About grace and dignity

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Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), posthumous portrait of Gerhard von Kügelgen from 1808/09

About Grace and Dignity (Original title: Ueber Anmuth und Würde ) is a philosophical work by Friedrich Schiller , which appeared in the journal Neue Thalia in mid-June 1793 . In the influential work, Schiller dealt extensively with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant for the first time . In addition to ethics , he primarily subjected aesthetics from the critique of judgment to critical appreciation.

With regard to the dual nature of man as a being of feeling and reason, Schiller wanted to explain human beauty in terms of grace and dignity . Schiller's emphatic concern was to reconcile the Kantian dualism between the physical and the spiritual-rational nature of man in a synthesis of the “ beautiful soul ” in which duty and inclination harmonized .

This essay already pointed to the main philosophical-aesthetic work On the Aesthetic Education of Man .

content

Beauty and grace

Sandro Botticelli (ca.1485)
The Birth of Venus

Using the example of the goddess Venus , Schiller differentiates between beauty and grace right from the start :

“The Greek fable attaches a belt to the goddess of beauty, which has the power to give grace and love to those who wear it. It is precisely this deity that is accompanied by the goddesses of grace or graces . The Greeks thus distinguished grace and graces from beauty, since they expressed such through attributes [...], All grace is beautiful [...], but not all beautiful is graceful. "

The goddess can transfer the belt to give the wearer the desired quality. Those who lacked grace, among other virtues, should sacrifice to the graces . Grace is therefore a "mobile beauty" that differs from the "fixed" that is "necessarily given" to humans. Since the belt retains its magical power even with “the unattractive ”, its effect can even help it move beautifully.

Starting from the holistic view of the Greek image of man , that every act is “at the same time an expression of his moral determination”, “ nature and morality , matter and spirit , earth and heaven flow together in the poetry”, Schiller arrives at the definition of grace as “one (r ) Beauty that is not given by nature, but is produced by the subject himself. "

He distinguishes this quality from the advantages of the body, such as the physique, the beautiful skin or the melodious voice, which one owes "only to nature and happiness."

In the following, Schiller goes into reason in its relationship to beauty. For Schiller, beauty has a double character: it belongs to nature as well as to the intelligible . She is to be regarded as “the citizen of two worlds, one of which she belongs to by birth and the other by adoption; it receives its existence in the sensual nature and gains citizenship in the rational world. "

Raffael 1504–1505
The Three Graces

Grace and grace - both of which are often used synonymously - are described several times in their interrelationship with the “architectural beauty” of the human being, and differentiated from it. In the case of architectural, external beauty, nature is determined by the necessity of the teleological purpose.

“Architectural beauty can please, it can be admired, it can arouse astonishment; but only grace will take you away. Beauty has worshipers; Lover has only grace; because we pay homage to the Creator and love people. "

Schiller uses the term “beautiful soul”, which was coined by Christoph Martin Wieland and was popular in 1793, as an abstract quantity and corrective :

"So in a beautiful soul it is where sensuality and reason, duty and inclination harmonize, and grace is its expression in appearance."

With Schiller, grace takes on a moral dimension, since it goes back essentially to man's actions and can therefore be viewed as his merit, as an ethical act of freedom . Freedom and beauty are mutually dependent, since “grace is always only the beauty of the figure moved by freedom”.

“So freedom now rules beauty. Nature gave the beauty of the building, the soul gives the beauty of the game. And now we also know what we mean by grace and grace. Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom; the beauty of those appearances that determine the person. The architectural beauty does the creator of nature, grace and grace do their owner honor. The former is a talent, the latter a personal merit. "

The will

In the further course of the treatise, Schiller explains the central concept of will . With his idealistic idea of human autonomy, he rubs himself against the rigorous moral law of Immanuel Kant and describes the relationship between sensuality and law as “servile”. Kant added a rigidity to the moral law which “only transforms the more powerful expression of moral freedom into a more laudable kind of bondage.” Schiller provocatively asks whether “the truly moral man has a freer choice between self-respect and self-rejection than the sensual slave between pleasure and pain " have.

Schiller places the human will at the center of his considerations. The will is a sublime concept that determines the essence of man and distinguishes him from animals:

“There is one more authority in man, namely the will, which as a supersensible faculty is neither subject to the law of nature nor to that of reason in such a way that he does not have a completely free choice to either conform to this or that . "

Would

With dignity , Schiller contrasts grace with a central term of Kantian ethics as a counterpart : “Just as grace is the expression of a beautiful soul, so dignity is the expression of a lofty disposition.” In contrast to Kant, Schiller formulates that man should himself strive to bring his two natures into harmony and to form a harmonious whole; but this is a mere idea which, because of his nature, he “can never quite achieve.” Nature “constantly assaults man with the power of pain and pleasure.”

