practical sublime threatens our very existence, we feel nothing less before it than horror (174). This means, Schiller concludes, that the practical sublime will move us much more deeply than the theoretical sublime (175). But now the question is inevitable: how is the theoretical sublime really sublime at all? The problem is that there is no element of fear in the sublime, which Schiller himself, like most eighteenth-century thinkers, regarded as necessary to the very possibilty of the sublime (178). How, indeed, one might ask, does the theoretical sublime maintain any connection with freedom, which is crucial to Schiller’s account of the sublime? It is probably for this reason that Schiller devotes most of his exposition in ‘Von dem Erhabenen’ to the practical rather than theoretical sublime. Nearly half of the essay attempts to distinguish between two different forms of the practical sublime. There are three necessary components to the general concept of the practical sublime, he says. First, some physical power in nature; second, our powerlessness to resist it as physical beings; and, third, our moral predominance over it (186). Although all these elements must occur in each case of the practical sublime, it is contingent how we realize them in speciﬁc circumstances. There are two possible cases. The object is the cause of possible suffering, where the spectator imagines the suffering within himself. Or, the object is the cause of actual suffering, where the spectator simply observes what is happening to someone else. In the ﬁrst case the spectator makes the object fearsome ( furchtbar); and in the second case the object is fearsome and the spectator applies what is happening to someone else to himself. The ﬁrst case is what Schiller calls the contemplative sublime, the second case the pathetic sublime (186).

262

Schiller as Philosopher

Schiller explains in more detail each kind of the practical sublime. In the case of the contemplative sublime the mind can stay in a state of repose (187). Since the object is not really fearsome and we simply imagine it to be such, we are not really in danger. The experience of the contemplative sublime is therefore much less intensive and extensive than that of the pathetic sublime: less intensive, because the representation of danger must come from us and is therefore voluntary; less extensive, because not all people have a vivid imagination so that they can see something as dangerous. Schiller gives these examples of the contemplative sublime: an abyss that stands at our feet, a storm at sea, an erupting volcano, a harsh winter in the polar region (187). All these objects are sublime as soon as the imagination relates them to its own physical existence. With these examples the representation of danger has a real basis because the object really could harm us, though for it to be fearsome we must relate it to our own selves (188). However, sometimes indifferent objects, i.e. those that could not really harm us, are made by the imagination into something fearsome; here the imagination does not merely discover but creates its object (188). This is the case with something extraordinary or indeterminate, e.g. a deep stillness or quiet, a great emptiness, complete darkness. Here the imagination is in its proper element, Schiller says, because the suspense makes it fear that something horrible will happen. In the case of the pathetic sublime, however, the object is actually destructive, so that the imagination not only can but must see it as dangerous (192). Even here, however, we are spectators of suffering. We do not suffer ourselves but simply see someone else who suffers. If we were to suffer ourselves, then no aesthetic attitude would be possible. The aesthetic attitude demands some degree of quiet contemplation, and we cannot foster such an attitude where we really are in danger (178–9, 192). Hence, the suffering involved in the pathetic sublime must be someone else, and it must be of a strictly sympathetic kind. Furthermore, even sympathetic suffering will be too excessive for our sensibility if the suffering actually is taking place outside us; even empathetic pain overwhelms aesthetic enjoyment. Only when the suffering is a mere illusion or ﬁction, only when it is presented to the imagination and not to the senses, is it possible for the object to be sublime (192). Schiller’s distinctions are even more reﬁned and complex, but we need not pursue them here. They are, however, just another example of the systematic depth and rigour with which he develops his theory of tragedy. In this respect, as in so many others, it has no parallel in the age of Goethe.

APPENDIX 1

Rhetoric and Philosophy in Schiller’s Essays One of the greatest obstacles to the philosophical appreciation of Schiller’s aesthetic writings has been the recent—and growing—emphasis upon their rhetorical dimension.¹ According to this approach, the essential purpose and structure behind the aesthetic writings is poetic, stylistic, and rhetorical rather than philosophical, logical or systematic. We are warned against interpreting Schiller as a systematic philosopher and rigorous thinker, and against mistaking rhetorical strategies for logical blunders.² The ambiguities, inconsistencies and vagueness of his writings, we are told, are the deliberate or subconscious result of their poetic structure and rhetorical strategies rather than slips in reasoning or lapses in systematic thinking. There is nothing wrong in principle, of course, with a poetic or rhetorical approach to Schiller’s aesthetic writings. Schiller’s rhetoric and style is as legitimate an object of interest and investigation as his reasoning and theorizing. Indeed, some recent work has shed much light on the importance of the rhetorical tradition for Schiller’s program of aesthetic education.³ However, this approach goes seriously astray when it claims priority over, or attempts to replace, a close philosophical examination of the texts. In this case, two problems arise. First, such an approach is ﬂatly contrary to Schiller’s intention, to his own conception of his aesthetic writings; and, second, it cannot dispense with, but ultimately presupposes, a philosophical analysis of the text. Each of these points requires further explanation. Although Schiller saw himself ﬁrst and foremost as a poet, there can be no doubt that he regarded his aesthetic writings as attempts at serious philosophy. Under the inﬂuence of Kant and Reinhold, he stressed the importance of system, the need for clear conceptual distinctions, and the value of derivation from ﬁrst principles. While he was not so dogmatic or conﬁdent to believe that he had actually attained these goals, he still ¹ See Kerry, Schiller’s Writings, 1–13; Herman Meyer, ‘Schillers philosophische Rhetorik’, in Zarte Empirie: Studien zur Literaturgeschichte (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1963), 337–89; Elizabeth Wilkinson, ‘Zur Sprache und Struktur der Ästhetische Briefe’, Akzente 5 (1959), 389–418; Paul de Man, ‘Kant and Schiller’, in Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 129–62; and Todd Curtis Kontje, Constructing Reality: A Rhetorical Analysis of Friedrich Schillers Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (New York: Lang, 1987). ² See esp. Wilkinson, ‘Sprache und Struktur’, 399, 402–3, 407; and Kontje, Constructing Reality, 79, 89. ³ See Gerd Ueding, Schillers Rhetorik: Idealistische Wirkungsästhetik und rhetorische Tradition (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1971), 10–50; and Dieter Borchmeyer, Tragödie und Öffentlichkeit: Schillers Dramaturgie im Zusammenhang seiner ästhetisch-politischen Theorie und die rhetorische Tradition (Munich: Fink, 1973), 125–36.

264

Schiller as Philosopher

insisted that it is necessary for every serious thinker to strive to approach them. All the major early aesthetic writings—Kallias Briefe, Anmut und Würde, Ästhetische Briefe— are efforts to determine ﬁrst principles and to provide a system of aesthetics. Indeed, in the ﬁeld of aesthetics, Schiller was as much of a foundationalist as Reinhold, whose Elementarphilosophie was an attempt to derive the results of the critical philosophy from ﬁrst principles. While it is true that Schiller later abandoned his effort in the Kallias Briefe to provide the ﬁrst principle of aesthetics, an objective criterion of the beautiful, he never abandoned the foundationalist programme itself; indeed, he would make another attempt to provide aesthetics with a systematic foundation in Letters XI–XV of the Ästhetische Briefe. So severe was Schiller’s demand for clarity, rigour and system that it led to his sharp censure of some of his more lax philosophical contemporaries, among them F. W. von Ramdohr, J. G. Schloßer, and not least Friedrich Schlegel. Since he found their writings vague, uncritical and shallow, he could not bear to read, publish or review them. When the thinking got tough, Schiller complained, they resorted to metaphors and appeals to feeling. One could not, as he grumbled about Schloßer to Goethe, ‘simply smell and feel one’s way through metaphysics’.⁴ In this context it is instructive to compare Schiller with his romantic progeny, especially Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel. In the late 1790s, when Schiller had already laid down his philosophical pen, the young Novalis and Schlegel reacted against the foundationalist programme that had once inspired Schiller. Unlike Schiller, they rejected in principle the possibility of ﬁnding ﬁrst principles in philosophy; and they were skeptical of all deﬁnitions and attempts to determine infallible criteria. The purpose of poetry, in their view, is to transcend the limits of discursivity, to attain intuitive insight into the wholeness and unity of things that cannot be captured by the analytical intellect. We must be careful not to read this later romantic doctrine back into Schiller, however, as if he too were championing poetry and rhetoric to replace philosophy. For all Schiller’s inﬂuence on the romantics, he was much more skeptical about the claims of poetry, much more critical about its pretensions to provide a kind of immediate knowledge inaccessible to philosophy. In his insistence on ﬁrst principles and systematicity, Schiller shows himself to be still loyal to the legacy of the Aufklärung, which had always attempted to provide a solid foundation for the authority of reason. How did Schiller regard his own aesthetic writings? Did he see them as strictly philosophical? Or did he also regard them as poetic and rhetorical? The best clue for an answer to these questions comes from a short essay Schiller wrote for the Horen in 1795, ‘Ueber die nothwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schöner Formen’ .⁵ Here Schiller himself poses the question of the proper limits of poetry and its role in philosophical discourse. The occasion for his doing so was Fichte’s charge that his work, by relying too heavily upon the use of images, had confused the boundaries between philosophy and poetry. To Fichte, it seemed as if Schiller all too often allowed his argument to rest upon mere metaphor and suggestion rather than evidence and reasoning. Since Fichte’s criticism impugned his philosophical integrity, Schiller could not allow it to go unanswered. His response to Fichte’s challenge is that his aesthetic writings are indeed philosophical, though not in the conventional sense Fichte had in mind. ⁴ See Schiller to Goethe, February 9, 1798, NA XXIX, 202. ⁵ NA XXI, 3–27.

