Dialectic of Love: Platonism in Schiller's Aesthetics 9780773564145

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DIALECTIC OF LOVE PLATONISM IN SCHILLER'S AESTHETICS

Unravelling the contradictions and complexities of Friedrich Schiller's labyrinthine thought, David Pugh illuminates the inner dynamics of his writings and places them within a wider philosophical and cultural context. While modern discussions tend to focus on Schiller's thought in relation to the Enlightenment, Pugh argues that his ideas have a greater affinity with ancient and Renaissance thought. Dialectic of Love analyses the arguments of Schiller's major writings on aesthetics and argues that his philosophical thought, theories, and concepts are characteristic of the Platonic tradition. Pugh suggests that Schiller's conception of beauty be seen as synthesis, the sublime as separation. He connects these concepts to Aristotle's critique of Plato's theory of ideas, in which Aristotle points out an aporia of chorismos (separation) and methexis (participation). In Schiller's thought, Pugh argues, beauty and the sublime operate primarily as metaphysical relations of methexis and chorismos and only secondarily as aesthetic concepts. While Schiller, Pugh reveals, is not very well suited for the role of champion of the Enlightenment, he remains a crucial figure in the transmission of the Platonic tradition to modern idealism and to the aesthetic thought of the nineteenth century. DAVID PUGH is associate professor of German, Queen's University.

Mc GILL-QUEEN'S STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 1 Problems of Cartesianism Edited by Thomas M. Lennon, John M. Nicholas, and John W. Davis 2 The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity Gerald A. Press 3 Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid: Two Common-Sense Philosophers Louise Marcil-Lacoste 4 Schiller, Hegel, and Marx: State, Society, and the Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient Greece Philip J. Kain 5 John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England Charles B. Schmitt 6 Beyond Liberty and Property: The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century Political Thought J.A.W. Gunn 7 John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind Stephen H. Daniel 8 Coleridge and the Inspired Word Anthony John Harding 9 The Jena System, 1804-5: Logic and Metaphysics G.W.F. Hegel Translation edited by John W. Burbidge and George di Giovanni Introduction and notes by H.S. Harris 10 Consent, Coercion, and Limit: The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy Arthur P. Monahan 11 Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768-1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy Manfred Kuehn

12 Paine and Cobbett: The Transatlantic Connection David A. Wilson 13 Descartes and the Enlightenment Peter A. Schouls 14 Greek Scepticism Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought Leo Groarke 15 The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought Donald Wiebe 16 Form and Transformation A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus Frederic M. Schroeder 17 From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, c. 1300—c. 1650 Arthur P. Monahan 18 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi Translated and Edited by George di Giovanni 19 Kierkegaard as Humanist Discovering My Self Arnold B. Come 20 Durkheim, Morals, and Modernity W. Watts Miller 21 The Career of Toleration John Locke, Jonas Proast, and After Richard Vernon 2 2 Dialectic of Love Platonism in Schiller's Aesthetics David Pugh

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DIALECTIC OF LOVE Platonism in Schiller's Aesthetics David Pugh

McGill-Queen's University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo

© McGill-Queen's University Press 1996 ISBN 0-7735-1020-6 Legal deposit second quarter 1997 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Further financial support was granted by the School of Graduate Studies and Research, Queen's University. McGill-Queen's University Press is grateful to the Canada Council for support of its publishing program.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Pugh, David Vaughan, 1952Dialectic of love: platonism in Schiller's aesthetics (McGill-Queen's studies in the history of ideas; 22) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1020-6 1. Schiller, Friedrich, 1759-1805—Aesthetics. 2. Platonists. I. Title. II. Series. PT2496.Ep84 1997 111'.85 C97-900097-1

This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc. in 10 / 12 Baskerville

patri Optimo

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Contents

Preface xi Acknowledgments

xv

Note on Translations xvii Abbreviations

xix

1 Introduction

3

II Mythological Transformations

39

III Logic and Metaphysics 67 IV Schiller, Kant, and Plato v Ideals and Illusions

101

132

VI The Departure of Venus: "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" VII New Solutions: "Die Kunstler"

205

VIII Beauty and Goodness: Uber Anmut und Wurde IX The Rational and the Aesthetic State: Uber die asthetische Erziehung des Menschen 287

239

168

X

Contents x Poetry and the Ideal:

Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung XI Conclusion

Bibliography Index

406

415

427

367

Preface

In her recent survey of the critical history of Schiller's aesthetic writings, a miniature masterpiece that will soon establish itself as indispensable to all students of this material, Lesley Sharpe describes a 1930s study of Schiller's relation to Greek culture as "an example of the wrong question generating an inadequate answer." It is hard to dissent from her judgment. Whatever the merits of the various investigations of Schiller's attitude to the Greeks, the reader invariably feels that the question has addressed only a peripheral issue and that Schiller's extraordinary treatises, reflecting as they do the ambivalent movements of their author's mercurial mind, have not given up any of their most important secrets. But what kind of question is likely to be more fruitful? In recent years, a number of topics have come into favour, each generating a large quantity of scholarly publication and then giving way to the next. One thinks, to name only the most prominent "Stichworter," of rhetoric, autonomy, the public sphere, Utopia, and anthropology. As with Schiller's relation to Greek culture, each approach has its relative justification, in that each addresses an element that is unquestionably present in the writings and does so from a topical point of view. But it seems to me that the question of the inner structure of Schiller's three great treatises remains as obscure as ever. It is this structure that supplies the context for his statements that are relevant to the five topics I have just listed, and that context has to be understood before the individual statements can be properly evaluated. To be more specific, Schiller has an extraordinary propensity to contradict his own statements and to depart from apparently firm convictions. For example, his invocation of a "complete anthropological mode of evaluation" early in the Asthetische Briefe, frequently invoked by scholars who favour the anthropological line of

xii

Preface

investigation, is undermined as Schiller relies more and more strongly on his notion of the human self as "daemon" or "free intelligence," a notion that negates that of the rounded spiritual-material being. In practice, contradictions of this kind can be traced to a war between two underlying logical-metaphysical paradigms, one favouring the unity and the other the separation of form (or spirit or reason) and matter (or nature or sensibility), and these two paradigms are epitomized in the aesthetic concepts "beautiful" and "sublime." The conflict between these two paradigms is the thread that I shall be following in the present work in the belief that it brings us to the centre of the Schillerian labyrinth. Appearances to the contrary, I am not arguing that we should allow Schiller's shortcomings as a logician to define his achievements as an aesthetician, a procedure that would hardly do justice to his fundamental role at the inception of this branch of philosophy. Instead, I shall be interpreting his unresolved dilemma as a legacy of the Platonic tradition, and I mean by this the traditional dilemma as to whether the intelligible world is entirely separate from the sensible world or whether the latter participates in some way in the former. Though Schiller's commitment to both points of view must in some sense reflect his individual idiosyncrasies, I shall be treating the problem essentially as a metaphysical rather than a psychological one. It should be stressed that this is not a study of an influence, comparable to the influence of thinkers, such as Kant and Fichte, whose works Schiller read with care. There is no evidence of any but an indirect acquaintance with Plato's writings on Schiller's part, and, in all likelihood, he had no knowledge at all of other writers of the tradition, to whom I shall be referring, such as Plotinus or Marsilio Ficino. Nor do I attempt to show that Schiller's view on any particular question exactly matched a view that can be found in Plato or any of his successors. Instead, I attempt to show that the dilemma of unification and separation, the element of Platonism that will concern us most, reached Schiller in part through indirect sources, in part through his interpretation of Kant, and in part through his own independent efforts to understand his poetic creativity, ultimately giving rise to what the editors of his Samtliche Werketerm the "spannungsvoll[e] Polaritat" (sw 5:1152) of the beautiful and the sublime that pervades his treatises of the 1790s and shapes them from within. The fact that Schiller was unaware of the relation of his thought to the Platonic tradition does not speak against my interpretation. Rather, it seems to demonstrate the extraordinary and Protean vitality of that tradition, and, more than that, to suggest that Platonism's

Preface

xiii

answers to the perennial mystery of human existence, the question of the relation of consciousness to its material surroundings, are an inescapable part of the Western heritage. My contention, then, is that the logical weakness of Schiller's treatises illuminates both their inherent character and their relation to philosophical history. It follows that I reject three types of interpretation: (1) those that focus on his theory of beauty and sideline the sublime; (2) those that regard his logical peculiarities and shifts of opinion primarily as the consequence of biographical occurrences; and (3) those that attempt to detach him from the metaphysical tradition, arguing instead for a relation to the nascent study of empirical psychology. Despite his attempts to portray his arguments as psychological ones, Schiller was first and foremost a metaphysician. Despite the undoubted importance of his study of Kant in the early 17905, the roots of Schiller's mature thought lie in his youthful philosophy of love. (These roots are recognized by Manfred Frank, who refers in a chapter heading to Schiller's "Asthetik der Liebe.") But it is a central doctrine of Platonism that love binds the mental and the material worlds together. As Schiller sought to turn his early speculations into defensible philosophical positions, it is thus quite understandable that he unwittingly developed his arguments in a Platonic framework. Despite the originality of his solutions, the resulting treatises deserve to be viewed in that philosophical tradition, and indeed, their mysteries can be made somewhat less mysterious if we view them in that way. To close this preface on a personal note, it seems to me not coincidental that an argument of this kind has been conceived and formulated in a non-German country. It is to be hoped that "Auslandsgermanistik" can justify itself by making a virtue of necessity, that is, by standing aside from the heated debates of the German academy and by widening the horizons, both geographical and chronological, within which we readers, both German and non-German, attempt to come to terms with the challenging and enigmatic contributions of the great German writers.

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Acknowledgments

The present study has its origins in a Ph.D. dissertation written at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Professor Hans Eichner. Special thanks are due to Professor Eichner for maintaining a steady interest in this project in the years since its inception and for reading a late draft of the entire manuscript. Thanks are due also to Dr Lesley Sharpe, who read much of it and also allowed me to consult her own unpublished manuscript on the "Rezeptionsgeschichte" of the texts I deal with. Of the numerous friends and colleagues who have given me their advice and encouragement over the years, I would like to mention Professor Werner Beierwaltes, Professor Gerhart Hoffmeister, Professor Anthony Riley, Professor Hans-Jurgen Schings, Professor Martin Swales, Professor Deirdre Vincent, and Professor Wolfgang Wittkowski, as well as all my colleagues in the German Department at Queen's University. Some parts of the argument of chapters 3 and 7 have appeared previously in my articles cited in the bibliography. I should like to thank the editors of Oxford German Studies and Colloquia Germanica for their permission to reuse this material. I should also like to thank Queen's Universit for granting me sabbatical leave to write this book during the academic year 1993-94. The bulk of the work was completed at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar, where I benefited from the professional expertise of Dr. Ulrich Ott, Frau Ingrid Griininger, and the rest of the dedicated staff. Research was made possible by financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, and I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of both organizations.

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Note on Translations

It has been decided to make this study more accessible to readers who are unfamiliar with German by translating all quotations. When a quotation appears more than once, the translation is generally not repeated, but a reference is included to the place where it originally appeared. Quotations from Schiller, Kant, and other primary sources appear in the main text with the translation in the footnotes, while with quotations from other authors the opposite procedure is followed, that is, the English translation is in the text, the original in the footnotes. The translations from Schiller are my own. It is to be stressed that the translations are intended to convey the literal meaning of the text and nothing more. They make no claim to stylistic excellence. The reader of German may notice that I have not been absolutely consistent in my treatment of certain key words, such as "Geist." Here I have been guided by what seemed most suitable in the particular context. On the matter of gender-inclusive language, I have preferred to render Schiller's "der Mensch" with the traditional English word "man" (of course in its meaning of homo not vir), since it is the only term that mediates in the same way between the individual and the genus. I have similarly retained the term (and the associated pronoun "he") in my own discussions, in that it would be confusing and cumbersome for the reader if I were to switch back and forth between one terminology and another. Authors of original philosophical inquiries nowadays of course avoid the term "man," and for good reasons that do not need to be rehearsed here. However, in a work of historical interpretation, it seems preferable to adhere to the language that is both commensurate to the subject and conventional in scholarship on the subject. To those who object that "man" is gender-biased where "der Mensch" is not, I would

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Note on Translations

reply that Schiller and his precursors in the tradition of philosophical anthropology were in fact thinking predominantly of the male sex when they wrote about the human race (as they were also thinking exclusively of Europeans). Famously, Schiller wrote "Alle Menschen werden Bruder" (All "men" shall become brothers), and in the opening lines of "Die Kunstler," he portrays modern "man" as standing on the verge of the new century "in edler, stolzer Mannlichkeit" (in noble, proud masculinity). The translation "man" thus reflects the spirit of his thought rather better than the strenuously gender-neutral language that is now preferred. Readers who find my procedure disturbing are invited to imagine inverted commas around the term in recognition of its historical character. The titles of Schiller's works are given throughout in German. It will perhaps be helpful if English versions are given here. The chief prose works under discussion are Uber Anmut und Wiirde (On Grace and Dignity) , Uber die asthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters), Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (On Naive and Sentimental Poetry), Uber das Erhabene (On the Sublime), and Uber die notwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schoner Formen (On the Necessary Limits to the Use of Beautiful Forms). The following poems are discussed extensively: "Der Triumph der Liebe" (The Triumph of Love); "Die Freundschaft" (Friendship); "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" (The Gods of Greece); "Die Kiinstler" (The Artists); "Das Ideal und das Leben" (Ideal and Life). For the quotations from Kant, I have used Norman Kemp Smith's version of the Critique of Pure Reason (New York: St Martin's, 1965), Copyright © Smith, Norman Kemp (Trans.), reprinted with permission of St Martin's Press, Incorporated, and Macmillan Press Ltd. Quotations are identified by the customary page references to the original editions of the second and first edition. For the Critique of Judgment, J. H. Bernard's version (London: Macmillan, 1892) is used, with appended page references to that translation as well as to the cited German edition. Quotations from other languages are generally given in English only. For quotations from Plato, I have used The Collected Dialogues, 2d edition, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Copyright © 1963 renewed by PUP, reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press. Ficino's De amore is quoted by permission of Spring Publications, Inc., from the translation by Sears Jayne cited in the bibliography. Other translations are cited in the footnotes.

Abbreviations

Works frequently cited are identified by the following abbreviations. AB

Schiller, Asthetischer Brief

A UB

Schiller, Augustenburger Briefe

AE

Schiller, Uber die asthetische Erziehung des Menschen

ENN

Plotinus, Enneads

AW

Schiller, UberAnmut und Wurde

KB

Schiller, Kallias-Briefe

KDU

Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft

NA

Schiller, Werke, Nationalausgabe

NG

Schiller, Uber die notwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schoner Formen

NSD

Schiller, Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung

REP

Plato, Republic

sw

Schiller, Samtliche Werke, ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert G. Gopfert.

UDE

Schiller, Uber das Erhabene

WB

Schiller, Werke und Briefe, Bibliothek Deutscher Klassiker

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DIALECTIC OF LOVE

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I

Introduction

In the opening lines of his greatest philosophical poem, Schiller establishes a sharp antithesis between an unchanging realm of divine purity and a lower world of transience and decay: Ewigklar und spiegelrein und eben FlieBt das zephirleichte Leben Im Olymp den Seligen dahin. Monde wechseln und Geschlechter fliehen, Ihrer Gotterjugend Rosen bliihen Wandellos im ewigen Ruin. ("Das Ideal und das Leben," lines 1-6)l

The world of change referred to in the fourth line is soon identified as the material world that is the human habitat and in which we are entrapped by our corporeality: "Nur der Kdrper eignetjenen Machten, / Die das dunkle Schicksal flechten" (21-22). 2 Even during our earthly life, however, it is possible for us to reduce our stake in the material world and to participate in the life of the gods: "Wollt ihr hoch auf ihren Fliigeln schweben, / Werft die Angst des Irdischen von euch" ( 27-28) .3 In this double metaphor, "the earthly" is first thought of as a material 1. "Eternally clear, mirror-pure and smooth, zephyr-light life flows past for the Blessed Ones on Olympus. Moons succeed each other and generations flee, but the roses of their divine youth blossom immutably amidst the eternal ruin." Schiller's poems are quoted here and subsequently from the first volume of Sdmtliche Werke. Quotations are identified in the text by line reference only. 2. "Only the body falls to the powers that weave dark fate." 3. "If you want to hover high on their wings, cast off the fear of the earthly."