Apollo statue, sculptures from ancient Greece as symbols of perfection

If Schiller had repeatedly distanced himself from Kant in the previous remarks, it now seems as if he is returning and praising precisely the element of limitation of instincts. Dignity appears as an expression of a sublime morality and is intended to tame the unleashed nature of man:

"Control of the instincts through moral force is freedom of the spirit, and dignity is its expression in appearance."

Schiller directly connects dignity with the already discussed concept of will and its freedom , which distinguishes humans from animals:

“The animal must strive to get rid of pain; man can choose to keep it. The will of man is a sublime concept, even if one does not pay attention to its moral use. The mere will alone raises man above beastliness; the moral one raises him to deity. "

If grace and dignity are combined in a person, "the expression of humanity is complete in him, and it stands there, justified in the spirit world and acquitted in appearance." This ideal of humanity is expressed in the ancient figures of gods, you can recognize it in the "divine figure of a Niobe " and the "Belvederic Apollo ." Schiller clarifies the dualistic character of the pair of terms - the feminine connotation and its male counterpart - with metaphors from the sphere of rule:

“With dignity, then, the spirit in the body acts as ruler, […] with grace, on the other hand, it rules with liberality because it is here who puts nature into action and finds no resistance to defeat. But only obedience deserves indulgence, and strictness can only justify opposition. So grace lies in the freedom of voluntary movements; Dignity in mastering the involuntary. "

Emergence

Despite an illness, Schiller wrote the essay in just under six weeks. As in other cases - such as the ghost seer - Schiller needed material for his magazine and therefore began to write it down.

Johann Caspar Lavater (1741–1801)

In his thesis from 1780, which was accepted as a dissertation , the attempt on the connection between the animal nature of man and his mental nature , Schiller had postulated that every sensation of human nature leads to a certain physical expression. Schiller did not rule out the physiognomics presented by Johann Caspar Lavater in principle; due to the diverse "capricious game (s) of nature", however, their completion in the foreseeable future is unlikely.

Based on clear examples of facial expressions , Schiller described how the affects had a direct physical effect and led to the "most secret touches of the soul on the outside of the body" being revealed. It is just as much a "law of wisdom" as an "indispensable guide" of "social life (s)" that benevolent emotions beautify the body, while "mean and hateful" distort it into "beastly forms". The further the "spirit is removed from the image of the deity", the closer its physical manifestation comes to the cattle. So the appearance of “the philanthropist” invites someone seeking help, while “the defiant look of the angry person scares everyone back”.

Schiller's preoccupation with Kant's philosophy, of which he had previously only known the early writings on the philosophy of history , led to a decisive turning point in his work in February 1791.

Christian Gottfried Körner was the addressee of the Kallias letters . Painting by Anton Graff

Christian Gottfried Körner had drawn his attention to the fact that Kant only describes beauty in terms of its effect on the subject , but does not examine the differences between beautiful and ugly objects .

In the first part of the Critique of Judgment , Kant had shown that aesthetic taste judgments relate to the recipient's feeling and are not objective judgments of knowledge about certain objects. Imagination and reason harmonized in a taste judgment; whoever is capable of such a judgment shows good taste. These judgments have no objective, but subjective generality . Kant put it: "What is generally pleasing without a term is beautiful."

In a letter to Körner in 1792, Schiller wrote that he had found the “objective concept of the beautiful, about which Kant despairs”, that he wanted to organize his thoughts and publish “in a conversation: Callias, or about beauty” a little later. It will turn out to be "a decent book the size of the visionary."

With the six Kallias letters , Schiller tried to redeem this claim and develop a theory of beauty. In his first letter of January 25, 1793, he described the problem of establishing an objective concept of beauty “and legitimizing it completely a priori from the nature of reason.” Beauty is “in the field of appearances”, at home where there is no space for platonic ideas . Beauty is a property of things, but a “thing without properties” is impossible. In the letters Schiller also formulated the familiar words that beauty is "freedom in appearance."

Schiller wanted to organize the correspondence into a dialogue and publish it, a plan which was not carried out and which was replaced by the essay with which the letters continued.

background

Immanuel Kant . Etching by Johann Leonhard Raab

With the treatise, Schiller summarized his previous engagement with Immanuel Kant. About grace and dignity can be viewed as a melting pot of his aesthetic views, in which reading influences from the works of Christoph Martin Wieland , Moses Mendelssohn and Johann Georg Sulzer can also be found. As in other writings, Schiller did not present his thoughts systematically and deductively, but rhapsodically .

