About the aesthetic education of man

On the aesthetic education of man is a treatise by Friedrich Schiller in the form of a letter, which deals with Kant's aesthetics and the course of the French Revolution .

Initially, Schiller wanted to deal with the central topic of aesthetics or beauty in a book entitled “Callias or About Beauty” and refute Kant's statement that “beauty” and “taste” are subjective. Kant's dualism of intelligible and empirical world, reason and sensuality, corresponds to Schiller's juxtaposition of the concepts of necessity and freedom, sensuality and reason, imagination and cognitive faculties, arbitrariness and law, and nature and culture. Schiller's moral-philosophical, anthropological, and historical-philosophical reflections are presented most extensively in the letters “On the Aesthetic Education of Man”. He protests against the forced dictation of reason in the Enlightenment as well as against the arbitrariness of the senses and nature. This shows his examination of the course of the French Revolution . He is disappointed with their outcome and, in his letters on aesthetic education, turns against the arbitrariness of an aristocratic state as well as against the rule of a people that politically could not meet the demands of the reason demanded by the Enlightenment. In the letters “On the Aesthetic Education of Man” he tries to explain why the French Revolution failed and France did not bring the promised humanity .

Origin and edition history

The letters on the aesthetic upbringing of man go back to the letters to the Prince of Augustenburg , which Schiller wrote between February and December 1793. After the loss of these letters in the fire in Christiansborg Palace ( Copenhagen ) on February 26, 1794, Schiller began a new version, but with major changes compared to the original version, of which only a copy exists. Letters 1-9 appeared in January 1795 in the first part of the Horen , letters 10-16 in the second. The last letters (17-27) Schiller published in June 1795 in the sixth piece under the title Die schmelzende Schönheit . Schiller planned a splendid edition for the Prince of Augustenburg, but it was never made. In 1801 the treatise on the aesthetic education of man appeared in a series of letters in book form in the third part of the collection of smaller prosaic writings .

Overview of the letters

Schiller's first letter as a facsimile from the Horen .

1st to 5th letter

Schiller explains the discrepancy between nature and reason: on the one hand there is nature of most people with the need for the satisfaction of their instincts - on the other hand, as an achievement of culture, there is the reason of less ruling people, who have their own nature and subjugate those of other people. Nature and reason each form a “state of need” if they are not related to one another.

1st letter : Schiller introduces the theme of the letters, namely his "Investigations into beauty and art" dealing with "Kantian principles".

250th birthday of Friedrich Schiller with a quote from the 2nd letter: German postage stamp from 2009

In the 2nd letter it says that man can only reach freedom through beauty.

3rd letter : A moral culture cannot be imposed and the dictatorship of reason is no way out, because it robs man of his nature.

4th letter : Moral uniformity and moral confusion can only be prevented by the totality of character . Aesthetic education starts here by working sensually and sensibly at the same time. That is, in order to change society, one must start with the individual in order to achieve a transition between a repressive “state of need” and a permanent moral state of freedom. The point is to refine the character so that the person is ready to act morally and not act like a “barbarian” whose principles destroy his feelings, or like a “savage” whose feelings dominate his principles.

5th letter : He deplores both the unnatural nature of the "civilized classes" who selfishly defend their property and their rights, as well as the very nature of the "lower and numerous classes" who act only according to their crude lawless instincts.

6th to 10th letter

Schiller deals with the social and cultural realities of his time and sets out in search of an objective concept of beauty in order to clarify how beauty can be a necessary condition for freedom.

6th letter : The unity of the "senses" with the "spirit" of the ancient Greeks has developed further through the progress of science and the state system to the detriment of the individual, who can only develop a part of his talents. The separation of individual sciences, of church and state, of laws and morals on a social level alienates people through division of labor and specialization; the division into classes alienates him from the harmony inherent in him, the unity between body and mind. Man becomes “an imprint of his business, his science”. The theorist has a “cold heart” because he dissects the whole thing and is thus robbed of its emotional impact, while the businessman has a “narrow heart” because he cannot look beyond his horizon and see the whole thing. Progress must not come at the expense of the individual.

7th letter : The individual disadvantages of social developments cannot simply be resolved, but mean development and are "a task for more than a century".