4

Dialectic of Love

substance or garment that we could discard (hence becoming free of all earthly stains, "von alien Erdenmalen / Frei" [31-32]), but that substance is equated with fear, a fear, we are to understand, that we could overcome if we could only divest ourselves of our corporeality. But how are we to cast off our bodily existence while remaining in this world? The answer seems to fall into a positive and a negative part. The negative prescription is that we master our physical desires and appetites, which derive from the body, for "Des Genusses wandelbare Freuden / Rachet schleunig der Begierde Flucht" (i5~i6). 4 Once we commit ourselves to the satisfaction of our bodily appetites, we make ourselves the prisoners of the material world, condemning ourselves thereby to change, decline, and death. This hostility to our bodily appetites, the dualistic ontology of change and changelessness, the postulation of a purer and more real world behind or above that of empirical experience: these are things which any reader of the Phaedo or the Republic will instantly recognize as hallmarks of the Platonic style of philosophizing, and before proceeding to the positive aspect of Schiller's prescription, I must make some preliminary remarks about this affinity. In the opening stanzas of his poem, Schiller captures the spirit and the pathos of the Platonic philosophy without engaging in the laborious task of dialectic. For the identification of the realm of the forms with the dwelling of the Olympian gods, we can point to Plato's myths, notably that of the charioteer in the Phaedrus, as precedents for the adaptation of traditional mythical material to a new metaphysical content. But a closer parallel to the life of Olympian ease, the "zephirleichte Leben" of Schiller's poem, can be found in a treatise of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, who places the gods in a realm of pure intellect (nous): "To 'live at ease' is There; and to these divine beings verity is mother and nurse, existence and sustenance; all that is not of process but of authentic being they see, and themselves in all: for all is transparent, nothing dark, nothing resistant; every being is lucid to every other, in breadth and depth; light runs through light."5 The passage bears a striking similarity to Schiller's ecstatic description of the sentimental idyll he hoped to write one day (letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt, 30 November 1795). Its 4. "The flight of desire rapidly punishes the unstable joys of consumption." 5. ENN 5.8.4. All further quotations from Plotinus will be taken from the revised MacKenna translation cited in the bibliography and identified in the text by treatise and section number. As is indicated by the reference to Plotinus, to whom further Platonic authors will be added in due course, the term "Platonism" is to be understood here in a broad sense. More will be said on this below.

Introduction

5

subject was to be the marriage of Hercules and Hebe, and it was to be a sequel to "Das Ideal und das Leben," the last stanza of which depicts Hercules' ascent to heaven. In the letter, Schiller evokes his vision as follows: "Denken Sie sich aber den GenuB, lieber Freund, in einer poetischen Darstellung alles Sterbliche ausgeloscht, lauter Licht, lauter Freiheit, lauter Vermogen—keinen Schatten, keine Schranke, nichts von dem alien mehr zu sehen—Mir schwindelt ordentlich, wenn ich an diese Aufgabe, wenn ich an die Moglichkeit ihrer Auflosung denke. Eine Szene im Olymp darzustellen, welcher hochste aller Geniisse!"6 And Schiller continues with a characteristic—but also characteristically Platonic—metaphor, distinguishing the "filth" of reality from the "ethereal" part of his nature: "Ich verzweifle nicht ganz daran, wenn mein Gemut nur erst ganz frei und von allem Unrat der Wirklichkeit recht reingewaschen ist; ich nehme dann meine ganze Kraft und den ganzen atherischen Teil meiner Natur noch auf einmal zusammen."7 The reason for drawing attention to this parallel is not to suggest that Schiller was knowingly echoing Plato or Plotinus. As Reinhardt Habel has shown, Schiller's ideas on the idyll, Greek myth, and the artistic deification of man are derived in large measure from the writings of Winckelmann.8 As for philosophical sources in the narrower sense, there has long been a consensus among scholars that the predominant influence on Schiller came from Kant, and there is no reason to differ from this well-founded view. Comments on Plato in Schiller's writings, correspondence, and conversations are few and far between, and there is no evidence to suggest that he had heard of Plotinus at all. What will be argued in the present study is that, despite the absence of any conscious intention, Schiller's philosophical thought, that is, his concepts, his theories, and his dilemmas, can best be understood as a revival of the Platonic tradition, and that by placing his thought in that wider context, we

6. "Imagine the delight, dear friend; everything mortal extinguished in a poetic representation; pure light, freedom, potentiality; no shadow, no limit, nothing of the kind to be seen any more; I am truly giddy when I think of this problem and the possibility of its solution. To portray a scene on Olympus, how much the highest of all delights!" 7. "I do not quite give up all hope of it, if only my mind is quite free and cleansed of all the filth of reality; I shall then gather all my strength and the whole ethereal part of my nature at once." Quoted from Schiller, Werke, Nationalausgabe, vol. 28, p. 120. Quotations from Schiller's letters will henceforth be taken, with spelling and punctuation modernize as appropriate, from this edition and identified in the text by volume and page number. 8. Habel, "Schiller und die Tradition des Herakles-Mythos."

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can throw new light both on its intrinsic character and on its historical significance.9 Returning now to "Das Ideal und das Leben," I said that Schiller offers a negative prescription, in the form of resistance to physical appetite, for escaping from the corporeal world. The positive counterpart to this is that we then enter into a relationship to our physical surroundings that is based on contemplation rather than on appetite and consumption. In a syncretistic adaptation of the myth of Proserpine to that of the Garden of Eden, Schiller writes: Selbst der Styx, der neunfach sie umwindet, Wehrt die Riickkehr Ceres' Tochter nicht, Nach dem Apfel greift sie, und es bindet Ewig sie des Orkus Pflicht. (17-20) 10

By reaching out for the apple and eating it, Proserpine / Eve follows he physical appetite, surrendering herself to corporeality and hence to death also; astonishingly, Schiller has reinterpreted Hades, the realms of death ("des Todes Reichfe]," 12), as a name for this world. The alternative to consumption and enjoyment ("GenuB"), we must infer, would have been for her to contemplate the apple as appearance—"An dem Scheine mag der Blick sich weiden" (14) (The gaze may dwell on the appearance)—that is, as the bearer of merely formal properties of shape and colour, for these are exempt from mutability and have their ontological home in a world of divine purity. This is true not only of apples, towards which the appetite of hunger can be directed, but even (and par excellence) of the human body, which is not just the source and object of the sexual appetite but also the source of all the other destructive cravings as well. In the third stanza, Schiller contrasts body and form ("Korper" and "Gestalt") in a 9. In The Posthumous Life of Plato, Frantisek Novotny confirms Schiller's philosophical affinity to Plato while denying that Schiller was "thoroughly or directly acquainted" with Plato's writings: "Echoes of Platonic philosophy which occur in [Schiller's] poems ... can be explained by his knowledge of those elements of Plato's thought which formed part of the general education of his times, but are due in a greater measure to his special spiritual kinship with Plato manifesting itself in his idealistic view of the world" (pp. 517-18). 10. "Even the Styx that winds around her nine times does not prevent the return of Ceres' daughter; but once she has reached for the apple, she is bound eternally by the law of Orcus."

Introduction

7

way that parallels but also displaces the traditional antithesis of body and soul. It is not the disembodied soul but the "Gestalt" that wanders "oben in des Lichtes Fluren, / Gottlich unter Gottern" (25-26) (above in the meadows of light, godlike among gods), a location described later in the poem as "in den heitern Regionen,/\Vo die reinen Formen wohnen" (121-22) (in the serene regions, where the pure forms dwell). By "Gestalt" and "Form" we are to understand the body viewed as appearance or "Schein," in which guise it presents itself to the contemplative gaze from which all appetite and lust have been purged.11 As Schiller wrote to Korner (21 September 1795; NA 28:60), the focus of the poem is "[d]er Begriff des uninteressierten Interesse [sic] am reinen Schein, ohne alle Rucksicht auf physische oder moralische Resultate."12 The adjective "uninteressiert" here of course echoes Kant's theory of disinterestedness, which was Schiller's proximate source. The theory is however a derivative of a much older one. As we shall see in due course, Schiller contrives to outbid Plato's dualistic metaphysics with a new dualism of his own, one positing worlds of semblance ("Schein") and reality in which the original dualism respectively is and is not resolved. The person who has learned to look at material objects as though they were immaterial will see them as they might be in the realm of the ideal ("des Ideales Reich"), and by doing so will divest himself of the material ("des Irdischen entkleidet," 141) and become godlike. Plotinus too 11. A statement from the s6th AB shows that the terms "Form" and "Schein" function in a parallel fashion in contrast to a more material antithesis: "Sobald der Mensch einmal so weit gekommen ist, den Schein von der Wirklichkeit, die Form von dem Korper zu unterscheiden, so ist er auch imstande, sie von ihm abzusondern." (Once man has reached the point of distinguishing semblance from reality, form from body, he is also capable of isolating the one from the other.) In Letter 15, "Gestalt" is defined as "ein Begriff, der alle formalen Beschaffenheiten der Dinge und alle Beziehungen derselben auf die Denkkrafte unter sich faBt" (a concept that embraces all the formal qualities of things and all the relations of these to the powers of thought). "Leben," which is its antithesis, is "ein Begriff, der alles materiale Sein und alle unmittelbare Gegenwart in den Sinnen bedeutet" (a concept signifying all material being and all that is immediately present to the senses). It is thus legitimate to identify the terms "Form," "Schein," and "Gestalt" in "Das Ideal und das Leben" in that they all refer to a disembodied and immaterial dimension of things. The quotations are taken from the fifth volume of Schiller, Samtliche Werke, pp. 657-58, 614. Unless otherwise indicated, further quotations from Schiller's theoretical works (including the KalliasBriefe) will be taken from the same volume and will be identified in the text by page reference only. Emphasis, unless otherwise stated, will be Schiller's own. 12. "The concept of a disinterested interest in pure appearance, with no consideration for physical or moral outcomes."

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regards the godlike status as the ultimate goal of the seeker after beauty, and he too regards the approach as a progressive departure from the material world. Like Schiller he uses the metaphor of the removal of clothing in the mystic ascent to the Good, which he asserts is also beautiful: "To attain [the Good] is for those that will take the upward path, who will set all their forces towards it, who will divest themselves of all that we have put on in our descent: so, to those that approach the Holy Celebrations of the Mysteries, there are appointed purifications and the laying aside of the garments worn before, and the entry in nakedness" (ENN 1.6.7). As with Schiller, the ascent entails a manner of seeing that abstracts the form from the body: "When [the seeker] perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows, and hasten away towards That they tell of (1.6.8). Plotinus states the point with even greater clarity in his discussion of the musician, whom he names alongside the lover and the philosopher as a man capable of beholding the Good: "This natural tendency [to be sensitive to tones and the beauty they convey] must be made the starting-point to such a man; he must be drawn by the tone, rhythm, and design in things of sense: he must learn to distinguish the material forms from the Authentic-Existent which is the source of ... the entire reasoned scheme in the work of art: he must be led to the Beauty that manifests itself through these forms" (ENN 1.3.1). The logic and metaphysics of beauty thus seem to apply equally to natural objects and artifacts. Plotinus' conferral of metaphysical dignity on art may surprise those who know no more of Plato than that he banished the poets from his Republic. How could a loyal disciple, we wonder, betray his master on so important an issue? As we shall see, however, the concept of beauty occupies such a central position in Plato's philosophy that his opposition to poetry is, to say the least, eccentric. Though Plato had good philosophical reasons for his opposition, Plotinus was nonetheless using authentically Platonic concepts and structures when he wrote the treatises "Beauty" (1.6) and "On the Intellectual Beauty"(5.8), in which he extended the theory of beauty to the field of the fine arts. To be sure, in Plotinus' view the musician is the lowest (because the most earth-bound) member of his trio of theorists. In "Das Ideal und das Leben," by contrast, there is no mention of the lover and the philosopher as alternative aspirants to "des Ideales Reich"; still less does Schiller mention the natural scientist, whom Aristotle would certainly have wanted to include in the list. Artistic contemplation, it appears, has

Introduction

9

expanded to push out all other contenders; this gives us a first indication of Schiller's strategy, which tends to appropriate for art and aesthetics the dignity reserved by Platonism predominantly for the philosophical life. This relationship to the Platonic tradition will help us to understand why, in his treatises, Schiller finds it necessary to place himself at a distance from philosophy as such even while he echoes some of philosophy's traditional claims. The poem "Das Ideal und das Leben" performs a similarly devious manoeuvre in its treatment of the active moral life. It concludes of course with the deification of Hercules, which is conferred on him as a reward for his heroic struggles on behalf of mankind. It has not been noticed, so far as I know, that the first stanza also contains a reference to the same mythical figure, in this case to the story of Hercules' choice between allegorical figures representing virtue and happiness, the encounter being symbolically located at a crossroads: "Zwischen Sinnengliick und Seelenfrieden / Bleibt dem Menschen nur die bange Wahl" (7-8).13 These motifs thus provide the poem with a kind of mythological frame, and by itself this frame leads us to expect a poem celebrating the type of life for which Hercules was rewarded. But the actual object of the poem is aesthetic contemplation, which enables us, Schiller seems to be saying, to avoid the choice between happiness and virtue that Hercules was forced to make. Instead, we can share in the life of the immortals who are lucky enough to enjoy both simultaneously: "Auf der Stirn des hohen Uraniden / Leuchtet ihr vermahlter Strahl" (9-10).M This is of course not to argue that Schiller was an immoralist, for, as the fifth stanza makes clear, he is not exempting us from the duty of

13. "Man retains merely the anxious choice between happiness of the senses and peace of soul." In Xenophon, Memorabilia of Socrates (2.1.21), the story is attributed to the sophist Prodicus. For an iconographical history of the motif, see Panofsky, "'Hercules Prodicius.' " Surprisingly, the implicit reference is missed by Gerhard Friedl (Verhullte Wahrheit, p. 119), since he looks for it only in the penultimate strophe: "But Schiller excludes this aspect of freedom of decision in the penultimate strophe, although it would have been strongly suggested by the repeated call for the renunciation of earthly goods at the beginning of the poem." ("Schiller klammert diesen Aspekt der Entscheidungsfreiheit in der vorletzten Strophe aber aus, obwohl er wegen des mehrfachen Aufrufs zum Verzicht auf irdische Giiter am Anfang des Gedichts durchaus nahegelegen hatte.") As Friedl points out, Schiller had used the motif in his early poem "Der Venuswagen," lines 25-29. 14. "Their married beam shines on the brow of the high son of Uranus."