In the Age of Enlightenment , religion increasingly lost its importance as the highest educational authority . So the leading philosophers sought an origin of morality that could be nourished from another source. Although Kant valued the moral influence of religion on humanity, it was not for him the essential determining factor of moral action. The moral law had to have its origin in freedom, since an act conditioned by religious belief would only be an expression of external control. Belief in God - as in the immortality of the soul - was a reasonable postulate of practical reason, but not the basis of morality.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

Despite certain differences, Kant and Schiller, Lessing and Herder agreed that they could find a natural history of freedom and thus morality. In the philosophy of history they were concerned with the question of how humanity could be educated.

To consider grace as a beautiful expression of movement of the soul is a thought that goes back to the moral philosopher Shaftesbury (1671–1713). Shaftesbury already renounced a theological justification of morality and was of the opinion that even atheists can act virtuously with a good upbringing. For this, however, a “noble upbringing” was necessary, with which “the highest perfection of grace and politeness” could be achieved. Schiller, the poet of freedom, did not associate grace with the higher class, although he admits the “exquisite circles” in some places of his aesthetic writings a better taste .

Winckelmann The only way to grow up is to imitate the old

The idea of ​​the "ideally beautiful" originating from Shaftesbury had prevailed with Johann Joachim Winckelmann . Winckelmann developed the model character of antiquity , which was so defining for the Weimar Classicism , which he represented with its ideal of “noble simplicity and quiet greatness” as exemplary for the present. The basic thesis of the book Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works , that contemporary art could only become great and inimitable itself by imitating "the ancients", was new because it referred to the Hellenic culture , while up to now it was mainly based on Roman antiquity . Winckelmann saw the fusion of nature and ideal in Greek art and enlivened the dispute between the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes with his theses .

The imitation of antiquity meant a higher figure of nature for Winckelmann, as the Greeks had completed nature speak and mapped, "as they demanded it." The Greeks had succeeded in what nature ( teleological striving) to obtain: the representation of the ideals in a general way. "The soul becomes more recognizable and significant in violent passions, but great and noble it is in the state of unity, in the state of rest." Greek antiquity should be a pattern that can be repeated under similar conditions. If the ideal of creative freedom were once again to become the principle of society, as it was with the Greeks, a culture could flourish again that would produce perfected works of sculpture and poetry , tragedy , philosophy and statecraft. This freedom is shown, for example, in the Laocoon group of figures : the figures remain beautiful even in the greatest pain of dying, just as the depths of the sea remain calm while the storm rages on its surface. The picture of the “beautiful soul” so designed by Winckelmann, which is in harmony with itself and the world, was the ideal of the classical period - a harmony of body and soul, me and the world, which was not superficially pleasing, but a unity in the turmoil of pain and significantly influenced Schiller.

Laocoon group : "Noble simplicity and quiet greatness"

Schiller referred several times to the gods of antiquity, described them again and again in poems - such as the gods of Greece - and praised them as an ideal that was partly lost and partly to be strived for. The ideal of humanity, the combination of grace and dignity in one person, was for him ideally represented in the gods sculptures. Winckelmann described this higher beauty, which arises from the “connection of grace with dignity”, without, however, distinguishing between grace and dignity.

Schiller derived his considerations from the Greek myth . The allegory and thus the art has been the philosophy of the medium. The poetry is the disclosure and at the same time critique of "unpoetic" states of presence.

In a critical review of Gottfried August Bürger's poems, he had already described the task of poetry to bring the “separate forces of the soul back into union”, “which occupies head and heart, sagacity and wit, reason and imagination in a harmonious union at the same time restores the whole human being in us. "

With the unifying myth, Schiller wanted to overcome the dualism of the “all-smashing” Kant, that irreconcilable split between nature and reason, beauty and grace, inclination and duty in order to restore the “whole person”. The need for harmony, reconciliation and synthesis are also due to the later works On Naive and Sentimental Poetry and "On Aesthetic Education of Man".

If duty and inclination conflict, the “beautiful soul” turns into a “ sublime ” one and has to pass a test. For Kant, sublimity is a complementary term to beauty , which refers to objects and events - mostly of nature - which, due to their sheer size, overwhelm a person's power of perception and make clear to him both his physical powerlessness and his inner freedom, like storming floods (dynamically sublime), mighty mountains, endless seas (mathematically sublime) and "the starry sky above me." The sight of these natural events increases the strength of man's soul and shows him a power of resistance that gives him courage to deal with the apparent "omnipotence of To be able to measure nature. ". The sublimity is not in nature, but in the mind of the human being, when he can become conscious of being superior to nature in himself - and thus also outside of himself.

The Schaubühne as a moral institution

With the text, Schiller also outlined the central part of his theory of drama : Against the background of the Kantian ethics, he viewed the theater as a “ moral institution ”. Although he followed Kant in saying that the moral force in man cannot be represented , since the supernatural withdraws from it . However, using the example of the beautiful and sublime soul, the theater can indirectly clarify the moral strength of man "through sensual signs to the mind".

