By: Jacob Weinrib
"I hope to convince you that the theme I have chosen is far less alien to the needs of our age than to its taste. More than this: if man is ever to solve that problem of politics in practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through Beauty that man makes his way to Freedom." (9)
–Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man
This paper explores Schiller's belief that beauty unites the opposing drives within man, and in doing so, creates the possibility of individual-and subsequently of collective or political-freedom. Schiller's belief in the power of the aesthetic is grounded in an acceptance and modification of both Platonic and "Kantian principles" (Schiller 3). In Plato's Republic, art is maligned as an imitation of the half-real visible world, which is itself an imitation of the forms. Thus, art is an imitation of an imitation. Schiller, a poet, play-wright and philosopher, cannot accept Plato's denigration of art. However, he sees in Plato's notion of justice as the harmony of the tripartite soul a possibility for human freedom through the reconciliation of our competing moti-vations or drives. Kant, the preeminent philosopher of Schiller's time, is preoccupied by what reason can know through reason alone. Schiller recognizes the importance of human reason but believes that a potentially equal force must counter it: feeling. Schiller sees in the human an opposition between sense and form; between feeling and reason. This opposition, Schiller thinks, must be harmonized for individual and collective freedom to be realized.
In Schiller's view, humanity is fractured between sensual and formal drives. Schiller's contemporaries recognize the concept of the formal drive, that of the rational faculty. However, Schiller postulates the existence of an additional and opposing drive that is rooted in feeling. Schiller begins his argument by showing that the heart, an organ of the sense-drive, provides access to the formal or rational drive: "the way to the head must be opened through the heart" (53). The two drives answer two main objectives. The first drive, the sense-drive, seeks to give "reality to the necessity within" and is rooted in "the physical existence of man, or his sensuous nature" (79). In contrast, the form-drive subjects the reality outside of the human to the law of necessity.
The sense-drive depicts the finitude of humanity. This drive represents the changing world of physical existence and sensory experience, of "time occupied by content" (79). If man were engaged solely in this drive, he would be a mere unit occupying a moment of time. All human potential would be lost to the sensation "swept along by the flux of time" (79). However, this drive also makes the balance between the two drives possible. Schiller believes that reason has reached its limit of accomplishment "by discovering [formal] laws" (49). In order to actually carry out what reason has discovered, the will must be coupled with feeling. A generation later, Hegel states "Nothing great has been accomplished in the world without passion" (26). Hegel's view can be likened to Schiller's: a great idea or law may be attained by reason, but the idea requires feeling, an activity of the sense-drive, to be achieved.
However, the form-drive is by no means subordinate even though it cannot exist effectively if independent. Just as the form-drive requires the sense-drive to implement its reason, so the sense-drive calls upon the form-drive. Out of sensation, "suppressed nature soon resumes her rights, and presses for reality of existence, for some content to our knowing and some purpose for our doing" (Schiller 81). The form-drive originates from human reason or the timeless and absolute existence of humanity. This drive provides agreement to the diversity of instances while establishing what is constant in all possible changes of condition. In contrast, the sense-drive pertains to an individual's relation to the physical world within a moment of time that is subject to change. The crucial feature of the form-drive is that it commands forever because the truth it espouses is not contingent on a condition, but is timeless and eternal:
But once [thought] says: this shall be, it decides for ever and aye-once you confess truth because it is truth [...] then you have made an individual case a law for all cases, and treated one moment of your life as if it were an eternity. (83)
The operating form-drive removes the individual from time because it elevates man's being to the unity of ideas that encapsulates all worldly phenomena-including time. Thus, when the form-drive is active, the individual is not in time; time is within the individual. The form-drive expresses the judgment of every mind for all time and thus expresses man as a species rather than an individual.
Because Schiller is responding to Kant, general similarities between the ideas of the two philosophers are to be expected. For example, the sense-drive seeks physical pleasures, is rooted in time, and operates according to the laws of nature. It bears a resemblance to Kant's hypothetical imperative. The hypothetical imperative treats an action as good only for a subjective purpose, for example, to obtain sensory pleasure. Such an outcome exists within time and is subject to the laws of nature. Expressed simply, both the sense-drive and the hypothetical imperative are rooted in a person's contingent ends. Kant dismisses the hypothetical imperative because its maxim, or subjective principle of action, relates merely to a desired end. The action is, in other words, not necessary for its own sake. Schiller, in contrast, does not dismiss his sense-drive entirely but shows that its very existence demonstrates the need for a form-drive, just as Kant's hypothetical imperative suggests the possibility of a categorical imperative.