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Dialectic of Love

moral struggle in our earthly lives.15 Despite this, however, it is suggestive how Schiller, while retaining the structure and imagery of Platonism, contrives to elevate the status of art and aesthetic contemplation within that structure and to dignify the aesthetic life by the juxtaposition with the life of Hercules, who is a kind of pagan miles christianus; the identification of "Schein" or "Gestalt" as the divine image of humanity ("der Menschheit Gotterbild") and the apparent substitution of this "Gestalt" for the immortal soul make us wonder whether, in consequence of the loss of a conventional belief in God and immortality, Schiller is forcing a reinterpreted and dechristianized Platonism to perform the traditional task of providing hope, support, and consolation.16 In the absence of direct influence and even of any substantial knowledge of Platonism on Schiller's part, a Platonic interpretation of his thought evidently requires some general justification even before I begin to examine the evidence in detail.17 Such a justification falls into two parts. First, there may be a class of individuals who, prior to any philosophical training and by virtue of their nature or experience, are inclined to believe in a purer realm of thought or spirit transcending the material world. Assuming the availability of the texts, persons possessing 15. See also the 2701 AB (p. 662): "Wie iibel wiirde [der Mensch] sich also raten, wenn er den Weg zum Ideale einschlagen wollte, um sich den Weg zur Wirklichkeit zu ersparen!" (How misguided [man] would be, then, if he were to take the path to the ideal in order to save himself the journey to reality!) The preceding sentence states that an active moral disposition ("Energie des Willens") is a prerequisite of the capacity for aesthetic contemplation. 16. For the theological connotations of the Greek term theoria, see Joachim Ritter, "Die Lehre vorn Ursprung," p. 37: "Theory in the Platonic sense is more than positivistic science. It is carried by a feeling of the presence of the divine." ("Theorie im platonischen Sinn ist mehr als 'positivistische' Wissenschaft. Sie wird von einem Gefuhl der Gegenwart des Gottlichen getragen.") Ritter also points out that contemplatio, which is the Latin equivalent, is etymologically linked to templum and hence preserves the religious connotation. 17. References to Plato in Schiller's correspondence are infrequent and generally betray little direct knowledge, but his letter to Korner of 4 July 1794 contains a reference to Wilhelm Gottiieb Tennemann's System der platonischen Philosophie that is worth pursuing. In his letter of 17 June, Korner had expressed an interest in studying Plato, and Schiller's reply, "Was den Plato betrifft, so kann Dir vielleicht die Schrift von Tennemann: System der platonischen Philosophie. viele unnothige Arbeit ersparen" (As far as Plato is concerned, Tennemann's book System of Platonic Philosophy may perhaps save you much unnecessary work), leaves it tantalizingly open whether he has read it or not. If he did, he will have found in volume i inter alia an eloquent account (pp. 173-92), based mainly on Isocrates, of the negative consequences of a century of prosperity and enlightenment on Athenian morals. This could have helped Schiller formulate his analysis of modern society in the fifth and sixth Asthetische Briefe. We also find (pp. 220-21) an account of Platonic purification ("Reinigung," "Veredelung") that Schiller might have read with approval. In volume 2 (pp. 78-79), we find inter alia an outline of the section in the Sophist in which

Introduction

11

such a temperament might naturally be drawn to the Platonic philosophy. But if they have never had the opportunity to study the sources, their excursions into philosophical thinking might lead without their knowing it to concepts or theories that were anticipated in the writings of Plato. The Schillerian passages cited above provide ample evidence that Schiller, most of all perhaps in the phrase "von allem Unrat der Wirklichkeit reingewaschen" (cleansed of all the filth of reality) had indeed a propensity to think in this way.18 In the following, I shall be drawing attention to many Platonic echoes that can be heard in Schiller's writings, even though Schiller may have been unaware that that is what they are. The second way of sustaining a Platonic interpretation is by showing the existence of Platonic elements in the philosophical and cultural traditions in which Schiller was raised. To demonstrate this in a comprehensive fashion would require a separate study, but Max Wundt has given us a valuable sketch of the rediscovery of Plato by writers, philosophers, and scholars in the eighteenth century, with the decisive breakthrough coming in the decade of the i76os.19 Here I need only refer to Plato summarizes and confutes the views of those who see all reality either in ideas or in matter. Schiller's analysis of the idealist and the realist in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtungis a late descendant of this Platonic passage, though it is not necessary to assume that Schiller knew this. The possible influence of Tennemann's work on Schiller's thought is a question that merits a full-scale investigation. On the Kantian character of Tennemann's view of Plato, see Novotny, The Posthumous Life of Plato, pp. 506-7. 18. See Rnowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, p. 11: "[Plato] is the father of all those who have held that Soul or Spirit or Mind is the only reality, of those who regard all movement and activity as ultimately intellectual, of those who find the true life of the human spirit in an upward striving towards the divine." Describing his antithesis of the idealist and the realist in a letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt (9-11 January 1796), Schiller clearly identifies himself as an idealist, and in his last letter to the same friend (2 April 1805), he declares his allegiance to the spirit of philosophical idealism while also, revealingly, venting his exasperation with the technical details of particular philosophical texts: "Die speculative Philosophic, wenn sie mich je gehabt hat, hat mich durch ihre hohle Formeln verscheucht, ich habe auf diesem kahlen Gefild keine lebendige Quelle und keine Nahrung fur mich gefunden; aber die tiefen Grundideen der Idealphilosophie bleiben ein ewiger Schatz und schon allein um ihrentwillen muB man sich gliicklich preisen in dieser Zeit gelebt zu haben." (Speculative philosophy, if it has ever had me in its grip, has scared me off by its empty formulae; I found no living springs and no nourishment for myself on that barren landscape. But the deep fundamental ideas of ideal philosophy remain an eternal treasure; for their sake alone one must count oneself lucky to have lived in this age.) 19. "Die Wiederentdeckung Platons im 18. Jahrhundert." An indirect but important role, Wundt argues (p. 153), was played by Rousseau, whose novels Julie (1761) and Emile (1762) contain numerous references to Plato.

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Dialectic of Love

Leibniz's interest in Plato and his cautious identification of his own epistemological views with Platonism;20 to the influence of Shaftesbury, the heir of the Cambridge Platonists, on numerous German writers and thinkers of the eighteenth century;21 to the Platonic quality of Winckelmann's thought;22 to the prominence given to Platonism and its founder in that canonical mid-eighteenth century novel, Wieland's Geschichte des Agathon (first version 1766-67) ;23 to Moses Mendelssohn's adoption of Platonic costume to defend Wolffianism in his Phaedon (i767); 24 and to Kant's acknowledgment of Plato as his precursor in the advocacy of a theory of ideas.25 These examples suffice to show that Platonism was a living force in Germany in the eighteenth century and that Schiller can plausibly be assumed to have absorbed some elements of Platonism from his cultural environment without much, or perhaps even any, direct acquaintance with Plato's texts. A word should be said here about the philosophy instruction that Schiller received from 1776 onwards from Jakob Friedrich Abel, an inspiring teacher whose lasting influence on Schiller has long been recognized.2b In the standard history of the Ducal Academy, which Schiller attended from 1773 to 1780, Robert Uhland writes of Abel: "He dared to attack the 'Wolffians in spirit' whose soul was sustained by words alone, and to confront them with a Bacon, a Plato, or with the 'fiery spirit of Leibniz.'"27 Abel's own Rede uber das Genie, on which Uhland's 20. Preface to New Essays on the Human Understanding (1704), in Leibniz, Selections, pp. 368-69. Leibniz associates his belief in innate ideas with Plato and Locke's theory of the mind, as a tabula rasa (inaccurately) with Aristotle. 21. Weiser, Shaftesbury und das deutsche Gtistesleben. 22. The Platonic character of Winckelmann's thought is stressed by Cassirer in Freiheit und Form, pp. 127-39. For a more detailed treatment of the relationship, see the valuable study by Rein, Winckelmanns Begriff der Schonheit. 23. On Wieland's continuing preoccupation with Platonism, see Reemtsma, Das Buck vom Ich on Wieland's unfinished novel Aristipp und einige seiner Zeitgenossen. 24. The importance of this work for Schiller during his early years is stressed by Riedel, Die Anthropologie des jungen Schiller, pp. 160-63. 25. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Transcendental Dialectic, book i, section i, "Von den Ideen iiberhaupt," in Kant, Werke, vol. 3, pp. 321-26. See chapter 4, below, for further discussion. Kant's works will be quoted from this edition and identified henceforth by volume and page number in the text. 26. For an excellent recent contribution on Abel, see Riedel, "Influxus physicus und Seelenstarke." 27. "Er wagte es, die 'geistigen Wolffianer' anzugreifen, deren Seele sich nur auf Worte stiitze, und ihnen einen Bacon, Plato oder den 'feurigen geistvollen Leibniz' gegeniiberzustellen." Uhland, Geschichte der hohen Karlsschule, p. 151.

Introduction

13

comments are based, confirms this admiration for Plato, who is designated next to Scipio and Cato as a "groBer Geist." Despite Abel's unconcealed sympathy for a more materialistic psychology, the speech reverts repeatedly to Plato, even citing the Parable of the Cave at the rhetorical climax: "Full of the feeling of his strength and full of noble pride, the genius casts aside the shameful fetters, scorning the cramped dungeon where the normal mortal languishes; full of heroic courage, he tears himself free and, like the royal eagle, flies far above the small low earth and disports himself in the sun."28 Abel's praise for Bacon's and Plato's use of images is also of interest; in his words, "one advances to the first sensible image upon which all abstractions depend, one thinks and feels."29 Here we can hardly help thinking of Schiller's justification of his beautiful presentation ("schoner Vortrag") of philosophical ideas at the opening of the Asthetische Briefe (570-71). Indeed, Schiller's use of the doctrine of anamnesis in his early poem "Das Geheimnis der Reminiszenz" tells us with some certainty that he acquired some knowledge of Platonism from Abel. In view of the Platonic atmosphere of "Das Ideal und das Leben," which is by no means hard to detect, it is surprising how little interest scholars have shown in investigating Schiller's relation to this tradition. The common practice of describing Schiller as an idealist makes the situation even more puzzling, for Plato is the fountainhead of idealist philosophy.30 The eminent philosopher Werner Beierwaltes has devoted a book to the connections linking Schelling and Hegel to the Platonic tradition, and he has argued elsewhere for such a connection with specific reference to idealist aesthetics (in the latter case with Marsilio Ficino functioning as mediating figure).31 There can therefore be nothing objectionable in an investigation of an idealist's relation to the philosophy of Plato and his followers. In further support of my approach, I would 28. "Das Genie voll Gefuhl seiner Kraft, voll edlen Stolzes, wirft die entehrende Fesseln hinweg, hohnend den engen Kerker, in dem der gemeine Sterbliche schmachtet, reiBt sich voll Heldenkuhnheit los und fliegt gleich dem koniglichen Adler weit iiber die kleine niedre Erde hinweg und wandelt in der Sonne." Rede iiber das Genie, p. 31. The eagle here, Abel's own addition, makes us think of the ending of Schiller's great poem "Der Spaziergang." 29. "man dringt bis zum ersten sinnlichen Bilde vor, an dem alle Abstraktionen hangen, man denkt und fiihlt." Ibid., p. 42. 30. See the title of Klaus Berghahn's recent collection, Schiller: Ansichten eines Idealisten. 31. Platonismus und Idealismus; Marsilio Ficinos Theme des Schonen. See especially the latter, p. 54: "despite all differences, Ficino's conception of the beautiful as a 'reflective' manifestation of the primal oneness and goodness in the realm of the sensible and finite makes the substantial link between 'Platonic aesthetics' and the idealist philosophy of art, insofar

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Dialectic of Love

cite Paul Oskar Kris teller's plea for a broad and flexible understanding of the Platonic tradition: "For Platonism, if regarded not as the literal repetition of Plato's theories but as a constant adaptation and amalgamation of his basic motives according to the insight and convictions of each new thinker, will continue to be restated and revived in the future in many different ways as it has been in the past. Thus it may be considered with as much right as any other intellectual current in Western civilization to be a living tradition, and (why not?) a philosophia perennis."^2 Kristeller's voice is no less authoritative than that of Beierwaltes, and, if we accept his judgment, there can be no inconsistency in the claim that Schiller's philosophy belongs in the Platonic tradition even though Schiller himself lacked direct knowledge of Plato's philosophy. The metaphysical approach adopted in the present study contrasts particularly sharply with the trends of recent Schiller scholarship, which tends to favour a kind of sociological decoding of Schiller's conceptual system.33 Two scholars belonging to earlier generations stand apart from this pattern of neglect and deserve to be mentioned. The first is Hermann Friedrich Miiller, a translator of the Enneads who, over a fortyyear period, produced three articles arguing for an affinity of thought and temperament between Schiller and Plotinus.34 While he points out some interesting parallels and provides many useful references, Miiller's method is largely confined to the suggestive juxtaposition of cognate

as the latter, from within its own transcendental or logical-metaphysical grounding, understands art as an 'emanation of the absolute,' as 'incorporation of the finite into the infinite' (Schelling), or as the manifestation of the idea in the ideal' (Hegel)" ("trotz aller Differenzen: Ficinos Konzeption des Schonen als einer 'reflexiven' Erscheinung der ursprunghaften Einheit und Gutheit im Bereich des Sinnlichen und Endlichen verbindet 'platonische Asthetik' der Sache nach mit der idealistischen Philosophic der Kunst, sofern diese aus eigener transzendentalphilosophischer oder logisch-metaphysischer Begrundung Kunst als einen 'AusfluB des Absoluten,' als 'Einbildung des Endlichen ins Unendliche' [Schelling] oder als das Erscheinen der Idee im Ideal [Hegel] begreift"). 32. Kristeller, Eight Philosophers, p. 53. 33. A good example is Bolten, Friedrich Schiller. More philosophically motivated criticism tends to focus on Schiller's relations to contemporary thinkers. His relationship to Kant will be discussed in chapter 4, below, and will be argued to be consistent with my portrayal of Schiller as a Platonist. His relation to Fichte, discussed most recently in Pott, Die schone Freiheit, will not concern us here in that it pertains only to parts of AE, whereas our concern is with the overall character of Schiller's thought. 34. "Plotin und Schiller uber die Schonheit"; "Plotinos uber asthetische Erziehung"; "Zur Geschichte des Begriffs 'schone Seele.' "

Introduction

15

passages and thus remains ultimately impressionistic. One misses the effort to pursue the underlying reasons for the parallels in the logical and metaphysical structures of Schiller's thought, for only with that kind of investigation could the detection of Platonic or Plotinian elements in Schiller's writings become more than an isolated apergu. The second scholar is Franz Koch, whose study Schillers philosophische Schriften undPlotin appeared in 1926. Like Miiller, Koch offers a profusion of helpful parallels, but he goes further than Miiller in trying to integrate his findings into a comprehensive view of his subject. Besides being rather cursory, however, Koch's work suffers from the disproportionate influence of Robert Sommer, whose overestimation of the organicistic and naturalistic elements in Schiller's thought led him virtually to assimilate Schiller's position to Herder's.35 Instead of using the Plotinian echoes as the starting point for an exploration of Schiller's idealism, as common sense would dictate, Koch finds himself eccentrically trying to force both Plotinus and Schiller into an organicistic paradigm that is fundamentally alien to them both. This is the chief flaw in Koch's work, and it is perhaps this flaw that has prevented it from finding a following among later scholars. A more recent exception to the general neglect of metaphysics is a 1959 study by Kate Hamburger that attempts to chart Schiller's philosophical and artistic development with reference to idealism and modern existentialism.36 Defining Platonic idealism as "thought directed towards objective ideas and ideals" ("das auf objektive Ideen und Ideale gerichtete Denken," 132), Hamburger argues that from the start of his career, Schiller vacillated between this variety of idealism and a more subjective version, one oriented towards action rather than contemplation, and one 35. Sommer, Grundzuge einer Geschichte. Sommer has found a modern champion in Jeffrey Barnouw, whose numerous articles strive to locate Schiller's aesthetic writings within a fundamentally sensationalist tradition, incorporating an antimetaphysical theory of perception and personality. Barnouw makes his case with great energy and learning, and his proof of Schiller's influence on the American pragmatist C. S. Peirce is striking, but the argument relies ultimately on a selective reading of Schiller's texts. Two consequences of this are Barnouw's dismissal of UDE as an early text that is not indicative of Schiller's mature position ("The Morality of the Sublime") and his refusal to come to grips with the concept of "Schein" ("'Freiheit zu geben durch Freiheit' "); see chapter 9, below, for discussion of these questions. It is undeniable that the materials can be found in Schiller's writings for the sensationalist theory discerned by Barnouw (and Peirce), but they have to be detached from the metaphysical foundations within which they are embedded. It is with these foundations that I shall be concerned here. 36. "Schiller und Sartre." Page references for the quotations from this article that follow appear in the text.