With this essay, Schiller related the concept of beauty to the self-determined human being, but two years later he expanded it into a vision of an all-encompassing aesthetic culture. He was disappointed with the developments in post-revolutionary France and now wanted to work on true political freedom. The essay can be viewed as a step in this direction.

meaning

Theobald von Oer : The Weimar Musenhof , 1860 - Schiller reads in the Tiefurter Park; with cap, Wieland sitting on the far left of the temple of the Muses , Goethe standing on the right in front of the column .

The essay is one of Schiller's best-known aesthetic treatises and cemented his position as a leading art philosopher in Germany.

It can be regarded as the forerunner of the main philosophical work On the Aesthetic Education of Man , the first version of which Schiller was working on at the same time. Schiller solved the basic problem between matter and form discussed there by reconciling it with the concept of play . The game is an expression of art , art "a daughter of freedom." So what the beautiful soul does here is assigned to the game there.

A little later, Schiller placed the thoughts on art and beauty presented here in a critical historical-philosophical context and thus formulated an alternative to the social decadence of the century, especially those of the French Revolution.

Shaftesbury's idea of ​​the ideal and beautiful, which prevailed with Winckelmann, showed itself in Schiller as an attempt to indirectly bring reason to view as the beautiful soul . With this thought he contradicted Kant, who in his critique of knowledge had limited the possibilities of pure reason and rejected dogmatic metaphysics in order to instead point out a priori conditions for the possibility of experience: It is not things in themselves but their appearances that are perceived, the “ideas of reason “On the other hand, no adequate view could be given.

With his definition of beauty as "freedom in appearance", Schiller had found a criterion for the perception of beauty and thus got beyond Kant. The specific “refinement of the human being” was only achieved in the unifying form of grace and dignity . ( → see Kant and Schiller ).

Grace goes beyond the natural (architectural) beauty of the human being: it is neither an expression of reason and freedom on the one hand, natural beauty of form on the other; it is the synthesis of nature and freedom.

This thought concerns ethics as well as aesthetics. In both fields, Schiller distinguished himself from Kant with the aim of overcoming the division of human beings into body and mind, nature and freedom in a mediating manner. According to Schiller, the compelling character of the ethics of duty ( deontology ) could not be graceful , as the “idea of ​​duty” was presented with a “harshness” that “shrinks all graces from it.” Just as Schiller used Kant's purely subjective, inner concept of Wanting to objectify beauty, he intended to loosen its concept of morality from its rigidity and to reconcile it in the holistic image of grace. In this way, a person becomes a beautiful soul.

With the ideal of the beautiful soul , Schiller stands for a direction of German idealism that dealt with the Kantian ethics. German idealism held on to the connection between the good and subjective freedom, which was shaped by Kant, but also wanted to redefine the mediation between the good of the moral law and the finite actions of man. With Schiller's turn from the “inclination to duty”, sensuality was no longer to be measured only by the moral law, but should be directed towards the good. Sensual and finite, limited actions should no longer just remain suppressed, but enter into what is good and be reconciled with it.

reception

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant : The Graces keep a respectful distance

Since Schiller had primarily dealt with Kant in this work, his reaction was very important to him. On May 18, 1794 he wrote to Christian Gottfried Körner that Kant had dealt with the treatise in his religious essay and had defended himself against attacks. He spoke respectfully of the font and described it as a masterpiece, which pleased him very much.

As a natural being, man belongs to the realm of phenomena for Kant, but as a free being, which cannot be determined heteronomously , but whose will is subject to moral laws, he follows the voice of the ought. If practical reason only had what (weak) nature wanted anyway, it could not come from freedom, the direct cause of morality that cannot be proven but has an indirect effect. Practical reason thus ultimately leads to actions which, because of their reasonableness, are to be willed. For this reason - in order not to cancel itself out - freedom must reject mainsprings such as inclinations and joy. For Kant, actions of “sympathetic souls” that “spread joy around them” had no real moral value despite their amiability.

Kant was therefore not convinced by Schiller, as he wrote at the beginning of his religious essay in a note in which he explicitly referred to Schiller's work. He rejected his criticism of the “rigorism” of the mandatory term and took up a pair of Schiller's terms who had differentiated between “rigorists” and “latitudinaries”. He could not add grace to the concept of duty “precisely for the sake of his dignity [...]. Because it contains unconditional coercion, with which grace stands in direct contradiction. The majesty of the law (like that on Sinai) inspires awe (not shyness, which repels, nor excitement, which invites confidentiality), what respect the subordinate has for his master, but in this case, since this lies in ourselves, a feeling of the sublime of our own destiny awakens, which carries us away more than anything beautiful. ”The virtue as“ the disposition to fulfill one's duty exactly is also beneficial in its consequences […] and the glorious image of humanity […] even allows probably the accompaniment of the graces, who, however, keep themselves at a respectful distance when duty is still the only topic. "Kant saw the interplay of rational and sensual elements - combining virtue and" graces "- one of many duties.