Accordingly, Schiller's form-drive is comparable to Kant's categorical imperative. The form-drive refers to the world of moral necessity that occurs eternally and is based on reason. Kant's categorical imperative requires that the principles of our actions command categorically and absolutely even though the results of these actions might be unknowable. It is a command that derives its significance not from the outcome of an action but from the necessity of the imperative. Kant's categorical imperative commands universally. Similarly, Schiller explains that the form-drive
gives laws-laws for every judgment, where it is a question of knowledge, laws for every will, where it is a question of action [...] in both cases we wrest this condition from the jurisdiction of time, and endow it with reality for all men and all times, that is, with universality and necessity. (81-83)
Both the form-drive and the categorical imperative exist universally, timelessly and exclusively in form.
Although Kant and Schiller are pursuing different philosophical objectives, they both demonstrate an indi-vidual possibility that can be universalized. Kant is in search of a moral imperative without any proof that a moral action has ever occurred. Schiller is trying to show that a balanced approach to sensual feeling and formal reason can re-integrate humans towards their potential. If Kant can show that a categorical imperative commands each rational being universally, then he can postulate a kingdom of ends, which he defines as a union of rational beings under universal and self-legislated laws (Kant 39). Likewise, if Schiller can reconcile an individual's competing drives, then a new drive will emerge, and consequently a new human possibility: individual and collective freedom.
The drive that bridges the two opposed drives is the play-drive. Schiller believes that the dominance of either the sense-drive or form-drive leaves man unsatisfied, frag-mented, and slavish. The play-drive produces a reciprocal relationship between the two drives. This harmony creates "the most perfect of all works to be achieved by the art of man: true political freedom" (Schiller 7).
Considering the object of each drive will clarify the concept of the play-drive. Life is the sense-drive's object. In this instance life refers to "all material being and all that is immediately present to the senses" (101). In contrast, the object of the form-drive is form: "a concept which includes all the formal qualities of things and all the relations of these to our thinking faculties" (101). The play-drive must unite these two fundamentally opposed drives. Thus, its object must be "living form: a concept serving to designate all the aesthetic qualities of phenomena and [...] the widest sense of the term we call beauty" (101).
It is through the play-drive that the two opposing drives are brought into harmony with each other. The play-drive constrains the sense-drive and the form-drive so that they "act in concert [...] and set man free physically and morally" (97). When standing alone the sense-drive is limited and the form-drive is absolute. The play-drive makes each of the other two drives both limited and absolute. The result is that the human is then a creature not of opposition but of play. In a "reciprocal action [...] each [drive] in itself achieves its highest manifestation precisely by reason of the other being active" (95). The reciprocal relation of the play-drive does not simply align internal opposition within the human, it is also the prerequisite for "a complete intuition of human nature" (95). Schiller argues that the play-drive is the simultaneous "experience" of man in which he is "conscious of his freedom and sensible of his existence" (95). Through the play-drive the human can "feel himself [as] matter and come to know himself as mind," and in doing so obtains "a complete intuition of his human nature" (95).
But how can this harmony ever occur if the sense-drive exists in time while the form-drive exists eternally? To exacerbate this disagreement, the sense-drive insists that there shall be change while the form-drive "demands that time shall be annulled and that there shall be no change" (97). Schiller's response is that the play-drive resolves the tension between the other two drives. The play-drive must both exist in time and cancel time; it must annul "time within time" (97). There can be no opposition within the play-drive because it unites the sense-drive's temporality with the form-drive's absolute existence.
Having defined the play-drive, Schiller explains how the play-drive must be approached. Schiller describes a moment for both the individual and the species in which the sense-drive operates without the form-drive because "sensation precedes consciousness" (139). In order to be-come a human being, the physical necessity of the sense-drive must be replaced by a moral necessity that is based on reason. This union is demanded because it is the nature of reason to "insist on perfection and on the abolition of all limitation" (103). However, feeling cannot proceed directly to thought because "only through one determination being annulled again can a contrary determination take its place" (139-141). Moreover, if both "determining forces" were present they could cancel each other and thereby leave man without either drive (141). To approach the play-drive the human must be in a state of neither sense nor form. In this indeterminate state the human needs a vehicle to move toward the play-drive. The aesthetic is the "middle disposition" by which the human approaches the play-drive (141). The only way to make "sensuous man rational" is to "first [make] him aesthetic" (161).
For Schiller, the term aesthetic refers to the totality of phenomena that corresponds to physical or sensual character, the logical or formal character, and the willful or moral character. Most would readily accept that education or development is possible for these separate characters. However, Schiller is suggesting that an aesthetic education develops and harmonizes each. An aesthetic judgment contemplates an object by its "sheer manner" of being and not with respect to any applicable law or purpose (143). The aesthetic education develops the aesthetic character towards taste and beauty and in so doing, harmonizes the divided character of each individual.
