Friedrich Schiller
2021-01-05
FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER (1759-1805) was a leading German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered for such dramas as THE ROBBERS (1781), the WALLENSTEIN trilogy (1800-01), MARIA STUART (1801), and WILHELM TELL (1804). Critics have noted his innovative use of dramatic structure and his creation of new forms, such as the melodrama and the bourgeois tragedy.
Schiller also wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics, synthesizing the thought of Kant with that of Idealist philosophers. He elaborated the concept of "die schöne Seele" (the beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that duty and inclination are no longer in conflict with one another. Thus beauty, for Schiller, was not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one too. His philosophical work was also concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt, and then found its way as well into his dramas.
One of the most profound works of German philosophy, ON THE AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN (1794), was inspired by Schiller's deep disenchantment about the French Revolution and its degeneration into violence. It examines politics, revolution, and the history of ideas in order to argue that art should have a greater role in shaping society. He conceives of art as the vehicle of education, one that can liberate individuals from the constraints and excesses of either pure nature or pure mind. Through aesthetic experience, he asserts, people can reconcile the inner antagonism between sense and intellect, nature and reason.
Schiller also wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics, synthesizing the thought of Kant with that of Idealist philosophers. He elaborated the concept of "die schöne Seele" (the beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that duty and inclination are no longer in conflict with one another. Thus beauty, for Schiller, was not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one too. His philosophical work was also concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt, and then found its way as well into his dramas.
One of the most profound works of German philosophy, ON THE AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN (1794), was inspired by Schiller's deep disenchantment about the French Revolution and its degeneration into violence. It examines politics, revolution, and the history of ideas in order to argue that art should have a greater role in shaping society. He conceives of art as the vehicle of education, one that can liberate individuals from the constraints and excesses of either pure nature or pure mind. Through aesthetic experience, he asserts, people can reconcile the inner antagonism between sense and intellect, nature and reason.
Schiller delivered his essay on Lycurgus and Solon in the context of his lectures on Universal History, at
Jena University, in August 1789. The essay puts forth two alternative
conceptions of government—a republican and an oligarchic form—which have
existed since the time of the Greeks. The oligarchic, associated with Lycurgus (ca. 800 BCE), reduces man to a beast, denying individual human creativity. Solon's (d. 559 BCE) republican government is premised on a conception of man raised to the level of participation in the divine.