8th letter : Reason as an achievement of the Enlightenment has freed itself from the delusions of the senses, but philosophy as epistemology in the age of the Enlightenment points back the way to nature. "Sapere aude" (Latin; "Have the courage to use your own understanding!"; Lit .: "Dare to know!") Is the path that must be followed. The working people, however, lack the “energy of courage” because they are too tired from the struggle with hardship, while the state and priesthood do not want to give up their power. An enlightenment of the mind must be judged according to how it shapes the character. It is also based on the opposite of the character, "because the way to the head through the heart must be opened."

9th letter : An improvement in the political situation can only come from the "refinement of character". Schiller asks himself how this can develop under a barbaric state constitution. “This tool is fine art” because, like science, it is immune to “the arbitrariness of people”. Man can restrict the conditions for their exercise, but not determine their content and goals: "Truth and Beauty". The artist must not himself become a victim of his time, but must follow the idealism of his heart and demonstrate "steadfast courage"; so he gives “the direction to the good”. Then “the calm rhythm of time will bring about the development” that is necessary for a lived humanism.

10th letter : He turns against representative and purpose-related art, since it is no longer committed to the truth. In his age man walks on both astray, "here of the brutality" of the lower classes, "there of the slackness and perversity" of the civilized classes, contrary to his real destiny. Beauty is supposed to get people out of this “double aberration”, in which way is not answered at this point. Schiller refutes the assertions of Schiller's contemporaries that the refinement of morals, as a result of a developed feeling for beauty, leads to liberality, using examples from ancient peoples and more recent nations, in which “beauty only rests on the decline of heroic virtues “And grew out of the loss of political freedom. In the following he questions the concept of beauty, because the beauty that can be experienced does not seem to have the desired consequences, and concludes that there must be beauty that is not based on experience, but can be "shown as a necessary condition of humanity" .

11th to 16th letters

Here Schiller develops the ideal of beauty as an ideal of humanity. Both basic instincts, affectionality and rationality, must be accepted because they are fundamental to humans. What is necessary is a “ play instinct ” which, as a “living figure” in the aesthetic “play”, unites instinct-satisfying “happiness” and moral “perfection” (cf. Noetzel 1992, p. 63 f.). Aesthetic play makes people humane People. The "living figure" is the "ideally beautiful", the beauty in the broader sense that is not based on experience, and differentiates the tangible beauty into the "melting beauty", the beauty in the narrower sense, and the "energetic beauty", which is the gives power to both basic instincts "sensual instinct" and "form instinct".

In the 11th letter , Schiller takes up his thoughts on the essence of the human being and describes it as a system of “person” or personality, spirit, what remains and “state” or change, matter, changing. Time is the condition by which persistent matter can develop into every possible state. The achievement of all possible states is the “disposition to the deity” in man and the way there leads through the “senses”, even if man can never become godlike. The senses as the disposition of matter, without which the human being is “only form”, forms the prerequisite for the union of matter and spirit. In order to stand out from nature, man must give his body spirit and give the spirit "reality" through its sensory system and thus anchor it in the body. He must alienate the inside - "absolute reality" - and shape the outside - "absolute formality".

12th letter : In order to fulfill this task there are two basic instincts in man: (a) The "sensual" instinct strives for change, but is attached to matter and gives matter "content" in the course of time. The time filled with content “is called sensation”. (b) The “form instinct” strives for freedom from the body, the suspension of time, for harmony and constancy in change, so that people or matter can assert themselves in all external changes and retain their identity. This happens because the “form instinct” gives the sensation legality (“truth” and “right”).

13th letter : The task of culture is to mediate between the two instincts by developing the "faculty of feeling" and also of the "faculty of reason". This has to be done as diverse as possible so that the person receives the greatest possible independence and freedom. Neither of the two basic instincts should predominate because they are mutually dependent. If one drive predominates, it destroys the other and the person is no longer complete in the sense of Schiller.

14th letter : The balance between the two drives makes it possible for people to experience their “destiny”. The human being becomes “a symbol of executed determination”. The “play instinct” is the unifying drive, in that it uses the sensation and suffering of the “sensual drive” and the self-activity and freedom of the “form drive”.

15th letter : The “play instinct” can be described as a “living figure”, as a symbiosis of “sensual instinct” or “life” and “form instinct” or “shape”. This “living figure” means “beauty” in the “broadest sense”. Aesthetic art is the object of the “play instinct”. A distinction is made here between “mere play”, the concept of experience in play, and aesthetic play. “Man only plays where he is, in the full sense of the word, man, and he is only fully man where he plays.” In the state of aesthetic play, man experiences the “state of supreme rest and movement”, personal happiness.

