Aesthetic Reason and Imaginative Freedom

Friedrich Schiller and Philosophy

María del Rosario Acosta López, Jeffrey L. Powell, María del Rosario Acosta López, Jeffrey L. Powell

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781438472201, 9781438472195
• eBook ISBN: 9781438472218
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

This book seeks to draw attention to Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) as a philosophical thinker in his own right. For too long, his philosophical contribution has been neglected in favor of his much-deserved reputation as a political playwright. The essays in this collection make two arguments. First, Schiller presents a robust philosophical program that can be favorably compared to those of his age, including Rousseau, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, and he proves to be their equal in his thinking on morality, aesthetics, and politics. Second, Schiller can also guide us in our more contemporary philosophical concerns and approaches, such as phenomenology, hermeneutics, aesthetics, and politics. Here, Schiller instructs us in our engagement with figures such as Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, Roberto Esposito, and others.

Part I

Schiller’s Historico-Philosophical Significance

1

Schiller, Rousseau, and the Aesthetic Education of Man

YVONNE NILGES

Schiller considered his letters on aesthetic education (1795) to be the most significant of his theoretical writings. This is not merely due to the aesthetic substance of the letters, but just as much to what Schiller himself identified as his “political creed”1: the aesthetic education of man engages with contemporary constitutional law as a result of the French Revolution, most notably with Rousseau’s legal and political philosophy. As early as in his lecture “The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon,” (1789) Schiller had rejected Rousseau’s claim for direct democracy (without identifying Rousseau by name).2 In the years to follow, the reign of terror in France did not cause Schiller to revoke his judgment on the general will; rather, Schiller’s Vernunftgericht (tribunal of reason)—a term derived from Kant’s ethics—is directly opposed to Rousseau’s ideas on society and on the state and even is an increase from Schiller’s former criticism.

To this day little is known about Schiller’s reception of Rousseau. At a first glance, this seems to be surprising, but the reason for this void is certainly twofold: on the one hand, Schiller refers to Rousseau merely implicitly in virtually all of his works, and on the other, this very reference is a deeply dialectical one starting in 1789. Schiller’s political attitude toward Rousseau is rooted in ambivalence, tending toward repudiation, to the effect that Schiller intricately revises Rousseau’s political conceptions (as he does with Kant’s ethics, which is, however, often mentioned explicitly in Schiller’s works).3 On the following pages we shall for the first time trace the crucial influence the Social Contract had on Schiller and, in so doing, trace Schiller’s criticism of Rousseau which takes the form of an appellate court in the legal dispute of the time.

Rousseau’s theory, according to Schiller’s judgment, is but a one-sided one, lending itself to excessively rigid conclusions and even to devastating consequences as the course of the French Revolution had unfortunately shown. This does not mean, however, that Schiller ignores Rousseau’s good will, but he believes the Contrat social to be too theoretical, i.e., nothing but rational, whereas in his own view, mundus intelligibilis and mundus sensibilis, intelligibility and sensibility, must indeed be reconciled. When Schiller dedicated himself to representative democracy in 1789 thus renouncing Rousseau’s volonté générale, this was because he did not trust the general will to be truly judicious. Chaos and riotous masses had, a few years later, actually taken possession of France. These later historical developments therefore confirm Schiller’s concerns, and On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters aims to be a suggestion for improvement, at least in the first part, to which we shall now direct our attention. The Enlightenment—and Rousseau’s direct democracy—has, according to Schiller, overestimated itself as a result of its drastic one-sidedness and its self-righteous apodictic statements. Thus Rousseau writes in his Contrat social.4

Sovereignty cannot be represented for the same reason that it cannot be alienated; it consists essentially in the general will, and the will does not admit of being represented: either it is the same or it is different; there is no middle ground.

Schiller’s tribunal of reason, in contrast, attempts to mediate and to communicate, thereby introducing a renegotiation of contemporary legal and political matters (VIII, 499). In the second of his letters Schiller thus starts by connecting the state to the sphere of art: the former, he argues, ought to be regarded as the most accomplished work of art in order to really and truly secure political freedom (VIII, 558/AL, 88). This, however, is an indirect correction of the notion of the state as asserted by Rousseau. According to the Social Contract, the state is not an artwork, but rather a machine—and the most accomplished legislator “the mechanic who invents the machine.”5 The metaphors could not be more converse. Rousseau’s description of the state as a machine exemplifies the enlightened mindset, such as La Mettrie’s materialistic philosophy, for instance (L’homme machine, 1748). Yet this very reduction to one simple theoretical idea should in the following lead to what Burke, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), had at an early point described as incomplete, i.e., as a merely geometrical and arithmetical political experiment.6

A machine, as an inanimate object, is insensible and cold. Therefore, when Schiller complains that the enlightenment has not lacked light but warmth, not a philosophical but rather an aesthetic culture (VIII, 505),7 this too refers to Rousseau’s affirmative notion of a state machinery as opposed to Schiller’s own concept of the state as a perfect work of art:

Reason has accomplished all that she can accomplish by discovering the law and establishing it. Its execution demands … the ardor of feeling … If she [truth] has hitherto displayed so little of her conquering power, this was due, not to the intellect that was powerless to unveil her, but to the heart that closed itself against her … since the way to the head must be opened through the heart. (VIII, 580ff./AL, 106–07)

Reason alone has accomplished everything it could achieve; the completion, however, is up to sensitivity as the way to the head must be opened through the heart.8

It is the third letter on aesthetic education where Schiller’s “political creed” and Rousseau’s Contrat social clash even more. Here Schiller introduces the word “Notstaat” (the state born out of need; VIII, 561/AL, 90) or, alternatively, the word “Naturstaat” (the state of nature; VIII, 562/AL, 91), which needs to be replaced by a true state of reason, i.e., a state of truthful liberty “Staat der Freiheit” (VIII, 567/AL, 95). As we can easily recognize, Schiller is again alluding to Rousseau’s Social Contract (which is, in Schiller’s view, to be annulled), but how exactly does he operate within Rousseau’s terms, how circumspectly does he dismantle and reassemble Rousseau’s diction?