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which was later confirmed for him by his study of Kant's ethical theory. Hamburger's thesis follows the path marked out by Hermann Gumbel, who sees a"realistic turn" in Schiller's later work,37 and she consequently argues that Schiller abandoned idealism after 1795 for a more direct engagement—by means of a return to drama—with the world of action in the material world. The aesthetic treatises are thus summarized briefly under the rubric of an alleged "negative stance on Schiller's part towards a Platonic kind of idealism and the failed attempt to install beauty in life as an idea and as a means of education" (i44).38 While the relation between Schiller's aesthetics and his subsequent drama goes beyond the scope of the present book, one must say that Hamburger's treatment of the aesthetic writings is determined more by the requirements of her thesis than by a desire to do justice to those writings themselves. Whatever the merits of her proposed affinity between Schiller and Jean-Paul Sartre, we should question, first, whether the pessimism of the end of the twenty-seventh Asthetischer Brief represents, as Hamburger claims, a scepticism towards the Platonic idea, or rather, as seems more likely, a pessimism about the material world, which so stubbornly resists the forming influence of that idea. Second, it must be noted that Hamburger fails to take into account the role of the sublime in Schiller's aesthetics. As we shall see, the sublime implies a pessimistic view of the material world and has the function of restoring an element of moral integrity to aesthetic contemplation, hence counteracting the danger of passivity latent in beauty. Schiller's aesthetic thought attempts to embrace the conflict between activity and passivity, enacting an intricate interplay of aesthetics and morality by means of constructs such as moral beauty and sentimental poetry. The latter inherits much of the moral pathos of the sublime, on which it is modelled. The reader of sentimental poetry, we thus learn, feels "einen lebendigen Trieb, die Harmonic in sich zu erzeugen, welche er dort [bei naiven Dichtungen] wirklich empfand, ein Ganzes aus sich zu machen, die Menschheit in sich zu einem vollendeten Ausdruck zu bringen" (752).39 Activism is thus built into the concept of the sentimental, 37. "Die realistische Wendung des spaten Schiller." 38. " [Eine] negative Haltung Schillers zu einem Idealismus Platonischer Form und das MiBlingen des Versuchs, die Schonheit als Idee und als Erziehungsinstrument in das 'Leben' einzubauen." 39. "A living impulse to produce that harmony in himself that he there [in naive poetry] actually felt, to make a totality of himself, to bring humanity to perfect expression in himself."

Introduction

17

which, by virtue of its orientation towards ideas, remains an essentially Platonic concept. By focusing on beauty in the aesthetic writings and ne glecting the role of the sublime, Hamburger selects the evidence that will best serve her thesis, causing Schiller's alleged shift from idealistic contemplation to realistic activism to appear more incontrovertible than it actually is. A final objection to Hamburger's thesis might be that Schiller's early Philosophische Briefe (1786) are already preoccupied with the gulf between the ideal and the real, while the "Vorrede" to Die Braut von Messina shows that, even in 1803, that is, after the alleged realistic turn, he still adhered to an essentially idealist aesthetics. It is to oversimplify if, in analysing the complex interplay of moral realism and aesthetic idealism in Schiller's work, the critic attempts to divide Schiller's career into chronological segments, allocating one principle to one segment and another to another. If we are to go beyond the beginnings made by Muller and Koch and to correct Hamburger's distortions, it is necessary to engage with Schiller's thought in a more comprehensive fashion than was attempted by any of them. Instead of searching for Platonic anticipations of individual concepts, we must look at Schiller's system in its entirety, at its genesis, its range, its method, and its idiosyncrasies. Our aim must be to evaluate, not sources or influences, but the character of the whole, for only then will it be possible to evaluate such Platonic echoes and reminiscences as we discover. To this end, it will be necessary to devote extensive attention to the system's inner workings, which often resemble more a debate between competing points of view than the exegesis of a clear train of thought. While many scholars have found fault with the logical consistency of the treatises, discovering flaws ranging from minor ambiguities to outright contradictions, Schiller's logic has never received the kind of careful consideration it requires. For the sceptics, Schiller's shortcomings as a logician are often treated as justification for a refusal to engage with his thought at all. His admirers, on the other hand, have tended to concede these shortcomings but not to dwell on them, preferring all too often to comment on attractive individual passages even when these passages are contradicted with equal energy elsewhere. But it is not sufficient to note that a contradiction exists (or, for that matter, to deny it); we must also ask why and as a result of what philosophical pressures it has come about. It is the contention of this study that the Platonic character of Schiller's thought is manifested not merely in certain easily recognizable concepts

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Dialectic of Love

or metaphors and not merely in its striving for transcendence, which we have termed its pathos, but also in the strained logic of the system he attempted to erect. Schiller's logic, I shall argue, reflects his struggle with the Platonic metaphysical heritage and its inherent dilemmas. Although this heritage reached him by indirect paths and although he was consequently unaware of its ultimate sources, there is still merit in placing him in the context of this older and wider tradition. Such an approach can enrich not merely our philosophical understanding of his thought but also our critical appreciation of his literary creations and even our ability (something that cannot be taken for granted) to view his personality sym pathetically. Even more important, it can illuminate continuities in philosophical history that go back beyond the Age of Enlightenment and hence place an important pioneer of philosophical aesthetics in a new light. The Asthetische Briefe elicited from the Duke of Augustenburg, their noble recipient, a somewhat condescending comment that, although it wa made privately, anticipated the tone of much subsequent criticism: "Poor Schiller is not really cut out to be a philosopher. He needs a translator to express with philosophical precision what he has said with poetic beauty, to translate him from the poetic into philosophical language."40 The Duke was disturbed by the unacademic style of Schiller's treatise, and he locates the problem in Schiller's disposition and training. Quite simply, Schiller was a poet, and he therefore could not be expected to be a good philosopher as well.41 A cognate, though more refined, approach to Schiller's personality can be traced back to Schiller's own image of 40. "Der gute Schiller ist doch eigentlich nicht zum Philosophen geschaffen. Er bedarf einen Ubersetzer, der das poetisch schon Gesagte mit philosophischer Prazision entwickelt, der ihn aus dem Poetischen in die philosophische Sprache ubersetzt." Quoted in NA vol. 27, p. 237. 41. Fichte was another early critic of the philosophical calibre of his work, insinuatin in his letter of 27 June 1794 that Schiller illicitly confused images and concepts. See especially the following (NA vol. 35, p. 232): "With me, the image does not stand in the place of the concept but rather before or after the concept, as a simile. ... But your manner is com pletely novel. ... You put chains on the imagination, which can only be free, and want t force it to think, which it cannot do. This, I think, is the cause of the tiring exertion that your philosophical writings cause me and have caused to several others." ("Bei mir steht das Bild nicht an der Stelle des Begriffs, sondern vor oder nach dem Begriffe, als Gleichnis. ... Ihre Art aber ist vollig neu. ... Sie fesseln die Einbildungskraft, welche nur frei sein kann, und wollen dieselbe zwingen, zu denken. Das kann sie nicht; daher, glaube ich, entsteht die ermudende Anstrengung, die mir Ihre philosophischen Schriften verursachen; und die sie Mehrern verursacht haben.")

Introduction

19

himself (letter to Goethe, 31 August 1794, NA 27:32) as a hybrid: "Mein Verstand wirkt eigentlich mehr symbolisierend, und so schwebe ich als eine Zwitterart zwischen dem Begriffund der Anschauung, zwischen der Regel und der Empfmdung, zwischen dem technischen Kopf und dem G e n i e . . . . Noch jetzt begegnet es mir haufig genug, daB die Einbildungskraft meine Abstraktionen und der kalte Verstand meine Dichtung stort."42 The comment can be thought of as the original source for countless later judgments that seek to explain, but also to disparage, Schiller's achievements on the grounds that such a hybrid mix must necessarily produce flawed work in both areas. The nineteenth-century philosopher Wilhelm Windelband used the postulate of an inner division as the basis for what is nonetheless a sympathetic portrayal of Schiller's philosophy, and his account, despite its Victorian orotundity, is still worth pondering: Schiller the poet saw the most valuable and perfect manifestation of the human essence in the aesthetic function; Schiller the character, with austere conviction, subjected all human action to the ends of morality. If we call one the Goethean and the other the Kantian ideal, then Schiller's mind was so sympathetically affected by both, so equally filled with both, that one can trace both elements from the beginning to the end of his activity as a writer. Even within the same text the upper hand is gained now by one element, now by the other, depending on how the lively character of the poetic thinker has been seized by its subject. This conflict of the two elements ended neither with the victory of the one or the other, nor with their complete and comprehensive reconciliation; rather, it can be recognized as late as Schiller's final utterances, though he tried repeatedly to settle it once and for all.43

42. "My understanding works more in a symbolizing way, and so I hover like a hybrid between concept and intuition, between rule and feeling, between the technical mind and genius. ... It still happens to me often enough that my imagination disturbs my abstractions and my cold understanding disturbs my poetry." 43. "Der Dichter Schiller sah in der asthetischen Funktion die wertvollste und vollkommenste Auspragung des menschlichen Wesens, der Charakter Schiller unterwarf mit strenger Uberzeugung alles menschliche Tun dem sittlichen Zweck. Nennt man das eine das Goethische, das andere das Kantische Ideal, so war der Geist Schillers von beiden so sympathisch beruhrt und von beiden so gleichmaBig erfullt, daB man vom Anfang bis zum Ende in seiner schriftstellerischen Tatigkeit beide Elemente verfolgen kann. Ja oft in derselben Schrift iiberwiegt bald das eine und bald das andere, je nachdem der Gegenstand das lebhafte Wesen des dichterischen Denkers nach der einen oder nach der anderen Seite mit

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Dialectic of Love

One can admire here Windelband's identification of inner conflict as the foremost feature of Schiller's thought, as well as the implicit insight that Schiller the "thinker" is also Schiller the "character," that is, that the thinker is prone to think thoughts of an austerely moralistic kind. No less important is Windelband's recognition that the conflict remained unresolved throughout Schiller's life, an insight that averts the misleading chronological interpretation referred to above. Certain aspects of the analysis cannot be allowed to stand, however. The expression "poetic thinker" ("dichterischer Denker") for example, is a cliche that is best avoided, and the suggestion of a susceptibility on Schiller's part to Kantian and Goethean ideals gives rise to the unfortunate notion of Schiller as a malleable figure, inclining to the poetic or philosophical side, depending on whom he had most recently been reading or talking to. Of more importance is the insidious way in which such terminology suggests that only the Kantian side of Schiller's mind is capable of producing thoughts of philosophical interest, while the aesthetic side would, it is implied, produce better poetry if only it were able to prevent such philosophical thoughts from crossing an inner frontier. This is, of course, a highly artificial distinction. Hegel applauded Schiller precisely for departing from the premise of Kantian dualism in his theory of beauty. It did not occur to him to discount this step because it was the product of a poet. Conversely, it is by no means to the detriment of Schiller's poems when the voices of intellectual exertion and moral austerity are heard in them, as they are throughout "Das Ideal und das Leben." Despite the vividness of Schiller's self-characterization as a hybrid, the critic must endeavour to see him as one, for the creativity of Schiller, both as a poet and a philosopher, had a great deal to do with the energy generated in that inner struggle. Though originating with the author himself, the division into poet and thinker (or "character") ultimately helps us as little as the division into discrete chronological periods. An implication of Windelband's account is that the writings of such a divided man must pose an essentially psychological problem. While the sich reiBt. Dieser Kampf der Elemente hat weder mit dem Siege des einen oder des anderen noch mit einer vollen und allseitigen Versohnung derselben geendet, sondern ist vielmehr bis in die letzten AuBerungen Schillers hinein zu erkennen; aber immer neue und neue Versuche hat er gemacht, mit demselben zum AbschluB zu kommen." Die Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, vol. 2, pp. 249-50. The spelling has been modernized in some places.

Introduction

21

following chapters will be concerned mainly with metaphysics, psychological considerations cannot be ignored entirely, and chapters 6 and 7, especially, will trace the contours of Schiller's mature philosophy as they first appear in his more subjective writings of the 17805. The later dilemmas are foreshadowed in the context of his so-called philosophy of love, in which, in a characteristically Schillerian mixture, metaphysical and religious statements stand alongside a theory of the emotions underlying poetic creation. The inner instabilities of the theory of love thus point not only to a crisis of religious belief but also to uncertainties in Schiller as to the validity and reliability of his poetic gift; his abandonment of poetry from 1789 to 1795 is thus connected with his waning belief in the theory that had underlain his earliest achievements. In the context of Schiller's biography as a poet, then, his turn to a Kantinspired metaphysics in the 17905 can be seen as an attempt to resolve, albeit at a level of greater objectivity and generality, the problems of creativity that had troubled him in the previous decade. It is thus possible to draw a chronological line between the two periods, marking the shift, not, as with Hamburger, from idealism to realism, but from a more psychological to a more metaphysical treatment of his problems. The adoption of a more metaphysical approach, and in particular the discovery of the sublime, enabled Schiller to defuse the threat posed by the anticipated loss of creative enthusiasm. Whatever the logical weaknesses of his treatises, one must observe that Schiller's later poems and plays, equivalent to a second literary career, would have been impossible without them. The reader who can appreciate such later masterpieces as "Der Spaziergang" or Maria Stuart must also acknowledge that Schiller's philosophical phase had served a useful purpose. Like so many others, Windelband links Schiller to Kant, for the reason that Kant was the philosopher Schiller studied most intensively. And yet, in a letter to Goethe (28 October 1794, NA 27:74), Schiller disclaimed any interest in the particular details of the Kantian system, arguing instead that Kant had merely restated the truths that had been available to mankind since time immemorial: "Es erschreckt mich gar nicht, zu denken, daB das Gesetz der Veranderung, von welchem kein menschliches und kein gottliches Werke Gnade fmdet, auch die Form dieser Philosophic, so wie jede andere, zerstoren wird; aber die Fundamente derselben werden dies Schicksal nicht zu furchten haben, denn so alt das Menschengeschlecht ist und solange es eine Vernunft gibt, hat man sie stillschweigend anerkannt und im ganzen danach

22

Dialectic of Love

gehandelt."44 The impression conveyed here, namely, that Kant confirmed Schiller's own convictions rather than provided him with new ones, is borne out by the finely balanced formulation of Wilhelm von Humboldt, one of the most sympathetic contemporary observers of Schiller's personality and work: "He did not take anything from him [Kant]; the seeds of the ideas developed in Uber Anmut und Wiirde and the Asthetische Briefe lie in what he wrote before becoming acquainted with the Kantian philosophy, and they represent merely the inner and original disposition of his mind. But that acquaintance marked a new epoch in Schiller's philosophical effort, for the Kantian philosophy brought him support and encouragement."45 It is consistent with this analysis that Schiller's doctrine of aesthetic idealization, which is so prominent in the Asthetische Briefe and Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, occurs first in the review Uber Burgers Gedichte (sw, 970-91), written in 1790, before he began his study of Kant, whereas such famous and quintessentially Kantian doctrines as the thing-in-itself or the a priori status of time and space do not interest Schiller in the slightest. I have referred to the mixture of metaphysics and the psychology of poetic creation in Schiller's early philosophy of love, and this mixture can help us to understand what he sought and found in Kant. We must recall that when he turned to Kant in 1791, Schiller had just suffered a catastrophic breakdown of his health, and he knew his recovery could only be temporary. Besides a new theory of poetic creation, he urgently needed a new set of beliefs to enable him to accept his grim fate, and, as before, the questions of poetry and religion were inseparable. Although Schiller does not use this term, he respects Kant as a proponent of a philosaphia perennis. What matters is not so much the particular argument or theory but rather the ancient claims of philosophy to teach us 44. "It does not faze me at all to think that the law of change, from which no work of gods or men can expect mercy, will destroy the form of this philosophy like every other; but the foundations of this philosophy need not fear this fate, for they have been tacitly acknowledged and, on the whole, followed in practice for as long as there has been a human race capable of reason." 45. "Er nahm nicht von ihm [Kant]; von den in Anmut und Wiirde und den Asthetischen Briefen durchgefuhrten Ideen ruhen die Keime schon in dem, was er vor der Bekanntschaft mit Kantischer Philosophic schrieb; sie stellen auch nur die innere, urspriingliche Anlage seines Geistes dar. Allein dennoch wurde jene Bekanntschaft zu einer neuen Epoche in Schillers philosophischem Streben; die Kantische Philosophic gewahrte ihm Hulfe und Anregung" ("Uber Schiller und den Gang seiner Geistesentwicklung"; quoted from Oellers, Schiller: Zeitgenosse aller Epochen, vol. i, p. 300).