Appendix 1

265

The core of Schiller’s essay is a distinction between three kinds of exposition or style: the ‘popular’, the ‘scientiﬁc’ or ‘philosophical’, and the ‘aesthetic’ or ‘beautiful’. A scientiﬁc exposition addresses our intellect alone, and its structure must follow the logical structure of the argument itself. It does not simply expound the results of the investigation, but it also shows the process of reasoning that led to them. A popular exposition appeals directly to our imagination, showing how concepts apply to speciﬁc examples in experience; it does not, however, reveal the grounds or reasoning behind the investigation but simply their results. An aesthetic exposition is a synthesis of the other two: it not only follows the order of reasoning but it also uses examples to appeal to intuition and imagination. It combines the free order of the imagination with the necessary order of thought (8–9). Following Kant’s categories of modality, Schiller then classiﬁes these forms of exposition according to whether they establish the possibility, reality or necessity of their subject matter (10–1). A scientiﬁc exposition attempts to demonstrate the necessity of its subject matter; a popular exposition attempts to show its reality; and an aesthetic attempts to show its possibility or desirability. Which form we choose, Schiller says, depends on our purposes and audience. The scientiﬁc form is best from the didactic point of view because it shows not only the central theses but the reasons for them, allowing the student to think for himself; popular and aesthetic forms, however, are more suitable from the pulpit or podium where the aim is to convince people of the results without going into the reasons for them (11). The crucial question now is: What form of exposition does Schiller attribute to his own aesthetic writings? Remarkably, he is not entirely explicit, leaving his readers to draw their own inferences. Some have taken Schiller’s ideal to be the aesthetic form of exposition, and so they have stressed the poetic and rhetorical dimension of the aesthetic writings. This is indeed the basic premise behind the rhetorical approach.⁶ The interpretation seems reasonable enough, given Schiller’s general preference for the aesthetic and its holism. But, upon closer inspection, it proves untenable. Some of the central and characteristic features of aesthetic exposition cannot be attributed to the aesthetic writings. For it was never Schiller’s aim just to present his results in pleasing form; he also wanted to demonstrate them, to show the reasons for them. And it was never his intention simply to show the possibility and desirability of his central ideas; he was also keen to show their necessity. All the close reasoning and systematic theorizing of the Kallias Briefe, Anmut und Würde and the Ästhetische Briefe would be pointless if they were only instances of aesthetic exposition, which attempts only to portray the results of investigation in pleasing language. If only by elimination, then, it is clear that the only form of exposition that applies to Schiller’s aesthetic writings is the scientiﬁc or philosophical. The crucial question then becomes: What kind of scientiﬁc or philosophical exposition? In a few dense pages Schiller sketches his own ideal (14–5). It is not, of course, the geometric method of Spinoza, still less that staid parade of numbered paragraphs characteristic of Wolff and the German academic tradition. Schiller had something completely different in mind, something going back to the Platonic tradition.⁷ His ideal philosophical method is reminiscent of the ⁶ See Meyer, ‘Schillers philosophische Rhetorik’, 386–9. ⁷ This point was stressed long ago by Ernst Cassirer, ‘Die Methodik des Idealismus in Schillers philosophischen Schriften’, Idee und Gestalt (Berlin: Cassirer, 1924), 83–111, esp. 83, 108–9.

266

Schiller as Philosopher

Platonic dialectic: it not only analyzes a whole into its parts but it also synthesizes the parts into a living whole. It appeals to not only our understanding, whose function is to analyze a whole into its elements, but also our productive imagination, whose task is to reunify the parts into a whole. Such a method of exposition demonstrates the necessity of its ideas with the utmost rigour; and in its pursuit of clarity it does not shirk from the most relentless analysis. However, it also goes a step further by making the abstract concrete, by attempting to fuse analyzed terms into a single living whole. Though he gives no speciﬁc name to the method itself, Schiller calls the writer who proceeds according to it ‘der darstellende Schriftsteller’ (14). Schiller’s insistence on rigorous reasoning and conceptual clarity should be sufﬁcient to show that he intends his aesthetic writings to be appraised philosophically. But, even at this point, the defender of the rhetorical approach will not relent. He or she will insist that ‘der darstellende Schriftsteller’ is indeed the poet or rhetorician, for he alone has the power to make ideas appear evident to the senses through the use of images, and to unite through the imagination what has been divided by the intellect. Hence, Schiller seems to assign the aspect of synthesis to the poetic or rhetorical dimension of his work. It is precisely here, however, that we see the fatal error of the rhetorical approach: it confuses form and substance, as if the beautiful images of the imagination were sufﬁcient to provide intellectual content. Schiller utterly and explicitly rejects such a conﬂation: ‘Where the content must conform to the form, there is no real content at all’ (18). Insofar as synthesis is a matter of content, that content has to be supplied by reason alone; it is the task of poetry or rhetoric merely to dress it in an appealing form. To be sure, the synthetic work of dialectic is undertaken by the productive imagination; but Schiller, unlike the romantics, never understood the imagination to be an extra-rational power. Synthesis is ultimately the function of reason. If it is the task of the understanding (Verstand ) to divide what is given to sense, it is the task of reason to reunite what the understanding has divided. Such is the unmistakable purport of his famous adage in the Ästhetische Briefe: ‘Nature (the senses) unites everywhere, the understanding separates everything, but reason unites once again’ (NA XX, 368n). So far, I have argued that the rhetorical approach is ﬂatly contrary to Schiller’s intentions, that it does not examine his aesthetic writings according to the philosophical standards by which he wanted them to be judged. But this too is scarcely the end of the matter. The defender of the rhetorical approach might concede this point and still insist, perfectly correctly, that we are not bound to take Schiller at his word. He or she will stress that although Schiller intends his work to be philosophy—although he wants it to be appraised by standards of logical rigour—the fact remains that it fails to match these standards. It is for just this reason, he will conclude, that we should appreciate his aesthetic writings as poetry and rhetoric, for this alone explains their lack of rigour and coherence. Such a reply reveals, however, the limitations of any purely rhetorical analysis. It shows that a rhetorical analysis cannot replace but must follow a philosophical examination of the text; for it is only when we have shown that the text is inexplicably incoherent and ambiguous that we can resort to rhetoric and poetry as an explanation for its incoherence or ambiguity. But are the texts really incoherent and ambiguous? This cannot be a starting assumption without simply begging the question; we can show that they are incoherent and ambiguous only as a result of a philosophical analysis of the text. The rhetorical or poetic approach is therefore trumped by the philosophical. This approach has its place

Appendix 1

267

only after a proper philosophical examination, only after we show how Schiller fails to match his own standards of rigour and systematicity.⁸ ⁸ Some examples of the rhetorical approach will show the very weak rationale behind it. Its practioners are eager to spy poetry or rhetoric upon the ﬂimsiest basis. Wilkinson, for example, ﬁnds evidence for ‘the subordination of logic under rhetoric’ because Schiller’s terminology is so inexact: his terms do not have a single univocal sense, as in a deductive system, but they take on many meanings according to their context. (See Wilkinson, ‘Sprache und Struktur’, 400–4.) While this is undoubtedly correct, it scarcely proves that Schiller is a rhetorician. Wilkinson’s implicit criterion for being a philosopher is following the geometric method, an absurdly strict test that would rule out every philosopher beyond the seventeenth-century rationalists. Another early champion of the rhetorical approach was S. S. Kerry, who stressed the irreducible poetry of the aesthetic writings and protested against a purely philosophical treatment. Kerry saw this poetic dimension in Schiller’s tendency to reify abstractions, to make concepts into personae that he projected into the external world. (See Kerry, Schiller’s Writings, 7, 9, 11.) Never, however, did Kerry consider Schiller’s own regulative restrictions about reading abstractions into nature; he simply confused poetic license with ontological commitment, ﬂatly contrary to Schiller’s own warnings about such inferences. Another more notorious case in point is Paul de Man, who regarded Schiller as little more than a popularizer of Kant. (See De Man, ‘Schiller and Kant’, 146–7, 154–5.) De Man distinguished the poet Schiller from the philosopher Kant on the grounds that Schiller is more metaphysical than Kant, Kant more critical than Schiller. Where Kant warns us about making inferences to the existence of the noumenal or intellectual world, Schiller, led astray by his imagination, assumes the existence of such a world. But the contrast here is bogus: on a strictly practical basis, Kant himself does permit inferences to the existence of the noumenal world; Schiller makes his inferences on the same basis, observing the same regulative restrictions as Kant.