To begin with, the primordial state of man (Naturstand) is something that Schiller was very cautious to idealize, departing from Rousseau. To Schiller, the process of civilization generally means progression (culture) and nothing that one should regret. Consequently, the state of man before civilization, which must be conceived as an unachievable role model if we follow Rousseau, becomes the opposite in Schiller’s understanding. Rousseau’s “amour de soi” that characterizes the noble savage is in fact immature narcissism in Schiller’s eyes—or what Rousseau himself had called the “amour-propre” (which he had associated with man after the beginning of civilization). Schiller thus reverses Rousseau’s judgment, interpreting civilization as a remedy for humankind, whereas Rousseau himself regards the process of socialization (and, stemming from this development, culture and art) as a mere sign of decay. As a result, however, this also means that Schiller’s state of nature is, at the same time, not Rousseau’s state of nature: to Schiller it is a purely physical state born out of need that must be overcome. While Schiller’s diction therefore alludes to Rousseau, Schiller still implicitly dissociates himself from Rousseau’s very ideas—despite the fact that the connotation of the word “Naturstaat” in the context of Schiller’s third letter refers to the absolutist state, which both Rousseau and Schiller do repudiate. What happens in this third letter is that Schiller seemingly adopts Rousseau’s vocabulary, but by combining Rousseau’s cultural, aesthetic and political theories, he gives Rousseau’s ideas a different color, which is actually antithetic. The very idea of an aesthetic education in support of political change is as much opposed to Rousseau’s principles as one could possibly imagine (cf. Rousseau’s Émile, ou De l’éducation, 1762).9

The aim of Schiller’s aesthetic letters is to “cure” the Revolution by means of an aesthetic education: which is to lead to a true state of reason instead of a radical call for a republic that has meanwhile become distorted. Rousseau’s legal and political philosophy, according to Schiller, fails to take into account that man was not yet educated enough in order to act politically mature; the enlightened education had not been a holistic one, just as Rousseau’s own principles had been rationalistic only, neglecting sensibility. To cultivate the heart as well and, in so doing, to cultivate a sense of human totality is to what Schiller’s appellate court aspires.

Strikingly, Schiller operates with Rousseau’s “inalienable rights” by taking them in another direction. Schiller asserts that it is part of man’s inalienable rights to simply annul the Social Contract and to leave the circulus vitiosus of apodictic theory in ideational realization. That way, man will truly come of age and learn to not rush into political caesuras for which he is not ready:

[he] conceives, as idea, a state of nature [Naturstand] … attributes to himself in this idealized natural state a purpose of which in his actual natural state he was entirely ignorant, and a power of free choice of which he was at that time wholly incapable; and now proceeds exactly as if he were starting from scratch, and were, from sheer insight and free resolve, exchanging a state of complete independence for a state of social contracts. (VIII, 562/AL, 90–91)

In his fifth letter, Schiller paraphrases the problem even more pointedly: the generous moment of the French Revolution has found an unreceptive generation; the physical opportunity was there, Schiller maintains, but the moral one was not—“The moral possibility is lacking, and a moment so prodigal of opportunity finds a generation unprepared to receive it.” (VIII, 567/AL, 96)

At one point, admittedly, even the Contrat social concedes that there is a time of human maturity needed before legislative effects can hope to be fruitful; Rousseau’s word choice is characteristic in this context and not compatible with Schiller’s own notion of liberty. Rousseau, in the said passage, speaks of oppressive “subjection” to the law and then acknowledges that this necessary subjection is not advisable at just any time: “but the maturity of a people is not always easy to recognize, and if one acts too soon the work is ruined.”10 However, this is precisely Schiller’s objection. The enlightened belief in incessant progressiveness has run out of patience after all and therefore prevented man from coming to terms with himself first. Man has relied on his intellect only and neglected the cultivation of the heart, to the effect that there has been no balance that could have enabled him to act politically wiser. When Schiller thus chooses a certain phrase from Rousseau’s novel Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1760) to be the motto serving his aesthetic letters, he expresses his surprise at the fact that in his novel, Rousseau has in fact valued a holistic approach, while in his Social Contract, slightly later, he has not. The phrase in question—Schiller’s motto—reads “Si c’est la raison, qui fait l’homme, c’est le sentiment, qui le conduit” (VIII, 556). In his Contrat social Rousseau has become entirely abstract and therefore extreme, to the point that he supports totalitarian measures. According to Rousseau’s volonté générale, the citizen may well be forced to succumb to the general will, “which means nothing other than he shall be forced to be free.”11 However, pressure and oppression is exactly what Schiller has been observing on the basis of the French developments; these are, like Rousseau’s claims, the birth of tragedy from the spirit of pure theory.

As early as in a letter from September 18, 1787, Schiller’s friend Körner had raised the question of whether a one-sided, despotic enlightenment was actually helpful, and although this question originally referred to the Illuminati, in Schiller’s perception the parallels to Rousseau and to Rousseau’s reception in the Revolution are self-evident. As a result, Schiller’s demonstrative motto taken from Rousseau’s Julie may be regarded as a dialectical effort to come to Rousseau’s defense after all Schiller’s tribunal of reason, matter-of-factly, can only deliver the judgment that Rousseau’s political principles, with the most serious consequences, have bec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Schiller’s Historico-Philosophical Significance
• Part II: Imagining Schiller Today
• Friedrich Schiller’s Works Cited
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover