## 1. Early Life and Literary Beginnings



Born in 1759 in Marbach am Neckar, Schiller showed such early
intellectual promise that he was recruited by Karl Eugen, Duke of
Wurttemberg, to attend his military academy. There Schiller was
broadly educated, including in medicine, and became an army doctor in
1780. But his interests always lay in more humanistic subjects.
Already in 1777, he had published his first poem; soon thereafter, he
began composing dramas. The revolutionary mood of the age, combined
with his deep objections to the Duke's tyrannical rule, prompted
a passion for freedom already evident in his first play, *The
Robbers* [*Die Rauber*], whose protagonists defy
social norms at the expense of their own lives. The play premiered in
Mannheim in 1782, achieved instant success, and quickly earned
Schiller international fame. The Duke, alarmed at Schiller's
revolutionary tendencies, had him arrested and forbade further
playwriting. Schiller responded by fleeing to Mannheim to begin his
literary career in earnest (Martinson 2005a: 2; Sharpe 1991:
viii).



In the succeeding decade, Schiller authored plays and other literary
works, composed dozens of poems, and authored two major histories, one
of the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish and one of the Thirty
Years' War. As his fame grew, Schiller was appointed professor
of history at the University of Jena where he lectured on both history
and aesthetics. *The Robbers'* message of liberation from
political corruption had meanwhile been so influential that the new
French Republic made Schiller an honorary citizen in 1792. But like
many of his contemporaries, Schiller's enthusiasm for the French
Revolution turned to horror as the Terror began. His political
disillusionment was coupled with both a serious illness and a crisis
of self-confidence in his playwriting. Schiller had already
experimented with philosophical prose, but this crisis inspired him to
turn his attention fully to philosophy in the hopes of both recovering
his health through quiet contemplation and of gaining philosophical
insights that would reignite his literary talents.
 [2]
 A small pension provided by the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar made his
temporary withdrawal from the theater and academic life financially
possible, and it was during this period that most of Schiller's
remarkable theoretical output took place.


## 2. Philosophical Works


### 2.1 Kallias Letters



Schiller began his philosophical retreat with a thorough study of Kant
and was immediately inspired by Kant's description of human
freedom. In 1793, he wrote to his friend Christian Gottfried
Korner: "It is certain that *no* mortal has spoken a
greater word than this Kantian word ... determine yourself from
within yourself" (NA XXVI, 191/KL 153). But Schiller was left
dissatisfied with two of Kant's claims as regards aesthetics:
one, that there could be no objective principle of beauty, and two,
that aesthetic experience refers only to pleasure felt by the subject,
not to any property of the object. In letters to Korner, which he
never published but after his death became known as the "Kallias
Letters" ["*Kalliasbriefe*"], he set out to
correct these Kantian claims and to place aesthetics on a more secure,
independent, and critical foundation.



Schiller proposes to discover the objective principle of beauty
following the procedure of Kant's transcendental deduction: by
asking what our ability to perceive beauty reveals about our mental
faculties. He concludes that humans must possess two forms of reason:
theoretical and practical. Theoretical reason connects
"representation with representation to gain knowledge" (NA
XXVI, 179/KL 149). If theoretical reason is applied to concepts, it
produces logical judgments. If it is applied to intuitions, it
produces teleological judgments. Practical reason, by contrast,
connects "representation with the will in order to act"
(NA XXVI, 179/KL 149). Its principle is autonomy or freedom. If
practical reason is applied to free actions, it produces moral
judgments. If it is applied to "unfree effects"--in
other words, to objects in the world--it produces
*aesthetic* judgments (NA XXVI, 183/KL 152). Judging something
beautiful implies that we have encountered the appearance of freedom
in empirical experience. As Schiller puts it: since practical
reason's principle is freedom, beauty is "thus nothing
less than freedom in appearance" (NA XXVI, 183/KL 152; Schindler
2008: 93-4).



But what would freedom in appearance actually look like, and how could
we identify it? Schiller names two qualities that appear in the object
itself that prompt us to judge it beautiful. The first, he says, is
the "being-determined-through-itself of the thing": a
sense that it is not determined by outside forces but is rather
self-determining, existing only "through itself" (NA XXVI,
192/KL 154). As an example, Schiller contrasts a workhorse to a
Spanish palfrey. The workhorse



> 
> 
> trots just as tiredly and clumsily as if it were still pulling a
> wagon, even when it is not pulling one. Its movement no longer springs
> from its nature but rather reveals the pulled weight of the wagon. (NA
> XXVI, 204/KL 163-4)
> 
> 
> 



The palfrey, by contrast, moves lightly and appears to weigh nothing:
its movements are "an effect of its nature than has been left to
itself" (NA XXVI, 205/KL 164). This, Schiller says, is a kind of
autonomy: the palfrey is determined by its own nature, not by gravity
or function. The beauty of animals generally decreases the more they
appear determined by gravity, not form: in the case of a light-footed
horse, form masters matter; in the case of a duck, matter masters form
(NA XXVI, 205/KL 164). This analysis allows Schiller to extend his
claim that aesthetic judgments are, like moral judgments, a product of
practical, not theoretical, reason. Moral actions are self-determining
because they follow the form of the moral law, never accounting for
external factors. If something in the sensible world appears to be
similarly self-determining, it will be "an *analogy* of
the pure determination of the will" and so an
"*exhibition of freedom*" (NA XXVI, 192/KL 154).
Schiller concludes that



> 
> 
> [s]elf-determination of the rational is pure determination of reason,
> morality; self-determination of the sense-world is pure determination
> of nature, beauty. (NA XXVI, 195/KL 156)
> 
> 
> 



But such self-determination is not yet enough to distinguish the
highest beauty: the beautiful object's form must not only be
self-determining according to some external form but determine that
form as well. Schiller articulates this distinction in Kantian terms:
acting freely according to one's form is autonomous; being the
source of the form according to which one acts is heautonomous,
literally self self-governing (Beiser 2005: 67; Roehr 2003: 120;
Schindler 2008: 95). Heautonomy in other words occurs when the rule in
question is "*both given and obeyed by the thing*"
(NA XXVI, 208/KL 167). Beauty is thus found in a landscape "if
all of the particular parts out of which it is constituted play along
together so well that they set their own limitations" (NA XXVI,
213/KL 171), or in a dance in which dancers interact "so
skillfully and yet so artlessly that both seem merely to be following
their own mind" (NA XVI, 216-7/KL 174). The qualities of being
autonomous and heautonomous, Schiller claims, persist in the object
whether it is being observed or not. This assertion allows Schiller to
achieve his second goal of locating beauty in the object rather than
only in the observing subject.