19th century

Heinrich von Kleist : Grace becomes more radiant when the reflection in the world becomes darker and weaker

Heinrich von Kleist formulated an alternative to Schiller in his aesthetic work About the Marionette Theater . The profound conversation between a dancer and the first-person narrator described there revolves around the central question of the endangerment of grace through consciousness . The narrator illustrates this threat with the allegory of the puppet figure . The limbs of the puppet, which are only led by strings, follow, starting from the center, only the force of gravity, "an excellent quality that one looks for in vain in most of our dancers." Contrary to the metaphorical tradition, the puppet no longer stands for the mechanical, cold and inhuman, but rather serves as a corrective for overly exalted acting and appears as the ideal counter-image to the lively dancer, whose grace is disturbed by fear, shame and adornment. The dolls know nothing of the inertia of matter that otherwise opposes the dance and only needed the floor, "like the elves , to touch it, and the momentum of the limbs to revive through the momentary inhibition", while it is human impossible to achieve the same grace.

In order to portray the inhibiting influence of reflection on the grace of man, the narrator weaves in a narrative reminiscent of the myth of Narcissus , with which he clarifies the ideal of unconscious beauty that is produced as if by chance: a young, graceful man who As the narrator saw the statue of the thorn extractor shortly before , a splinter pulls out of the foot after bathing. A casual look in a mirror reminds him of the statue. The narrator, who also noticed this, causes him to repeat this figure to test his grace or to meet his vanity . But no matter how often he tries to consciously reach the original posture, he was “unable to bring out the same movement again.” In the next few days he stands in front of the mirror for a long time and visibly loses “the free play of his gestures” until after a year "no trace of the loveliness to be discovered in him".

Kleist distinguished himself with Schiller's essay in that he did not determine grace through the moral category of morality, but rather as a natural, unconscious action, the symbol of which is the puppet. The grace becomes more radiant when the “reflection in the world becomes darker and weaker.” Even according to Kleist's view, man cannot return to paradise by simply negating the spirit. The reconciliation of grace and consciousness sought by Schiller will then be possible when "knowledge has passed through an infinite". It is purest in the human body, which “either has no consciousness at all or has an infinite consciousness.” Against Schiller's idealistic hope, the absent-minded narrator ultimately raises the question of whether “we should eat from the tree of knowledge again ” to fall into the state of innocence ", which is affirmed by the dancer as" the last chapter of the history of the world. "

Goethe was not convinced by Schiller's essay

Goethe reacted negatively and referred to the great gap between his and Schiller's thinking. In 1817, twelve years after Schiller's death, he explained his relationship with Schiller in an autobiographical individual work that did not belong to poetry and truth . He had this contemplation, entitled Happy Event , printed in his magazine Zur Morphologie, through which he indicated that he was confronting Schiller as a viewer of nature. Goethe explained the initial difficulties in the relationship with Schiller, which would later be significant for cultural history, but which was not yet recognizable here. He spoke of his rejection of the robbers and Don Carlos , finally going into the philosophical script:

“His essay on grace and dignity was just as little a means of reconciling me. The Kantian philosophy, which elevates the subject so high by seeming to constrict it, he had taken up with joy; she developed the extraordinary that nature placed in his being, and he, in the highest feeling of freedom and self-determination, was ungrateful to his great mother, who certainly did not neglect him. Instead of considering them independently, living from the lowest to the highest, legally bringing about them, he took them from the side of some empirical human naturalities. I was even able to point to certain hard passages directly; they showed my creed in a false light; I felt it was worse when it was said without reference to me; for the enormous gap between our ways of thinking only complained all the more decisively. "

Hegel defined beauty as the "sensual shining of the idea"

For Hegel , the representative of objective idealism , beauty as an idea was a form of truth that was realized externally, had to emerge from pure thinking and gain objectivity. While Schiller had spoken of beauty as the "only possible (m) expression of freedom in appearance" in his main philosophical work , Hegel now defined it as the "sensual appearance of the idea."

In his lectures on aesthetics , he praised Schiller for "breaking through the Kantian subjectivity and abstraction of thought and daring to attempt to think beyond them, to grasp unity and reconciliation as the true and to realize it artistically."

With Schiller, the beautiful is recognized as the "integration of the reasonable and the beautiful" and this "integration is pronounced as the truly real."