16th letter : Schiller differentiates the concept of beauty here and contrasts the beauty of the "experience" from the 10th letter with the "ideally beautiful". The “ideally beautiful” can work in two different ways. On the one hand, it can dissolve the tension between the “form instinct” and the “sensual instinct” and, on the other hand, it can “tense” them in order to maintain their respective strength. The beauty of “experience”, on the other hand, is divided into “melting beauty”, beauty in the narrower sense, which unites the basic instincts, and “energetic beauty”, which stabilizes the power of the two basic instincts. It is energetic beauty that can save the “civilized classes” from their moral decline, the declining power of the “form instinct”. But both have to work equally mutually, because when the "melting beauty" prevails, there is a threat of "softness and annoyance", the "energetic beauty" prevails, there is a threat of "wildness and hardness".

17th to 23rd letter

Here Schiller unfolds his theory of the aesthetic state. However, the real person of his time never fully reaches this, because he lacks either “harmony” or “energy”. The aesthetic state lies exactly in between and merges “suffering” and “activity”, “feeling” and “thinking”. Education of man can be achieved through "melting beauty" before man allows reason to guide his actions. The growing person experiences the “zero” state in which both sensuality and reason work equally. In this way Schiller's political utopia can be introduced (cf. Noetzel 1992, p. 65 f.).

17th letter : Through "beauty" the "harmony" can be restored in the "tense person" and the "energy" in the "tired person". The respective “restricted state” is traced back to an “absolute”, aesthetic state in which the human being is in unity with his nature and thus a “complete whole”. Freedom can only be experienced in this way. If one of the two basic instincts predominates, the person is in a state of compulsion, the "compulsion of sensations" or "the compulsion of concepts".

18th letter : “Through beauty the sensual person is guided to form and to thinking; through beauty the spiritual man is led back to matter and given back to the world of the senses ”. So there has to be a “middle state” in which both can become real. The two basic states “suffering” or “feeling” and “activity” or “thinking” are fundamentally opposed to each other and can only be connected by “beauty” by uniting them and becoming a whole. The human being thus becomes a “pure aesthetic unit”.

19. Letter : There is an infinite gap between the states of “feeling” and “thinking”. Beauty does not fill this gap, but enables a transition. It gives the "thinking forces" the freedom to express themselves according to their own laws and can free people from their limitations. The power of the spirit itself cannot be restricted, but it is only through suffering that it gets the drive to become active and is thus bound to matter, the "substance".

20th letter : Freedom can only take place when both basic instincts are fully developed in humans. Man begins his life with the “sensual drive” before he has developed his “personality”. However, people run the risk of not getting beyond this state. First man has to come to a zero point of determination, a state of "indeterminacy", so that he can reach a "middle", the "aesthetic" state in which the "sensual instinct" is not so dominant that the spirit can itself can not develop.

21st letter : Man has to detach himself from the determination of the body as well as from that of the spirit in order to reach a state of "determinationlessness" in which the determination is not determined. This “zero” state makes people determinable in a new way, in an “aesthetic determinability”. The “empty infinity” of the “zero” state, which can be brought about not only by will but also by want, becomes a “fulfilled infinity” in the “aesthetic” state. Beauty or “aesthetic culture” is not tied to a specific purpose, finds no truths or fulfills duties, but it helps people to achieve dignity that enables them to achieve personal freedom. This is the greatest good that can happen to people.

22. Letter : In the aesthetic state, it is easy for people to switch from “calm to movement”, from “seriousness to play”, from “indulgence to resistance”, from “abstract thinking” to “intuition”, because in the State "zero" is not taken by either one or the other. This is an ideal state, as man can never step out of the dependence of his forces, but man can experience the greatest possible rapprochement. This should happen through the effect of real art. The human being should be able to check its effect to determine whether it is genuine and bring it into an aesthetic state through its "enjoyment". But people must also be able to feel them. For this, art must first address the “substance” of the human being so that he is ready to get involved and can then influence the “form”.

23rd letter : Aesthetic education is the prerequisite for "making sensual people reasonable". The character of the human being is “refined” to such an extent that reason and thus freedom develop by itself. Once this has happened, harmony and the common good of the “noble soul” become a need instead of “duty” and an expression of their “dignity”.