Schiller also suggests that when we call an action beautiful, it is
because it too exhibits a spontaneous self-determination that seems to
spring from the actor's essence. To illustrate this claim, he
offers five variations on Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan.
A man has been beaten, robbed, and left to die on the side of the
road. Four strangers offer assistance, but in each case, their offer
is badly motivated: by prudence or greed or out of a tortured sense of
duty. The fifth man by contrast offers, of his own accord, to abandon
his own belongings and carry the wounded man to safety. We call this
man's action beautiful, Schiller says, because he "forgot
himself in his action" and "fulfilled his duty with the
ease of someone acting out of mere instinct". In a word,
Schiller concludes,



> 
> 
> a free action is a beautiful action, if the autonomy of the mind and
> autonomy of appearance coincide. For this reason the highest
> perfection of character in a person is moral beauty brought about by
> the fact that *duty has become its nature*. (NA 198/KL 159;
> Schindler 2008: 93-4; Winegar 2013: 283-4)
> 
> 
> 



Schiller himself did not consider this deduction of beauty a success,
and most of his critics have agreed (Beiser 2005: 61). The status of
his claim that beauty is freedom in appearance is also not clear:
Beiser for instance claims it is regulative since neither autonomy nor
heautonomy can appear in the natural world, while Houlgate claims that
the quality of being "not-determined-from-the-outside" can
actually be found in the object (Beiser 2005: 63; Houlgate 2008:
37-49; Schindler 2008: 87). But Schiller's contention that
aesthetic judgment falls in the provenance of practical rather than
theoretical reason laid the groundwork for his later depiction of
aesthetic aspects to moral action, and his use of form as a dynamic
concept is credited with offering a plausible alternative to
Kant's subjectivist description of aesthetic experience
(Schindler 2008, Falduto 2020).


### 2.2 "On Grace and Dignity"



Schiller's "Kallias Letters" left many themes
unresolved, but the possibility of an aesthetic aspect to moral
action, articulated in the fifth variation of his Good Samaritan
story, became the major subject of his 1793 essay "On Grace and
Dignity" ["*Uber Anmut und
Wurde*"]. Using grace and dignity as concepts capable
of bridging the divide between morality and aesthetics, Schiller in
this essay grapples with a question formulated by Kant, namely how
duty and inclination can combine in our assessment of moral
 worth.[3]



Schiller begins the essay with an analysis of an ancient Greek myth
depicting Venus, the goddess of beauty. According to this myth, Venus
possesses a belt that could impart grace to those who wore it, even if
they themselves were not beautiful (NA XX, 252/GD 124). Grace is thus
associated with but not synonymous with beauty: a person need not be
beautiful to be graceful. Since the belt is a transferable accessory,
the grace it bestows, Schiller continues, is contingent, not part of
the wearer's essence. But it is also objective; it exists
whether or not it is being perceived. Since "movement is the
only change an object can undergo without altering its
identity", Schiller concludes that grace must designate
"beauty of movement" (NA XX, 253/GD 125; Curran 2005: 26).
The Greeks also restricted grace to humans, meaning to those capable
of moral sentiments (NA XX, 254/GD 126). Whereas natural objects
cannot take credit for their beauty, then, grace implies an expression
of human freedom and is an instance of "*personal*
merit". Grace, Schiller concludes, is "beauty of form
under freedom's influence" (NA XX 264/GD 133-4).



Graceful actions, Schiller claims, present us with a paradox. On the
one hand, as instances of freedom, they are deliberately undertaken
movements. On the other hand, they appear to be natural and even
instinctive. Schiller accounts for this paradox by distinguishing
between two kinds of action. Our rational natures allow us to engage
in voluntary actions in direct response to our free will. But we also
undertake actions that, despite being directed by the will, appear
involuntary. These actions Schiller calls "sympathetic":
they occur "at the behest" of moral sentiment as opposed
to natural instinct (NA XX, 266/GD 135-6; Deligiorgi 2006: 13).
Acting according to the objectively determined moral law still
determines an action's moral worth, according to Schiller, who
describes himself as "completely of one mind with the most
*rigorous moralists*" (NA XX, 283/GD 149). But an action
can be graceful in addition to being morally worthy if it seems to
follow naturally from an agent's disposition, motivated by
feelings that are themselves the product of her character. Grace thus
describes the way we act as opposed to the reasons we give for our
actions: it is an expression of our "moral attitude" (NA
XX, 272/GD 140). Being determined in this way by disposition allows an
action to appear both necessary and natural to the point that the
person does not seem "*conscious of possessing
grace*" (NA XX, 269/GD 138).



Schiller calls a person who lives in this state of grace a
"beautiful soul". In such a case,



> 
> 
> the ethical sense has at last so taken control of all a person's
> feelings that it can leave affect to guide the will without hesitation
> and is never in danger of standing in contradiction of its decisions.
> (NA XX, 287/GD 152)
> 
> 
> 



A beautiful soul "carries out humankind's most exacting
duties with such ease that they might simply be the actions of its
inner instinct" (NA XX, 287/152); it can obey reason "with
joy", not "discard it like a burden" (NA XX, 283/GD
149). Grace, in short, bridges the Kantian divide: "It is in a
beautiful soul that sensuousness and reason, duty and inclination are
in harmony, and grace is their expression as appearance" (NA XX,
288/GD 153). Because we recognize in the beautiful soul an image of
human perfection, such harmony elicits our approval and love (NA XX,
302/GD 165).



In embodying this kind of perfection, grace provides evidence of a
unity of the moral and aesthetic that Kantian philosophy, in the
process of making its conceptual distinctions, provisionally disrupts.
Once we understand the underlying unity that grace suggests, however,
we can correct the excesses brought about by Kant's rigorous
separation of reason and inclination. In addition to better reflecting
metaphysical truth, emphasizing the unity of the moral and the
aesthetic, Schiller thinks, will produce better results. Brutally
suppressing our sensual side will not be successful in the long
run:



> 
> 
> The enemy who has been merely *laid low* can get up again, but
> the one who is *reconciled* has been truly overcome. (NA XX,
> 284/GD 150)
> 
> 
> 



Although Schiller describes the beautiful soul as an ideal of human
harmony, he acknowledges that circumstances sometimes make that
harmony impossible. Because humans are natural creatures, they are
susceptible to pleasure and pain. But whereas other animals are
motivated solely by this susceptibility, humans in addition have
reason. We also have a "suprasensual faculty", namely the
will, which is subject neither to nature nor to reason (NA XX, 290/GD
155; Roehr 2003:
 126).[4]
 This means that while animals must fight to free themselves from
pain, humans "can decide to hold on to it" (NA XX, 290/GD
155). When pain threatens to force a human to act against reason, her
ethical nature must resist (NA XX, 293/GD 157-8). In such a
moment, harmony is impossible and the person in question cannot
achieve moral beauty. But such a moment also creates the possibility
of a "moral greatness" that gives "evidence of
superiority of the higher faculties over the sensuous" (NA XX,
294/GD 158). In refusing to succumb to pain, "the beautiful soul
becomes heroic" and "transforms into a *sublime*
soul" (NA XX, 294/GD 158). The appearance of such a soul, its
embodiment in action, is not grace but dignity.



As an example, Schiller imagines someone whose extreme physical pain
is evident in his body. His "veins swell, his muscles become
cramped and taut, his voice cracks, his chest is thrust out, and his
lower body pressed in". By contrast, however, "his
intentional movements are gentle, the facial features relaxed, and the
eyes and brow serene" (NA XX, 296/GD 159). This composure in the
midst of pain gives us evidence of "a power independent of
suffering" and even "peace in suffering". It is this
peace, Schiller says, that defines dignity (NA XX, 296/GD 160).
Schiller here qualifies his earlier claim that the beautiful soul
represented humans' highest achievement: when grace and dignity
are united in the same person, he now claims, "then the
expression of humanity is complete in that person" (NA XX,
300/GD 163).