APPENDIX 2

The Neo-Kantian Interpretation of Schiller Given that Schiller’s aesthetic writings are philosophy, the question remains how we should approach them philosophically. The question is moot since Schiller’s writings have been interpreted from virtually every philosophical angle. There have been liberal and fascist, Hegelian and Marxist, phenomenological and existentialist, readings. Each generation interprets Schiller anew, and all too readily according to the latest philosophical fashion. I cannot engage here in a detailed critique of these interpretations; I will content myself, therefore, with explaining the strengths and weaknesses of only one of them. Perhaps the most fruitful philosophical approach to Schiller has been that practiced by the neo-Kantian movement. Inevitably, this movement studied his philosophy in its Kantian context. Some scholars in this tradition—Ernst Cassirer, Friedrich Überweg, Karl Vorländer and Kuno Fischer—succeeded remarkably in combining a philosophical approach with sensitivity to historical context. Writing in the age of historicism, they respected Schiller’s historical context and individuality while still honoring his claims to be a philosopher. It is a caricature to think that these scholars forced Schiller into a Kantian straitjacket, or that they objected to him on the grounds he did not precisely follow Kantian terminology.¹ Their aim was to determine how Schiller continued but also broke with the critical philosophy. Rightly, they viewed Schiller’s philosophy essentially as a creative transformation of Kant, one that both cancels and preserves, corrects and develops, the Kantian legacy. There are powerful arguments on behalf of the Kantian approach. First and foremost, it is generally recognized that, after 1791, Schiller’s thinking was decisively inﬂuenced by Kant. Whether correctly or not, Schiller himself claimed to follow the fundamental principles of Kant’s epistemology and ethics; and even in the ﬁeld of aesthetics, where he differed most sharply from Kant, he still worked largely within a Kantian framework. Second, even where Schiller broke explicitly with Kant, we are still forced to consider his philosophy in a Kantian context because it was essentially a reaction against him. We can appreciate Schiller’s reasoning, and reconstruct his arguments with accuracy, only if we show exactly how he took issue with Kant. For all the arguments in its favor, the Kantian approach to Schiller also has its limitations. It would be a fundamental and fatal mistake to think that Schiller’s philosophical goals, interests and problems were determined entirely by his encounter with Kant. They had their origin much earlier in his intellectual development, during his days at the Karlschule, long before his study of Kant. These early goals, interests and problems very much provide the foundation and context for the mature Schiller’s appropriation of Kant. While it is doubtless true that Kant transformed Schiller, it is no less true that Schiller ¹ Pace Gottfried Baumecker, Schillers Schönheitslehre (Heidelberg: Winter, 1937), 1.

Appendix 2

269

transformed Kant, and that the source of that transformation lay in his complex preKantian intellectual development. Here lies the crux and challenge for all scholarship on Schiller’s philosophy: determining precisely where Schiller transforms, and where he follows, Kant. Another shortcoming of the Kantian approach is that it tends to regard Kant as the sole inﬂuence on the mature Schiller. Rightly, several scholars have protested that such an emphasis overshadows other important inﬂuences on Schiller’s thinking; they have contended that thinkers like Wieland, Herder, Goethe and Humboldt were of no less signiﬁcance in Schiller’s development.² These critics have a point, which practitioners of the traditional Kantian approach do well to heed. This approach too falsiﬁes Schiller—and commits its own form of anarchronism—if he takes him to be the sole major inﬂuence on the development of Schiller’s philosophy. While this does not show the Kantian approach to be false, it does show that it is insufﬁcient on its own. Lately, some scholars have developed a new line of criticism against the Kantian approach. They maintain that it ignores the metaphysical dimension of Schiller’s thinking, and speciﬁcally his debt to the Platonic tradition.³ This new metaphysical approach to Schiller stresses his apparent ‘indifference to epistemology’, which consists in his silence regarding the thing-in-itself and his lax observance of Kant’s critical limits. Supposedly, Schiller never understood Kant’s attitude toward Plato—his attempt to read Plato’s ideas as regulative ideals—and reinjected Plato’s metaphysics back into Kant’s philosophy. Schiller did not follow Kant’s transcendental method because, we are told, he wrote about the noumenal and phenomenal as entities rather than as faculties of knowledge. While the emphasis on Plato is new, the metaphysical approach itself has long been a mainstay of Schiller interpretation. There are other variations of the metaphysical approach: some claim that Schiller anticipates the objective idealism of Schelling and Hegel, whereas others maintain that he is a champion of the vital materialism of Herder and Leibniz.⁴ There is something to be said for the metaphysical approach, at least in its latest Platonic incarnation. There are important Platonic themes in Schiller’s thinking, and some of his fundamental problems can be ultimately traced back to the Platonic tradition. But admitting this point still does not make Schiller’s philosophy metaphysical, at least not in the sense required by the advocates of this interpretation. For it is a mistake to think that Schiller believes in the existence of metaphysical entities, or that he is making claims to knowledge about them. While he indeed believes in the existence of noumenal freedom, he thinks, like Kant, that the basis for belief in its existence is essentially moral or practical rather than metaphysical or theoretical. The fundamental problem with the metaphysical approach—whether in its Platonic or Hegelian variant—is that it rides roughshod over Schiller’s own scrupulous adherence to Kant’s regulative guidelines. Time and again in the ² See, e.g., Baumecker, Schillers Schönheitslehre, 125–8, who stresses Goethe; Benno von Wiese, Friedrich Schiller (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1959), 244–7, 450–4, who emphasizes Wieland; and Robert Sommer, Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie und Ästhetik von Wolff–Baumgarten bis Kant–Schiller (Würzburg: Stahel, 1892), 378, 387–8, who exaggerates the role of Herder. ³ See Pugh, Dialectic of Love, 107, 113, 245, 323–4. The same approach is approved by Sharpe, Aesthetic Essays, 27. ⁴ Other prominent champions of the metaphysical interpretation are Georg Lukács, ‘Zur Ästhetik Schillers’, 36, 41, 47; Robert Sommer, Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie und Aesthetik (Würzburg: Stahel, 1892), 391, 428, 431; Eduard Spranger, Schillers Geistesart (Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1941), 33, 38; Wilhelm Bohm, Schillers Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (Halle: Niemeyer, 1927), 37, 44, 51–2, 57.

270

Schiller as Philosopher

aesthetic essays Schiller stresses the importance of following these guidelines. Hence in the Kallias Briefe Schiller constantly warns us not to read freedom into phenomena, as if objects of nature were really free; and in the Ästhetische Briefe he repeatedly insists that we should not engage in metaphysical speculation about the connection between the noumenal and the phenomenal.⁵ It is of the ﬁrst importance to see that Schiller’s adherence to this regulative doctrine was vital to all his mature thinking, which separated moral from metaphysical questions.⁶ The source of Schiller’s conversion to Kant came from his recognition of the signiﬁcance of Kant’s critical doctrines; and the difference between the early and mature Schiller is that the later Schiller fully understood the value of metaphysical restraint and separating morals from metaphysics.⁷ Of course, partisans of the metaphysical approach still have the strategy open to them of saying that Schiller, despite all his professions to the contrary, nonetheless violates Kant’s regulative limits. They can point out a discrepancy between Schiller’s principles and practice, a tension between his intentions and the hidden implications of his doctrines. The problem is that they still have not made this stronger and deeper case; rather than showing how Schiller violates his own ideals, they simply ignore those passages where he professes them, as if he were a metaphysican by policy and intention. They have, therefore, only begged the question against the older Kantian interpretations of Schiller, which rightly stressed Schiller’s loyalty to the critical tradition. For all the reasons stated above, then, this work attempts to revive the neo-Kantian approach to Schiller. While cognizant of some of its shortcomings, it also attempts to realize some of its strengths. It is a very sad truth: contemporary Kant scholarship has not lived up to the achievements of the neo-Kantian legacy.⁸ ⁵ For the Kallias Briefe, see NA XXVI, 180, 200, 208–9. See also below, 2.5. For the Ästhetische Briefe, see NA XX, 371, 9–20; 372, 19–26; 356, 18–22. See too Schiller to Körner, October 24, 1794, NA XXVII, 70–1. See also above, 4. 11. ⁶ For further discussion, see above, 1.6. ⁷ On the importance of the regulative doctrine for Schiller’s philosophical development, see Cassirer, ‘Die Methodik des Idealismus’, 93–4, 95, 105. ⁸ See above, 4.1–2.

