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ART. VI.-THE ÆSTHETIC MOTIVE IN SCHILLER'S ETHICAL THOUGHT

It would be quite impossible to gain an adequate understanding of Schiller's ethical thought or of the poet's significance in the development of modern philosophical speculation unless the poetic quality of his temperament and the æsthetic point of view which was so striking a characteristic of all his reflective activity were clearly apprehended and constantly kept in view. There was in his make-up, to quote the words of a distinguished modern writer,1 "that wonderful blending of the artistic spirit, in which lay his affinity with Goethe, and of the strenuous character in which he resembles Fichte, and which prepared him, as it did Fichte, for the understanding of Kant." The deep vein of the heroic in his nature was tempered and refined by close contact with the Greek spirit, into which his sympathetic study of classical literature had brought him, and, while he retained what seems almost an inspired enthusiasm for the morally heroic, he also developed that exquisite sensitiveness for the external shapes of beauty, a shock to which could not be atoned for by any act or situation, no matter how self-forgetful or sublime.

It is this quality of Schiller's genius, already discoverable, as I have elsewhere shown,2 in the earliest writings of his school period but reaching greater maturity under the influence of Hellenism and of Goethe, to which must be directly attributed the advance upon the harsh formalism of the ethical system of Kant which it is unquestionably the merit of Schiller to have inaugurated. For in spite of a verbal coincidence of many passages in the two men's writings, and notwithstanding the opinion of careful writers like Drobisch3 and Meurer and, more recently, of E. Kühnemann, we have not, I think, a mere reproduction in Schiller, in a more rhetorical dress, and perhaps quite spontaneous,

5

Windelband, Gesch. d. neueren Phil., Vol. II, p. 248.

Phil. Rev., XV, 3, p. 277 ff.

Ü. d. Stellung Schiller's zur Kantischen Ethik, in Ber. ü. d. Verà. d. K. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss., Leipzig, 1860.

Das Verhältnis d. Schiller'schen zur Kant'schen Ethik, Freiburg i. B., 1880. 'Schiller's Philosophische Schriften u. Gedichte, Leipzig, 1902.

of the round of Kantian ethical conceptions, but a real advance of first importance-an advance which consists, on the psychological side, in a fuller recognition of the essential unity of human nature, of the significance and rights, in the moral life, too much neglected by Kant, of the desiderative or sensuous side of man's nature, and of the possibility of educating this to the point where it will not be the antagonist of reason, but an integral part of the complete moral character; on the moral side, in the concrete synthesis of law and end, the dutiful and the good, a synthesis which, speaking broadly, characterizes the whole trend of post-Kantian and of contemporary ethical thought. When a recent writer1 speaks of the end of life as "an ideal of character, to be realized by the individual; and his attitude to it one of obligation to realize it. . . not something to be got or to be done but to be or to become," he but restates the favorite thought of Schiller that "man's destiny is not to perform individual moral actions, but to be a moral being; virtue, not virtues, is his task, and virtue is nothing but an inclination to duty." The ideal of the harmonious unfolding of the soul, then, as the supreme end of life, the ever memorable basic idea of Greek ethics, as Höffding calls it,3 constitutes Schiller's contribution to modern ethical philosophy. Nor is it in the critical insight into the defects of the Kantian ethics, and the fuller recognition of the rights and possibilities of human nature, that the main merit of Schiller lies. Through his lofty exposition, in prose and in verse, of the principles and ideals of art and morality these have become the common possession of the German people, and are destined to exert their influence wherever the knowledge of German letters extends. The point of departure for Schiller's criticism of Kantian morality is his investigation into the objective nature of the beautiful, the philosopher's stone, as Körner called it," the failure to discover which formed a gap in Kant's theory of æsthetic. This objective characteristic Schiller professes at length to have discovered in the semblance of autonomy

James Seth, Ethical Principles, p. 16. 2Werke, Goedeke ed., Vol. X, 99 ff.

The Problems of Philosophy, p. 162.

For further confirmation of the view of the historical significance of Schiller presented here see Höffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Vol. II, 122, 130 ff.; Hettner, Gesch. d. d. Literatur, Drittes Buch, Erster Abschnitt, Zweite Abteilung. 141 ff.; Paulsen, System of Ethics, Intro.; Hegel, Aesthetik, 1, 78, 80, quo. by Bosanquet, Hist. of Aesthetic, 287.

Letter to Schiller, March 13, 1791.