24th to 27th letter

The development perspective of the aesthetic state lies in the abolition of the inner natural force of the human being and creates the practical conditions for the application of moral principles. Schiller developed the idea of ​​the aesthetic state, in which the "beautiful interaction" and the "beautiful tone" are lived as communicative prerequisites and in which the moral state dissolves because the individual is motivated to act morally and the common good for his own inner life Has become a need (cf. Noetzel 1992, p. 66 f.).

24th letter : Schiller names three successive stages of human development: (a) the "physical state" in which he is at the mercy of the power of nature, (b) the "aesthetic state" in which he is free from the power of nature is, and (c) the "moral state" in which he rules nature. Man has to escape his “animal state” on his way to “happiness”, but even the first appearance of reason is not enough, because a weakly developed reason can easily be deceived by the sensual, which has no other reason for action than Knows "their advantage". This "sensual self-love" has to be overcome in the course of human growth, as no moral action can arise from it for the benefit of all. He attacks religion, which undermines reason and thus rejects the divinity and “ideal destiny” inherent in humans, because God is a “holy”, not just a “powerful being”. Worship must be based on a reverence that exalts people rather than on a fear that degrades people.

25th letter : Only in the aesthetic state does man rise from nature and differ from it. “Reflection” is the first means of doing this. It becomes more or less “light” in the person. His naive ideas of God are lost through the recognition of laws. It is now possible for him to shape it himself. Schiller returns to the concept of beauty, because the jump from the physical to the aesthetic state does not lie in human nature. "Beauty is [...] the work of free contemplation." Contemplation takes place via the sense organs, but is at the same time the entry into the "world of ideas". Conversely, the mental performance, the recognition of the "truth", can trigger sensations in people through the thoughts. The "truth" remains "truth", even if the sensations are not stimulated, but then the feeling of "beauty" would not be possible, because the condition for recognizing beauty is sensation. Accordingly, beauty is at the same time “our condition and our deed” and through beauty both natures “reason” and “senses” can be reconciled. Since man is in this “beautiful” state in a state of freedom and the concept of freedom in itself means “something absolute and supersensible”, the question no longer arises of how he can get from the aesthetic state to “truth” and moral action , says Schiller.

26th letter : An aesthetic state is hardly possible if the person is “deprived of all refreshment” through physical distress or freed from “any personal effort” through material abundance, the two drives mutually cancel each other out in the person. Where the “activity leads to enjoyment” and “enjoyment leads to activity”, the beautiful “soul” can develop, which is “the condition of humanity.” The freedom of the beautiful soul shows itself in the interest in “appearance” (appearance ), which is not tied to a specific purpose, just as Schiller sees art and beauty. This is where the “play instinct” unfolds, which “likes appearances” and “enjoys with the eye”. Depending on how strong the intention is to linger on appearances, the “aesthetic instinct” develops sooner or later. By striving in the “art of appearances” to free appearances from reality and thus inevitably free reality from appearances, he “preserves” the “limits of truth” and thus “expands” the “realm of beauty”. The appearance is only "aesthetic" if it neither simulates reality nor needs it to be effective, but is "sincere" and "independent". However, the “beautiful” “object” itself does not have to be without “reality”, because only the judgment about it must “take no account” of it. Man must be able to enjoy “the beauty of living nature” without “desiring” it and “admire” “the beauty of imitative art” “without asking for a purpose”. However, this already requires a “higher degree of beautiful culture”. Whether this has been achieved by an individual or a group of people can be seen from the fact that the ideal then takes precedence over real life, honor over property, and the dream of immortality over existence. Schiller emphasizes at this point that the people of his age are far from that advanced.

27th letter : In order to bring people so far that they no longer “prefer form to material” and demand “abundance” of material so that they no longer have to covet them, “a revolution in their whole perception is required”. However, even in nature, the "physical game" can be observed when the physical urges are satisfied, and here the "aesthetic game" can already be guessed at. As part of nature, man is just as capable of this in the “game of free sequence of ideas”, but his “imagination” makes “the leap to aesthetic games” with the help of the spirit “in an attempt at a free form” of the game. He already sees the people of his time on the right track, because the marital and family climate has already become emotional. People no longer marry out of lust or reason, but out of love. Schiller is now developing this principle of giving freedom through freedom on a larger scale into an “aesthetic state” in which “good company” is lived and the “ideal of equality is fulfilled”. Here, beauty is given a "sociable character" that brings "harmony into society" because it creates harmony in the individual. Through lived affection, serfdom will disappear in the “aesthetic state” and all people of the state will become free citizens with equal rights.