Schiller's response to Kant's depiction of duty and
inclination was taken up by none other than Kant himself, who in
*Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason* devoted a
footnote to clarifying his position (48-9). "On Grace and
Dignity" has thus been much discussed in Kant scholarship both
as a possible contribution to Kantian theories of moral psychology and
as supporting the possibility of a Kant-based ethics of character
(Baxley 2010; Deligiorgi 2011; Winegar 2013). The essay has also been
praised for further developing the possibility of an aesthetic aspect
to moral action; Schiller's attention to ways moral action might
appear is credited with foregrounding the role of appearances in our
acquisition of knowledge (Curran and Fricker 2005: 4; Deligiorgi
2006).


### 2.3. The Pathetic, The Sublime, and the Tragic



In several essays on tragedy, some of which predate his period of
intense philosophical engagement, Schiller continued to refine his
thoughts on human dignity in the face of suffering. In "On the
Art of Tragedy" ["*Uber die tragische
Kunst*"], published in 1792, Schiller begins with a fact
about humans, namely that we sometimes derive pleasure from witnessing
others'
 suffering.[5]
 Again Schiller asks: what must be true of us in order for this fact
to be possible? In answer, Schiller draws on the Kantian distinction
between reason and sensibility. The moral law, he continues, is
objectively true and autonomously constructed, whereas our senses
produce states we passively suffer. Because we know this, instances in
which we respond to conflict by mastering our emotions in deference to
the moral law give us pleasure. Struggle against our sensuous natures
in order to act autonomously, in other words, allows us to witness
what is most impressive about humans, namely our free will. That
experience gives us pleasure: "the very assault on our sensuous
life", Schiller says, "is the condition for igniting that
power of mind whose activity produces the pleasure" (NA XX,
152/E 5).



Because we recognize our ability to overcome our sensuous nature as
the highest expression of our humanity, observing someone else
struggle and triumph over her emotions makes us sympathize with her,
and this sympathy also gives us pleasure. In this early essay, then,
Schiller defines tragedy as the art that imitates nature in those
actions most apt to arouse sympathy. In other words, it is the art
form that evokes the universal pleasure humans experience when
triumphing over their sensuous nature (NA XX, 153-4/E 6).



Schiller follows these philosophical considerations with advice to
fellow tragedians, promising to isolate the "conditions under
which the pleasure of the emotion would be produced with the most
certainty and the greatest force" (NA XX, 154/E 6). A tragedy
will fail both if the audience's sympathy is too weak and if it
is too strongly aroused and replaced by outrage at the instigator of
the suffering (NA XX, 154/E 7). The best tragedies will evoke both an
unavoidable moral conflict and the hero's willing embrace of it
(NA XX, 156-7/E 9). The images of suffering that tragedy
presents should be lively and vivid; they should strike us as
universally true; the plot must allow the suffering to build momentum
but also be balanced and varied (NA XX, 159-164/E 11-14).
The most successful tragedian will use these and other principles to
stimulate compassion with suffering that gives evidence of
humans' highest calling (NA XX, 165-67/E 16-18).



"On the Sublime: Toward the Further Development of Some Kantian
Themes" ["*Vom Erhabenen: Zur weitern Ausfuhrung
einiger Kantischen Ideen*"], published in 1793, takes, as
promised, a decidedly Kantian turn. Building on distinctions made in
"On Grace and Dignity", Schiller here abandons sympathy as
tragedy's defining characteristic and replaces it with a version
of Kant's sublime. Kant describes the sublime as an essentially
mixed emotion: it combines humans' fear in the face of infinite
power with pride in their ability to conceptualize that infinity or
withstand that power. Schiller similarly reports that we call an
object sublime if



> 
> 
> our sensuous nature feels its limits, but our rational nature feels
> its superiority, its freedom from limits. Thus, we come up short
> against a sublime object *physically*, but we elevate ourselves
> above it *morally*, namely, through ideas. (NA XX, 171/E
> 22)
> 
> 
> 



Roughly tracking Kant's distinction between the mathematically
and dynamically sublime, Schiller divides the sublime into the
theoretical and the practical. The theoretical sublime presents nature
as an object of knowledge and indicates that we "can
*think* more than we know"; it describes for instance the
mixture of fear and awe we experience when conceptualizing infinity
(NA XX, 173/E 24). The practically sublime, by contrast, concerns
nature as an object of feeling, specifically as a source of danger and
fear. But in being confronted by a storm or natural disaster, we also
become aware of our power to remain calm in the face of danger. Such
experiences isolate moments at which the individual has recourse only
to his "intellectual self, to the inner self-sufficiency of his
rational powers" (NA XX, 177/E 28). They allow resistance on a
"completely different order", showing our sensuous being
to be an "external, natural thing that has no effect at all on
what we genuinely are as persons, our moral selves" (NA XX,
185/E 35). They thus allow us to acknowledge that as sensual beings,
we are never safe from disease, loss, and death, but we know that we
can face even our own annihilation with dignified calm. Human beings
can also be what Schiller calls magnificent: they can, through
physical or mental prowess, defeat what they fear. The sublime, by
contrast, shows humans succumbing to the fearful but not fearing it.
Because of what it says about our moral selves, observing such
dignified defeat somewhat paradoxically inspires us even more than the
magnificent human's triumph. Schiller further distinguishes
between the "contemplative sublimity of power", which
includes our terror in the face of silence or the dark, and "the
pathetically sublime", which requires us to witness suffering.
But the basic requirements for a representation of the sublime remain
the same: it must include an objective, physical power; subjective,
physical impotence; and subjective or moral security in the face of
that impotence (NA XX, 186/E 36).



In "Concerning the Sublime" ["*Uber das
Erhabene"*], drafted between 1794 and 1796, Schiller
continues to develop his claim that the sublime displays humanity at
its most noble. Nothing, he says, "is so beneath the dignity of
human beings as to suffer violence, for it destroys the
individual's humanity"; the person who, confronting
violence, "cowardly suffers it, tosses his humanity aside"
(NA XX, 38/E 70). But despite the fact that the forces that can
inflict violence on humans are legion, resistance is possible: even
when the agent cannot surmount these forces physically, he can resist
them "*idealistically*, when he takes a step beyond
nature and thereby negates the concept of brute force in regard to
himself" (NA XX, 39/E 71). Counterintuitively, this means
accepting the suffering and, in the process, transforming it into
voluntary submission. Such a moment is a mix of anguish and happiness
which is "preferred by noble souls over all pleasure"
since it "establishes our moral self-sufficiency in an
irrefutable manner" (NA XX, 42/E 74). The "capacity to
feel the sublime", Schiller concludes, "is thus one of the
most glorious dispositions in human nature" (NA XX, 52/E
83).



