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On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

by Friedrich Schiller

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668834,234 (3.7)1
'Man defines himself by his deeds - and what kind of image of man do we see in the mirror of our present times?' The poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller was also a profound philosopher, who described his work On the Aesthetic Education of Manas 'the best thing that I have done in my life'. This impassioned treatise analyses politics, revolution and human nature to define the relationship between beauty, art and morality. Expressed as a series of letters to a patron, it argues that only an aesthetic education - rather than government reform, religion or moral teachings - can achieve a truly free society, and must be placed at the heart of human experience. One of the most important works of German philosophy, its arguments remain as arresting and inspiring as when they were first written. Translated by Keith Tribe with an introduction and notes by Alexander Schmidt… (more)
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Originally published 1793. Also known as On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters.
  MichaelLibrary | May 25, 2021 |


Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy addressing beauty, taste, art and the sublime. After studying what philosophers have to say on this topic, it is refreshing to read the philosophical reflections on aesthetics by Friedrich Schiller (1769-1805), a man who was not only a first-rate thinker but a great poet and playwright. And Schiller tells us he is drawing his ideas from his life rather than from books and is pleading the cause of beauty before his very own heart that perceives beauty and exercises beauty's power.

Writing at the end of the 18th century, Schiller reflects on the bitter disappointment of the aftermath of the French Revolution where an entire society degenerated into violence. What can be done? As a true romantic, he sees beauty and art coming to the rescue.

Schiller writes how idealized human nature and character development is a harmonizing and balancing of polarities - on one side we have the rational, that is, contemplative thought, intelligence and moral constraint and on the other side we have the sensual, feeling, physical reality. Lacking this balance, harmony and character, Schiller perceives widespread disaster for both lower and higher social classes, that is, people of the lower classes living crude, coarse, lawless, brutal lives and people of the higher, civilized classes are even more repugnant, living lethargic, slothful, passive lives. Not a pretty picture, to say the least.

We might think scientists or hard working business people might stand a better chance at achieving balance, harmony and character. Sorry; the news is not good here either. Schiller writes, "But the predominance of the analytical faculty must necessarily deprive the fancy of its strength and its fire, and a restricted sphere of objects must diminish its wealth. Hence the abstract thinker very often has a cold heart, since he analyzes the impressions which really affect the soul only as a whole; the man of business has very often a narrow heart, because imagination, confined within the monotonous circle of his profession, cannot expand to unfamiliar modes of representation."

So, what must be done to restore a population's needed balance, harmony and character? Again, for Schiller, beauty and art to the rescue. One key idea in making beauty and art a central component of people's lives is what he terms `the play drive'. Schiller writes: "Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly man when he is playing" By play, Schiller doesn't mean frivolous games, like a mindless game of cards; rather, play for Schiller is about a spontaneous and creative interaction with the world.

To flesh out Schiller's meaning of play, let's look at a couple of examples. In the morning you consult your auto manual to fix a problem with the engine and then in the afternoon you examine a legal document to prepare to do battle in court. Since in both cases you are reading for a specific practical purpose or goal, according to Schiller, you are not at play. In the evening you read Shakespeare. You enjoy the beauty of the language and gain penetrating insights into human nature. Since your reading is not bound to any practical aim, you are free to let your imagination take flight and explore all the creative dimensions of the literary work. According to Schiller, you are "at play" and by such playing in the fields of art and beauty, you are free.

And where does such play and spontaneous creativity ultimately lead? Schiller's philosophy is not art-for-art's sake, but art for the sake of morality and freedom and truth. If Schiller could wave a magic wand, everybody in society would receive an education in beauty by way of art, literature and music. And such education would ultimately nurture a population of men and women with highly developed aesthetic and moral sensibilities who could experience the full breathe and depth of what it means to be alive. Or, to put it another way, with a restored balance, harmony and character, people would no longer be slaves to the little world of their gut or the restricted world of their head, but would open their hearts and directly experience the fullness of life. And experiencing the fullness of life, for Schiller, is true freedom.

How realistic is Schiller's educational program as a way of transforming society? Perhaps being realistic is not exactly the issue. After all, Frederick Schiller was an idealist. He desired to see a society of men and women appreciating art and beauty and having their aesthetic appreciation color everyday behavior, so much so that their dealings and activity in the world would serve as a model of noble, moral conduct for all ages. Not a bad vision.