Introduction

23

to overcome our passions and to see through the illusoriness of earthly satisfactions, to provide us with access to a higher reality exempt from transience, and, not least, to set us apart from and above the mass of those who pursue their ends in this world as if it were the only one.46 It is thus readily understandable that Schiller, who approached Kant with such needs and expectations, should have interpreted him, as I shall argue in chapter 4, in an essentially Platonic fashion. Philosophy of course cannot survive merely as a way of life; it requires a body of doctrine to bolster its claims. Perhaps the paradigmatic text of this tradition is Boethius' De ConsolationsPhilosophiae (ca. 524), in which the author struggles for equanimity in the face of the collapse of his worldly fortunes and his impending execution. The doctrinal element in this text is drawn primarily from Neoplatonism, and it is a remarkable testimony to the durability of the Platonic tradition that it was still capable of providing consolation in similar circumstances twelve hundred years later. But if Schiller benefited from the therapeutic powers of Platonism, he also inherited its philosophical difficulties. The contradictions at the heart of Schiller's thought, commonly seen as the result of personal idiosyncrasy, conflicting influences, or deficient philosophical acumen, can be more fruitfully viewed as the outcome of a tension at the heart of the Platonic system. This tension was pointed out and criticised by Aristotle and by Plotinus, and their analyses will assist us in our efforts to understand the inner dynamics of Schiller's thought. While not disputing that Schiller's psychological constitution is of legitimate interest, I must also stress that his logical difficulties are of serious philosophical interest.47 The fact that he wrote his treatises without any detailed knowledge of the ancient texts suggests that he was led by an extraordinary intuition and speculative energy into issues that had troubled metaphysicians for centuries. If it seems implausible to attribute such powers to a poet, we might consider whether, at some level, the poet and the metaphysician are not engaged in the same kind of undertaking. It was argued by Carl Justi in the last century, for example, that 46. On the last point see Boll, "Vita Contemplativa," p. 15: "For Plato, the relationship between the man who is active in a merely practical sense ... and the man who, by his own inner command, beholds the eternal and essential is the same as that between the slave and the truly free man." ("Der blofi praktisch tatige Mensch ... ist fur Plato gegenuber dem, der nach eigenem inneren Gebot das Ewige und Wesenhafte schaut, nur wie der Sklave gegenuber dem wahrhaft Freien.") 47. The outstanding treatment of the relation of psychological roots to philosophical expresssion in these texts is still Spranger, "Schillers Geistesart," first published in 1941.

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Dialectic of Love

the Platonic theory of ideas is fundamentally an aesthetic theory, and we might also reflect that the justification of divine Providence, a classical problem of metaphysics, occupied the literary figures of the German Enlightenment as much as it did the philosophers.48 At the very least, we should discard all preconceived antitheses between the intuitive and nature-loving poet and the cerebral and rigoristic philosopher if we are to do justice to Schiller's work in this area. The conflict expressed by Windelband as subsisting between the poet and the "character" is fought out in Schiller's texts between the concepts of the beautiful and the sublime. In his aesthetic writings before the three great treatises, Schiller had contrived to keep these concepts separate from one another, with the essays on tragedy (Uber den Grund des Vergniigens an tragischen Gegenstdnden, 1792; Uber die tragische Kunst, 1792; Vom Erhabenen/Uber das Pathetische, 1793) being devoted to the sublime and the Kallias-Briefe (1793) seeking a post-Kantian definition of beauty. From here on, however, the two concepts start to run together. In the subsequent works he strives for a synthesis of the two concepts, but one in which they will yet remain discernible as opposites. Here we can see not merely the source of Schiller's logical problems but also his dependence on the Platonic tradition that generates these problems, and it is therefore these later treatises that will occupy us in the present study. In Uber Anmut und Wiirde, the discussion of grace ("Anmut"), a type of physical demeanour, is followed by an exploration of moral beauty, which is its psychological foundation. But from here Schiller moves to dignity ("Wiirde"), another physiological phenomenon, and to its underlying psychological state of moral sublimity. As we shall see, it is not at all clear how the exposition of the latter concepts is to be reconciled with the discussion of the former pair, and the fact that the shift to the sublime is unannounced in the treatise's introduction makes us suspect that Schiller is, as it were, feeling his way though his treatise, with an uncertain sense of overall direction. By concluding that the sublime and the beautiful must be fused with each other in order to produce the ideal of humanity, Schiller finds a formula that is rhetorically effective but also, in view of the incompatibility of its components, logically problematic. 48. See in this context Schiller's letter to Korner of 28 February/ March 1793 (NA vol. 26, p. 2 20), in which, inspired by his reading of Kant's Religion innerhaW der Grenzen der bloflen Vernunfi, he expresses an intention to compose a poem on the theodicy. For the reference tojusti, see Cassirer, "Eidos und Eidolon," p. 17.

Introduction

25

In Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, Schiller is at pains to keep the sublime out of the discussion; one senses that he wishes to avoid the logical complications of the previous treatise. However, concepts such as the "Formtrieb" (form-drive) and "energische Schonheit" (energizing beauty) function as surrogates for the sublime, and the basic problem, that is, the antagonism between the natural and the intelligible worlds and its reconciliation, remains a constant. Furthermore, in the short essay Uber das Erhabene (sw, 792-808; published 1801), Schiller seems to repudiate many of the positions advanced in the Asthetische Briefe but concludes by claiming that a complete aestheti education would include the sublime as well as the beautiful. He therewith repeats the pattern established in Uber Anmut und Wiirde and confronts us with the same logical conundrum. In Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, finally, Schiller once again starts out investigating a single concept, the naive, but soon, as in Uber Anmut und Wiirde, a second concept, the sentimental, emerges from the analysis in a somewhat oblique way that seems to have been unplanned at the outset. Next, the sentimental goes beyond merely complementing the naive to become an element in a literary typology, and instead challenges the naive for precedence; we notice too that after the appearance of the sentimental, the meaning of the naive shifts. Here as in Uber Anmut und Wiirde and Uber das Erhabene, Schiller appears in the role of a referee trying to adjudicate the conflict between his unruly dialectical creations, and again he imposes an even-handed but dubious settlement: the ideal poet must represent a fusion of the naive and the sentimental. These two concepts are not identical to their counterparts in the cognate antithesis of the beautiful and the sublime, and I shall discuss their relationship at the proper place. However, it can be stated here that there clearly is a similarity between the two antitheses, with one concept in each case pointing towards the natural world, the other towards the intelligible. Without too much simplification, therefore, and thinking of Uber das Erhabene as a postscript to the Asthetische Briefe (a view to be defended later), it can be said that Schiller essentially repeats the same logical pattern three times in his major essays. For our purposes, then, Schiller's theory of the sublime is as important as his theory of beauty.49 Our subject will not require us to dwell on the sublime as a separate phenomenon, however, but rather on its 49. The sublime has been a popular topic since Samuel Monk's classic study The Sublime of !935 and by now has been well researched. The standard older German discussion is

26

Dialectic of Love

relation to the beautiful, as an antithetical pair that can be united and separated in a way that is puzzling and needs explanation. Here I should refer to the recent research by Carsten Zelle into the development of a two-pronged aesthetic system over the course of the eighteenth century, a trend that began with Nicolas Boileau's simultaneous publication of his classicistic L'art poetique and his translation of PseudoLonginus' On the Sublime [Peri hypsous] (1674).5° According to Zelle's provocative analysis, the beautiful functions as a heading for a conventional canon of taste (perfection, harmony, and so forth), while the sublime serves as a focus for the more emotional criteria that cannot be subsumed under the beautiful. He thus finds an inherent antagonism in the duality, with each term reflecting the taste of a different social stratum. While Schiller's concepts of the beautiful and the sublime cannot be simply aligned with the antithesis progressive / reactionary, Zelle's premise that, despite attempts to reconcile them, the two concepts are fundamentally hostile to each other is certainly borne out by Schiller's treatment of them. An influential attempt to deal with with this problem can be found in Wolfgang Busing's Schillers Idee des Erhabenen. Busing formulates the

Victor, "Die Idee des Erhabenen" (first published 1937). For an excellent recent study, see Zelle, "Angenehmes Grauen." 50. "Schonheit und Erhabenheit." The volume in which this essay appears is testimony to the recent renaissance of interest in the sublime that has been brought about by the writings of Jean-Francois Lyotard, particularly his short essay "Das Erhabene und die Avantgarde." In his fine article "Die Notstandsgesetzgebung im asthetischen Staat," which appeared after work on the present book was completed, Zelle turns his attention to the twopronged nature of Schiller's aesthetics (see also Zelle's new study Die doppelte Asthetik der Moderne). While his analysis of the aporetic dimension of Schiller's thought is entirely consistent with the view to be presented here, his explanation of it (p. 447, n. 26) by reference to a duality in the "Weltanschauung" of Schiller's teacher Abel (Zelle refers to Riedel's article on Abel cited in note 26, above) strikes me as unconvincing. Schiller's attachment to incompatible metaphysical frameworks in treatises written in the mid-i 7905 is too persistent and too obsessive to be accounted for by an influence that ended when he left the Karlsschule in 1780. In the same article (p. 445, n. 17), Zelle criticizes my own paper "Schiller as Platoiiist" for failing to provide a philological answer to the question how Schiller became a Platonist. There is unfortunately no simple answer to his objection, in that Schiller's Platonism was in large measure self-generated; in its contradictory and polarized character, it reflects a process of strenuous independent thought rather than a passively absorbed influence. On the other hand, and as indicated in the text above, there was plenty of opportunity to learn about Platonism at second hand from contemporary German writers.

Introduction

27

problem accurately enough as a dilemma between the identity and nonidentity of the two concepts, and he wisely follows Dieter Henrich in stressing the importance of Schiller's early theory of love for his later aesthetics.51 Busing's most valuable contribution, on which I shall build later on, is the insight that the theory of beauty advanced in the KalliasBriefe is essentially a synthesis that includes the sublime as well, and that this synthesis is due to Schiller's derivation of beauty from freedom, an idea of reason underlying all our moral actions. Both the sublime and the beautiful are thus grounded in morality, a fact that helps to explain why Schiller subsequently had difficulty in keeping them apart. Less understandable, after this promising start, is why Busing argues so doggedly for the "Kunstcharakter" (artistic character) of the sublime, attacking all critics who emphasize the term's obvious moral content. As Paul Crowther has recently shown, Kant's theory of the sublime in the Kritik der Urteihkraft is anticipated by some passages in Kant's writings on ethics that explicitly link the concept of sublimity to the moral consciousness.52 This link is as important to Schiller as it is to Kant, and there is not the slightest point in denying it. Busing's strategy accords with the modern propensity to emphasize "the autonomy of the aesthetic," an alleged innovation of Kant and Schiller that, if genuine, could be used to defend Schiller from the charge of being a moralist rather than a poet (cf. Nietzsche's bon mot, "der Moraltrompeter von Sackingen"). But an interpretation of the sublime that excludes morality cuts across Schiller's intentions.53 In UberAnmut und Wurde, for example, both beauty and sublimity are used as terms of moral psychology to describe relations of harmony and disharmony between natural desire and moral duty. The "Kunstcharakter" view is plainly wide of the mark. The sublime disposition ("die erhabene Gesinnung") is precisely that, a disposition, not a 51. Henrich, "Der Begriffder Schonheit." 52. The Kantian Sublime, especially pp. 19-22. 53. For an interesting sociological account of aesthetic autonomy, see Wolfel, "Zur Geschichtlichkeit des Autonomiebegriffs." The political ineffectiveness of this notion, deplored by Wolfel, ceases to be surprising once one recognizes its metaphysical roots. Panofsky, Idea, pp. 54-55, credits the fifteenth-century artist and theorist Leon Battista Alberti with taking a step towards "the autonomy of the aesthetic experience" on the grounds that he advocated a purely phenomenal definition of beauty, dispensing with all metaphysical underpinning and loosening the connection between "pulchrum" and "bonum" ("beautiful" and "good"). If the autonomy of art is understood in this antimetaphysical and ethical sense, then Schiller's contribution to aesthetics runs in a direction contrary to autonomy. Wittkowski's recent volume Revolution und Autonomie contains several discussions of this issue in relation to Schiller's aesthetics.

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Dialectic of Love

work of art and not even a type of behaviour or demeanour to be artificially cultivated. In Uber das Erhabene, the sublime appears precisely as an anti-aesthetic concept, in that it is said to remind us of our home in the intelligible and hence to free us from the sensualistic illusions fostered by beauty. In defending his untenable distinction, Busing succumbs to the fate of many who have written on this subject: he fails to sustain a clear focus and gets lost in details and digressions. A full critique of his argument would thus take up many pages. In its broad outlines, however, the view to be presented here is quite different from Busing's, for an investigation of the links between Schiller's thought and Platonism highlights the metaphysical character of the former, in which beauty and sublimity stand for competing ontological visions, that is, the harmony and the disharmony of the intelligible and material worlds. The fact that the concepts are rooted in the very structure of Being explains why Schiller can apply them in so many different contexts, not merely aesthetic but also moral, psychological, physiological, and social; the list is by no means exclusive. Indeed, the importance of art is precisely that it is not autonomous in the sense of being self-contained, but rather that it provides a microcosm in which the macrocosmic issues, of vital moral importance to all humanity, can be fought out.54 The source of Schiller's logical difficulties is that the Platonic heritage commits him to both visions, and hence he must struggle for ways of reconciling them without ever reducing one to the other. The question of aesthetics as a new and autonomous philosophical discipline brings us to a final area of concern that will occupy us in the following chapters. If, as I am arguing, Schiller's aesthetics can be seen as a revival of the Platonic tradition, it will also be necessary to inquire into the relation between his ideas and those of the Platonic revival in Renaissance Italy. One need not look far for reasons to make this comparison. Schiller's youthful theory of love provided the seeds of his mature aesthetics, and the Italian cinquecento produced a succession of Platonically inspired theories of love. The source for these works was the 54. This kind of interpretation is directly contradicted by Busing in Schillers Idee des Erhabenen. Disputing the view that wider metaphysical issues are raised by the question of the "objective characteristic of beauty" ("objektives Merkmal des Schonen") addressed in the Kallias-Briefe, he writes (p. 105): "What matters to Schiller is the individual beautiful object, not an 'ontology of beauty.' " ("Schiller geht es um den einzelnen schonen Gegenstand, nicht um eine 'Ontologie des Schonen.' ")

Introduction

29

Symposium, the canonical presentation of Plato's theory of love; as E. R. Dodds has told us, love has a special importance in Plato's thought as being the one mode of experience which brings together the two natures of man, the divine self and the tethered beast. For Eros is frankly rooted in what man shares with the animals, the physiological impulse of sex ...; yet Eros also supplies the dynamic impulse which drives the soul forward in its quest of a satisfaction transcending earthly experience. It thus spans the whole compass of human personality, and makes the one empirical bridge between man as he is and man as he might be.55

It is here, therefore, that we should seek the ultimate source for Schiller's determination to effect a reunification of divided man by means of aesthetic experience. It is for this reason, and also because of the complex nature of the project, that his aesthetic thought as a whole (that is, not just his early philosophy of love) can be thought of as a dialectic of love.56 Numerous writers of the Italian Renaissance found Plato's doctrine irresistible. The revival started with Marsilio Ficino, whose De amore, written in 1469, was published in 1484, and its influence can still traced in Giordano Bruno's De gl'eroici furori (1585). The most famous text for English-speaking readers is probably the closing pages of Castiglione 's 55. The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 218. 56. Schiller's striving for mediation between body and spirit appears for the first time in the theory of the "Mittelkraft" (mediating force) in his first medical dissertation Philosophic der Physiologic (1779). The derivation of the "Mittelkraft" from the Platonic theory of love becomes evident when we consider that Ficino, who like Schiller was trained as a doctor, posited a spiritus to perform the same mediating function (see Kristeller, Die Philosophie des Marsilio Ficino, p. 98). Kondylis is able to explain the popularity of the doctrine of love in the later Enlightenment (and also in Schiller's early thought) in terms of the anti-Cartesian "Rehabilitation der Sinnlichkeit" (rehabilitation of sensibility) during that period; see Entstehung der Dialektik, pp. 34-35: "Already in its original form of the mutual relations of the sexes, [love] appears as an interaction of mind and sensibility, by which the mind is enlivened and sensibility is refined. ... It is clear that such a comprehensive view of love [in Schiller's Philosophie der Physiologie] sees the relation of the sexes not as the prime origin but rather as a mere manifestation of a cosmic law." ("Schon in der Urform der Beziehung der Geschlechter zueinander erscheint [die Liebe] als eine Zusammenwirkung von Geist und Sinnlichkeit, wodurch der Geist belebt und die Sinnlichkeit veredelt wird. ... Es ist klar, daB solch eine umfassende Auffassung von der Liebe [in Schillers Philosophie der Physiologie] in der Beziehung der beiden Geschlechter zueinander nicht das Primare, sondern eher eine bloBe Manifestation eines kosmischen Gesetzes erblickt.") From this perspective, the reversion to a Platonic framework does not look at all surprising.