Beauty leads the human to the aesthetic. If man is fully human when he is at play, then beauty will be the object of the play-drive. Since beauty is not exclusively matter or mind, it is the suitable object of the play-drive, which will unite the two opposing drives. It is the form-drive that pursues this unifying possibility for beauty; it is reason that says, "[w]ith beauty man shall only play, and it is with beauty only that he shall play" (107).
Although this argument may seem abstract, Schiller states its practical nature from the outset. Schiller believes that the political problems of the state are a reflection of an imbalance within the individuals of the state. In the Republic, a major influence for Schiller, Plato uses the city as a model to demonstrate the potential harmony of the soul. Schiller inverts this model by showing that on an individual level, the harmony of drives have the potential to create political freedom:
[I]f man is ever to solve that problem of politics in practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only though Beauty that man makes his way to Freedom. (9)
The individual and societal problems that concerned Schiller have intensified since Schiller's death. This makes his work even more relevant today than in his own lifetime. Of primary concern to Schiller is the danger of major political reform, the fragmentation of the individual for the benefit of an inadequate state, and the resulting need for an aesthetic education. I will comment on each of these issues in turn.
Schiller, aware of the bloodshed that followed the French Revolution, believes that any sweeping political reform, including revolution, is excessively dangerous. While he maintains that the states of Europe are states of compulsion rather than of freedom, he does not believe that a drastic action, which risks statelessness or tyranny, would meet his political goals. Schiller insists that the state requires drastic alterations yet must continue to function. Schiller likens the difficulty of this task to changing a wheel as it revolves (13). Schiller solves this problem by showing how the individual must change in order to improve the state. While the description of the moral state of freedom that he hopes to establish is vague, it does not require extensive description. The moral state will be the product of whole and free individuals. If we cannot conceive of such a state it is because we are neither whole nor free:
The development of man's capacity for feeling is, therefore, the dire urgent need of our age [...] because it provides the impulse for better-ing our insights. (53)
Having seen the fragmenting effect of the Industrial Revolution on the individual, Schiller perceives man's in-dividuality as sacrificed for the benefit of inadequate states. Schiller laments that most individuals perform very special-ized (and often monotonous) occupations at the expense of developing the harmony of their own natures (35). Consequently, Schiller states that the individual will become even more fragmented as occupations are further specialized until he is "nothing more than the imprint of his occupation" (35). The result of this phenomenon is that the individual is destroyed so that an inadequate state can prolong its unworthy existence.
In the Republic, Plato's ideal city excludes the artist and almost all types of art. According to Plato, a city directed towards truth is hampered by visual, poetic, and dramatic art, which attempt to imitate the secondary reality of the visible world and represent the less rational aspect of human nature. Art, more specifically, is a real and viable threat to the unity and harmony of the city and its members. Schiller's argument counters Plato's portrayal of art. Schiller argues that beauty unites the aesthetically educated man, harmonizes society, and allows reason to reach its potential:
Taste alone brings harmony into society, because it fosters harmony in the individual [...] only the aesthetic mode of perception makes of him a whole, because both his natures must be in harmony if he is to achieve it. All other forms of communication divide society [...] only the aesthetic mode of communication unites society because it relates to that which is common to all. (215)
An argument can be made that Plato, a masterfully artistic writer, may in some way agree with Schiller's assessment of the power of the aesthetic. After all, Plato concludes his argument condemning art with the Myth of Er, a story that reinforces the philosophical arguments of the entire work while moving the reader to an emotional acceptance of the argument that complements the reader's rational under-standing.
As poet and philosopher, Schiller attempts to reconcile the sensual and feeling drive of man with his formal and rational drive. Beauty, the object of the play-drive, is neither exclusively sense nor form, and thus can harmonize man's competing drives. Schiller believes that an aesthetic education that develops one's taste and beauty harmonizes individuals and consequently has the possibility of creating political freedom. Since man alone possesses sensual and formal drives, only man is capable of playing with beauty. For Schiller, the aesthetic education of man is required to solve fundamental individual and political problems, because only those affected by beauty can be happy and free.
Works Cited:
Hegel, G.W.F. (1988). Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Trans. L. Rauch. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc.
Kant, Immanuel (1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. J.W. Ellington. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company Inc.
Plato (1987). The Republic. Trans. D. Lee. London: Penguin Books.
Schiller, Friedrich (1989). On the Aesthetic Education of Man. Ed. and Trans. E.M. Wilkinson & L.A. Willoughby. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
