Beautiful soul

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The term beautiful soul describes a character or type of person in which the affects and the moral forces are in a harmoniously balanced relationship that is also perceived as aesthetically beautiful.

This conception has been known in European antiquity since Plato and Plotinus as Kalokagathia , as the unity of the truth, the good and the beautiful in one person. In the medieval epic this ideal was used for character drawing; a person was beautiful because he was good and good because he was beautiful. Related to this is the concept of noble hearts that Gottfried von Straßburg's Tristan Prologue outlines as an ideal and counter-image of the "ordinary man":

"I have a bad idea / the werlt ze love vür escort / and noble hearts z'einer hage / the heart that I carry / who will see into my heart."

- Gottfried von Strasbourg : Tristan and Isolde . Verses 45-49

The content was developed primarily in the 18th century from Shaftesbury's aesthetic-ethical concept of harmony and defined by Friedrich Schiller in the book About Grace and Dignity (1793): the beautiful soul is the goal of an aesthetic education, a perfection to harmonious humanity through the Reconciliation of duty and inclination, of reason and sensuality, which is revealed in outward appearance through grace and dignity; However, it has already been found with a different meaning in medieval and baroque, especially in Spanish mysticism for an increased religious and spiritual sensitivity, as well as in Pietism . In the secularized form for a soulful-sentimental virtue as an end in itself, the term was understood in the epoch of sensitivity .

The literary examples were particularly shaped by the understanding of sensitivity. They can be found in Samuel Richardson's Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Julie or Die neue Heloise (1761), in Johann Georg and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi as well as in the 6th book Confessions of a Beautiful Soul by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's literary novel Wilhelm Master's apprenticeship years (1795/96). The term “beautiful soul”, which Christoph Martin Wieland first used, became a buzzword in the late 18th century due to Rousseau's influence .

In his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel takes up the concept of the “beautiful soul” critically and describes it as a type who preserves the state of innocence for itself, but at the price of having no effect in the world, “not to existence ] reach". This “unrealistic” beautiful soul, according to Hegel, “dissolves in longing consumption”.

literature

  • Robert E. Norton: The Beautiful Soul. Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Century . Ithaca 1995.
  • Hans Schmeer: The concept of the “beautiful soul” especially in Wieland and in German literature of the 18th century . Berlin 1926, reprint Nendeln 1967.

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