While Friedrich Schlegel complained that the writing was "so completely exclusively a product of the understanding alone" and feared that if the emphasis was on the understanding, "heartless and marrowless rationalists" could arise, Wilhelm von Humboldt praised the treatise in high tones. About the aesthetic and the concept of beauty in "creating and acting, that is, about the foundations of all art, as well as about art itself, these works contain everything essential in a way that it will never be possible to go beyond."

20th and 21st centuries

For Thomas Mann it was Schiller's pathos of freedom that deterred Goethe. Schiller's concept of human dignity, which understood humanity and refinement in a revolutionary emancipatory way , had to have a repulsive effect on Goethe's aristocratic attitude towards life . In “Grace and Dignity”, Schiller placed sensual nature against spiritual grace. Schiller's “idealistic spiritual hatred of nature” was just as insulting for Goethe as the idea that grace cannot come from sensuality and that nature cannot rise to grace. Schiller described grace as a beauty that is not given by nature, but rather produced by the subjects themselves, and he distinguished it from the natural architectural necessity, which is only a talent but no merit. For Goethe this was an affront . In order to take the moralistic connotation of the word “merit”, Goethe spoke of “innate merits”. The aristocratic words should be understood in this sense : "How merit and happiness are linked, that never occurs to the fools."

Theodor W. Adorno : The reconciliation of morality and nature is not humane and innocent

Adorno's thinking was also shaped by the disparagement between Schiller and Goethe, which has been common since Nietzsche . If Nietzsche made fun of Schiller's pathos and noble gestures, ridiculed his idealism as the presumptuous conduct of German education and called him the “moral trumpeter of Säckingen”, Adorno saw in Schiller the inevitable supplier of stilted, inconsistent sentences and played Goethe against him as well . Schiller tied the " alienated story" to the human heart in order to justify its inhumanity. The “German tirade and sentence” is “imitated by the French, but practiced at the regulars' table .” The petty bourgeois play themselves in the idealistically high demands . The “reconciliation of morality and nature” sought by Schiller “against Kant and secretly in harmony with him” is not “as humane and innocent” as she believes.

In spite of its liberation tendencies and emphasis on human dignity, idealism dominated other areas. Kant and Schiller are jointly responsible for having displaced the natural beauty from aesthetics in favor of a “false reconciliation” that was achieved symbolically in the work of art . As a result, the subject was liberated and the conception of art was further developed, but the two spheres of subject and nature would suddenly face each other. Schiller's essay on grace and dignity marked a turning point here. Idealism left behind aesthetic devastation: everything that was not subjectively permeated was degraded to mere material and cleared away as unsuitable for art, even though art needed it.

The philosopher Otfried Höffe rejects Schiller's interpretation that according to Kant's principle of autonomy one should not have a natural inclination for moral actions. The one in the well-known distich : "I am happy to serve my friends, but unfortunately I do it with inclination / And so it often annoys me that I am not virtuous." The fears that echoed are based on a misunderstanding and ignore Kant's conviction that Tendencies towards what is dutiful can facilitate the effectiveness of moral maxims . Not if you also , but if you only help your friends and behave indifferently to the needs of others, you live heteronomously .

Matthias Luserke-Jaqui criticizes gender-typological clichés and classifications. Schiller initially understands grace in general as an expression of the beautiful soul, but then assigns it to female virtue , which he contrasts with “male” dignity. The bond of the beautiful soul to the delicate female physique is not without an involuntary comedy. It also remains incomprehensible why Schiller, who tended towards antithetical pairs of opposites (naive - sentimental), made a distinction on the normative level between grace and dignity, when these can occur and occur together in people.

Song of the bell : "The boy proudly tears himself off the girl"

The gender and role clichés are mainly known from Schiller's ( thought ) poetry , such as the famous song from the bell , which speaks of "chaste housewives", of tender worries of motherly love and proud boys who storm out into life, or the epigram power of women :

"I expect strength from the man who asserts the dignity of the law / But through grace alone the woman rules and rules."

A basic problem of the text for Luserke-Jaqui is Schiller's philosophical argument, which is complicated by the aesthetic penetration of moral maxims and the apodictic , normative style of the essay. Schiller formulates “laws” as aesthetic principles with which he underlines his normative aesthetics. At the points where Schiller apparently only describes, he also formulates normative expectations. A formulation like “grace is” must therefore be understood like “grace must be”, an assertoric judgment goes over into an apodictic one . In addition, Schiller invokes ultimate justifications , such as a “law that we cannot fathom”, which appeal to the evidence .