3-°

Dialectic of Love

Libro del Cortegiano (i528). 57 Ficino (1433-99) was unquestionably the dominant figure in this revival, and, as Erwin Panofsky has pointed out, Ficino's ideas were adapted to form an aesthetic system by Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1615-96), whose 1664 oration L'idea del pittore, dello schultore e deU'architetto, scelta delle bellezze naturali superioro alia natura (The Idea of the Painter, Sculptor and Architect, Superior to Nature by Selection from Natural Beauties) is known to have influenced Winckelmann.58 In the twelfth book of his Theologia Platonica (1469-74, published 1482), Ficino investigates the relationship between God and the human mind, which he views as modelled on the relation of form to matter. In the fourth chapter, which is headed "How God continually pours intellection into us" (Quo pacto Deus nobis intelligentiam infundit assidue), we come across the following analogy: A craftsman makes a thousand mirrors, and after making them and setting them up he positions himself before them. The result is a thousand images of the craftsman in a thousand mirrors. Whenever the craftsman moves in such a way as to turn his eye towards his other members or moves his other members to turn them as far as possible towards his eye, the images in the mirrors imitate these movements. God creates souls in the same way and then positions himself before them as if they were mirrors, and as a result of this positioning, images of God appear in each one. These images are precisely the minds of the souls, and this is why there are not only so many minds, because the souls in which they exist are also many, but also why they are all one, because it is one God that they reflect.59

57. The standard work on this tradition is Nelson, Renaissance Theory of Love. 58. Panofsky, Idea, pp. 105-11, on Bellori. Panofsky reprints the Italian text of Bellori's speech, which was published in 1672 as introduction to his Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, as second appendix on pp. 154-77. A German version exists under the title Die Idee des Kunstlers. For Bellori's influence on Winckelmann, see Panofsky, Idea, p. 242, n. 22. 59. Quoted from Marsile Ficin [Marsilio Ficino], Theologieplatonicienne, vol. 2, pp. 16667. Unless otherwise stated, further quotations from this work are taken from the Marcel edition with my own English translation. The analogy in the quoted passage seems to be based on several passages using the mirror metaphor in the earlier De amore, e.g., "The soul is prepared for [beauty] by its own nature, especially in this, that it is both a spirit and a mirror, as it were, next to God, a mirror in which ... the image of the divine countenance is reflected." Quoted from Ficino, Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love, p. 94. For an even earlier occurrence of the metaphor, see the passage from Macrobius' Comment, in Somnium Scipionis, i. 14.15, quoted by Lovejoy in The Great Chain of Being, p. 63.

Introduction

31

A similar comparison is used by Schiller in his early poem "Die Freundschaft" to describe the soul's relation to God: Freundlos war der grofie Weltenmeister, Fiihlte Mangel—darum schuf er Geister, Sel'ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit!— Fand das hochste Wesen schon kein Gleiches, Aus dem Kelch des ganzen Seelenreiches Schaumt ihm—die Unendlichkeit.60

There is absolutely no reason to suppose that Schiller had any knowledge of Ficino, nor is it necessary to dissent from the usual assumption that, in terms of Schiller's immediate cultural environment, such images have their source in Shaftesbury and Leibniz, whose ideas had been popularized by poets such as Albrecht von Haller, Johann Peter Uz and Ewald von Kleist.61 The anticipation of Schiller's metaphor in Ficino's text is so striking, however, that it is surely worth considering what are its intellectual and historical foundations. In his recent account of Renaissance metaphysics, Charles H. Lohr writes: The fall of Constantinople in 1453, the financial crisis of 1464-5, the death of Francesco Sforza in 1466 along with the collapse of the alliances dependent upon him, the assassination of Galeazzo Maria in 1476, the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478: all contribute to the pessimism which pervades the work of Ficino and his contemporaries. The withdrawal of wealthy families from civic life ... presaged the approaching end of an age and a change in humanism itself. About the time that Florence shifted her allegiances from Venice to Milan, reflection among humanists shifted from the virtues of civic responsibility to literature and artistic creativity. Speculation on the divine meaning behind mythological tales, on the nature of beauty, on true nobility, on the purpose of friendship, on the precedence of the contemplative over the active life, on man as creative and perfectible, characterised the new era. The discussion of man's dignity shifted from his place in the state to his place in the hierarchy of being. Humanists were no longer active politicians, like Leonardo Bruni, interested in moral philosophy 60. "The great master of the world was without friends and felt a deficiency; for that reason he created spirits as blessed mirrors of his blessedness. Though the highest being found no equal, eternity gushes up to him from the chalice of the entire realm of souls." 61. See the commentary to the poem in Schiller, WB vol. i, pp. 1188-91, and also to "Die Herrlichkeit der Schopfung," vol. i, pp. 1175-77.

32

Dialectic of Love

and the models they could find in Plutarch's Lives. Rather they were teachers and professional philosophers, dedicated to a life of reflection far removed from professional activity. They were, moreover, courtiers, dependent on the benevolence of a prince.62

The analysis confirms Ernst Cassirer's view of the Theologia Platonica as a work of retrenchment after the more optimistic Platonism that marks the work of Nicholas of Cusa a half century before: "Philosophy becomes a bulwark against the forces of worldliness, which are pressing from all sides."63 While the tradition of civic humanism was never particularly strong in the German Enlightenment, one can nonetheless recognize a comparable darkening in the cultural environment towards the end of the century, a shift away from the cheerful pragmatism of men like Thomasius and Wolff towards the sublime speculations of postKantian idealism. In the sphere of theology, of greater importance in Germany than in England or France, one can point to Thomas Abbt's repudiation of neological optimism in the 17605, a symptom of the vulnerability of the Leibizian theodicy that presages the famous Pantheism Controversy of the i78os.64 In the political sphere, one thinks first of all of the reactionary course set by the Prussian authorities after the death of Frederick the Great in 1786, and next of the great disillusionment represented by the French Revolution. Plato's own philosophy has been compared by E. R. Dodds to an attempted counterreformation, of whose necessity Plato was persuaded by the moral and political decline of Athens after a century of Enlightenment. Dodds's striking analogy can be extended for our purposes to the later Platonic revivals as well, those of both the later fifteenth century in Italy and of the later eighteenth century in Germany, in that they too represent withdrawals of

62. "Metaphysics," p. 569. 63. "Die Philosophic wird zur Schutzwehr gegen die von alien Seiten andrangenden weltlichen Krafte." Individuum undKosmos, p. 65. 64. Riedel, Die Anthropologie, pp. 161-65, points out that Mendelssohn wrote his Phadon in part in response to Abbt's critical review (1764) of Johann Joachim Spalding's work of popular theology, Die Bestimmung des Menschen. On the decline of the Leibnizian theodicy, Riedel stresses (p. 161) "that Phaedon was written under conditions of pressure to provide a proof, a pressure that had noticeably intensified over the course of the century in relation to the metaphysical optimism of the early Enlightenment" (" daB der Phaedon unter den Voraussetzungen einer Beweislast verfaBt wurde, die sich gegeniiber dem metaphysischen Optimismus der Fruhaufklarung im Verlauf desjahrhunderts merklich erhoht hat").

Introduction

33

reason from the practical sphere into metaphysics, withdrawals prompted by catastrophes in the political world.65 In the Asthetische Briefe Schiller compares the French Revolution to a court case ("Rechtshandel") in which freedom and authority have come face to face "vor dem Richterstuhl reiner Vernunft" (573) (before the judgment-seat of pure reason). The historic opportunity was missed, however. As Schiller wrote in the Augustenburger Brief of 13 July 1793 (NA 26:262), "Ja ich bin soweit entfernt an den Anfang einer Regeneration im Politischen zu glauben, daB mir die Ereignisse der Zeit vielmehr alle Hoffnungen dazu auf Jahrhunderte benehmen."66 It is hard to exaggerate the sense of horror and disillusionment engendered among educated Germans by the discovery that the rational and humane ideals espoused throughout the century by countless decent men and women should have culminated in the repulsive spectacle of the Jacobin terror. With this background in mind, we can understand Schiller's disgust with the plebeian character of daily politics, which he portrays as at once materialistic and superstitious: "Der Nutzen ist das groBe Idol der Zeit, dem 65. The Greeks and the Irrational, pp. 207-35. Dodds sees the transformation of the critical and pragmatic rationalism of the fifth century B.C. into a metaphysically extended rationalism as occurring largely under the impact of a shamanistic view of the soul transmitted via the Pythagorean movement from northern Europe: "The occult knowledge which the shaman acquires in trance has become a vision of metaphysical truth; his 'recollection' of past earthly lives has become a 'recollection' of bodiless Forms which is made the basis of a new epistemology" (p. 210). Dodds's comment on Plato's dualistic view of man is also suggestive: "There is the faith and pride in human reason which he inherited from the fifth century. ... And there is the bitter recognition of human worthlessness which was forced upon him by his experience of contemporary Athens and Syracuse" (pp. 215-16). Compare Schiller's distinction between "true" and "real" human nature in NSD (p. 755). For a further historical example, see Manfred Fuhrmann's judgment on the victory of Neoplatonism over the more pragmatic Stoicism under the impact of the calamitous third century (Rom in der Spdtantike, pp.'135-36): "Stoicism ceased to play a prominent role in late antiquity, its place being taken by the spread of Neoplatonism.... This meant that great weight was now attached to metaphysical speculations and that ethics turned away from practical life, leaving reality and striving for the spiritual and divine." ("In der Spatantike hat die Stoa keine herausragende Rolle mehr gespielt; an ihrer Stelle verbreitete sich der Neuplatonismus ... und dies bedeutete, daB nunmehr metaphysischen Spekulationen groBes Gewicht beigemessen wurde und daB sich die Ethik von der Lebenspraxis abwandte, daB sie aus der Wirklichkeit fort- und zum Geistigen, zum Gottlichen hinstrebte.") A similar shift from a pragmatic to a metaphysical ethics is performed by Kant and inherited by Schiller. 66. "So far am I from believing in the start of a political regeneration that the events of our time actually take away my hopes of such a regeneration for centuries to come."

34

Dialectic of Love

alle Krafte fronen und alle Talente huldigen sollen" (572).6? Schiller was thus acting consistently with this new aristocratic perspective when he banned all discussion of politics, though the favourite topic of the day ("Lieblingsthema des Tages"), from his journal Die Horen: "Aberje mehr das beschrankte Interesse der Gegenwart die Gemuter in Spannung setzt, einengt und unterjocht, desto dringender wird das Bedurfhis, durch ein allgemeines und hoheres Interesse an dem, was rein menschlich und iiber alien EinfluB der Zeiten erhaben ist, sie wieder in Freiheit zu setzen und die politisch geteilte Welt unter der Fahne der Wahrheit und Schonheit wieder zu vereinigen" (870).68 As in Ficino's Florence, the dashing of hopes for sociopolitical improvement had led to a withdrawal into a higher world of eternal verities, in which humanity was viewed as incompatible with political activity and even freedom was redefined in the spirit of the vita contemplativa. With very few exceptions, recent scholarship has been dominated by the conviction that Schiller was a representative of the Enlightenment. In one sense, this is a truism, for Schiller's aesthetic writings emerge from his intensive study of the aestheticians of his own and the previous generation; he writes, for example, to Korner on 11 January 1793 (NA 26:174) that he owns books by Burke, Sulzer, Webb, Mengs, Winckelmann, Hume, Batteux, Wood, and Mendelssohn, whereas one looks in vain for references in his correspondence to Plotinus or Ficino. But this attention to the Enlightenment context, as unobjectionable as it seems, nonetheless harbours the danger of a certain bias, arising from the character of most modern interest in that period. Without doubt, the new consensus is a side-effect of the general rehabilitation that the Enlightenment has been enjoying among German scholars after decades of neglect. While one can applaud this trend insofar as it corrects an older tendency to view Schiller in isolation from his cultural environment, we are now surely reaching the point where we can recognise that, as desirable as it was, the rehabilitation of the Enlightenment was itself the product of certain historical circumstances, and that in its focus on what strikes the twentieth-century 67. "Utility is the great idol of our age, for which all powers are supposed to toil and to which all talents are supposed to pay homage." 68. "But the more people's minds are strained, hemmed in and enslaved by the limited interest of the present, the more urgent becomes the need to restore them to freedom by means of a general and higher interest in what is purely human and above the influence of the times, to reunite the politically divided world under the banner of truth and beauty."

Introduction

35

mind as progressive, it can seriously skew our perspective on the age of Klopstock, Wieland, and Lessing.69 The danger of this approach to Schiller is that it can prompt scholars to define his historical context in a selective way, to prejudge complex issues, and, in particular, to deny recognition to those aspects of his thought that cannot in some way be reduced to the modern liberal's notion of enlightenment as an ongoing process of secularization and social reform. At the close of an article demonstrating the importance of religious motifs in Lessing's drama, Rolf Christian Zimmermann warns aptly against this kind of "bildungsgeschichtlich bedingte Sichtbehinderung": "as interpreters of the Age of Goethe, we repeatedly, and without realizing it, slip into the error of not behaving in an enlightened way, that is, of not serving truth, but rather of projecting our modern enlightened attitudes into the historical classics of our curriculum, with the aim of finding these classics more amenable for our comprehension and more amenable for transmission in our classes."70 This is a warning that deserves to be heeded. Besides, the popular picture of "Schiller der Aufklarer" (proponent of enlightenment) portrays Schiller as a latecomer in a movement whose heroic days—if that is the right term for so docile a period—were long past; it thus fails to explain the extraordinary power exerted by his personality and his works on his contemporaries, 69. See in this connection Norbert Hinske's revealing "Nachwort" to the fourth edition of his indispensable Was ist Au/klarung?, p. 569: "Though one might not guess it, the present collection is the child of disturbed times. The basic idea that ultimately led to its appearance in 1973 crystallized between 1966 and 1968 in the years of the student movement; the first outline of a publication announcement was made in December 1966. At that time the editor was working as a tutor at the Free University, Berlin, one of the hotbeds of that movement, and 'the' Enlightenment counted as one of the chief guarantors to which its adherents laid claim." ("Der vorliegende Sammelband ist, vielleicht ohne daB man ihm das anmerkt, ein Kind unruhiger Jahre. Die Grundidee, die dann schlieBlich 1973 zu seinem Erscheinen gefuhrt hat, bildete sich zwischen 1966 und 1968 in denjahren der studentischen Bewegung heraus; der erste Entwurf fur eine Verlagsankundigung stammt aus dem Dezember 1966. Der Herausgeber war damals am Philosophischen Seminar der Freien Universitat Berlin, einer der Keimzellen jener Bewegung, als Privatdozent tatig. Zu den Kronzeugen, die deren Vertreter fur sich in Anspruch nahmen, gehorte 'die' Aufklarung.") 70. " unmerklich gleiten wir als Interpreten der Goethezeit doch immer wieder einmal in den Irrtum, uns nicht aufklarerisch zu verhalten, also der Wahrheit zu dienen, sondern unsere moderne Aufgeklartheit in die historischen Klassiker unserer Bildung hineinzuspiegeln, um diese Klassiker bequemer verstandlich zu finden und in unserer Lehre bequemer weitergeben zu konnen" ("Uber eine bildungsgeschichtlich bedingte Sichtbehinderung," p. 279).