The fact that the sublime can provide this evidence of our autonomy,
Schiller continues, means that it offers something beauty cannot. The
beautiful character lives in harmony with herself, finding
"pleasure in the exercise of justice, charity, temperance,
fortitude, and fidelity" (NA XX, 39/E 75). But such a person, if
never tested, may never become aware of her moral powers. We should,
then, be grateful for personal or historical events that disrupt
beauty and produce the sublime since without sublime experiences,
"beauty would make us forget our dignity" (NA XX, 53/E
84). Here Schiller reiterates his claim that the beautiful and the
sublime together complete human nature:



> 
> 
> Only if the sublime is married to the beautiful and our sensitivity to
> both has been shaped in equal measure, are we complete citizens of
> nature, without on that account being its slaves, and without
> squandering our citizenship in the intelligible world. (NA XX, 53/E
> 84)
> 
> 
> 



Achieving this completeness requires practice, and art can provide us
with that practice. When we encounter actual misfortune, we may find
ourselves defenseless and easily overwhelmed. By contrast, "the
artificial misfortune of the pathetic"--in other words,
witnessing suffering in an artistic context--"finds us
fully equipped, and, since it is merely imagined, the self-sufficient
principle in our minds gets room to assert its absolute
independence" (NA XX, 51/E 82). The more we practice this
independence aesthetically, the more adept we will be at executing it
in real life: witnessing tragedy as an art form, in short, is an
"inoculation against unavoidable fate"; it allows us to
practice sublime emotions such that when confronted with actual
tragedy, we can react to it as if it were a performance and moderate
our emotional responses accordingly. Of such an accomplishment,
Schiller enthuses that "a human being can soar no higher!"
(NA XX, 51/E 83).



Schiller takes up the question of the aesthetic value of suffering
more specifically in "On the Pathetic"
["*Uber das Pathetische,*" sometimes
translated "On Tragic Pity"]. "Portrayal of
suffering--as mere suffering--is never the end of
art", he says, "but as a means to this end it is of the
utmost importance to art" (NA XX, 196/E, 45). This is again
because suffering facilitates the moral response that reveals
humans' freedom. The more suffering we see, the more freedom we
stand to witness: Schiller writes that tragedy thus requires a
"full salvo of suffering" (NA XX, 197/E 46). Once the
pathetic becomes sublime by eliciting this response of freedom, it
ceases to be merely pathetic and becomes aesthetic.



To provide an example of aesthetic suffering, Schiller refers to
Johann Winckelmann's famous description of the ancient statue of
Laocoon. Even as serpents slay both him and his sons, the battle
between his sensuous self and his spiritual self is visible on
Laocoon's brow, signaling that he has not abandoned himself
to fear. The *Aeneid*'s evocation of the serpents that
pursue and ultimately overpower Laocoon provides another example:
their approach is terrifying, but if



> 
> 
> in the course of this trembling we feel ourselves elevated, then it is
> because we become conscious that, even as a victim of this power, we
> would have nothing to fear for ourselves insofar as we are free. (NA
> XX, 208/E 56)
> 
> 
> 



Evocations of the sublime can be more or less effective: the most
powerful instances, Schiller says, are when a character chooses
suffering out of duty or as a means of atoning for a failure of duty
(NA XX, 212/E 60). In such cases, it is not just the general human
capability for free action but "the use of this capability that
warrants our respect" (NA XX, 212/E 61).



Any display of freedom in the face of suffering, even if that
suffering is for an immoral cause, elicits our admiration. This fact,
Schiller submits, explains the possible disjunction between moral and
aesthetic judgment (NA XX, 213/E 61). The self-sacrifice of Leonidas
at Thermopylae, for instance, elicits both a positive moral and a
positive aesthetic judgment:



> 
> 
> Judged from a moral perspective, this action portrays for me the moral
> law being carried out in complete contradiction of instinct. Judged
> aesthetically, it portrays to me the moral capability of a human
> being, independent of all coercion by instinct. (NA XX, 213/E 61)
> 
> 
> 



The unnecessary self-immolation of Peregrinus Portheus, by contrast,
elicits a negative moral judgment by needlessly violating the duty of
self-preservation, but it generates a positive aesthetic judgment
because "it testifies to a capacity of the will to withstand
even the mightiest of all instincts, the *instinct* for
self-preservation" (NA XX, 215/E 64). Moral and aesthetic
judgments will, in any event, often conflict since moral rigor
generally is in tension with the freedom we value both in artists and
their creations (NA XX, 217/E 65). The more morally a character acts,
in other words, the more she adheres to a law; the more she adheres to
a law, the less freely she acts and the less aesthetic interest she
generates. As audience members, we would rather, Schiller concludes,
"watch power and freedom expressed at the cost of lawfulness
than watch lawfulness expressed at the cost of power and
freedom" (NA XX, 220/E 68).



Schiller's depiction of tragedy as the triumph of the will over
the senses is echoed perhaps most famously in the struggle between the
Apollonian and Dionysian forces Nietzsche credits with producing
tragedy in the first place (*The Birth of Tragedy*; Martin
1996: 179-187). It has also generated praise and critique in
more contemporary theorizing. Hughes argues that Schiller's
description of the pleasure we take in tragedy successfully accounts
for several other theories, including that tragic heroes must show
courage (Walter Kaufmann); that tragedies foreground
"comings-to-knowledge" and tragic flaws (Aristotle); that
they showcase conflict between two morally justified positions
(Hegel); and that they include some kind of renunciation
(Schopenhauer) (see Hughes 2015). By contrast, Gellrich suggests that
Schiller's use of the Kantian sublime to characterize tragedy
places undue emphasis on the individual to the detriment of other
factors that should characterize tragedy (1988: ch. 4). Indeed,
Schiller's focus on the individual's struggle as
tragedy's focal point puts him at odds with theories that
emphasize either social aspects of tragedy or the political upheaval
that makes moments of sublime resistance more likely (Eagleton 2003:
19, 110; Williams 1966: 44). Gardner in addition criticizes
Schiller's rationalized view of tragedy as a refusal to accept
suffering on its own terms and so as a denial of suffering's
significance (2003: 235).


### 2.4. Letters on Aesthetic Education



Schiller's "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of
Man" ["*Uber die asthetische Erziehung des
Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen,*" often referred to
simply as "Aesthetic Letters"] is perhaps his best-known
theoretical work. Published in his journal *Horen* in 1795 and
written in the form of letters to his new patron, the Prince of
Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg, they are dauntingly ambitious,
encompassing a diagnosis of the French Revolution, a critique of the
Enlightenment, a transcendental account of beauty, an analysis of
human psychology, an assessment of art's psychological and
political importance, and an image of a new, ideal form of government
designed to allow humans to reach their full potential.



The "Aesthetic Letters" begin with an almost despondent
analysis of the modern human
 condition.[6]
 The state is tottering, its "rotting foundations giving
way". Hopes for freedom and progress prove to be vain in the
face of "crude, lawless instincts" among some citizens and
a "repugnant spectacle of lethargy" among others (NA XX,
96/E 96). Schiller lauds the Greeks for their simple, harmonious
relation to their world and laments modern society's enslavement
to its manufactured needs. Recent history had shown with painful
clarity that if the moral character of the people is not developed,
even the most idealistic revolution will fail. A vicious cycle
suggests that without the state there can be no morality and without
morality there can be no state. Despite the Enlightenment's
lofty goals, Schiller laments,



> 
> 
> we see the spirit of the age wavering between perversity and
> brutality, between unnaturalness and mere nature, between superstition
> and moral unbelief; and it is only through an equilibrium of evils
> that it is still sometimes kept within bounds. (NA XX, 320-21/E
> 97)
> 
> 
> 



The "moral possibility", Schiller simply concludes,
"is lacking".