Schiller himself recognized the problem of his text a little later and referred to the interplay between philosophy and poetry, which gave him an "awkward reputation": "[...] because the poet where I wanted to philosophize and the philosophical spirit usually rushed me, where I wanted to write poetry. ”Although this essay was to be followed by more, he confided to Goethe in 1794 that in philosophy“ everything is so strict, so rigid and abstract, and so highly unnatural ”,“ because all nature is only synthesis and all philosophy is antithesis . "

literature

Text output

  • Friedrich Schiller: About Grace and Dignity (Complete Works; Vol. 5 Philosophical Writings, Mixed Writings). Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-538-05177-1 .
  • Friedrich Schiller: Kallias or about beauty. About grace and dignity . Reclam, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-15-009307-4 .

Secondary literature

  • Peter-André Alt : Schiller. Life, work, time; A biography . Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-53128-8 (2 vols., Here especially vol. 2, pp. 104–111).
  • Götz-Lothar Darsow: Friedrich Schiller . Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-10330-7 (also dissertation Berlin 1999).
  • Diana Schilling, About Grace and Dignity (1793) , in: Schiller Handbook, Life - Work - Effect, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui, Metzler, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-476-01950-0 , pp. 388–398

Web links

Wikisource: On Grace and Dignity  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, On Grace and Dignity, p. 231, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings, Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  2. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity, p. 233, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings, Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  3. ↑ a b c Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity, p. 235, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings, Vermischte Schriften, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart.
  4. ↑ a b c Friedrich Schiller, On Grace and Dignity , p. 240, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings and Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart.
  5. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity , p. 241, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings and Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  6. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity , p. 266, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings and Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  7. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity , p. 265, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings and Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  8. ↑ Schiller Handbook, Life - Work - Effect, About Grace and Dignity , p. 391, Metzler, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui Stuttgart, 2001
  9. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity , p. 243, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings and Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  10. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity , p. 267, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings and Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  11. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity , p. 277, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings and Mixed Writings, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  12. ↑ Literary knowledge for school and study, Friedrich Schiller, Interpretations, Philosophische Schriften, Über Anmut und Würde , p. 151, Reclam, Stuttgart 1999
  13. ↑ Matthias Luserke-Jaqui, Friedrich Schiller, the essayistic work , 5.7. Kallias Letters and About Grace and Dignity, p. 244, A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen, 2005
  14. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, attempt on the connection between the animal nature of man and his spiritual, § 22, Physiognomik der Sensungen, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophische Schriften, Vermischte Schriften, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart, p. 71
  15. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, experiment on the connection between the animal nature of man and his spiritual, § 22, Physiognomik der Sensungen, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophische Schriften, Vermischte Schriften, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart, p. 69
  16. ↑ Matthias Luserke-Jaqui, Friedrich Schiller, the essayistic work , 5.7. Kallias Letters and About Grace and Dignity , A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen 2005, p. 245
  17. ↑ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Analysis of the Beautiful, § 9, Works in Six Volumes, Volume 5, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1983, p. 298
  18. ↑ Schiller manual, Life - Work - Effect, Kallias, or about beauty, Metzler, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui Stuttgart, 2001, p. 382
  19. ↑ Quoted from: Matthias Luserke-Jaqui, Friedrich Schiller, Das essayistische Werk, 5.7. Kallias Letters and About Grace and Dignity, S, 245, A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen, 2005
  20. ↑ Matthias Luserke-Jaqui, Friedrich Schiller, the essayistic work, 5.7. Kallias Letters and About Grace and Dignity, A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen 2005, p. 247
  21. ^ LW Beck, Kant's “Critique of Practical Reason”, Moralische Erbildung, XII. The aesthetics of pure practical reason , Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich, 1974, p. 218
  22. ↑ Schiller Handbook, Life - Work - Effect, About Grace and Dignity , Metzler, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui Stuttgart, 2001, p. 392
  23. ↑ Quotation from Kindler's new literature lexicon , vol. 17, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Thoughts on the imitation of Greek works in painting and sculpture , p. 740, Kindler, Munich 1992
  24. ^ Rüdiger Safranski, Schiller or the invention of German Idealism , Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2004, p. 284
  25. ↑ Schiller Handbook, Life - Work - Effect, About Grace and Dignity , p. 390, Metzler, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui Stuttgart, 2001