( )
  Glenn_Russell | Nov 13, 2018 |
Some quick thoughts; not my final review . . .
__________
"I love art and everything related to it above all else, and I admit that my inclination is to favour it before any other occupation of the mind. But it is not here what art is to me, but rather how it relates to the human spirit as a whole . . ."
__________
It took me two, or three (maybe more) times as long to finish this than I had expected, because of the amount of arresting points that I came across and had to note down . . .
__________
I think I will carry what is contained in both Schiller's Letters, and Seneca's Letters, with me every day, for the rest of my life. They have both introduced some new notions and ideas with which I agree wholeheartedly, but they have both also clarified and expanded upon certain ideas, feelings, and views, that I already had.

I'll promise myself now: I will, one day, go through both Seneca's and Schiller's letters, one by one, clarifying in each what each author is saying, and how this relates to my beliefs, outlooks, and views . . .
__________
This Penguin edition (which I only discovered after reading, was first published in 2016; thanks Penguin!) contains Schiller's Letters which constitute On the Aesthetic Education of Man, but equally importantly, also contain, for the first time in an English translation, his Letters to Prince Frederick Christian von Augustenburg.
_____
The translation by Keith Tribe was excellent. I quickly read some reviews of this and noticed some people saying that they found it hard to understand what Schiller was saying. I suspect this may have been to the translation they were reading, because this more modern one is excellent. Any trouble with understanding will not be due to the translation.

Schiller is not too hard to understand, and no prior reading of Kant, or Burke, for example, is required to understand his ideas and concepts.
_____
The Prince was a sponsor of Schiller, allowing him "three of the intellectually most intense years of his life. He dedicated himself to a close study of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy, especially the aesthetic theory in the Critique of Judgement of 1790.

For the sake of brevity, I'm not going to comment on what Schiller touches upon right now, but I will say that he does not view asesthetics and the cultivation of taste as any kind of panacea of the first order, but as: a complement to morality; a substitute for true virtue, and some other things which I will not go into here.

I am not doing a full review here, so for now, please read some of the quotes I have included below. By doing so, you should easily see that his work stretches beyond purely theoretical aesthetics and the cultivation of taste, but more into the application. Do not read them all (unless you want to), but use them as an example of some of the views and ideas that are Schiller touches upon. I have not been exhaustive with the selection, but included some more extended passages which contain some of Schiller's more important and central arguments.

(Bolded passages below are ones that I personally find particularly insightful, perceptive &c. I apologise for any spelling errors, I was typing some of the longer passages in some haste . . .)
_____
Also, something you should bear in mind:

"To be sure, On the Aesthetic Education of Man is an ything but a rounded academic tract on asethetics and politics, leaving as it does many questions unanswered. How exactly would aesthetic education be implemented? What is the relation between the harmony-based model of liquifying beauty and the dynamic model of energetic beauty? But it must be remembered that the text is basically a fragment, a part of a larger, unfinished project. It shares this fate with some of the most important works in eighteenth-century thought, such as Rousseau's Social Contract" —From the Introduction
__________
—Our reputation for education and refinement, which we rightly value by comparison with all other merely natural humanity, is pulled up short by the natural humanity of the Greeks, for they freely embraced all the natural delights of art and worthiness of wisdom, though without being seduced by then as we have to our age; they are also our rivals, even our models, in respect of those very advantages in which we seek consolation and reassurance for our unnatural manners. At once complete in form and substance, at once philosophical and creative, at once gentle and energetic, the Greeks united the youth of imagination with the manhood of reason in a glorious humanity.

. . . How different are we moderns! The image of the human species in each of us has been enlarged, shattered and scattered as shards, not in proportioned admixtures; so that one has to go from one individual to another to reconstitute the totality of the species.

. . .Which modern man is prepared to challenge and one Athenian to debate the prize of humanity?

. . .How did an individual Greek come to be representative of his era, and why does no modern man claim this distinction? Because the first was formed as a unity by nature, and the second by an intellect that divided and subdivided.

