10 - Energy and Schiller's Aesthetics from the “Philosophical” to the Aesthetic Letters

Summary

In the following I offer a reading of Schiller's aesthetics different from the usual fare. Much is known about Schiller's training as a medical professional. Less is known about his general knowledge of advances in the physical sciences. He was clearly aware of the great strides that were being made in his day in understanding celestial spheres and the earth. The focus of my inquiry is on the role that concepts of energy, in particular kinetic energy, had on the way that Schiller conceptualized grace, the beautiful, and the sublime in his earlier and later aesthetic writings. Thus this essay acknowledges the widespread repercussions of the Copernican Turn for the entire concept of scale and branches of knowledge (Wissenskulturen) evident in the eighteenth century. Common to each variation of scale is the notion of energy, verve, or Kraft. Energy, understood in terms of the natural sciences, is fundamental to movement and change. I apply the new paradigm of movement to Schiller's categories (that is, scales) of grace, the beautiful, and the sublime.

Far as creation's ample range extends,

The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends.

— Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle I, canto vii

The Sublime, like the beautiful, is lavished wastefully through all of nature

— Schiller, On the Sublime

IN THEIR LONG AND FREQUENT CONVERSATIONS about science, politics, aesthetics, and philosophy, an enduring question for Schiller and Goethe, and one that transcended all branches of knowledge, was the nature of energy; it lurks behind their view of nature as all-encompassing.