Bibliography SCHILLER EDITIONS AND SOURCES Anon, Correspondence of Schiller with Körner, Comprising Sketches and Anecdotes of Goethe, the Schlegels, Wieland and other Contemporaries. London: Bentley, 1849. Anon, Essays Aesthetical and Philosophical. London: Bell, 1875. Bohn’s Standard Library. Bird-Pollan, Stefan, ‘Kallias Letters’, in Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics, ed. Jay Bernstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 145–83. Bolton, Jürgen, ed. Schillers Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984. Dahlstrom, Daniel, and Hinderer Walter, eds. Friedrich Schiller: Essays. New York: Continuum, 1993. The German Library: vol. 17. Danzel, Theodor ed. Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner, Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur 121 (1848), 1–25. Dewhurst, Kenneth, and Reeves, Nigel, eds. Friedrich Schiller: Medicine, Psychology and Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Düsing, Wolfgang, ed. Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen: Text, Materlialien, Kommentar. Munich: Hanser, 1981. Fambach, Oscar, ed. Schiller und seine Kreis in der Kritik seiner Zeit, Vol. II of Ein Jahrhundert deutscher Literaturkritik. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957. Hempel, C. J., Schiller’s Complete Works. Translated. Philadelphia: Kohler, 1861. Hoyer, Walter, ed. Schillers Leben Dokumentarisch. Berlin: Kiepheuer & Witsch, 1967. Kuhlenkampf, Jens, ‘Vollständiges Verzeichnis der Randbemerkungen in Schillers Handexemplar der Kritik der Urteilskraft’, in Materialien zu Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974: 126–44. Leitzmann, Albert, ed. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe. Leipzig: Insel, 1912. 3 vols. Leroux, Robert, ed. Lettres sur L’Éducation Esthétique de l’Homme. Paris: Aubier, 1943. Michelsen, A. L. J., Briefe von Schiller an Herzog Christian von Schleswig-HolsteinAugustenburg über ästhetische Erziehung, Deutsche Rundschau VII (1875), 67–81, 273–84, 400–13, and VIII (1876), 253–68. Peterson, Julius, ed. Schillers Werke, Nationalaugabe. Weimar: Böhlausnachfolger, 1943f. 42 vols. Vaihinger, Hans, ‘Zwei Quellenfunde zu Schillers philosophischer Entwicklung’, Kant-Studien 10 (1905), 373–89. Walzel, Oskar, Philosophische Schriften. Vols. 11 and 12 of Schillers Sämtliche Werke, Säkular Ausgabe. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1904–5. Wilkinson, Elizabeth, and Willoughby, L. A., Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. Wilpert, Gero von, Schiller Chronik. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1958. Wolzogen, Karoline von, Schillers Leben. Verfaßt aus Erinnerungen der Familie, seinen eigenen Briefen und den Nachrichten seines Freundes Körner. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1830. 2 vols.

272

Schiller as Philosopher OTHER PRIMARY SOURCES

Abel, Jacob Friedrich, Einleitung in die Seelenlehre. Stuttgart: Mezler, 1786. Reprint: Hildesheim: Olms, 1985. —— Rede über das Genie. Marbach: Schiller National Museum, 1955. —— Karlschule Schriften, Eine Quellenedition zum Philosophieunterricht an der Stuttgarter Karlschule (1773–1782). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1995. Addison, Joseph, The Spectator, ed. Donald Bond. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. 5 vols. Aristotle, Complete Works, ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. 2 vols. Burke, Edmund, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. London: Dodsley, 1957. Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners Opinions, Times. London: Purser, 1732. 3 vols. Reprint: Indianapolis: Liberty, 2001. Crusius, Christian August, Die philosophischen Hauptwerke, ed. G. Tonelli. Hildesheim: Olms, 1964. 4 vols. Dalberg, Carl Theodor von, Grundsätze der Aesthetik. Erfurt: Keyser, 1791. Diderot, Denis, ed. Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers. Paris: Le Breton, 1757. 17 vols. Ferguson, Adam, Institutes of Moral Philosophy. Edinburgh: Kincaid & Bell, 1769. Reprint: London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1994. —— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ——Grundsätze der Moral Philosophie, trans. Christian Garve. Leipzig: Dyck, 1772. Reprint in the Series: Reception of the Scottish Enlightenment in Germany, ed. Heiner Klemme. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2000. Vol. 6. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte. Berlin: Veit, 1845. 8 vols. Reprint: Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971. Garve, Christian, ‘Anmerkungen des Uebersetzers’ to Adam Ferguson, Grundsätze der Moral philosophie. Leipzig: Dyck, 1772: 285–420. Gerstenberg, Heinrich Wilhelm, Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Literatur. Heilbronn: Henninger, 1888. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche, ed. Friedmar Apel. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1998. 40 vols. —— Johann Peter Eckermanns Gespräche mit Goethe. Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1949. Gottsched, Johann Christian, Schriften zur Literatur, ed. Host Steinmetz. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1972. Herder, Johann Gottfried, Werke, ed. Gunter Grimm. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993. 10 vols. Heydenreich, Karl Heinrich, System der Aesthetik. Leipzig: Göschen, 1790. Reprint: Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1978. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968. Hogarth, William. Analysis of Beauty. London: Reeves, 1753. Home, Henry, Elements of Criticism. Edinburgh: Millar, 1777. 3 vols. Reprint: New York: Garland, 1967. Humboldt, Wilhelm von, Werke in Fünf Bänden, eds. Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft, 1960. 5 vols.

Bibliography

273

Hume, David, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary. Indianapolis: Liberty, 1985. Hutcheson, Francis, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, ed. Wolfgang Leidhold. Indianapolis: Liberty, 2004. Kant, Immanuel, Kants gesammelte Schriften, ed. Wilhelm Dilthey et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1902. Körner, Christian, ‘Ueber die Freiheit des Dichters bei der Wahl seines Stoffs’, Thalia, II (1789), 59–71. Lacombe, Jacques, Dictionnaire portatif des beaux-arts. Paris: Herissant, 1753. Lavater, Johann Caspar, Physiognomische Fragmente. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984. Lenz, Jacob Michael, Werke und Schriften, eds. Britta Titel and Helmut Lang. Stuttgart: Govert, 1966. 3 vols. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Werke und Briefe, ed. Helmuth Kiesel. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1988. 12 vols. Locke, John, An Essay concerning human Understanding, ed. Peter Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Machiavelli, Niccolò, Opera, ed. Mario Bonfantini. Milan: Ricciardi, 1954. Mendelssohn, Moses, Gesammelte Schriften, Jubiläumsausgabe, ed. Fritz Bamberger et al. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstattt: Frommann, 1971. 17 vols. Mengs, Anton Raphael, Gedanken über die Schönheit und über den Geschmack in der Malerey. Zurich: Heidegger, 1762. Reprint: Eschborn: Klotz, 1992. Mirabeau, Comte de, Travail sur L’Education Publique. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1791. Montesquieu, Charles, Œuvres Complètes, ed. Roger Caillois. Paris: Gallimard, 1949–51. 2 vols. More, Henry, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings. London: Morden, 1662. 2 vols. Moritz, Karl Phillip, Werke, ed. Horst Günther. Frankfurt: Insel, 1981. 3 vols. Nietzsche, Friedrich, Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe, eds. G. Colli and M Montinari. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967–77. 15 vols. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, eds. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns. New York: Pantheon, 1966. Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, ed. H. E. Butler. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1921–2. Ramdohr, Friedrich Wilhelm Basilius von, Charis oder Ueber das Schöne und die Schönheit in den nachbildenden Künste. Leipzig: Dyck, 1793. 2 vols. Reid, Thomas, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, ed. Derek R. Brookes. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995. Reinhold, Karl Leonard, ‘Ueber das bisherige Schicksal der kantischen Philosophie’, Der teutsche Merkur II (1789), 3–37, 113–35. —— Briefe über die kantische Philosophie. Leipzig: Göschen, 1790–2. 2 vols. Reprint: Leipzig: Reclam, 1923. —— Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens. Jena: Widtmann und Mauke, 1789. Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Œuvres complètes. Pléiade edn. Paris: Gallimard, 1995. 5 vols. Spinoza, Bendictus, Opera, ed. C. Gebhardt. Heidelberg: Winter, 1925. 4 vols. Stahl, Georg Ernst, Theoria medica vera physiologian et pathologiam, ed. L. Choulant. Leipzig: Voss, 1831–3. 3 vols.

