This was definitely challenging to get through, but worthwhile! I especially loved the ideas Schiller brought up about bringing together reason and emotion to make decisions because in their equal opposition, there's an opportunity for reflection you wouldn't get if you were automatically pulled in one direction or another. One of my favorite passages was- "The sensuous drive awakens with our experience of life (with the beginning of our individuality); the rational drive, with our experience of law (with the beginning of our personality); and only at this point, when both have come into existence, is the basis of man's humanity established. Until this has happened everything in him takes place according to the law of necessity. But now the hand of nature is withdrawn from him, and it is up to him to vindicate the humanity she implanted and opened up within him. That is to say as soon as 2 opposing fundamental drives are active within him, both lose their compulsion, and the opposition of two necessities gives rise to freedom" (143)
I'll probably reread it at some point cause there's definitely more to get out of it but for now I highly recommend!

Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy addressing beauty, taste, art and the sublime. After studying what philosophers have to say on this topic, it is refreshing to read the philosophical reflections on aesthetics by Friedrich Schiller (1769-1805), a man who was not only a first-rate thinker but a great poet and playwright. And Schiller tells us he is drawing his ideas from his life rather than from books and is pleading the cause of beauty before his very own heart that perceives beauty and exercises beauty's power.

Writing at the end of the 18th century, Schiller reflects on the bitter disappointment of the aftermath of the French Revolution where an entire society degenerated into violence. What can be done? As a true romantic, he sees beauty and art coming to the rescue.

Schiller writes how idealized human nature and character development is a harmonizing and balancing of polarities - on one side we have the rational, that is, contemplative thought, intelligence and moral constraint and on the other side we have the sensual, feeling, physical reality. Lacking this balance, harmony and character, Schiller perceives widespread disaster for both lower and higher social classes, that is, people of the lower classes living crude, coarse, lawless, brutal lives and people of the higher, civilized classes are even more repugnant, living lethargic, slothful, passive lives. Not a pretty picture, to say the least.

We might think scientists or hard working business people might stand a better chance at achieving balance, harmony and character. Sorry; the news is not good here either. Schiller writes, "But the predominance of the analytical faculty must necessarily deprive the fancy of its strength and its fire, and a restricted sphere of objects must diminish its wealth. Hence the abstract thinker very often has a cold heart, since he analyzes the impressions which really affect the soul only as a whole; the man of business has very often a narrow heart, because imagination, confined within the monotonous circle of his profession, cannot expand to unfamiliar modes of representation."

So, what must be done to restore a population's needed balance, harmony and character? Again, for Schiller, beauty and art to the rescue. One key idea in making beauty and art a central component of people's lives is what he terms `the play drive'. Schiller writes: "Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly man when he is playing" By play, Schiller doesn't mean frivolous games, like a mindless game of cards; rather, play for Schiller is about a spontaneous and creative interaction with the world.

To flesh out Schiller's meaning of play, let's look at a couple of examples. In the morning you consult your auto manual to fix a problem with the engine and then in the afternoon you examine a legal document to prepare to do battle in court. Since in both cases you are reading for a specific practical purpose or goal, according to Schiller, you are not at play. In the evening you read Shakespeare. You enjoy the beauty of the language and gain penetrating insights into human nature. Since your reading is not bound to any practical aim, you are free to let your imagination take flight and explore all the creative dimensions of the literary work. According to Schiller, you are "at play" and by such playing in the fields of art and beauty, you are free.

And where does such play and spontaneous creativity ultimately lead? Schiller's philosophy is not art-for-art's sake, but art for the sake of morality and freedom and truth. If Schiller could wave a magic wand, everybody in society would receive an education in beauty by way of art, literature and music. And such education would ultimately nurture a population of men and women with highly developed aesthetic and moral sensibilities who could experience the full breathe and depth of what it means to be alive. Or, to put it another way, with a restored balance, harmony and character, people would no longer be slaves to the little world of their gut or the restricted world of their head, but would open their hearts and directly experience the fullness of life. And experiencing the fullness of life, for Schiller, is true freedom.

How realistic is Schiller's educational program as a way of transforming society? Perhaps being realistic is not exactly the issue. After all, Frederick Schiller was an idealist. He desired to see a society of men and women appreciating art and beauty and having their aesthetic appreciation color everyday behavior, so much so that their dealings and activity in the world would serve as a model of noble, moral conduct for all ages. Not a bad vision.

Fairly boring set of letters on philosophy. To be honest, the introduction was more riveting than the content itself

It would undoubtedly have been difficult to find a better book to finish first in this new year, that would honourably follow Kierkegaard’s works on love which opened the end of last year, than these Letters on aesthetic education by Friedrich Schiller.

Herein, Schiller endeavours to describe being-human through an attempt at the reconciliation of various opposing qualities and activities of the human constitution. Which is exactly what my thesis for literature is about. And which is exactly the dynamic I intuited to be found in early German romanticism throughout my minor readings in/on that movement.

It’s both eerie, and thoroughly reassuring, that all my reading projects seem to come together in an answer to my own fundamental question I have articulated ever since I started studying philosophy and literature, and had since before; what is that which makes us human?

I’m looking forward to scrutinising this for my upcoming thesis in literature, and see where the process, alongside my inevitable personal reading and further development, will bring me afterwards, and in pursuit of my (final) thesis in philosophy.

I have now read this both in English and in German (as the Augustiner Briefe) and I have to admit it’s very difficult reading for me. I am not much of a philosopher and I tend to get lost in the babble. Sometimes I wonder if philosophers purposely write in a confusing manner to keep their study elite, like academic writing.

Having studied this piece in two different courses has widened my understanding of the text and I do have a handle on what Schiller is attempting to convey.

Regardless, I do like what Schiller is saying here and his belief in the importance of aesthetics clearly shows in his plays and other works. The balance between art and science is an important one and finding that ‘wow’ moment is worth studying both. It’s sad to see that today American society could use a good lesson in Schiller as we have neglected the humanities for too long now.

Libro magnífico, se pone denso en algunos momentos pero en otros tiene ideas geniales.
El ideal de belleza y el sentido de lo estético en nuestrasociedad me parece más que apropiado. Hoy en día necesario.
La importancia de más allá de tener una vida útil, funcional y progresar como sociedad. Tener una sociedad con individuos con vidas significantes, camino que se adquiere con la cultura estética sin duda.