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Dialectic of Love

rendering (to take just one example) his literary war with the older generation in the "Xenien-Streit" of 1796 all but incomprehensible. We should also recall that such gifted scholars as Emil Staiger, Walther Rehm, and Friedrich Sengle have all discovered elements in Schiller's personality and work that hark back more to the spirit of the previous century.?1 It is to be hoped that by drawing attention to the similarities between Schiller's experience and that of Ficino's generation, it may be possible to focus attention on the pessimistic character of Schiller's metaphysics and hence to rectify some of the distortions that have characterised much recent work.

The intention of this chapter has been to give a preliminary survey of the ground to be covered in this book. It will be helpful, however, in view of the broad ramifications of the matter under consideration, if I now enumerate the main arguments of the following pages: 1 Schiller's mature aesthetic treatises belong to the tradition of Platonic metaphysics. This analysis can make sense of some internal features of these treatises more adequately than the more common approaches. It will be shown that Schiller's arguments, which are frequently inconsistent or contradictory, can be understood only by considering them as the outcome of a highly complex inner debate between two standpoints. 2 The important themes and dilemmas of the mature treatises are foreshadowed in Schiller's struggles of the 17808 over the theory and practice of poetic creativity. This thesis suggests, first, that this private concern remains significant in the apparently more public treatises, and also that the three factors normally linked to the writing of the treatises—the French Revolution, Schiller's study of Kant, and his encounter with Goethe—are less important than is usually assumed. 3 Attention will be given to ancient and Renaissance precedents of Schiller's theories, though without any intention of suggesting that 71. Rehm, "Schiller und das Barockdrama"; Staiger, Friedrich Schiller, pp. 41-42; Sengle, "Die Braul von Messina, " especially p. 271: "Is it really blasphemous if we state, simply and modestly, that like Goldoni, Grillparzer, and Nestroy, [Schiller] was one of the great masters of the European Baroque theatrical tradition?" ("1st es denn wirklich eine Blasphemie, wenn wir schlicht und bescheiden feststellen, dafi [Schiller] wie Goldoni, Grillparzer oder Nestroy einer der groBen Meister der theatralischen Barocktradition in Europa gewesen ist?")

Introduction

37

these writings were known to Schiller. The aim here is to situate Schiller's aesthetics within a philosophical tradition predating the eighteenth century. 4 Schiller's metaphysical and contemplative turn represents a move away from active participation in life and is related to his sceptical attitude towards the political sphere. Although Schiller's political imagery often suggests a liberal and progressive stance, the metaphysical foundations of his theory actually point in a rather conservative direction. Among the works of a more general nature that have played a role in the conception of this book, pride of place must go to Arthur O. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being, still indispensable after a half-century as an account of the persistence of the Platonic tradition in European intellectual history. Natural Supernaturalism by M. H. Abrams, though chiefly a portrayal of English Romanticism as a Neoplatonic revival, contains some valuable chapters on German authors.72 On the tradition of Platonism in art history, Panofsky's Idea remains the standard work, as do Ernst Cassirer's Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance and Paul Oskar Kristeller's Die Philosophie des Marsilio Ficino, on the Platonic revival in Renaissance Italy.73 On the role of Platonism in German literature of the eighteenth century, one must mention Rolf Christian Zimmermann's massive Das Weltbild desjungen Goethe as well as the studies of Goethe's Faust and Die Wahlverwandtschaften by Harold Jantz and Bernhard Buschendorf respectively, both of whom succeed in establishing hermeneutical contexts going back to the European Renaissance for the works they deal with.74 Hans-Jiirgen Schings's Melancholic und Aufkldrung, though focusing on psychology and anthropology rather than on metaphysics, remains an exemplary demonstration of the persistence of pre-Enlightened currents of thought in eighteenth-century Germany and hence stands as a warning to the scholar not to underestimate the degree to which even the last generation of "Aufklarer" remained in thrall to doctrines that had little or no base in empirical observation. Finally, Wolfgang Wittkowski is a scholar who has written 7 2. Abrams's earlier study The Mirror and the Lamp also contains some valuable pages on aesthetic Platonism, especially pp. 42—46, 126)—32. 73. See also Werner Beierwaltes, Marsilio Ficinos Theorie des Schonen. 74- Jantz, Goethe's Faust as a Renaissance Man; Buschendorf, Goethes mythische Denkform. See also Ulrich Gaier's recent article "'... ein Empfindungssystem, der ganze Mensch,' " where the author seeks the roots of Holderlin's poetics in the Platonic tradition.

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Dialectic of Love

extensively on Schiller and, though his focus is on the drama and its moral implications, his account of Schiller's moral convictions has deeply influenced the view to be taken here.75

75. See especially Wittkowski's massive and polemical Wallenstein studies "Octavio Piccolomini" and "Theodizee oder Nemesistragodie?"

II

Mythological Transformations

The importance of the myth of Hercules in Schiller's poem "Das Ideal und das Leben" has been clear to scholars for some time, particularly since Gerhard Kaiser's controversial study "Vergotterung und Tod." The implications of Schiller's combination of the two versions, the didactic tale of Hercules at the crossroads and the legend of his deification, have not been fully appreciated, however. The sense of the crossroads is that we have to choose between virtue and vice; in Christian terms, between happiness in this world ("Sinnengluck") and in the next ("Seelenfrieden"). But the poem goes on to tell us how aesthetic contemplation will enable us to evade this choice, to reconcile the pleasures of soul and of sense, and hence to emulate the deified Hercules with his distinctly carnal afterlife. The poem thus provides a gloss on Schiller's early conviction, stated in his first medical dissertation (250), that "Gottgleichheit ist die Bestimmung des Menschen" (it is the destiny of man to become equal to God), and illustrates how, after the loss of his early religious beliefs, he attempted to compensate for them with his aesthetic philosophy. The new solution does not stand up to sober examination, of course, for neither a genuine afterlife nor genuine sensual pleasure is on offer; immortality is conferred on the "Gestalt," not the soul, and the marriage to Hebe is to be experienced as appearance ("Schein") as opposed to enjoyment ("GenuB"). Neither the Christian believer nor the libertine is therefore likely to be converted to a gospel of Schillerian contemplation. While this judgment may seem uncharitable, it can help us to put Schiller's line of argument into logical and historical perspective. In logical terms, Schiller's argument can be simplified as follows. He starts with a didactic fable preaching a harsh ascetic moral (choose virtue,

4-O

Dialectic of Love

not pleasure). He confronts it with a more conciliatory alternative (it is possible to be virtuous without renouncing pleasure). Finally, he distinguishes between the realm of art, where the reconciliation is possible, and the world of normal experience, which remains governed by the need for harsh choices. This yields a logically complex pattern of unity and difference: on the one hand, art (both virtue and pleasure) and on the other, life (either virtue or pleasure). Viewed in the context of the history of ideas, Schiller is apparently suggesting in "Das Ideal und das Leben" that art can resolve the difference between traditional Christian values and the newer spirit of enlightenment, which has recently been brought by Panajotis Kondylis under the general heading "die Rehabilitation der Sinnlichkeit."1 But the resolution is bought at the price of a new divorce between art and i. Die Aujklarung, passim. Panofsky ("'Hercules Prodicius,' " pp. 82-83) points out that a "rehabilitation of the sensible" can already be noted in an early painting by Raphael, the subject of which he identifies as Scipio's Dream. Virtue appears here as a beautiful figure, and pleasure as less menacing, in contrast to medieval treatments of the Hercules story, where, under the influence of early Christian asceticism, virtue is portrayed as ugly and pleasure as repulsive: "Raphael's 'Pleasure' figure may be seen as a symptom or at least an anticipation of a change in attitude ... whereby Italian art placed itself in a certain contrast with both the northern and the ancient view. Despite all differences, the north and antiquity agree in seeing 'virtue' and 'vice' as irreconcilable opposites that brook no compromise. But from some southern representations, including Raphael's, we gain the impression of a certain relativism. As 'Virtue' becomes gentler, 'Pleasure' becomes proportionately less dangerous; as the promises of 'Virtue' come to rest more on success and fame than on securing one's salvation, the awful threats connected with choosing the path of'Vice' become proportionately weaker." ("Raffaels 'Voluptas'-Figur [darf] als Dokument oder wenigstens als Ankimdigung eines Gesinnungswandels betrachtet werden ..., durch den sich die italienische Kunst sowohl zur Auffassung des Nordens als auch zur Auffassung der Antike in einen gewissen Gegensatz gestellt hat. Der Norden und die Antike, sie beide kommen bei aller Verschiedenheit doch darin uberein, daB sie die 'Tugend' und das 'Laster' als unversohnliche Gegensatze auffassen, zwischen denen ein Ausgleich nicht moglich ist. Demgegenuber gewinnen wir vor manchen siidlichen Darstellungen, und eben auch schon vor dem Raffaelischen, den Eindruck eines gewissen Relativismus: in demselben MaBe, in dem die 'Virtus' sanfter wird, wird die 'Voluptas' minder gefahrlich, und in demselben MaBe, in dem die Versprechungen der 'Tugend' mehr auf Erfolg und Nachruhm als auf Bewahrung des Seelenheils [ruhen?], entfallen die furchtbaren Drohungen, die an die Wahl des Lasterwegs gekniipft worden waren.") The passage, which reads like a commentary on Schiller's "Die Gotter Griechenlandes," should remind us that the eighteenth century was anticipated by the Italian Renaissance in its critique of Christian asceticism. Closer to Schiller's time, Panofsky tells us of an opera libretto Alcide al Bivio by Metastasio (1760, music by Johann Adolf Hasse) in which, after Hercules has chosen Virtue, Pleasure (not Vice!) is reconciled to her rival and the two of them accompany Hercules on his life's path as a rainbow appears overhead.

Mythological Transformations

41

life that is just as severe as the old one between the spirit and the flesh. Schiller draws this consequence as clearly as one could wish in his letter to Herder of 4 November 1795, written only three months after the composition of "Das Reich der Schatten" (the first version of "Das Ideal und das Leben"). Contradicting Herder's view that art should closely reflect the life of the society that produces it, Schiller argues that contemporary life is actually so prosaic in all its manifestations that it would fatally infect poetry if this union were attempted: "Daher weiB ich fur den poetischen Genius kein Heil, als daB er sich aus dem Gebiet der wirklichen Welt zuriickzieht und anstatt jener Coalition, die ihm gefahrlich sein wiirde, auf die strengste Separation sein Bestreben richtet. Daher scheint es mir gerade ein Gewinn fur ihn zu sein, daB er seine eigne Welt formiret und durch die Griechischen Mythen der Verwandte eines fernen, fremden und idealischen Zeitalters bleibt, da ihn die Wirklichkeit nur beschmutzen wiirde" (NA 28:98).2 The verb "beschmutzen" (to soil), which Schiller uses here, reflects the negative attitude to the material world that is typical of Platonism and thus suggests that the old antithesis of spirit and matter, far from being resolved in the new aesthetic theory, is merely reproduced in the new antithesis of aesthetic purity and the filth of reality.3 This is not to say that the renewed separation is Schiller's last word on the matter. As we saw, he insists, both in "Das Ideal und das Leben" and elsewhere, on moral 2. "I therefore know of no other salvation for the poetic genius than that he withdraw from the region of the real world and, instead of that coalition that would be perilous to him, direct his effort towards the strictest separation. It thus seems to me to be of profit to him that he form his own world and, through the Greek myths, remain the kinsman of a distant, alien, and ideal age, since reality would merely soil him." In Truth and Method (p. 74), Hans-Georg Gadamer hits the nail on the head when he writes of an "inner shift in the ontological basis" of Schiller's aesthetics: "Thus at the basis of the aesthetic reconciliation of the Kantian dualism of being and moral obligation, there is a more profound unresolved dualism. It is the prose of alienated reality against which the poetry of aesthetic reconciliation must seek its own self-consciousness." Since Gadamer's subject in this passage is actually the "asthetischer Staat" of the 27th AB, it is interesting to see his analysis borne out by a text of such a different character. 3. Schiller argues in the same way to Goethe, 9 December 1796 (NA 29:22-3): "Es ist mir eine neue trostreiche Erfahrung, wie der poetische Geist alles Gemeine der Wirklichkeit so schnell und so glucklich unter sich bringt, und durch einen einzigen Schwung, den er sich selbst gibt, aus diesen Banden heraus ist, so daB die gemeinen Seelen ihm nur mit hoffnungsloser Verzweiflung nachsehen konnen." (It is a new and consoling experience for me how rapidly and successfully the poetic spirit brings under its sway all base aspects of reality and, by a single transport that it gives to itself, is free of these bonds, so that base souls can only look after it in despair.)

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Dialectic of Love

struggle as a precondition of aesthetic contemplation, and one should not overlook the ethical concerns built into the theory of the sublime. However, the tendency towards a new polarization remains. This problematic pattern of unity and separation takes us to the heart of Schiller's philosophical dilemmas, and, as our brief look at "Das Ideal und das Leben" shows, the same pattern is at work also in his poetic treatment of myth. The proximity of myth and argument in Schiller's work itself represents an affinity to the Platonic tradition, for famously, and despite his hostility to the poets, Plato was one of the most literary of philosophers, whose extensive influence is as attributable to his myths and parables as it is to his abstract doctrines. The most famous of these parables is that of the cave (REP 5i4a~52ib), Plato's canonical analogy for the world of appearances in its relation to the world of being. Schiller makes a passing reference to this parable in "Die Kunstler" (1788-89): Hier schwebt sie, mil gesenktem Fluge, Um ihren Liebling, nah am Sinnenland, Und malt mit lieblichem Betruge Elysium auf seine Kerkerwand. (74-77)4 The grammatical subject of the quoted sentence and the figure said to be responsible for our experience in the phenomenal world is the goddess of beauty, Venus Cypria, who plays no role in Plato's parable in the Republic. In fact she is one of the two Venuses encountered in another Platonic text, the Symposium; Schiller's fusion of the motifs and his subordination of the more important to the less important exemplify the eclecticism with which later Platonic writers are prone to handle the materials supplied by the tradition. The two Venuses, Cypria and Urania, provide the allegorical framework of Schiller's poem (54-102, 425-42). Since their duality points forward to the dualism of Schiller's mature thought, the Platonic origin of that duality is of considerable interest to us here. Schiller's poem is a vindication of art in an age dedicated to scientific progress, and in a letter to Korner (9 February 1789; NA 25:199) he summarized its central idea as "die Verhullung der Wahrheit und der Sittlichkeit in die Schonheit" (the veiling of truth and morality in 4. "Here she hovers with lowered flight around her darling, near to the world of the senses, and, with lovely deception, paints Elysium on the wall of his dungeon."