Among the culprits to be blamed for this condition are the
Enlightenment's over-emphasis on reason and its eschewing of
sentiment--factors that Schiller suggests led to the French
Revolution's barbaric excesses. "The development of
man's capacity for feeling", Schiller concludes,
"is, therefore, the more urgent need of our age" (NA XX,
332/E 107). What more specifically is needed is an instrument that can
develop this capacity for feeling without neglecting humans'
rational capacities. In Letter Nine he offers his solution:
"This instrument is fine art" (NA XX, 333/E 108). The
artist, then, is called upon to influence the world for the good,
resisting the distractions of the present in the interest of humanity
itself. Schiller exhorts his fellow artists to surround their
contemporaries with



> 
> 
> the great and noble forms of genius, and encompass them about with the
> symbols of perfection, until semblance conquer reality, and art
> triumph over nature. (NA XX, 336/E 111)
> 
> 
> 



At this point, however, Schiller admits a problem: historically
speaking, art has often had a corrupting effect. Perhaps we should
resist being "delivered up to her enervating influence"
(NA XX, 340/E 114). Before we draw this conclusion and abandon art as
a solution to the modern world's ills, however, we must assess
what definition of art we are using to evaluate its failures. But
against what are we to assess historical definitions of art? Such an
inquiry would seem to presuppose a concept of beauty; if that concept
itself comes from historical examples, the question of how to evaluate
art objectively remains unresolved. An adequate analysis of
art's potential, then, would seem to require an ahistorical
definition of beauty. Again channeling Kant's transcendental
method, Schiller then suggests that "perhaps *experience*
is not the judgment seat before which such an issue can be
decided" (NA XX, 340/E 114). Instead, any definition of beauty
would "have to be deduced from the sheer potentialities of our
sensuo-rational nature" (NA XX, 340/E 115); the pursuit of
beauty requires a "pure concept of human nature as such".
Since this concept in turn cannot be derived from experience, we must
follow "the transcendental way" to truth (NA XX, 341/E
115).



Schiller thus begins, in Letter 11, with an examination of human
nature. At the highest level of abstraction, he suggests, we find in
humans a distinction between the person and his condition or
"the self and its determining attributes" (NA XX, 341/E
115). The self Schiller associates with autonomous personhood,
independence, and form; our condition he associates with embodiment,
dependence, and matter. These two fundamentally opposed sides do,
however, coexist in humans, resulting in the imperative that they be
brought into harmony: each person is to "externalize all that is
within him and give form to all that is outside him" (NA XX,
344/E 118).



In Letter 12, Schiller claims that humans are impelled towards the
fulfillment of this imperative by two corresponding drives, the form
drive [*Formtrieb*] and the sense drive
 [*Sachtrieb*].[7]
 The sense drive "proceeds from the physical existence of
man" (NA XX, 344/E 118). It situates the human within time and
so within change:



> 
> 
> man in this state is nothing but a unit of quantity, an occupied
> moment of time--or rather, *he* is not at all, for his
> personality is suspended as long as he is ruled by sensation. (NA XX,
> 345/E 119)
> 
> 
> 



The form drive by contrast affirms the person as constant throughout
change; it



> 
> 
> annuls time and annuls change. It wants the real to be necessary and
> eternal, and the eternal and the necessary to be real. In other words,
> it insists on truth and on the right. (NA XX, 346/E 120)
> 
> 
> 



In action, the form drive is concerned with dignity; the sense drive
is concerned with self-preservation. In politics, the form drive
results in abstract principles; the sense drive results in
lawlessness.



In Letter 14, Schiller suggests that when a human experiences both
these drives in balance--when he is "at once conscious of
his freedom and sensible of his existence" and can "feel
himself matter and come to know himself as mind"--a new
drive is awakened, namely the play drive [*Spieltrieb*] (NA XX,
353/E 126). In the play drive, both other drives "work in
concert": they are "directed toward annulling time
*within time*, reconciling becoming with absolute being and
change with identity" (NA XX, 353/E 126). In holding the first
two drives in harmony, the play drive frees humans of the domination
of each:



> 
> 
> To the extent that it deprives feelings and passions of their dynamic
> power, it will bring them into harmony with the ideas of reason; and
> to the extent that it deprives the laws of reason of their moral
> compulsion, it will reconcile them with the interests of the senses.
> (NA XX, 352/E 127)
> 
> 
> 



If this can be achieved, the human will be given "an intuition
of his human nature, and the object that afforded him this vision
would become for him a symbol of his *accomplished
destiny*" (NA XX, 353/E 126).



What, then, can awaken the play drive? In Letter 15, Schiller suggests
that each drive also has an object. The object of the sense drive is
life; the object of the form drive is form. Because the play drive
allows these drives to act in concert, its object is *living
form* [*lebende Gestalt*] (NA XX, 355/E 128). Living form,
in turn, is nothing less than beauty. Beautiful objects, then, can put
humans in the state in which we realize our highest potential. When,
to use Schiller's example, we contemplate the *Juno
Ludovisi*, we feel our sense drive and our form drive perfectly
equalized. In such a moment, "we find ourselves at one and the
same time in a state of utter repose and extreme agitation" (NA
XX, 360/E 132).



Since the contemplation of beauty leaves us dominated neither by the
sense drive nor by the form drive, the play drive "gives rise to
*freedom*" (NA XX, 373/E 143); it allows the will, which
exists independently of both drives, to choose between them (NA XX,
371/E 142). This freedom does not correlate to our ability to
articulate and follow the moral law. Freedom is rather the ability to
survey both this law and our sensuous desires and choose between them.
In facilitating this ability and so enabling freedom, the
contemplation of beauty completes the concept of human nature (NA XX,
355/E 128). So as soon as reason "utters the pronouncement: let
humanity exist, it has by that very pronouncement also promulgated the
law: let there be beauty" (NA XX, 356/E 129). Play, Schiller
then reiterates, allows humans to fulfill their very natures:
"man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a
human being, and *he is only fully a human being when he
plays*" (NA XX, 359/E 131).



Beauty's ability to free our minds of determinations explains an
apparent paradox. On the one hand, beauty does not produce knowledge
or build character (NA XX, 377/E 147). But on the other hand,
precisely because beauty accomplishes nothing, "something is
achieved"; when our drives are brought into harmony, our will
can actually choose freely. So defined, the aesthetic state is
"the most fruitful of all in respect of knowledge and
morality"; by committing neither to form nor to matter, it
contains maximum potential for both (NA XX, 379/E 148). "This
lofty equanimity and freedom of the spirit, combined with power and
vigor", Schiller says, "is the mood in which a genuine
work of art should release us"; after witnessing such art, we
"shall with equal ease turn to seriousness or to play, to repose
or to movement, to compliance or to resistance" (NA XX, 380/E
149). In facilitating this condition, beauty gives us the "gift
of humanity itself", Schiller says; it is our "second
creatress" (NA XX, 378/E 147-8). Our status as finite
creatures means that this state will remain only an ideal that each
particular art--music, painting, sculpture, etc.--must
struggle to approach in its own way (NA XX, 380-1/E
149-50). But all genuine art will produce a state of equilibrium
that puts the will in a position of maximum power and
self-determination (Beiser 2005: 155).



The kind of experiences required for each human to reach the aesthetic
condition will vary. To address this fact, Schiller postulates a
dichotomy within beauty itself. Energizing beauty, he says, tenses us:
it braces our nature and encourages prompt reaction. Such beauty is
necessary for the "sensuous man" who feels too much and
can be brought to equilibrium by exposure to form or thought. Melting
beauty, by contrast, releases: it relaxes our natures and is
especially necessary for the "spiritual man" who thinks
too much and needs to be brought to beauty by his senses. Both kinds
of beauty can be dangerous: energizing beauty can become extravagance,
and melting beauty can result in stifled energy or emptiness (NA XX,
360-2/E 133-4). But when they combine to produce a harmony
that cancels their respective extremes, they can allow individual
humans to reach their highest potential.