274

Schiller as Philosopher

Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold Graf zu, ‘Gedanken über Herrn Schillers Gedicht: Die Götter Griechenlands’, Deutsches Museum 8 (1788), 97–105. Sulzer, Johann Georg, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste. Leipzig: Weidmann, 1792. 4 vols. Reprint: Hildesheim: Olms, 1970. Wieland, Christian Martin, Sämtliche Werke. Leipzig: Göschen, 1798. 15 vols. —— Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin: Weidmann, 1916. Winckelmann, Johann, Kleine Schriften und Briefe, ed. Hermann Uhde-Bernays. Leipzig: Insel, 1925. 2 vols. —— Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums. Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1776. New edn.: Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972. SECONDARY SOURCES Abusch, Alexander, Schiller: Größe und Tragik eines deutschen Genius. Berlin: Aufbau, 1980. Adorno, Theodor, Gesammelte Schriften. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998. 22 vols. Allison, Henry, Kant’s Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Alt, Peter-André, Schiller: Leben-Werk-Zeit, Eine Biographie. Beck: Munich, 2000. 2 vols. Babbitt, Irving, Rousseau and Romanticism. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1919. Barnouw, Jeffrey, ‘«Freiheit geben durch Freiheit» Ästhetischer Zustand-Ästhetischer Staat’, in Friedrich Schiller: Kunst, Humanität und Politik in der späten Äufklärung, ed. W. Wittkowski. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982: 138–63. —— ‘ “Der Trieb, bestimmt zu werden”. Herder, Schiller und Schelling als Antwort auf Fichte’, Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift. 46 (1972), 248–93. —— ‘The Morality of the Sublime: Kant and Schiller’, Studies in Romanticism 19 (1980), 497–514. Baron, Marcia, Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Bauch, Bruno, ‘Schiller und die Idee der Freiheit’, Kant-Studien, X (1905), 346–72. Baum, Wilhelm, ‘Der Klagenfurter Herbert-Kreis zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 50 (1996), 483–514. Baumecker, Gottfried, Schillers Schönheitslehre. Heidelberg: Winter, 1937. Bäumler, Alfred, Das Irrationalitätsproblem in der Ästhetik und Logik des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zur Kritik der Urteilskraft. Halle: Niemeyer, 1923. Reprint: Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967. Beck, Lewis White, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Benjamin, Walter, Gesammelte Schriften, eds. Rolg Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974. 5 vols. Berger, Karl, Die Entwicklung von Schillers Ästhetik. Weimar: Böhlau, 1894. Berghahn, Klaus, Schiller, Ansichten eines Idealisten. Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1986. —— ed. Friedrich Schiller: Zur Geschichtlichkeit seines Werkes. Kronberg: Scriptor, 1975. Böhm, Wilhelm, Schillers Briefe über die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen. Halle: Niemeyer, 1927. Borcherdt, Hans Heinrich, Schiller, seine geistige und künstlerische Entwicklung. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1929. Wissenschaft und Bildung, Nr. 225.

Bibliography

275

Borchmeyer, Dieter, Tragödie und Öffentlichkeit: Schillers Dramaturgie. Munich: Fink, 1973. Bosanquet, Bernard, A History of Aesthetic. London: Allen & Unwin, 1904. Boucher, Maurice, La Revolution de 1789 vue par les Écrivains Allemands. Paris: Didier, 1954. Brelage, Manfred, ‘Schillers Kritik an der kantischen Ethik’, Studien zur Transzendentalphilosophie. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965: 230–44. Buchwald, Reinhard, Schiller. Wiesbaden: Insel, 1954. 2 vols. Burckhardt, Jacob, The Greeks and Greek Civilization, ed. Oswyn Murray and Sheila Stern. New York: St. Martins, 1998. Bürger, Christa, Der Ursprung der bürgerlichen Institution Kunst im höﬁschen Weimar. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1977. Bürger, Peter, Zur Kritik der idealistischen Ästhetik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983. Burschell, Friedrich, Schiller. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1968. Calder, W. M., ‘Schiller on the Will and on the Heroic Villian’, Oxford German Studies 2 (1967), 41–54. Carlyle, Thomas, Life of Friedrich Schiller. London: Chapman & Hall, 1873. Reprinted: Columbia S.C.: Camden House, 1992. Cassirer, Ernst, ‘Schiller und Shaftesbury’, Publications of the English Goethe Society. New Series 11 (1935), 37–59. —— ‘Die Methodik des Idealismus in Schillers philosophischen Schriften’, in Idee und Gestalt. Berlin: Cassirer, 1924. 2nd ed., 81–112. —— ‘Schiller—Freiheitsproblem und Formproblem in der klassischen Ästhetik’, in Freiheit und Form. Berlin: Cassirer, 1916: 269–302. —— ‘Das Problem Jean Jacques Rousseau’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 41 (1932), 177–213, 479–513. —— ‘Eidos und Eidolon: Das Problem des Schönen und der Kunst in Platons Dialogen’, Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 2 (1922–3), 1–27. Chytry, Josef, The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Collingwood, R. G., The Principles of Art. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938. Cysarz, Herbert, Schiller. Halle: Niemeyer, 1934. Danto, Arthur, ‘The Artworld’, Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964), 571–84. —— The Transﬁguration of the Commonplace. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981. Deubel, Werner, Schillers Kampf um die Tragödie. Berlin: Widukind, 1935. Düsing, Wolfgang, ed. Friedrich Schiller: Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen. Text. Materialien, Kommentar. Munich: Hanser, 1981. Literatur-Kommentare, Band 17. —— ‘Ästhetische Form als Darstellung der Subjektivität: Zur Rezeption Kantischer Begriffe in Schillers Ästhetik’, in Friedrich Schiller: Zur Geschichtlichkeit seines Werkes, ed. Klaus Berghahn. Kronberg: Scriptor, 1975: 197–252. Eagleton, Terry, The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Blackwell: Oxford, 1990. Ellis, J. M., Schillers Kalliasbriefe and the Study of his Aesthetic Theory. The Hague: Mouton, 1969. Anglica Germanica: British Studies in Germanic Languages and Literature, no. XII. Engel, Bernhard, Schiller als Denker: Prolegomena zu Schillers philosophischen Schriften. Berlin: Weidmann, 1908.

276

Schiller as Philosopher

Eucken, Rudolf, ‘Was können wir heute aus Schiller gewinnen?’, Kant-Studien 10 (1905), 253–60. Fischer, Kuno, Schiller als Philosoph. Leipzig: Fues, 1868. Frank, Manfred, Unendliche Annäherung: Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998. Frühwald, Wolfgang, ‘Die Auseinandersetzung um Schillers Gedicht “Die Götter Griechenlands” ’, Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 15 (1969), 251–71. Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Wahrheit und Methode. Tübingen: Mohr, 1990. Garland, Henry, Schiller. London: Harrap, 1949. Gauthier, Jeffrey, ‘Schiller’s Critique of Kant’s Moral Psychology’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (1997), 513–44. Gneise, Karl, Schillers Lehre von der ästhetischen Wahrnehmung. Berlin: Weidmann, 1893. Guyer, Paul, Kant and the Experience of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Hamburger, Käte, Philosophie der Dichter. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966. Haskell, Frances, and Penny, Nicholas, Taste and the Antique. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Henrich, Dieter, Konstellation: Probleme und Debatten am Ursprung der idealistischen Philosophie (1789–1795). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1991. —— ‘Der Begriff der Schönheit in Schillers Ästhetik’, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 11 (1957), 527–47. —— ‘Kant’s Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique’, in Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, ed. Eckart Förster. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. Herman, Barbara, The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Hermand, Jost, Von Mainz nach Weimar (1793–1919): Studien zur deutschen Literatur. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1969. Heuer, Fritz, ‘Zu Schillers Plan einer transzendentalphilosophischen Analytik des Schönen’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch 80 (1975), 90–123. Hinderer, Walter, Von der Idee des Menschen. Über Friedrich Schiller. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1998. Holmes, T. M., ‘Property and Politics in Schiller’s Theory of Aesthetic Education’, Oxford German Studies 11 (1980), 27–39. Jaeger, Hans, ‘Schillers Philosophie der Existenz’, in Schiller 1759/1959, Commerative American Studies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1959: 36–57. Jaeger, Werner, Paideia: the Ideals of Grek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet. New York: Oxford, 1945. 2 vols. Janke, Wolfgang, ‘Die Zeit in der Zeit Aufheben. Der transzendentale Weg in Schillers Philosophie der Schönheit’, Kant-Studien 58 (1967), 433–57. Jonas, Gisela, Schiller-Debatte 1905. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1988. Kaiser, Gerhard, Von Arkadien nach Elysium: Schiller-Studien. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978. Kaufmann, Walter, Hegel. New York: Anchor, 1966. Kerry, S. S., Schiller’s Writings on Aesthetics. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1961. Publications of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Manchester, no. 11.

