26 - Schiller's Political Ideas: Who Cares?

Summary

This chapter attempts to answer the volume's central question, “Who is this Schiller now?” by assessing which of Schiller's political ideas have gained scholarly traction recently. This assessment is made by means of a historiographical survey of Schiller's reception, mainly by intellectual historians, political philosophers, and social scientists. Although Schiller's political ideas tend to be reduced to a single nebulous concept of freedom and deployed emblematically, there are some interesting developments. His international concerns are now being recognized and illuminated. Schiller had transnational interests and to some degree began to conceive of a modern idea of Europe in his histories, dramas, historical essays, and philosophy. His writings are also being used to analyze European history and political thought. Finally, Schiller's political ideas are beginning to be mapped in relation to the republican tradition and to political philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Jefferson, Ferguson, and Montesquieu.

IN A 2007 LECTURE AT YALE UNIVERSITY the philosopher Frederick Beiser declared that “the study of Schiller's philosophy is not only in abrupt decline; it is virtually dead.” This literary obituary weighed heavily, as did George Steiner's prognosis that Schiller might in the next few decades become irrelevant to Western civilization, as the “three pillars on which the dynamic of Schiller's ongoing presence rests,” namely, “Classicism, education, language” appear to be disappearing as intellectual values. Does anyone care about Schiller's political ideas? Are they understood to be a part of the current of eighteenth-century transatlantic European thought? How does one begin to gauge such a thing?