Directions of interpretation

Schiller's Letters on Aesthetic Education lead as a question:

1. after the constitution of thought and sensation in the philosophy of consciousness ,

2. after the realization of political freedom in political theory and sociology ,

3. according to the character of the beautiful and the sublime in aesthetics and

4. According to the constitutive forces and goals of human development in educational anthropology .

For Schiller, sensuality and feeling are associated with passivity, nature is associated with suffering violence. Reason means creative activity and liberation from nature. However, Schiller fears the forces of nature as unpredictable, chaotic and arbitrary (cf. Noetzel 1992, p. 87). This can be understood as a personal interpretation of the French Revolution , in which a new state of terror began after the rule of the nobility was replaced by the people. However, the people had the right to implement the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment - freedom, equality and brotherhood. For Schiller, the fact that this did not succeed was due to the nature of man, who is determined by the two basic drives nature and reason, which are fundamentally opposed to each other.

The task of aesthetic education at Schiller can essentially be reduced to two features:

• Art or aesthetic education as an experience of personal happiness that happens to people in aesthetic play
• Art or aesthetic education as a moment that changes society, which happens through the sensitization of people and the refinement of their character. This political utopia should find expression in the “aesthetic” state, in which humanistic ideals are lived.

Political theory, sociology and educational anthropology

The question of the realization of political freedom and human development can be summarized as follows:

1. The “material instinct” is initially dominant in young people. It stands for "life". Humans make their decisions based on feelings and instincts and act purely for personal benefit. The right of the strongest counts, everyone is next to himself. Man makes himself a slave to his nature, because the material instinct strives for change.

2. The “form instinct” must develop in the course of life. It stands for reason and is an achievement of the culture that sets people apart from animals. Human actions are determined by laws and divided into duties without taking feelings and sensations into account. This makes man a slave to his mind by ignoring the needs of the physical world and submitting them to the mind.

These two basic instincts are present in every human being and must be balanced so that human beings are guided neither by pure reason, which has led to the immoral rule of the nobility, nor by their feelings and instincts, which the French Revolution transformed into the reign of terror of the people .

So that people can live humanistic ideals, all people must be included, because people do not live alone, but in a large community . Both instincts have to be brought into balance in the individual and thus his character has to be refined. Aesthetic education should do this.

It leads man through his senses, which form the interface between body and mind, into an ideal state in which - what is constitutive for man - both basic drives exist for themselves but are in exchange with one another.

In this way, moral behavior becomes a personal need for people, says Schiller. A person can not only experience personal happiness through aesthetic education, but also make the state an area of ​​freedom for everyone, if there are enough other people who have also reached the "aesthetic" state. This is the only way to create the humane state, Schiller's “aesthetic state”, which the representatives of the Enlightenment called for and in which the humanistic ideals - freedom, equality and brotherhood - are lived.

aesthetics

Schiller distinguishes between the ideally beautiful and the real beautiful, the beauty of the experience that stand opposite one another. Schiller divides the real beauty into “melting” and “energetic” beauty, which have different tasks. The “melting” beauty, the beauty in the narrower sense, is supposed to unite the two basic human drives “sensuality” and “reason”, while the “energetic” beauty, the sublime, is supposed to stabilize them, whereby both have to act reciprocally, thus neither on the one hand “softening” and on the other hand “hardness” arises, but both are balanced (16th letter).

The “ideal” beauty is not tied to a specific purpose, finds no truths or fulfills duties (21st letter). It creates a transition (19th letter), because this beauty can only be recognized with the mind if it is felt simultaneously with the senses (25th letter). “Ideal” beauty is “sincere” and “independent”, it neither fakes reality nor does it need it to be effective (26th letter). As an “aesthetic culture”, it leads people into an “aesthetic” state, an intermediate state between the two extremes of the basic instincts (19th letter), into an ideal state in which people experience their greatest possible personal freedom, since the two basic instincts "Sensuality" and "reason" are balanced (16th letter). This is the highest good that can happen to man (21st letter), since he is neither forced by the nature of his “sensuality” nor by “reason” (17th letter).