Building on these distinctions, Schiller claims in Letter 24 that both
individual humans and humanity in general must follow three
developmental stages: physical, aesthetic, and moral (NA XX, 388/E
156). In their initial natural state, humans are ruled by nature. When
reason begins to stir, "man leaves the narrow confines of the
present in which mere animality stays bound, in order to strive
towards an unlimited future" (NA XX, 390/E 159). But because
reason seems entirely opposed to natural life, its unconditional laws
are experienced as only coercive: humans then either resist
reason's law, resorting to eudaemonism, or enslave themselves to
it, denying their sensuous natures entirely (NA XX, 390-1/E
158-9). Beauty, by contrast, can unite humans' natural and
rational sides; it can facilitate our entry into the "world of
ideas" but without leaving behind "the world of
sense" (NA XX, 396/E 163). It can, then, convince us that the
moral law is not a foreign imposition and allow us to live in harmony
with its dictates.



In Letters 26 and 27, Schiller imagines the circumstances that must
have been necessary for early humans to develop an aesthetic sense.
Traces of play can be found in nature whenever there is an abundance
of resources: lions play when they have excess energy and are not
under threat; plants send out more shoots than necessary when they are
adequately nourished, squandering energy "in a movement of
carefree joy" (NA XX, 406/E 173). Similar abundance among humans
inspires "indifference to reality and interest in semblance
[*Schein*]": interest, that is, in a new layer of meaning
and significance that humans recognize as their own creation.
Semblance is positioned between "stupidity" and truth,
both of which "seek only the real" (NA XX, 399/E 165). A
nature that delights in semblance, by contrast, is "no longer
taking pleasure in what it receives, but in what it does" (NA
XX, 399/E 167; Sharpe 2005: 161-2). Semblance is evident in
adorned weapons, the transition of movement into dance, and the
evolution of desire into love. When we find such "traces of a
disinterested and unconditional appreciation of pure semblance",
the people in question have "started to become truly
human" (NA XX, 405/E 171-2).



In a final set of distinctions, Schiller somewhat suddenly applies his
tripartite analysis to political states. In the "dynamic state
of rights", humans limit each other's behavior through
force. In the "ethical state", humans curb their desires
out of respect for an abstract moral law. The third option Schiller
calls "the aesthetic state", which, he claims, has the
highest potential since it "consummates the will of the whole
through the nature of the individual" (NA XX, 410/E 176). In the
aesthetic state, citizens do their duty out of inclination, encourage
the balancing of their fellow citizens' rational and sensual
capacities, and act as unified, harmonious human beings (Beiser 2005:
163; Dahlstrom 2008: 101-2). In such a state, no privilege or
autocracy can be tolerated. Schiller admits in the last paragraph that
"such a state of aesthetic semblance" is rare but exists
in "a few chosen circles" in which humans are governed by
their aesthetic nature and so exist in freedom and cooperation with
others (NA XX, 412/E 178).



The ending to the *Letters* has left many readers confused and
dissatisfied, as evidenced by its mostly unfavorable reception among
Schiller's contemporaries (Wilkinson and Willoughby cxxxiii ff).
Schiller seems to be unclear regarding whether the aesthetic state is
the *means* to the achievement of full humanity or whether it
is an end; he seems, in short, not to have answered one of his
original questions, namely which must come first, a good state or good
citizens (Roehr 2003: 133-4; Sharpe 2005: 160). Schiller has
also been accused of encouraging elitism and a retreat into
apoliticism through his image of an aesthetic state, a charge most
powerfully leveled in the next century by Marxist critics (Sharpe
1995: 91). His theoretical movement from sensation to form, combined
with his genealogy of humans' development out of a
"savage" state has been cited as contributing to a
"racial regime of representation" that pervades Western
aesthetics (Lloyd 2019, 41-43, 72-74). Others
by contrast see the *Letters* as a testament to
Schiller's political engagement and republicanism (Beiser 2005:
123 ff; Lopez 2011; Moggach 2008; Schmidt 2009). There is, in
any case, no doubt that the *Aesthetic Letters* were enormously
influential. The concept of play has been taken up and developed by
philosophers such as Charles Sanders Peirce and Hans-Georg Gadamer
(Wilkinson and Willoughby 1967: clxxxviii-ix; Gadamer 1975:
101-34). The idea of play specifically as a cure for alienation
influenced the Frankfurt School through the writings of Herbert
Marcuse: indeed, according to Terry Eagleton, "[t]he whole
radical aesthetic tradition from Coleridge to Herbert Marcuse ...
draws sustenance from [Schiller's] prophetic denunciation"
of the modern condition (1990: 118; Marcuse 1955: 185-196; Guyer
2008; Sharpe 1991: 90-92; Saranpa 2002: 70-8). Jurgen
Habermas found in Schiller's idea of an aesthetic state a vision
of a "communicative, community-building, solidarity-giving force
of art" (1985: 59-64), in which art is capable of
"revolutionizing the conditions of mutual understanding"
(1985: 46, 49): a vision that, however problematic, he sees as a
source of insight into the nature of modern politics. Samantha
Matherne and Nick Riggle have recently argued for the relevance of
Schiller's conceptions of both aesthetic value and freedom in the
*Aesthetic Letters*, characterizing his theory as "a
non-hedonic, action-oriented, communitarian" philosophy worth
considering today (Matherne and Riggle 2020:1, 2021).


### 2.5. Naive and Sentimental Poetry



The title of Schiller's essay "On Naive and
Sentimental Poetry" [*"Uber naive und
sentimentalische Dichtung"*] (1795-6), articulates
another distinction Schiller uses to explore and define the modern
human condition. To ground the essay's fundamental dichotomy,
Schiller again takes a fact of human experience and then asks what
else must be true of humans in order for this fact to be possible.
This time his subject is the pleasure humans take in nature. What
explains our "many fondnesses for flowers and animals, for
simple gardens, for walks, for the land"? (NA XX, 413/E 179).
Schiller agrees with Kant that our pleasure cannot be only a response
to their beauty since our delight in a birdsong is destroyed if we
discover that it was produced by human imitation. This reaction
suggests, Schiller thinks, that our enjoyment of nature is not
aesthetic but moral. It is not the flower or animal itself that gives
us pleasure but



> 
> 
> an idea portrayed by them that we cherish in them. We treasure the
> silent creativity of life in them, the fact that they act serenely on
> their own, being there according to their own laws; we cherish that
> inner necessity, that eternal oneness with themselves. (NA XX, 414/E
> 180)
> 
> 
> 



In other words, natural objects display a harmony and unity that we
feel we once enjoyed and, as rational creatures, have lost. Our
pleasure mixed with melancholy indicates that "they *are*
what we *were*; they are what we *should become* once
more". The resulting emotion is sublime since it mixes the pain
of longing for lost unity with the pleasure of having "an
advantage that they lack": their natures are determined, whereas
humans are self-determining (NA XX, 414-15/E 180-1).



