Schiller's Philosophical Aesthetics in Anthropological Perspective

Summary

Friedrich Schiller, known from time to time, both positively and negatively, as the German Shakespeare, was not only one of the greatest German playwrights but also one of the first modern European intellectuals. It is no accident that we find in his Über naive und sentimentale Dichtung (On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, 1795–96) a kind of aesthetics of modernity, one that left visible traces in the theoretical writings of the Early Romantics. Long before Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, Schiller argued that the poet's work must reflect the philosophical and scientific achievements of his age. Precisely in the face of the increasing fragmentation of our faculties, which, according to Schiller, necessitates an “erweiterte[n] Kreis des Wissens und die Absonderung der Berufsgeschäfte,” poetry acquires a special function: it alone is able to reunify the divided powers of the soul, “welche Kopf und Herz, Scharfsinn und Witz, Vernunft und Einbildungskraft in harmonischem Bunde beschäftigt, welche gleichsam den ganzen Menschen in uns wieder herstellt.”

It is certain that for Schiller the precondition for achieving totality lies in the aesthetic state, which he once characterized as the noblest of all gifts. Here, the individual experiences the parallelogram of forces of his basic drives, both physical and mental, and is motivated to become a second creator. It is also true that traces of this basic program of the classical ideal of humanity can be found a generation earlier in the writings of Herder and Wieland. In the Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität (Letters Toward the Advancement of Humanity, 1793–97), for example, Herder states the case as follows: “Humanität ist der Charakter unseres Geschlechts; er ist uns aber nur in den Anlagen angeboren und muß uns eigentlich angebildet werden. Wir bringen ihn nicht fertig auf die Welt mit, auf der Welt soll er das Ziel unsres Strebens, die Summe unserer Übungen, unser Wert sein” (Werke, 5:103).

In the anthropologies and intellectual histories produced during the German Enlightenment, maturity (“Mündigkeit”) and the discovery of self-consciousness are often only different names for the same idea. From this perspective, it is clear that the Biblical narration of the fall of man evolved into a paradigm of intellectual emancipation.