This transition to the ideal state can only take place through the “aesthetic game” (14th letter) and the enjoyment of real art that is neither performing nor representative. The human being should be able to use the effect of real art to check whether it is real and to bring him into an aesthetic state through enjoyment. But man must also be able to feel it (22nd letter).

Philosophy of consciousness

Schiller answers the question about the essence of human beings with the duality of spirit and matter . Schiller sees the human being as a dual being who both feels and thinks. The human being is shaped by his spiritual as well as his sensual dimension and both must be distinguished from one another.

In the 11th letter he describes the essence of human beings as a system of “person” (sensation, personality, persistence) and state (spirit, change, thinking). Person and state are fundamentally different, since existence is finite and only the "deity" is eternal. The state cannot be based on the person, because otherwise the state would have to persist, and the person not on the state, because then the person would have to change. Thus, man is not because he thinks or feels; conversely, man does not think and feel because he is, but is because he is, and thinks and feels because there is something else besides man: time as independent condition of all existence and occurrences. For Schiller, time as the condition of all becoming is synonymous with the sentence: “The consequence is the condition that something happens”. Without the dimension of time, the spirit would only be an inherent part of the human being, but it could “not actually exist”; This means that it is first necessary to perceive the change in the state that happens in the course of time. According to Schiller, this results in two demands on people: to give expression to the body and to give support and reality to the mind in the physical anchoring.

For this connection between body and mind, Schiller sees in the 12th letter two opposing forces which he calls basic instincts: the "physical instinct" and the "form instinct". The “physical impulse” is attached to the body and the body is in constant change over time. Matter quasi fills the time in which the body feels, because the state of "fulfilled time is called feeling". This is what makes matter come alive and thus exist. The “real drive” demands change and that time has a “content”, because feeling and striving for change are the physical characteristics of life. The “form instinct”, on the other hand, strives for freedom from the body, the abolition of time, but also for harmony and constancy in change, so that man can maintain his material existence in the course of time change and retain his identity (12th letter). Both drives must be strong so that on the one hand a person develops a distinctive personality and on the other hand understands many things and puts changes into practice (13th letter).

So that neither one instinct nor the other predominates - the consequences of this are evident for Schiller in the political and social events of the French Revolution - or even one instinct cancels out the other, if one of the two becomes too strong, an intermediate state is still required, in which both drives are balanced. Only in this state is it possible for a person to experience freedom, since he is not determined by one of his two basic instincts, but is in a state of all possibilities (20th and 21st letters). These remarks lead Schiller to moral-philosophical considerations, because in this state of freedom, through appropriate aesthetic education, people almost automatically need to act morally in a “noble” way (23rd letter).

Topicality

Educational anthropology

Before humans begin to think in words and categories, they perceive their environment through the senses of their body. He “grasps” and “grasps” his environment in the literal sense and thus appropriates it. The senses are the interface between people and the environment, sensory perception is the prerequisite for communication with the environment. Through sensory perception, people get an idea of ​​the world, discover connections and gain knowledge. However, the senses need stimulation and practice in order not to wither. They have to be trained so that processing processes in the brain can be trained. A sensual aesthetic education is therefore necessary. Perception is a holistic and active process, senses and reason cannot be decoupled from one another and form a unit (see Zimmer 2000, p. 19 ff.).

Only through sensual perception does man develop language and thus “reason” and only through “reason” is it possible for man to act “meaningfully” and thus “morally”. This agrees with Schiller when he asserts, “There is no other way to make sensual people reasonable than to make them aesthetic beforehand” (23rd letter). If one abandons the concept of beauty as a synonym for aesthetics and instead uses the literal meaning “sensual perception” (Greek aisthesis), Schiller's theory for this point of view becomes clearer.

Political Theory and Sociology

In his conception of “aesthetic education”, Schiller does not deal literally but clearly with the events of the French Revolution. He tries to explain the social present and how and why it has developed in this way. He finds the way out of the barbarism of the aristocracy as well as the bourgeoisie, in that the character of the person is ennobled by the beautiful and the person can thus attain personal freedom and finally, if there are enough of these free people, also the social and political structure can be helped to freedom.