This sublime response is not, however, limited to our experience of
nature but can be prompted by interactions with humans as well. When
our reaction to another human's behavior combines melancholy at
what we have lost with the pleasure of superiority, we call that
person naive. A child who responds to an impoverished stranger by
offering her father's wallet makes us both smile at her basic
goodness and ashamed of our lost innocence (NA XX, 421/E 186). When
even adults act according to pure ideals despite evidence of the
world's corruption, we also call them naive, reflecting
both amusement at their ignorance and respect for their purity. The
artistic genius also exhibits a kind of naivete: she is
"guided solely by nature or instinct" and acts with
"simplicity and ease" that seems out of place in the
cruel, calculating world (NA XX, 424/E 189). The naive artist
names things "by their right name and in the most
straightforward manner" (NA XX, 427/E 191), unconcerned with
social connotations or norms. Naivete generally, then, is
characterized by purity, simplicity, directness, and ease.



Although naivete exists in the modern world, it was much
more prevalent among the ancient Greeks. This fact again relates to
conceptions of nature. The naive poet simply imitates nature.
This unreflective response means the poet "can have only a
single relation to his object and, in *this* respect, he has no
choice regarding the treatment" (NA XX, 440/E 204). Modern
humans, by contrast, have a more developed sense of self and are
therefore keenly aware of their separation from nature. When we
compare modern depictions of nature to those of the ancient Greeks,
what strikes us is that the Greek poet's portrayal
"contains no more special involvement of the heart"; he
"does not cling to nature with the fervor, sensitivity, and
sweet melancholy that we moderns do" (NA XX, 429/E 194). The
reason, Schiller says, is that in the divisiveness of the modern
world, nature "has disappeared from our humanity, and we
reencounter it in its genuineness only outside of humanity in the
inanimate world" (NA XX, 430/E 194). The ancient poet by
contrast had not lost nature and so felt no need to rediscover it.
Ancient poets, Schiller concludes, "felt naturally, while we
feel the natural" (NA XX, 431/E 195).



In contrast to the naive poet's direct relation to nature,
the sentimental poet foregrounds her own perspective and reflection,
precipitating a shift from objects to thought: whereas naive
poets "touch us through nature", modern poets "touch
us through ideas" (NA XX, 438/E
 201).[8]
 The sentimental poet communicates not his feelings but his thoughts
about his feelings: he "*reflects* on the impression the
objects make upon him" (NA XX, 441/E 204). Contrasting Homer,
Schiller's paradigmatic example of a naive poet, with
sentimental poets makes this distinction clear. A modern sentimental
poet, having recounted a heroic deed, "would hardly have waited
... to testify to his delight at this action"; we, as his
sentimental audience, would "also pause in our hearts while
reading and eagerly distance ourselves from the subject matter *in
order to look at ourselves*" (NA XX, 435/E 199, italics
mine). There is, by contrast, "not a trace of any of this in
Homer", who simply recounts events directly, leaving his own
response aside (NA XX, 435/E 199). Because they are dealing with the
object on the one hand and their own ideas on the other, sentimental
poets are always divided. They thus lack the easy, peaceful confidence
of their naive counterparts. Of his sentimental contemporaries
Kleist and Haller, for instance, Schiller writes:



> 
> 
> it is not their distinctive and dominant character to feel with a
> calm, uncomplicated, and easy sensibility and to exhibit the feeling
> in just this way. The imagination involuntarily crowds the intuition,
> the power of thought anticipates the feeling, and they close eyes and
> ears in order to sink, meditating, into themselves. (NA XX, 452/E
> 214)
> 
> 
> 



Although the sentimental disposition is more prevalent in the modern
world, some of modernity's finest poets were, Schiller argues,
actually naive. Shakespeare, for example, does not allow himself
to "be grasped" in his work (NA XX, 433/E 197). Goethe
likewise manages to foreground the object rather than ideas, achieving
a sturdy cheerfulness mostly unencumbered by modern anxieties. It is
even possible for a modern naive poet like Goethe to treat a
sentimental topic: Goethe's fictional character Werther
"ardently embraces an ideal and flees the actual world"
(NA XX, 459/E 220), but Goethe's treatment of this archetypical
sentimental character nevertheless succeeds in being
 naive.[9]
 Ultimately, Schiller thinks poets should follow their dispositions:
if a modern poet feels enough of an affinity for the Greek spirit
"despite all the intractableness of his material", he
should pursue it "wholeheartedly and do it exclusively,
disregarding every demand made by a sentimental age's
tastes" (NA XX, 471/E 231). It will be difficult and the effort
will be noticeable, but it may work. If the poet is instead drawn to
the ideal "then let him pursue this totally ... without
looking back to see whether the actual world might follow him"
(NA XX, 472/E 232).



Despite our longing for the simplicity represented by the naive
view, the sentimental view represents the higher development of human
potential. "[T]he goal for which the human being
*strives* through culture", Schiller says,



> 
> 
> is infinitely superior to the goal that he *attains* through
> nature. Thus the value of the one consists in absolutely reaching a
> finite greatness, while the value of the other lies in approaching an
> infinite greatness. (NA XX, 438/E 202)
> 
> 
> 



Schiller exhorts his readers not to mourn for lost unity but instead
to



> 
> 
> take nature up into yourself and strive to wed its unlimited
> advantages to your own endless prerogatives, and from the marriage of
> both strive to give birth to something divine. (NA XX, 429/E 193)
> 
> 
> 



The ultimate ideal is a kind of unity of unity and division, a
"structure of immediacy, its negation, and their unity"
that approaches the complex harmony that is a perpetual aspiration in
Schiller's worldview and is also a precursor of Hegel's
dialectic (Dahlstrom 2008: 91; Hinderer 1991: 206).



The sentimental poet's divided consciousness opens up new
possibilities for poetic genres, depending on what relation between
the two components of poetry--the actual world and the
poet's idea--is predominant (NA XX, 442/E 205). When poets
take the "contradiction between the actual and ideal" as
their subject matter, the result will be satire. Given the division
inherent in the modern world, Schiller suggests that satire is a
paradigmatically modern literary genre. Because comedy and tragedy
also foreground incongruities, Schiller considers them related forms.
Ironically, given his status as one of Germany's most
accomplished tragedians, Schiller identifies comedy as the higher of
the two. While in a tragedy, the subject matter generates what
happens, in comedy "everything happens because of the
poet" (NA XX, 445/E 208). This in turn means that the subject
matter is more free, making comedy the more free art. This freedom
extends to the comic poet who must only "remain himself"
and "be at home" in his production. Comic characters are
then beautiful, as opposed to tragic characters, who are sublime:
comic characters are always free and at ease, "while the sublime
character is free only by fits and starts and with a struggle"
(NA XX, 445/E 208). Comedy's goal, in fact, tracks



> 
> 
> the supreme goal of human striving: to be free of passion, to look
> around and into oneself always with clarity and composure, to find
> everywhere more chance than fate, and to laugh more about absurdity
> than rage and whine about maliciousness. (NA XX, 446/E 209)
> 
> 
> 



If, instead of foregrounding contrasts as do satire, tragedy, and
comedy, a work portrays harmony between the actual and the ideal, two
further genres are possible. If the harmony is mourned as lost, the
poem will be an elegy; if it is celebrated as achievable, it will be
an idyll. Idyllic poetry in particular has the potential to heal
humans' divided selves: it should serve as a "tangible
confirmation of the plausibility of realizing that idea in the world
presented by the senses" (NA XX, 468/E 228). Executed correctly,
the idyll is composed but expansive; it is still but includes
movement; it is both a unity and a manifold; it depicts



> 
> 
> the concept of a free union of inclinations with the law, the concept
> of a nature purified to the point of supreme moral dignity. In short,
> it is nothing other than the ideal of beauty applied to actual life.
> (NA XX, 472/E 232)
> 
> 
> 



Schiller suggests, in other words, that idyllic poetry might allow the
modern human to "see the legislation of nature in a pure
exemplar once again, and, in this faithful mirror, to be able once
again to purify himself" (NA XX, 468/E 229; Hinderer 1991: 204;
Sharpe 1991: 181-9).