Bibliography

277

Keyser, Gerhard, Vergötterung und Tod. Die thematische Einheit von Schillers Werk. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967. Koch, Franz, Schillers Philosophischen Schriften und Plotin. Leipzig: Weber, 1926. Kontje, Todd, Constructing Reality: A Rhetorical Analysis of Friedrich Schillers Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. New York: Lang, 1987. Koopmann, Helmut, ed. Schiller-Handbuch. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1998. —— ‘«Bestimme Dich aus Dir selbst», Schiller, die Idee der Autonomie und Kant als problematischer Umweg’, in Friedrich Schiller, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982: 202–19. —— Schiller. Munich: Artemis, 1988. —— Friedrich Schiller I, 1759–1794. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1966. Sammlung Metzler Band 50. Kroner, Richard, Von Kant bis Hegel. Tübingen: Mohr, 1924. 2 vols. Kühnemann, Eugen, Kants und Schillers Begründung der Ästhetik. Munich: Beck, 1895. —— Schiller. Munich: Beck, 1905. —— ‘Einleitung’ to Schillers philosophische Schriften und Gedichte. Leipzig: Meiner, 1922, 3rd edn. Lampert, F. J., German Classical Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Latzel, Sigbert, ‘Die Ästhetische Vernunft: Bemerkungen zu Schillers ‘Kallias’ mit Bezug auf die Ästhetik des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, Neue Folge II (1961), 31–40. Liepe, Wolfgang, ‘Der junge Schiller und Rousseau’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 51 (1926), 299–28. Lotze, Hermann, Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland. Munich: Cotta, 1868. Louden, Robert, Kant’s Impure Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Lovejoy, Arthur, ‘Schiller and the Genesis of German Romanticism’, Modern Language Notes 35 (1920), 1–9, 136–46. Lukács, Georg, ‘Zur Ästhetik Schillers’, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ästhetik. Berlin: Aufbau, 1954: 11–96. —— Goethe und seine Zeit. Bern: Francke, 1947. Lutz, Hans, Schillers Anschauungen von Kultur und Natur. Berlin: Ebering, 1928. Germanische Studien, Heft 60. Man, Paul de, ‘Kant and Schiller’, in Aesthetic Ideology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996: 129–62. Theory and History of Literature, vol. 65. Mathieu, Gustav, ‘Schiller and the Zentralkommitee’, German Life and Letters IX (1955), 40–6. Martinson, Steven, Harmonious Tensions: The Writings of Friedrich Schiller. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996. McCardle, Arthur, Friedrich Schiller und Swabian Pietism. New York: Lang, 1986. American University Studies: Series I. Germanic Languages and Literature, vol. 36. Mehring, Franz, Schiller: Ein Lebensbild für deutsche Arbeiter. Berlin: Dietz, 1961. Meinecke, Friedrich, Schiller und der Individualitätsgedanke. Leipzig: Meiner, 1937. Wissenschaft und Zeitgeist Nr. 8. Menzer, Paul, ‘Schiller und Kant’, Kant-Studien 47 (1955/56), 114–47. Mettler, Heinrich, Entfremdung und Revolution: Brennpunkt des Klassischen. Studien zu Schillers Briefen «Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen» im Hinblick auf die Begegnung mit Goethe. Bern: Francke, 1975.

278

Schiller as Philosopher

Meyer, Herman, ‘Schillers philosophische Rhetorik’, in Zarte Empirie: Studien zur Literaturgeschichte. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1963: 337–78. Middell, Eike, Friedrich Schiller. Leipzig: Reclam, 1982. Miller, R. D., Schiller and the Ideal of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. —— A Study of Schiller’s ‘Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man’. Harrogate: The Duchy Press, 1986. Minor, Jakob, Schiller:Sein Leben und seine Werke. Berlin: Weidmann, 1890. 2 vols. Muehleck-Müller, Cathleen, Schönheit und Freiheit: Die Vollendung der Moderne in der Kunst. Schiller-Kant. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1989. Epistemata: Würzburger wissenschaftliche Schriften; Reihe Literaturwissenschaft No. 36. Norton, Robert, The Beautiful Soul. Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Century. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Oellers, Norbert, Friedrich Schiller. Frankfurt: Insel, 1996. Paton, H. J., The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Pascal, Roy, ‘ “Bildung” and the Division of Labour’, in German Studies, Presented to Walter Horace Bruford. London: Harrap, 1962: 14–28. Petsch, Robert, Freiheit und Notwendigkeit in Schillers Dramen. Munich: Beck, 1905. Goethe und Schillerstudien, Band 1. Pfeifer, Elenora, ‘Die Kulturauffassung Friedrich Schillers in kulturtheoretischer Sicht’, Weimarer Beiträge 22 (1976), 87–111. Plumpe, Gerhard, Ästhetische Kommunikation der Moderne. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1993. Band 1: Von Kant bis Hegel, 107–50. Pocock, J. A., The Machiavellian Moment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. Pott, Hans-Georg, Die schöne Freiheit: Eine Interpretation zu Schillers Schrift Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen. Munich: Fink, 1980. Theorie und Geschichte der Literatur und der schönen Künste, Band 56. Prauss, Gerold, Kant über Freiheit als Autonomie. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983. Pugh, David, Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schiller’s Aesthetics. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996. —— ‘Schiller and Revolution’, in The French Revolution, ed. Gerhart Hoffmeister. Hildesheim: Olms, 1989: 31–50. —— ‘Schiller as Platonist’, Colloquia Germanica 24 (1991), 273–95. —— ‘Die Künstler: Schillers Philosophical Programme’, Oxford German Studies 18/19 (1989/90), 13–22. Reed, Terence James, Schiller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Regin, Deric, Freedom and Dignity: The Historical and Philosophical Thought of Schiller. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1965. Reiner, Hans, Pﬂicht und Neigung. Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1951, translated as Duty and Inclination. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1983. Trans. Mark Santos. Reiss, Hans, ‘The Concept of the Aesthetic State in the Work of Schiller and Novalis’, Publications of the English Goethe Society 26 (1956–7), 26–51. Riedel, Wolfgang, Die Anthropologie des jungen Schiller. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1985. Würzburger Wissenschaftliche Schriften, Band XVII. —— ‘Einleitung’ to Jacob Friedrich Abel. Eine Quellen Edition zum Philosophie Unterricht an der Stuttgarter Karlschule. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1995: 375–450.