"Beauty," he

or self-determination of the beautiful object. announces to Körner, December, 1792, "is nothing else than freedom-in-the-appearance." In order to be beautiful the object must not appear to suffer any determination from without, but must convey, by its form, a suggestion of freedom. Not that subordination to law (Regelmässigkeit) is incompatible with beauty: it is even essential to the object of æsthetic appreciation that it should conform to law. Only there must be no sensible restraint exercised by an external power. The law must be the law of the object's own nature, and each beautiful thing must represent, as it were, a kingdom of freedom. Now what holds true of the art object applies also to conduct. In order to have beauty of conduct, the external expression of the harmonious soul, of which Schiller the artist is in search, no sort of restraint must be exercised either by reason or by sense, by spirit or by nature. The action which is prompted solely by reverence for the moral law is good and meritorious, and there arise exigencies in every person's life when such conduct is demanded. But the slavery of our sensuous nature is as humiliating as the slavery of our reason, and perfect freedom is found only when the act proceeds from the character of man in its entirety; from the character in which sense and reason, inclination and duty, are in perfect accord. Inclination to duty-that is the heart of Schiller's ethics and the gist of his criticism of the Kantian rigorism in which the two terms form an irreconcilable antithesis. Kant's moral ideal yields to the æsthetic ideal, the dutiful to the beautiful soul, submission to expression, It is not until reason is so completely humanized that it will render due respect to instinct, and instinct so completely rationalized and disciplined that it will execute with ease and precision those actions which, if it were not so disciplined, reason would, in its capacity as intelligence, be obliged to demand-not until subjection, in short, gives place to perfect liberty and man is at peace with himself—that the ideal of humanity is fully realized.

It is the beautiful soul that Schiller celebrates in a number of poems whose dash and finish bear witness to the enthusiasm with which he contemplated this ideal of his poetic nature. The complete blending of freedom and law is symbolized in the well

known poem Der Tanz, whose noble ease and smoothly flowing rhythm is itself the best illustration of the ideal it glorifies. The buoyant movement of the dance represents primarily the entire domain of the fine arts in which submission to rule and glad freedom of expression are united as in the playful movements of the dance forms. But as in art we obey the law of nature with gladness so also should it be in conduct, which, from one point of view, may be considered as one of the fine arts, and not the least noble. Perhaps the most significant of these poems from a philosophical point of view, though less perfect in workmanship than the little poem just mentioned, is Der Genius, at first called by the more suggestive title Natur und Schule. Can knowledge only and the wooden systems, the question runs, lead to true peace? Must I mistrust impulse, the law which nature herself has written in my bosom, unless it squares with the rule, "till the school's signet stamp the eternal scroll"? The time, indeed, when feeling was a sufficient guide is gone; nature now yields her truth only to him who seeks her with a pure heart. But, the genius adds, if thou hast not lost thy guardian angel from thy side, if thy heart's childhood can yet rejoice in sweet instinct with its warning voice, then go hence in thy innocence:

"Dich kann die Wissenschaft nichts lehren. Sie lerne von dir! Jenes Gesetz das mit ehrnem Stab den sträubenden lenket, Dir nicht gilt's. Was du thust, was dir gefällt, is Gesetz-" These thoughts are repeated in endless variety, and may be found in many places both in the shorter poems and in the dramas. One or two further examples must suffice here. From the Votivtafeln:

"Uber das Herz zu siegen ist gross, ich verehre den Tapfern;
Aber wer durch sein Herz siegt, der gilt mir doch mehr."

From the last poem Schiller wrote, Die Huldigung der Künste: "Doch schön'res find ich nichts, so lang is wähle,

Als in der schönen Form-die schöne Seele."

Schiller is not content, however, with a merely psychological description of the beautiful soul, or with demanding for this an honorable place in the moral life; he addresses himself also to the all-important problem of how the perfect culture characteristic of this, the highest ideal of humanity, is to be accomplished. The

education of man through the instrumentality of art was a favorite subject of Schiller's reflection from the very first writings to the last. It was touched upon in the school essays of the Stuttgart period,1 discussed rather elaborately in the essays on the influence of the stage,2 and given poetic expression in Die Künstler, which has justly been considered among Schiller's noblest poems. The subject is taken up again in a more extended way in the Letters on Esthetic Education, published in 1795. The truth is that, while the Letters cover more than a hundred pages, Schiller never fairly faces his problem, and he discusses it even more scantily than it deserves. The purely sensuous condition, we are told, is one of restraint, and it becomes the first care of the moral pedagogue to break the power of sense, so that man may be enabled to fulfill his vocation as a moral being. The instrument or agency by which this is accomplished is art. "It is one of the most important objects of culture to subject man in his purely physical existence to the influence of form . . to make him æsthetic, because it is only from the æsthetic condition, not from the physical, that man can pass into a state of morality."" Not that the æsthetic condition is of any positive and direct significance either for knowledge or for the will: it is perfectly indifferent and fruitless; it discovers not a single idea and helps to fulfill not a single duty. All it does is to give man back to himself, as it were, to restore his freedom, so that he can make of himself what he will. In the æsthetic condition, as Schiller likes to express it, man is zero, but he is thus prepared to become all things; and, small as the gift may seem that art bestows on man, it is really infinite. In this condition man is devoid of interest (interesselos), in the language of Kant; both the sensuous and the moral needs are canceled, for the time being, and the transition from the physical to the moral state thus becomes a possibility. Kant, too, regarded the new birth, the transition, that is, from nature to morality, as an inexplicable act of the intelligible character. But the aid which Kant sought in religion Schiller sought to supple

Die Philosophie der Physiologie, 1779, and Über den Zusammenhang der tierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner geistigen, 1780. U. d. gegenwärtige deutsche Theater, 1782, and D. Schaubuhne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet, 1784. Aesthetische Briefe, 23.

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