The “aesthetic” person almost automatically feels the need to act morally, according to Schiller in his 23rd letter. Aesthetic education aims to make young people aware of their own aesthetic sensory activity and their aesthetic-cultural milieu as a prerequisite for the sensitive, understanding and judgmental adult in nature and society.

aesthetics

Schiller equates aesthetics with beauty, he wrote in a letter to his friend Körner in 1792 that beauty is the freedom of appearance.

The different forms of beauty that Schiller distinguishes in the 16th letter, the "ideal" beauty versus the "real" beauty, which is divided into "melting" and "energetic" beauty, beauty in the narrower sense and sublimity, appear hypothetical and are difficult to judge.

Like Hegel or Kant, Schiller considers object beauty, the essence of beauty, and subject aesthetics, the effect of beauty, separately from one another.

The modern criticism of the concept of beauty is directed against assigning art to the aesthetic value category “beautiful” or “ugly”, since these terms have subjective qualities, but art is seen as substantial. For example, in the aesthetics of goods, the “beautiful appearance” fades as a moral claim and quickly becomes an instrument for manipulable deceptions. However, the existence of the beautiful as a phenomenon is not called into question.

literature

• Klaus L. Berghahn (Ed.): Friedrich Schiller: About the aesthetic education of the people in a series of letters . Reclam, Stuttgart 2000.
• Georg Bollenbeck , Lothar Ehrlich (ed.): Friedrich Schiller: the underrated theorist. 1st edition. Böhlau, 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-11906-5 .
• Manuel Clemens, "The fading of the invisible. Schiller's" Aesthetic letters "after the confusions of Törless and the damaged life of Adorno", in: New German Review, No. 23 (2008), pp. 157-181.
• Manuel Clemens, "The Labyrinth of Aesthetic Solitude. A Little Theory of Education", Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2015.
• Elmar Dod: The Reasonable Imagination in Enlightenment and Romanticism. A comparative study of Schiller's and Shelley's aesthetic theories in their European context . Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1985.
• Birgitta Fuchs, Lutz Koch (ed.): Schiller's aesthetic-political humanism. The aesthetic education of man . Ergon, Würzburg 2006.
• Birgitta Fuchs, Lutz Koch (ed.): Aesthetics and education . Ergon, Würzburg 2010.
• Gerhard Huhn: Creativity and School. Risks of current curricula for free development of children . Synchron Verlag, Berlin 1990.
• Rolf-Peter Janz: "On the aesthetic education of man in a series of letters". In: Helmut Koopmann (ed.): Schiller manual . Stuttgart 1998, pp. 610-625.
• Gerhard Kwiatkowski (Ed.): Student dudes "The Art" . Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim 1983. (3rd, completely revised edition. 2007, ISBN 978-3-411-05943-0 )
• Wilfried Noetzel: Humanistic Aesthetic Education. Friedrich Schiller's modern approach and taste pedagogy . Deutscher Studien Verlag, Weinheim 1992.
• Wilfried Noetzel: Friedrich Schiller's philosophy of the art of living. On aesthetic education as a modern project . Turnshare, London 2006.
• Horst Schaub, Karl G. Zenke: Dictionary pedagogy. 6th edition. dtv, Munich 2004.
• Kurt Wölfel : Friedrich Schiller . dtv, Munich 2004.
• Renate Zimmer : Handbook of Sensory Perception . Herder, Freiburg 2000. (8th edition. 2005, ISBN 3-451-26905-8 )

Web links

• As an audio book in the Internet Archive

Work in full text

• Gutenberg project
• books.google.com
• Knowledge on the Net - On the Aesthetic Education of Man, in a series of letters
• 1st chapter; 1st to 9th letter digitized and full text in the German text archive ; Part 2; 10th to 16th letters digitized and full text in the German text archive ; 3rd part; 17th to 27th letter digitized and full text in the German text archive

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Friedrich Schiller (Ed.): Die Horen. 1st piece, Cottasche publishing house, Tübingen 1795.
2. ↑ cf. Friedrich Schiller (Ed.): Die Horen. 2nd piece, Cottasche publishing house, Tübingen 1795.
3. ↑ cf. Friedrich Schiller (Ed.): Die Horen. 6th piece, Cottasche publishing house, Tübingen 1795.
4. ↑ cf. Schaub / Zenke 2004, p. 48.
5. ↑ Table of contents, foreword