Bibliography

279

Robertson, John, Schiller After a Century. Edinburg: Blackwood, 1905. Rosalewski, Willy, Schillers Ästhetik im Verhältnis zur Kantischen. Heidelberg: Winter, 1912. Reprint: Nendeln: Kraus, 1973. Royce, Josiah, ‘Schiller’s Ethical Studies’, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 12 (1878), 373–92. Safranski, Rüdiger, Friedrich Schiller, oder Die Erﬁndung des Deutschen Idealismus. Munich: Hanser, 2004. Savile, Anthony, Aesthetic Reconstructions: The Seminal Writings of Lessing, Kant and Schiller. Blackwell: Oxford, 1987. Aristotelian Society Series, vol. 8. Schaper, ‘Friedrich Schiller: Adventures of a Kantian’, British Journal of Aesthetics 4 (1964), 348–62. —— ‘Schillers Kant: A Chapter in the History of Creative Misunderstanding’, in Studies in Kant’s Aesthetics. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press, 1979: 99–117. Schmid, Friedrich Albert, ‘Schiller als theoretischer Philosoph’, Kant-Studien 10 (1905), 261–85. Schneewind, Jerome, ‘Autonomy, Obligation and Virtue: An Overview of Kant’s Moral Philosophy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: 309–41. Seidel, Siegried, ‘Friedrich Schiller, Die Überwindung des subjectiven Idealismus’, Weimarer Beiträge 3 (1959/60), Suppl. 149–68. Sharpe, Lesley, Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. —— Schiller’s Aesthetic Essays: Two Centuries of Criticism. Columbus, S.C.: Camden House, 1995. Skinner, Quentin, Liberty before Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Sommer, Robert, Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie und Aesthetik. Würzburg: Stahel, 1892. Reprint: Hildesheim: Olms, 1975. Sorrell, Tom, ‘Kant’s Good Will and our Good Nature’, Kant-Studien 78 (1987), 87–101. Spranger, Eduard, Schillers Geistesart. Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1941. Abhandlungen der Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Nr. 13. Stahl, Ernst Ludwig, Friedrich Schiller’s Drama: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954. —— ‘The Genesis of Schiller’s Theory of Tragedy’, in German Studies Presented to H. G. Fiedler Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938: 403–23. Strube, Werner, ‘Schillers Kallias-Briefe’, Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 18 (1977), 115–31. Sullivan, Roger, Kant’s Moral Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Thomas, Calvin, The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller. New York: Holt, 1901. Tomaschek, Karl, Schiller in seinem Verhältnisse zur Wissenschaft. Vienna: Gerold, 1862. Träger, Klaus, ‘Schiller als Theoretiker des Übergangs vom Ideal zur Wirklichkeit’, Sinn und Form XI (1959), 546–76 Tschierske, Ulrich, Vernunftkritik und ästhetische Subjektivität: Studien zur Anthropologie Friedrich Schillers. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1988. Ueberweg, Friedrich, Schiller als Historiker und Philosoph. Leipzig: Reißner, 1884. Ueding, Gert, Schillers Rhetorik: Idealistische Wirkungsästhetik und rhetorische Tradition. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1971.

280

Schiller as Philosopher

Uhland, Robert, Geschichte der hohen Karlschule in Stuttgart. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1953. Darstellungen aus der Württembergischen Geschichte, Band 37. Ulrich, Joachim, ‘Goethes Einﬂuß auf die Entwicklung des Schillerschen Schönheitsbegriffs’, Jahrbuch der Goethe Gesellschaft 20 (1934), 165–212. Vorländer, Karl, ‘Ethischer Rigorismus und sittliche Schönheit’, Philosophische Montasheft 30 (1894), 225–80, 371–405, 534–77. —— Kant*Schiller*Goethe, Gesammelte Aufsätze. Leipzig: Dürr’schen Buchhandlung, 1907. Walzel, Oskar, ‘Einleitung in Schillers philosophische Schriften’, Schillers Sämtliche Werke. Säkular-Ausgabe. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1904–5, vol. XI, v–lxxxiv. Wessel, Leonard, ‘Schiller and the Genesis of German Romanticism’, Studies in Romanticism 10 (1971), 176–98. —— The Philosophical Background to Friedrich Schiller’s Aesthetics of Living Form. Bern: Peter Lang, 1982. European University Studies. Series I: German Language and Literature, vol. 578. Wiese, Benno von, Friedrich Schiller. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1959. Wilkinson, Elizabeth, ‘Schiller: Poet or Philosopher?’. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. —— ‘Schiller und die Idee der Aufklärung’, Jahrbuch der deutschen Schiller Gesellschaft IV (1960), 42–59. —— ‘Introduction’ to Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967: xi–cxcvi. —— ‘Zur Sprache und Struktur der Ästhetische Briefe’, Akzente 5 (1959), 389–419. Willoughby, L. A., ‘Schiller on Man’s Education to Freedom through Knowledge’, Germanic Review 29 (1954), 163–74. Wilm, E. C., ‘The Kantian Studies of Schiller’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 7 (1908), 126–33. —— ‘The Relation of Schiller to Post-Kantian Idealism’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 9 (1910), 20–4. —— The Philosophy of Schiller in its Historical Relations. Boston: J. W. Luce, 1912. Reprint: Bristol: Thoemmes, 1994. Windelband, Wilhelm, ‘Schillers transcendentaler Idealismus’, Kant-Studien X (1905), 398–411. Winkelmann, E., ‘Schiller und Fichte’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Erziehung und des Unterrichts 24 (1934), 177–248. Wittkowski, Wolfgang, ed. Revolution und Autonomie: Deutsche Autonomieästhetik im Zeitalter der Französischen Revolution. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990. —— ed., Friedrich Schiller: Kunst, Humanität und Politik in der späten Aufklärung. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1982. Wood, Allen, Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Woodmannsee, Martha, ‘Aesthetic Autonomy as a Weapon in Cultural Politics: Rereading Schiller’s Aesthetics Letters, in The Author, Art, and the Market. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.

Index Abel, J. F. 17–18, 20, 25, 28, 37 n 40 absolute idealism 11, 27, 64–5, 215, 269 Adorno, Theodor 119, 164 n 74 aesthetic autonomy 4, 156, 197–200, 202–3, 208–11 aesthetic condition 210, 232–3 aesthetic education 122, 123, 126–9, 135, 140, 158, 168, 201, 208–31 aesthetic judgement 3, 49–53, 59–60, 108–9 aestheticism 12, 95 aesthetics and morality 3–4, 76, 77, 101–2, 105–10, 118, 153, 202–3, 205–6, 207–8 Allison, Henry 169 n 1, 169 n 2, 182 n 33 Alt, Peter-André 9 n 25, 13 n 1, 16 n 3, 17 n 6, 29 n 31, 30 n 32, 31 n 34, 125 n 15 analytic of the beautiful 103, 119, 121, 122, 167 Anmut und Würde: its critique of Kant 175, 225–6 on dignity 80, 110–15 on grace 80, 94–7, 110–15 its reception 77–9 its structure 80–4 and virtue ethics 81–2 see also beautiful soul; sublime anthropological standpoint 17, 140, 166, 184 anthropology 17 Ästhetische Briefe: on aesthetic autonomy 208–11 its apology for beauty 153, 168 its anthropological standpoint 140, 166, 184 on beauty 76, 139–44, 150–1, 153 on culture 140–1, 145, 158 critique of Kant 184–7, 229–32 on freedom 151–3, 162, 186, 189, 229–37 its origins 17, 49, 121–3 on playdrive 141, 143–4 its structure 12, 119–20 and its unity 119–20, 165–8 Babbitt, Irving 78 Baron, Marcia 169 n 1, 169 n 2 Baumecker, Gottfried 268 n 1, 269 n 2 beautiful soul 4, 77, 78, 82, 110, 111, 141–2, 154–5, 166, 225 beauty 49–53, 53–7, 60, 65–8, 101–2, 143–4, 147–50, 151–3, 154–6, 168, 205 see also analytic of beauty; beautiful soul; deduction of beauty Berger, Karl 192 n 2, 196 n 8, 205 n 28 Bernstein, Jay 7

Bosanquet, Bernard 5 Briefe über Don Karlos 238 Brown, John 148 Bürger, Christa 192 n 13 Bürger, Peter 192 n 13 Burke, Edmund 54, 55, 88–9, 254 Caryle, Thomas 5 Cassirer, Ernst 8, 71 n 61, 88 n 26, 91 n 43, 268, 270 n 7 Chytry, Josef 161 n 68 Dahlstrom, Daniel 6 deduction of beauty 4, 57–62, 65–8, 74, 143–4, 150–3 DeMan, Paul 138 n 38, 164 n 74, 260 n 44, 263 n 1, 267 n 8 dignity 80, 110–15 see also Anmut und Würde Don Karlos, 238 Eagleton, Terry 192 n 3, 209 n 32 egoism 21, 35, 36, 39 Ellis, J. M. 6, 49 n 10 Erhard, Benjamin 179, 215 existentialism 82, 225 n 21, 234 n 33 fanatacism 101, 180 feeling 11, 83, 97–8, 112, 116, 169, 170, 181 see also love Ferguson, Adam 19, 21, 37 n 40, 92, 120, 112–15, 142 n 44, 161, 164 Fichte, J. G. 130, 137, 138, 144–7, 227–9, 264 Fischer, Kuno 8, 78 n 2, 268 freedom: aesthetic concept of 3, 153, 186, 216–17, 220–2, 231–2 in appearance 60, 64, 66–7, 74, 205, 213, 221 as autonomy 3, 182, 186, 214–15, 216–17, 235–8 and beauty 151–3, 186–7 as choice 153 and determinism 25, 42, 43 importance for Schiller 15, 34–6, 42, 43, 213–14 political 15, 162–3, 164 as self-determination 219, 222, 229–30, 234 and the sublime 112–13, 257–60 and tragic pleasure 256 see also heautonomy; will Freigeisterei der Leidenschaften 31