  26. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, Über Bürgers Gedichte, p. 677, Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings, Vermischte Schriften, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart
  27. ↑ Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, On the Dynamically Sublime of Nature § 28 , Works in Six Volumes, Volume IV, Writings on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 349
  28. ↑ Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment, Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, On the Dynamically Sublime of Nature § 28 , Works in Six Volumes, Volume IV, Writings on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1983, p. 353
  29. ^ Kindler's new literary lexicon, Vol. 14, sv Friedrich Schiller, About Grace and Dignity , p. 942, Kindler, Munich 1991
  30. ↑ Schiller Handbook, Life - Work - Effect , About Grace and Dignity , Metzler, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui Stuttgart 2001, p. 398
  31. ^ Rüdiger Safranski, Schiller or the invention of German idealism , Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2004, p. 371
  32. ^ Friedrich Schiller, Aesthetic Education of Man , Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings, Vermischte Schriften, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart, p. 313
  33. ↑ Literary knowledge for school and study, Friedrich Schiller, Interpretations, Philosophische Schriften, Über Anmut und Würde , p. 152, Reclam, Stuttgart 1999
  34. ↑ Schiller Handbook, Life - Work - Effect, About Grace and Dignity , Metzler, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui Stuttgart 2001, p. 388
  35. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, On Grace and Dignity , Complete Works, Volume V., Philosophical Writings, Vermischte Schriften, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart, p. 262
  36. ^ Rüdiger Safranski, Schiller or the Invention of German Idealism , Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 2004, p. 368
  37. ^ Historical dictionary of philosophy, Gut, das Gute, das Gut, Vol. 3, p. 964
  38. ↑ Schiller Handbook, Life - Work - Effect, About Grace and Dignity , Metzler, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui Stuttgart 2001, p. 397
  39. ^ Rüdiger Safranski, Schiller or the invention of German idealism , Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2004, p. 370
  40. ↑ Immanuel Kant, The Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason , First Piece, Annotation, Works in Six Volumes, Volume IV, Writings on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion , Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1983, pp. 669-670
  41. ↑ LW Beck, Kant's “Critique of Practical Reason” , Notes, XII. The aesthetics of pure practical reason, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 1974, p. 297
  42. ^ Heinrich von Kleist, About the Marionette Theater , Works and Letters in Four Volumes, Vol. 3, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1995, p. 476.
  43. ^ Kindler's new literary lexicon, vol. 9, sv Heinrich von Kleist, About the Marionette Theater , p. 489, Kindler, Munich 1990
  44. ^ Heinrich von Kleist, About the Marionette Theater , Works and Letters in Four Volumes, Vol. 3, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1995, pp. 478–479.
  45. ^ Kindler's new literary encyclopedia, Vol. 9, sv Heinrich von Kleist, About the Marionette Theater , Kindler, Munich 1990, p. 489
  46. ^ Heinrich von Kleist, About the Marionette Theater , Works and Letters in Four Volumes, Vol. 3, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1995, p. 480.
  47. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Autobiographical Details, Happy Event , Goethe's Works, Hamburg Edition, Volume 10, CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 539
  48. ^ GWF Hegel Lectures on Aesthetics I, The Idea of ​​Beauty , Vol. 13 Theory work edition by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel in twenty volumes, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 151
  49. ↑ GWF Hegel Lectures on Aesthetics I , Vol. 13 Theory work edition by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel in twenty volumes, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 89
  50. ↑ GWF Hegel Lectures on Aesthetics I , Vol. 13 Theory work edition by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel in twenty volumes, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 91
  51. ↑ Quoted from: Schiller-Handbuch, Leben - Werk - Effect, About Grace and Dignity , Metzler, Ed. Matthias Luserke-Jaqui Stuttgart 2001, p. 397
  52. ↑ Thomas Mann, Collected Works in Thirteen Volumes, Volume 9, speeches and essays, "Goethe and Tolstoi" , Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 100
  53. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Götzen-Dämmerung, Der Fall Wagner, Götzen -ämmerung, Der Antichrist, Ecce homo, Critical Study Edition , Vol. 6, Ed .: Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, dtv, Munich 1988, p. 111
  54. ^ Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, Reflections from the damaged life, Staatsaktion , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1997, p. 188
  55. ^ Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, Reflections from the Damaged Life, Schwabenstreich , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1997, p. 110
  56. ^ Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik , eds. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1997, p. 292
  57. ^ Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , eds. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1993, p. 98
  58. ^ Friedrich Schiller, Poems, Classical Poetry , Complete Works, Volume III., Poems, Stories, Translations, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart, p. 256
  59. ^ Otfried Höffe, Immanuel Kant , Die Autonomie des Willens, Beck, Munich 1988, p. 201.
  60. ↑ Matthias Luserke-Jaqui, Friedrich Schiller, the essayistic work, 5.7. Kallias Letters and About Grace and Dignity , A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen 2005, p. 250
  61. ↑ Friedrich Schiller, Power of Woman , Complete Works, Volume III., Poems, Stories, Translations, Deutscher Bücherbund, Stuttgart, p. 202
  62. ↑ Quoted from: Matthias Luserke-Jaqui, Friedrich Schiller, Das essayistische Werk, 5.7. Kallias Letters and About Grace and Dignity , A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen, 2005, p. 252
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