—If the commonweal makes office the measure of man, if it prizes in one citizen only his memory, in another only mathematical understanding, in a third only a mechanical skill; if it is here indifferent to character and only interested in particular knowledge, but there by contrast a sense of order and lawful conduct is thought enough compensation for the most occult thinking - if at the same time these individual skills are to be pushed to such a degree of intensity as the subject allows in extension - should we be surprised that all other faculties of the mind are neglected, so that the one single faculty prized above all others should be exclusively rewarded? We do know that the powerful genius does not take the limits of his occupation to be the limits of his activity, but the mediocre talent uses up the entirety of his meagre powers in pursuing the occupation that has fallen to him; and anyone who has time left over for his own pursuits once his occupational duties are fulfilled must already be commonly gifted. Moreover, the state seldom thinks it any recommendation when powers exceed tasks; nor if the higher intellectual needs of the man of genius compete with the demands of office.

—Greek states resembled a colony of polyps, for within themselves individuals enjoyed an independent life, although in times of necessity they could form into a whole; this new gave way to a clockwork mechanism, the joining together of an infinite number of lifeless parts to create a new mechanically driven whole. State and Church, laws and manners, means from end, effort from reward. Eternally shackled to one small fragment of the whole, man imagined himself to be a fragment, in his ear the constant and monotonous noise of the wheel that he turned; never capable of developing the harmony of his being, and instead marking the humanity in his nature, he simply became the impress of his occupation, his particular knowledge.

—Not for nothing does the ancient myth have the goddess of wisdom emerging fully armed from Jupiter's head; for her very first action is that of a warrior. Even at her birth she must enter a bitter struggle with senses that do not wish to be torn from sweet repose. .

The more numerous part of mankind is too tired and exhausted from its struggle with need to gird itself up for a new and more intense struggle against error. Happy to avoid the troublesome effort of thinking, they gladly leave the control of their concepts to others; and if it so happens that they rouse themselves to higher needs, they seize with greedy credulity upon the formulations that state and priesthood have prepared for them in anticipation.

Such people prefer the twilight of obscure belief, in which one can feel more alive and shape the imagination in whatever way one likes, to the ways of truth that chase away the comforting delusions of their dreams. These illusions, which the malevolent light of knowledge threatens to scatter, are the basis of all their happiness; how can they be expected to pay so much for a truth that begins by robbing them of all they hold so dear? To love wisdom, they would already have to be wise, which itself is a truth already felt by those who gave philosophy its name.

Culture of the capacity for feeling is the more urgent need at this time, not merely because it will enable better insight into life, but because it prompts the improvement of such insight itself.

—Inclination can only say: that suits your individuality and your present need, but your individuality and your present need will be swept away with change, and what you today fiercely desire will in time behind the object of your disgust. If, however, moral feeling says: that shall be, then it decides for ever and eternity - if you admit truth because it is truth, and practice justice because it is just, then you have made over single case the rule for all cases, and treated one moment of your life as eternity.

The more aspects there are to man's receptivity, the more flexible it is and the greater the number of aspects presented to phenomena, so the greater the amount of the world that man can grasp, the more faculties he develops within himself. The more power and depth the personality gains, the more freedom that reason gains, so the more world does man comprehend, so the more form he creates outside of himself.

His culture would therefore consist of: firstly, bringing about the most varied contact with the world for the receptive faculty, while intensifying as far as possible passivity in feeling; secondly, securing for the determining faculty the greatest independence from the receptive faculty, developing reason to the greatest possibly degree of activity. Where both qualities are united, man will combine the most abundant existence with the greatest autonomy and liberty and, rather than losing himself in the world, instead draw into himself the sheer infinity of its phenomena and subordinate it to the unity of his reason.


—One cannot therefore say that those who regard the aesthetic condition as the most fruitful in respect of knowledge and morality are entirely wrong. They are in fact completely right, for a disposition of the soul that comprehends all of humanity just necessarily and potentially also include within it every individual expression; a disposition of the soul that removes all limits from the entirety of human nature must also necessarily remove these limits from every single expression of the same.

Every other operation confers upon the soul a special skill, but for doing so sets a particular limit; only the aesthetic leads to the state of unlimitedness . . . only the aesthetic is a totality in itself, uniting in itself all the conditions of its origin and of its persistence. Only here do we feel ourselves torn from time . . .

Endorsing appearance of the first kind cannot harm truth, since one is never in danger of taking appearance for truth, which is in fact the only thing that can be harmful to truth; to despise appearance means to despise all fine art, for it is in its essence appearance. The enthusiasm of intellect for reality can sometimes lead to such a degree of intolerance that the whole art of beautiful appearance is dismissed out of hand, just because it is appearance; but this happens to the intellect only if it recalls the affinity mentioned above.