282

Index

Gauthier, Jeffrey 174 n 15 Der Geisterseher 38, 42 Gerstenberg, H. W. 242–3 Goethe, J. W. 213, 242, 244, 247, 251, 264 Die Götter Griechenlands 197 grace 80, 83, 86–7, 90–1, 94–6, 97–9, 105, 174, 177 Guyer, Paul 2 n 3, 169 n 1, 169 n 5, 170 n 5 Hamburger, Käte 70 n 57, 104 n 76, 225 n 21, 234 n 33 heautonomy 65, 67–8, 222–3 Hegel, G. W. F. 11, 26, 84, 234 Helvétius, C. A. 16, 21, 35, 42 Herder, J. G. 26, 269–43 Herman, Barbara, 169 n 1, 169 n 2, 182 n 33 Heydenreich, K. L. 52 n 17, 135 n 35 highest good 2–3, 18–20, 22–3, 31–2, 33–4, 171, 188–9 Hobbes, Thomas 19, 35 Hogarth, William 89 Hölderlin, Friedrich 26, 84, 129 Holmes, T. M. 134 n 34 Home, Henry 88, 89, 98 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 24 n 21 Hume, David 30, 51, 88, 89, 98 Hutcheson, Francis 19, 21 interplay (Wechselwirkung) 141, 145, 146, 210, 228, 236 Jacobi, F. H. 26, 183 James, William 5 Der Jungling und der Greis 32 Kalliasbriefe 47–9, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 205–6, 219–24, 230, 231, 239 Kalokagathia 85–6 Kant: his alleged asceticism 169, 175, 178, 225 on aesthetic judgment 49–53 his categorical imperative 60, 81 his concept of autonomy 3, 182, 214–15, 216–17 critique of his ethics 2–4, 140–1, 178, 184–7 his critique of Schiller 179–80 his dualisms 43, 101, 105–6, 112, 137, 138, 215–16, 236 on education 186 his formalism 206 his Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten 3, 40, 43, 60, 81, 162, 181, 216 on holy will 185, 219 his idealism 71–2, 75, 137–9 his individualism 125 his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft 43, 48, 81, 219, 220, 224

his Kritik der reinen Vernunft 37, 39, 41, 43, 58, 60, 65, 226 his Kritik der Urtheilskraft 38, 39, 40, 42, 48, 49–50, 51, 57, 66, 71–2, 74, 102, 142, 259 his Metaphysik der Sitten 3, 18, 179, 181, 185 on moral feeling 83, 169 on pleasure 49–50, 181 his purity thesis 169, 176, 203 on reason, 58–9 his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft 41, 179–80, 182, 219, 220, 224 on sensibility 109, 112, 233, 235 on theory and practice 130 his transcendental deductions 57–8 on understanding 58 on virtue 3, 20, 80, 81, 95–6, 97, 100–13, 125 on the will 186 Karlschule 9, 13–14, 15 Kastration und Männer 32 Kerry, S. S. 6, 263 n 1, 267 n 8 Koopmann, Helmut 45 n 63, 214 n 3 Körner, C. G. 38, 47, 51–2, 68, 69, 144, 200 Der Künstler 198–200 Lavater, J. C. 98–9 Leibniz, G. W. 9, 22, 26, 54, 56 Lenz, J. M. 243–4 Lessing, G. E. 142, 157, 193, 199, 239, 241, 244, 246, 247, 249, 250, 253 Locke, John 19 Louden, Robert 170 n 2, 170 n 5 love 21, 32, 35–6, 84–5, 174 Lovejoy, Arthur 5 Lukács, Georg 7 n 19, 70 n 59, 240 n 5 Lutz, Hans 165–8 Machiavelli, Niccolò 120, 125, 126, 164 Mandeville, Bernard 35 Marcuse, Herbert 119 Maria Stuart 252 Martinson, Steven 6, 24 n 21, 164 n 75 Meinecke, Friedrich 140 n 40 Mendelssohn, Moses 9, 16, 54, 88, 89, 254–7, 258 Miller, R. D. 6, 158 n 66, 213 n 2 Mirabeau, Count de 131 Montesquieu, Baron de 120, 125, 126, 164 More, Henry 28 Moritz, K. P. 200 Nietzsche, Friedrich 78, 239 Norton, Robert 78 n 3, 96 n 61 Novalis 84, 129, 264 Oz-Salzburger, Fania 142 n 44 Paton, H. J. 7, 169 n 2 patriotism 163–4

Index Philosophische Briefe 29–30, 32, 33–7, 38, 42 Philosophie der Physiologie 20, 24–5, 27–8 physiognomy 98–9 Plato 191, 266 Prauss, Gerold 171 n 7 Pugh, David 6, 24 n 21, 45 n 63, 79 n 6, 87 n 26, 116 n 80, 119 n 18 Ramdohr, F. W. 143, 263 Die Räuber 22, 90, 191, 245 reason 58–9 Reed, T. J. 6, 15 n 2 Regin, Deric 6 Reinhold, K. L. 38, 41, 42, 43 n 58, 58, 139, 204, 215 Reid, Thomas 37 n 40 republican tradition 120, 123–4, 125, 133, 163–4 Resignation 31, 189 n 50 Riedel, Wolfgang 13 n 1, 9 n 25, 16 n 5, 17 n 6, 18 n 7, 20 n 18, 21 n 20, 25 n 22, 28 n 30, 125 n 15 Rousseau 32 Rousseau, J. J. 120, 126, 127–8, 135, 157–61, 164, 176, 195, 203 Royce, Josiah 5 Savile, Anthony 6, 120 n 3, 142 n 43 Die Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet 195–6, 240, 256 Schelling, F. W. J. 11, 26 Schiller: and Christianity 19, 22–3, 30, 31–2, 36, 128, 189, 197 his critique of Kant 2–4, 10–11, 48, 50, 56, 62–3, 141, 184–9, 217–28, 220–1, 225–6 his early epistemology 23–6, 37 on economics 133, 134 existentialist interpretation of 82, 225, 234 on French Revolution 130 on highest good 2–3, 18–20, 22–3, 31–2, 33–4, 171, 188–9 inﬂuence of Kant upon 41–6, 81, 172–4, 202–3, 217, 219–20, 259–60 his inﬂuence on Kant 182 his Kantian principles 172–3, 187, 214, 224, 248, 259 on masses 133, 134, 194, 201 metaphysical interpretation of 45–6, 64, 103 his organicism 26–7 on pleasure 203, 206

283

on poverty 133, 134 reception of 4–7, 10–12, 77–9, 119 on standard of taste 3, 11, 47–53, 59 on virtue, 3, 10–11, 20–1, 80, 81, 95–6, 97, 100, 113, 125 on will 97, 111, 152 Schneewind, J. B. 170 n 2 Shaftesbury, Lord 11, 19, 20, 21, 56 n 26, 91–3, 96 n 61, 108, 176 Sharpe, Lesley 1 n 1, 6, 77 n 1, 78 n 3, 100 n 71 Spaziergang unter den Linden 30–1, 32 Spranger, Eduard 1 n 2 state 127, 161–4 Stolberg, Leopold 197 sublime 80, 117–19, 257–62 Sullivan, Roger 170 n 2 Sulzer, J. G. 258 taste 60, 105, 163, 174 theory–practice dispute 130–1 Thomas, Calvin 5 Über die nothwendige Grenzen beim Gebrauch schöner Formen 174, 264–6 Über die tragische Kunst 253, 254 Über das Pathetische 206–8, 239, 250–1 Über das gegenwärtige teutsche Theater 135, 193, 240 Über den Grund unseres Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen 253–7 unity of opposites 150–1, 216, 231 Versuch über den Zusammenhang der thierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner Geistigen 22–3, 25, 26, 99, 160, 199 virtue ethics 81–2 Von dem Erhabenen 261 Vorländer, Karl 8, 171 n 6, 268 Wieland, C. M. 23, 93–4, 199–200, 238, 269 Wiese, Benno von 29 n 31, 33 n 37, 86 n 23, 88 n 43, 98 n 26, 175 n 19, 247 n 23, 258 n 42 Willoughby, Elizabeth 5, 7, 8 n 22, 167 Willoughby, L. A. 5, 7, 167 Wilm, Emil 5, 30 n 33 Winckelmann, J. J. 88, 90–1, 117, 246 Windelband, Wilhelm 48 n 6 Wood, Allen 178 n 2 Woodmansee, Martha 192 n 3, 201 n 25