Schiller is not, however, content to confine his distinction between
the naive and sentimental to art. In the essay's final
section, he sketches a portrait of these two sensibilities divorced
from their aesthetic application. Here the naive person becomes
the realist; the sentimental character becomes the idealist. The
realist has a "knack for sober observation and a firm adherence
to the uniform testimony of the senses"; as far as action goes,
he submits to natural necessity, "yielding to what is and must
be" (NA XX, 492/250). He aims at happiness and prosperity and
views morality not as encompassed in an individual deed but in the sum
of a life. He can "proceed splendidly" this way but
"would not be able to lay claim, in any particular case, to
greatness and dignity" (NA XX, 494/E 252). The idealist instead
exhibits a "restless spirit of speculation that presses on
towards what is unconditioned", drawing "upon himself and
reason alone for his knowledge and his motives" (NA XX, 494/E
252). In moral evaluation, he will exhibit a "purer morality on
an individual level, but much less moral uniformity on the
whole" (NA XX, 496/E 253). Since humans are not capable of
consistent idealism, the idealist can be judged only by particular
acts. The general public, then, will often not have much to say about
the realist's everyday behavior, but "it will always take
a position on the idealists, and will be torn between reproach and
amazement" (NA XX, 497/E 254).



Realists and idealists' attitudes towards their fellow humans
will also differ:



> 
> 
> [t]he realist proves himself to be a friend of the [particular] human,
> without having a very high conception of human beings and humanity [in
> general]; the idealist thinks of humanity in so grand a manner that he
> comes dangerously close to despising human beings. (NA XX, 498/E
> 255-6)
> 
> 
> 



The realist will want to make the person he loves happy, while the
idealist will "seek to *ennoble* what he loves" (NA
XX, 397/E 255). In politics, the realist will aim at prosperity and
the idealist at freedom. Schiller then suggests but does not explain
that both realism and idealism can, in the political sphere, be either
"true" or "false". If realism is kept true,
its effects are modest but beneficial; the effects of true idealism
"are, by contrast, uncertain and often dangerous". While
false realism is only somewhat pernicious, false idealism is nothing
less than "terrifying"; it will lead, Schiller says in a
clear reference to the French Revolution, "to an infinite fall
into a bottomless depth and can only end in complete
annihilation" (NA XX, 503/E 259-60).



Not surprisingly, the ultimate goal must be the achievement of a
disposition that balances these extremes. The ideal of human nature,
Schiller writes, "is divided up between the realist and the
idealist, without being fully attained by either of them" (NA
XX, 500/E 257); "only by means of the perfectly equal
*inclusion* of both can justice be done to the rational concept
of humanity" (NA XX, 493/E 250). In letters to Wilhelm von
Humboldt, Schiller suggests that when the sentimental stage of
humanity is overcome, ideal humanity will be achieved, and the goal
articulated at the essay's beginning will be realized:
"our culture should lead us along the path of reason and freedom
back to nature" (NA XX, 414/E 181; Hinderer 1991: 206). The
essay concludes, then, with another tripartite development that leads
from unity through division to a unification of both.



"On Naive and Sentimental Poetry" played a
distinctive role in Friedrich Schlegel's intellectual
development and so in the entire German romantic movement (Lovejoy
[1920] 1947; Beiser 2005: 116ff). It likely shaped Hegel's
distinction between ancient and modern art, most notably his
discussion of modern tragedy and comedy. The essay's vision of
art's role in modernity has also been influential: Nietzsche
makes use of Schiller's definition of the naive in *The
Birth of Tragedy*'s analysis of Greek culture (24-6;
Martin 1996: 29-44); Georg Lukacs found in
Schiller's portrait of the artist a potent description of
art's task in the modern world (Lukacs 1953: 111ff;
Sharpe 1991: 194-6). Recently, Daniel Dahlstrom has cited the
essay as developing a kind of poetic phenomenology reminiscent of
Husserl (Dahlstrom 2018: 101-121)


## 3. Later Life and Influence



In 1796, Schiller's intensive period of philosophical output
ended and he returned to playwriting. For his first dramatic work in
ten years, the tragic trilogy *Wallenstein*, Schiller chose a
historical topic with the explicit goal of shifting his writing from
the sentimental towards the naive (Berman 1986; Moland 2011). The
plays were widely hailed as a success and were followed by four other
major dramas, among them *Maria Stuart* and *Wilhelm
Tell*. Schiller continued to write poetry and intensified his
collaborations with Goethe, including the co-production of a series of
epigrams, entitled *Xenien*, whose sardonic critique of their
contemporaries ignited a widespread literary feud (Mohr 2007: 217).
This extraordinarily productive period, however, lasted less than a
decade, at which point Schiller's always weak health failed him,
and he died at the age of forty-five.



Since his death, Schiller's thought has steadily influenced some
of philosophy's most prominent debates. Hegel and Wilhelm von
Humboldt were early promoters of Schiller's aesthetic and
political theorizing (Hegel *Aesthetics*, 89-91/62;
Humboldt, "Uber Schiller"; Price 1967). His influence
on British Romanticism especially through the enthusiasm of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge was also substantial (Kooy 2002). Marx and Engels
praised his revolutionary spirit and diagnosis of the modern age but
criticized his perceived idealism (Kain 1982: chs. 3, 4; Saranpa 2002:
ch. 5). Schiller's reputation suffered greatly from its
deployment in the 1914 "War of the Intellectuals" between
England and Germany and from misuse of his thought by National
Socialists in subsequent decades (Koepke 2005: 276-279; Martin
2011; Sharpe 1995: chs. 2 and 3; Sponsel 2011). A divided post-war
Germany saw Schiller's fame employed in support of competing
political philosophies in the German Democratic Republic and the
Federal Republic of Germany (Sharpe 2005: 58; Saranpa 2002: ch. 6).
More recently, his vision of an "aesthetically permeated
culture" has been cited as a predecessor to "modern
mass-media studies" (Fischer 2011: 133); his analysis of
the French Revolution has been mined for its lessons on the
use of aesthetics in marketing and political propaganda (Mandoki
2019); his thought has also been used in philosophical work on
the emotions (Bennett 2017). A 2018 volume on Schiller and
philosophy highlights his importance to other philosophical
figures, including the development of German Romanticism and
philosophical pessimism, and to the thought of French philosopher
Jacques Ranciere (Acosta Lopez and Powell 2018). Also in
2018, a special issue of *Kant-Studien* was devoted to
"Friedrich Schiller's Challenge to Moral
Philosophy." Schiller's was, in short, a vision of
the centrality of aesthetic experience to daily and political life
that has resonated through the centuries since his death and continues
to shape philosophical thought today.