The answer to the question 'To what extent may appearance exist in the moral world?' is simply this: to the extent that it is aesthetic appearance, i.e. appearance that neither seeks to represent reality, nor needs to be represented by it. Aesthetic appearance can never endanger the truth of morals, where one finds otherwise, it will be demonstrated without any difficulty that the appearance was not aesthetic.

—However since he now also includes outer form in his enjoyment, taking note of the form of things that satisfy his appetites, he goes beyond time itself, having not merely enhanced his enjoyment in extent and degree, but also ennobled the way in which he gains such enjoyment.

—One had advanced so far with theoretical culture that the most sacred pillars of superstition were rocked, and the throne of thousand-year-old prejudice began to shake. Nothing was wanting save the signal for the great transformation.

—Perhaps you may object, most serene Prince, that we have a circular argument here: that the character of a citizen depends just as much upon a constitution as that constitution depends on the citizen's character. I admit that, and so claim that, if we wish to break out of this circularity, we must either think of means of assisting the state without involving character, or deal with the character without involving the state. The first contains a contradiction, for no constitution can be conceived that is independent of the disposition of the citizen. However, perhaps there is something to the second idea, so that sources independent of the state might be made capable of refining ways of thought, but which sources for all their faults uphold the state in a pure and open manner.

But even if he is permitted to adhere to the spirit of the century, he should not take direction from it. The guiding laws of art do not take their form from a changing and often quite degenerated contemporary taste, but are founded in the necessity and eternity of human nature, in the original laws of the spirit. The pure source of beauty streams down from the divine part of our being, from the eternally pure ether of ideal mankind, uninfected by the spirit of the age that seethes in the dark eddies far below. It is for this reason that art can, in the midst of a barbaric and unworthy century, remain pure like a goddess, so long as its higher origin is remembered, and it does not itself become a slave to base intentions and needs. It is in this way that the few remnants of the Greek spirit wander through the night of our Nordic age, and the electric shock of this spirit arouses some related souls to a sense of their greatness.

In the same way that one can say that a person can receive freedom from another, even though freedom consists in man being relieved of any need to conduct himself in accordance with others, so one can just as well say that taste provides assistance to virtue, even though virtue expressly implies that it requires no external assistance.

—Morality can therefore be furthered in two ways, just like it can be obstructed in two ways. Either one has to strengthen the part played by reason and the strength of good will so that no temptation can overwhelm them; or the power of temptation must be broken, so that a weaker reason and a weaker good will might still have the advantage.

Raw and uncouth souls lack both moral and aesthetic education, allow pure appetite to dictate to them, behaving merely as their desire leads them. Moral souls who lack aesthetic education allow reason to dictate to them, and it is only through respect for their duty that they triumph over temptation. In aesthetically refined souls there is a further item that quite often replaces virtue where it is lacking, and aids it where it is already present. This item is taste.

Taste can therefore be seen as the first weapon used by an aesthetic soul in its struggle against raw nature, driving back the assault before it becomes necessary for reason to intervene as a legislator, and pronounce judgement.

I have not here placed religion and taste together in one class unintentionally, for both have the merit of being a surrogate for true virtue, securing the regularity of actions where there is no hope of the obligation of conviction.

A mixed society would be very poorly maintained on the basis of a moral world if one only flattered the senses with pleasant stimuli. For, even taking into account the vacuity of such provision, one could never be sure that the private taste of one individual member of society would not find repellent that which gave pleasure to another; and assuming that this would be resolved for everyone through sheer variety, it could not be said that the one shared the pleasure of the other, but that each would enjoy things for himself, and bury his feelings within.
But this society would not be much better satisfied if one supplied it with the profound truths of mathematics, physics, or diplomacy, for interest in these matters rays upon a particular understanding that cannot be expected from every person. The merely sensuous man and the man of specialised learning are thus both unsuitable subjects for conversation, because both equally lack the ability of generalising their private feelings, and making the general interest their own.
( )
  EroticsOfThought | Feb 28, 2018 |
Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy addressing beauty, taste, art and the sublime. After studying what philosophers have to say on this topic, it is refreshing to read the philosophical reflections on aesthetics by Friedrich Schiller (1769-1805), a man who was not only a first-rate thinker but a great poet and playwright. And Schiller tells us he is drawing his ideas from his life rather than from books and is pleading the cause of beauty before his very own heart that perceives beauty and exercises beauty's power.

Writing at the end of the 18th century, Schiller reflects on the bitter disappointment of the aftermath of the French Revolution where an entire society degenerated into violence. What can be done? As a true romantic, he sees beauty and art coming to the rescue.

Schiller writes how idealized human nature and character development is a harmonizing and balancing of polarities - on one side we have the rational, that is, contemplative thought, intelligence and moral constraint and on the other side we have the sensual, feeling, physical reality. Lacking this balance, harmony and character, Schiller perceives widespread disaster for both lower and higher social classes, that is, people of the lower classes living crude, coarse, lawless, brutal lives and people of the higher, civilized classes are even more repugnant, living lethargic, slothful, passive lives. Not a pretty picture, to say the least.

We might think scientists or hard working business people might stand a better chance at achieving balance, harmony and character. Sorry; the news is not good here either. Schiller writes, "But the predominance of the analytical faculty must necessarily deprive the fancy of its strength and its fire, and a restricted sphere of objects must diminish its wealth. Hence the abstract thinker very often has a cold heart, since he analyzes the impressions which really affect the soul only as a whole; the man of business has very often a narrow heart, because imagination, confined within the monotonous circle of his profession, cannot expand to unfamiliar modes of representation."

So, what must be done to restore a population's needed balance, harmony and character? Again, for Schiller, beauty and art to the rescue. One key idea in making beauty and art a central component of people's lives is what he terms `the play drive'. Schiller writes: "Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly man when he is playing" By play, Schiller doesn't mean frivolous games, like a mindless game of cards; rather, play for Schiller is about a spontaneous and creative interaction with the world.

To flesh out Schiller's meaning of play, let's look at a couple of examples. In the morning you consult your auto manual to fix a problem with the engine and then in the afternoon you examine a legal document to prepare to do battle in court. Since in both cases you are reading for a specific practical purpose or goal, according to Schiller, you are not at play. In the evening you read Shakespeare. You enjoy the beauty of the language and gain penetrating insights into human nature. Since your reading is not bound to any practical aim, you are free to let your imagination take flight and explore all the creative dimensions of the literary work. According to Schiller, you are `at play' and by such playing in the fields of art and beauty, you are free.

And where does such play and spontaneous creativity ultimately lead? Schiller's philosophy is not art-for-art's sake, but art for the sake of morality and freedom and truth. If Schiller could wave a magic wand, everybody in society would receive an education in beauty by way of art, literature and music. And such education would ultimately nurture a population of men and women with highly developed aesthetic and moral sensibilities who could experience the full breathe and depth of what it means to be alive. Or, to put it another way, with a restored balance, harmony and character, people would no longer be slaves to the little world of their gut or the restricted world of their head, but would open their hearts and directly experience the fullness of life. And experiencing the fullness of life, for Schiller, is true freedom.

How realistic is Schiller's educational program as a way of transforming society? Perhaps being realistic is not exactly the issue. After all, Frederick Schiller was an idealist. He desired to see a society of men and women appreciating art and beauty and having their aesthetic appreciation color everyday behavior, so much so that their dealings and activity in the world would serve as a model of noble, moral conduct for all ages. Not a bad vision.

( )
  GlennRussell | Feb 16, 2017 |
Das Buch ist von Friedrich Schiller
  lernen555 | Feb 24, 2011 |
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So you would like me to give you the results of my investigations into beauty and art as a series of letters.
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'Man defines himself by his deeds - and what kind of image of man do we see in the mirror of our present times?' The poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller was also a profound philosopher, who described his work On the Aesthetic Education of Manas 'the best thing that I have done in my life'. This impassioned treatise analyses politics, revolution and human nature to define the relationship between beauty, art and morality. Expressed as a series of letters to a patron, it argues that only an aesthetic education - rather than government reform, religion or moral teachings - can achieve a truly free society, and must be placed at the heart of human experience. One of the most important works of German philosophy, its arguments remain as arresting and inspiring as when they were first written. Translated by Keith Tribe with an introduction and notes by Alexander Schmidt

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