Mythological Transformations

43

beauty). Venus Urania is a forbidding deity who wears a crown of fire, indicating the transcendent character of the truth (including the moral truth) that she represents. Beauty is represented by Venus Cypria, clad in the girdle of grace, who chose, we are told, to accompany man in his exile in the material world and to aid him in his ascent from barbarism to civilization. The distinctive moment of the allegory in Schiller's treatment is that the conclusion of the poem reveals the two Venuses to be one and the same, indicating that, sub specie aeternitatis, beauty and truth are one. Hence, at the end of history the goddess of beauty will remove her veil and reassume her crown of fire, disclosing her true identity to her enlightened ("mundig") son. It would be easy enough to dismiss this as an example of Schiller's haphazard treatment of his intellectual materials. As we shall see, however, it is no mere slip, but rather a foretaste of the game of unity and disunity that he will later play with nature and mind and their aesthetic surrogates, the beautiful and the sublime. In its original Platonic context, the notion of the two Venuses is neither prominent nor particularly memorable. Pausanias, in whose speech it occurs, is only the second of the seven speakers of the Symposium, and his speech, together with those of Phaedrus and Eryximachus, serves as a mere curtain-raiser to the more substantive and entertaining ones that follow. The speech strikes us as intellectually rather pedestrian, in that it merely repudiates a lower physical love in favour of a higher spiritual love. Worse than this, Pausanias makes the speech in a transparently selfserving spirit. He has a liaison with Agathon, the young poet at whose house the banquet is taking place, and when he specifies that the lower love is directed towards both men and women and the higher love only to men, he is clearly seeking to justify that liaison. What concerns us here, however, is the fact that, in contrast to Schiller, Pausanias makes no effort to mediate between the two kinds of love. Like the story of Hercules at the crossroads, it presents us with a simple choice between right and wrong. In order to discover a precedent for Schiller's redirection of the myth, it is necessary to look at two intervening treatments of it. Marsilio Ficino's commentary on the Symposium, known as De amore (written 1469, published 1484), is a key document in the revival of Platonism in Renaissance Italy and one of the most popular texts in the sixteenth century.5 In his commentary on Pausanias' speech, Ficino's speaker 5. Quotations are from the excellent modern translation by Sears Jayne, Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love. Page references to his edition appear in the text, e.g., (De amore,

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(Ficino follows the Platonic format of the rhetorical banquet) integrates the allegory with the cosmological material dealt with by Plato in the Timaeus, and offers an interpretation of characteristically Neoplatonic intricacy. The higher and the lower Venus are aspects of the Angelic Mind and the World Soul, for each of the latter is divided into three parts, the World Soul being allocated not only to the lower Venus but also to Saturn and Jupiter. While this kind of arcane taxonomy was intellectually obsolete by the eighteenth century, what is of relevance here is that Ficino has made a respectable woman of the lower Venus, promoting her from a patron of low sexual enjoyment to a crucial agent in the generation of the material world. Though he follows Plato in calling her "vulgar" (Aphrodite Pandemos), his account actually obliterates the need for the pejorative name; hence, by Schiller's time, she can receive the more neutral designation Venus Cypria. This Venus, in Ficino's account, is the daughter of Jupiter, who, in his relation to the World Soul, "moves the heavenly things." While her paternity is of no concern to Plato's Pausanias, it allows Ficino to forge a link between the heavens and the material world, for Jupiter, "that faculty of the Soul itself which moves the heavenly things," also "created the power which generates these lower things" (De amore, 53). The sig nificance of this link, characteristic of the Neoplatonic scheme of emanation, is underlined by the fact that the lower Venus has a mother, for the term "mother," Ficino tells us, is associated by the physicists with "matter" (mater/ materia). The Heavenly Venus, by contrast, has no mother, for she was born out of the waves from the severed genitals of Uranus, and she is hence sufficiently immaterial to signify the intelligence of the Angelic Mind (where Saturn is its existence and Jupiter its life). Because Ficino's interpretation is so resolutely cosmological, the original reference to love is displaced onto the Cupids that accompany the two goddesses. The discussion of these figures thus reconnects the two Venuses to the sphere of human experience:

44). The Neoplatonic myth of emanation and reversion that underlies "Die Kunstler" appears here in the second speech as follows: "all things first flow from that eternal source when they are born; then they flow back again to it, when they seek their own origin; and finally, they are perfected, after they have returned to their source" (p. 45). The editor points out (pp. 58-59) that the sources of this notion are Pseudo-Dionysius, De divinis nominibus, 4.7-16, and Proclus, Elements of Theology, 14-39.

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Each Venus has as her companion a love like herself. For the former Venus [Urania] is entranced by an innate love for understanding the Beauty of god. The latter [Pandemos] likewise is entranced by her love for procreating that same beauty in bodies. The former Venus first embraces the splendor of divinity in herself; then she transfers it to the second Venus. The latter Venus transfers sparks of that splendor into the Matter of the world. Because of the presence of these sparks, all of the bodies of the world seem beautiful according to the receptivity of their nature. The beauty of these bodies the human soul perceives through the eyes. The soul again possesses twin powers. It certainly has the power of understanding, and it has the power of procreation. These twin powers are two Venuses in us, accompanied by twin loves. When the beauty of a human body first meets our eyes, our intellect, which is the first Venus in us, worships it and esteems it as an image of the divine beauty, and through this is often aroused to that. But the power of procreation, the second Venus, desires to procreate a form like this. On both sides, therefore, there is a love: there is a desire to contemplate beauty, here a desire to propagate it. Each love is virtuous and praiseworthy, for each follows a divine image. (De amore, 54)

Pausanias' antithesis between loves of a lower (and possibly heterosexual) and a higher (and exclusively homosexual) kind has thus been reformulated by Ficino into a masterly allegory of the emanative process of creation, with mediation between one level and another assured by the transfer of sparks of the divine splendor into the material world. Simultaneously, it alludes to the antithesis of the vita activa and the vita contemplativa; by contemplation, the soul can reascend from material things to its divine source, while by action, represented on the model of procreation, the soul can replicate ideas of the Angelic Mind in matter. Ficino's insistence that each love is "virtuous and praiseworthy" is a flat contradiction of Pausanias' hierarchical antithesis, whose raison d'etre was to praise the higher and condemn the lower type. Seemingly as an afterthought, Ficino takes up this problem in his final paragraph, attempting to return to the spirit of his Platonic model: "If anyone, through being more desirous of procreation, neglects contemplation or attends to procreation beyond measure with women, or against the order of nature with men, or prefers the form of the body to the beauty of the soul, he certainly abuses the dignity of love. This abuse of love Pausanias censures" (De amore, 54). In effect, the doctrine of two Venuses has been turned here into a triple categorization, with an ideal heavenly love and a sensual earthly love at the extremes and a purified earthly love representing a virtuous vita activa mediating between them.

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The threefold schema emerges even more clearly in another Neoplatonic treatise on love by Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), the Comento (1486, published posthumously) on Benivieni's canzone "Amore dalle cui."() Though the Comento was conceived largely as a polemic against Ficino, from our present standpoint the continuity is far more striking than the differences. On the point at issue here, and basing himself on Plotinus, Pico argues that there are, not one, but two heavenly loves, reflecting the descent of the ideas from God to the Angelic Mind and from there into the Rational Soul, or World Soul: "just as the first love, which is in the Angelic Mind, is called angelic or divine, so the second love, which is in the Rational Soul, is called human love, because the rational faculty is the most important part of man's nature" (Comento, 122). Turning to earthly love, defined as "a desire to possess earthly beauty" (123), Pico again divides this into two: "From this desire there can be born two loves, of which one is bestial and the other is human or rational" (124). The new distinction would seem to give rise to a fourfold division, but Pico takes care to connect the higher form of earthly love to the lower form of heavenly love, now by means of a further distinction in the concept of "man": The term "man" can mean a rational soul which is still in its unspoiled state; but it can also mean a rational soul which has already been bound and tied to its body. In the first sense, "human" love is exactly the kind of love which was described above as being the analogue of heavenly love. In the second sense "human" love is this love which we are discussing now, that is, love of a sensible beauty which has been abstracted from its physical form by the soul and so converted from sensible beauty, insofar as its nature permits, into intelligible beauty. (124-25)

From the raw material of the Platonic text, the Neoplatonic tradition has thus moved from a simple axiological distinction to an elaborate series of steps, up and down which the process of emanation and return can proceed, and we should observe here that the human realm, with its borderline location, can hardly be thought of as a "happy medium." Rather it seems to be torn by the conflicting pressures from above and 6. For the complicated history of the composition and publication of this work, see the introduction by Sears Jayne in his edition Commentary on a Canzone ofBenivieni. Quotations are taken from this edition and are identified by page references in the text, e.g., (Comento, P-35)-

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below, and hence reproduces their antithesis within itself. Pico's division of man into an embodied and a disembodied rational soul will reappear in Schiller's distinction between man as of "gemischte Natur" (mixed nature) and as "reine Intelligenz" (pure intelligence).7 Pico's threefold division of love (divine and bestial, with a hybrid human form in between) corresponds to a metaphysical schema that he spelled out in an earlier passage. In view of the frequency of such triadic structures in Schiller's thought, the passage is worth quoting here as a precedent: The Platonists divide all creatures into three classes. Two of these classes are extremes. In one class is included every creature which is corporeal and visible, such as the sky, the elements, the plants, and everything which is composed of the elements. In the other class is included every creature which is invisible and not only incorporeal but also entirely free and separate from any body. This latter class is properly called the intellectual level of being, and our theologians call it the Angelic level of being. Between these two extremes there is an intermediate level of being which, although it is itself incorporeal, invisible, and immortal, is nevertheless burdened with the function of giving motion to the corporeal world. This intermediate level of being is called the Rational Soul; it is lower than Angelic being, but higher than corporeal. It is subject to the former, but mistress over the latter. (Comento, 78)

The intermediate realm is clearly the human habitat, and it should be noted that it does not stand in a symmetrical relation to what is above and below it.8 The Rational Soul receives its dignity from its relation to the intellectual or Angelic level, which is what enables it to rise above the level of the rest of the corporeal world. Pico accentuates this 7. See, for example, his note to the igth AB (p. 631). 8. Ficino places the human soul in an ontologically central position. See Kristeller's discussion of "Vermittlung" in Die Philosophic des Marsilio Ficino, pp. 82-88, especially pp. 8788: "The soul thus stands ... on the borderline between time and infinity, and it thus appears ultimately as the distinctive middle being that binds together the extremes of the universe and that by its mere existence gives an immediate representation to the inner unity of being." ("Die Seele steht also ... auf der Grenzscheide zwischen Zeit und Ewigkeit, und so erscheint sie zuletzt als das ausgezeichnete Mittelwesen, das die Extreme der Welt zusammenbindet und das durch seine bloBe Existenz die innere Einheit des Seins unmittelbar zur Darstellung bringt.") This subject is dealt with in Theologia Platonica, vol. i, p. 2, where the soul is called "the centre of nature, the middle of all things, the chain of the universe,

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asymmetrical relation through his willingness to think of man (or at least some men) as a disembodied soul. Returning now to Schiller, we must first recall that the Platonic doctrine of love is concerned with the union of man's spiritual and physical parts, and that it is of particular significance as the precedent for Schiller's commitment to reestablishing human unity in aesthetic experience.9 As for the specific question of the dual Venus motif, we must note that this motif is not confined to "Die Kunstler" but that Schiller refers to it in two earlier poems also. "Der Triumph der Liebe" (published 1781), a youthful celebration of the effects of love on human life, assumes for the most part that love is under the tutelage of only one goddess, who is portrayed, like Ficino's second Venus (or Pico's intermediate Venus), as a purified, that is, non-bestial, love within the confines of nature. Only towards the end of the poem do we find the lines "Weisheit mit dem Sonnenblick, / GroBe Gottin, tritt zuriick, / Weiche vor der Liebe" (i62-64), 10 where the reference to the sun underlines the Platonic origin of the motif.11 The occurrence of that motif here is

the face of all things, the knot and the bond of the universe." The formulation is echoed in Pico's Comento: "Human nature, the tie and knot of the world, is located in the middle of the hierarchy of being and just as every middle participates in the extremes, so Man, through his various parts, has some relation or correspondence to every part of the world" (p-gi)9. The doctrine of intermediacy features prominently in a canonical text of the early Enlightenment, Addison's Spectator essays "The Pleasures of the Imagination," in the second of which (no. 411, 21 June 1712) we read: "The Pleasures of the Imagination, taken in their full Extent, are not so gross as those of sense, nor so refined as those of Understanding" (p. 369). Kant similarly transforms the metaphysical argument into an argument about cognitive faculties (see chapter 4), but the common structure remains, as its does here, evident. 10. "Wisdom with the sunlike gaze, great goddess, withdraw, yield to love." 11. Strictly speaking, the goddess of wisdom is not Venus Urania but Athene / Minerva. The attribution to this deity of a "Sonnenblick," however, which anticipates the "Feuerkrone" of "Die Kunstler" and the dazzling mirror of "Die Cotter Griechenlandes," seems tojustify my interpretation of the present passage as an example of the dual Venus motif. It is worth noting that Gottfried August Burger's "Nachtfeier der Venus," which inspired Schiller's "Triumph der Liebe," contains references to neither Athene nor the dual Venus, but expresses a wish that Diana (the goddess not of the sun but the moon) absent herself from Venus' celebration. See Burger, Samtliche Werke, pp. 1161-68, for the early version of this poem that would have been read by Schiller in 1781.

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slightly mysterious, in that the poem has not up to now been concerned with a preponderance of the intellectual or spiritual component in human life. The negative image with which, in the greater part of the poem, the dominion of Venus has been contrasted could not be more different, namely, primitive man, with his life of brutish fear and selfishness: Stein und Felsen ihre Herzen, Ihre Seelen Nacht, Von des Himmels Flammenkerzen Nie in Glut gefacht. (11-15)"

What is striking about Schiller's first use of the dual Venus motif is that, as well as being prophetic of his later development, it suggests, albeit tentatively, the precedence of the lower over the intellectual Venus, thus elevating the dignity and autonomy of the natural realm over pure mind. This reversal of the hierarchy originally proposed by Pausanias is another form of the rehabilitation of the senses noted above in connection with "Das Ideal und das Leben," and, like the reinterpretation of the Hercules myth, it would have been impossible without the Renaissance adaptation of the myth. The tactic of reversal is repeated in Schiller's great elegy of 1788, "Die Gotter Griechenlandes," for which "Der Triumph der Liebe" reads like an early draft. The motif is somewhat better integrated here, though not very much better. The first stanza names the lower Venus Amathusia as the deity presiding over the sensuous paradise of the Greeks, while only at the very end do we hear the prayer: Nimm die ernste, strenge Gottin wieder, Die den Spiegel blendend vor mir halt; Ihre sanftre Schwester sende nieder, Spare jene fur die andre Welt. (197-200)'3

12. "Their hearts rock and stone, their souls night, never set aflame by the fiery torches of heaven." 13. "Take back the solemn and severe goddess who blinds me by holding the mirror before me; send down her more gentle sister and keep her [the former one] for the other world."

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Dialectic of Love

Not only is the heavenly Venus not named or identified (as in "Weisheit mit dem Sonnenblick"), the reference is actually confusing in that an unnamed male god has been repeatedly mentioned as the tutelary deity of the disenchanted world: "Einen zu bereichern, unter alien, / MuBte diese Gotterwelt vergehn" (i55-56).14 Even the reference to the lower Venus is not particularly clear; since so many deities have been cited in the intervening stanzas, it is by no means obvious who is referred to. But this is a small blemish on a magnificent poem. We should note at this stage not only the dismissal of the heavenly Venus, more confident here than in "Der Triumph der Liebe," but also her clearer delineation, for the "wisdom" that she represents has been characterized in the preceding stanzas, memorably and at length, as a dehumanizing and abstract reason in its harmful effects on the human relationship to nature and the divine. Schiller thus has secularized the myth of the Venuses to apply to the challenge of modernity, a cultural problem that was of course unimaginable in the time of Ficino and Pico. Of "Die Kunstler," I should note here that Schiller retreats from the extreme position of a year earlier in "Die Cotter Griechenlandes." Not only does he treat modern intellectual culture more respectfully, he also restores the heavenly Venus to the place of precedence more in keeping with her ancient and Renaissance meaning. Simultaneously, however, his devious suggestion that the two goddesses are actually one enables him to continue his strategy of vindicating the intermediate human realm of nature and art; the lower Venus does not need to be defended if she is merely the higher Venus in disguise. Even after his Kantian education, Schiller's thought often follows the paths marked out by Ficino and Pico, with the bipartite division of Being yielding to a tripartite one. An illustration is provided by the following paragraphs from UberAnmut und Wurde (1793): Es lassen sich in allem dreierlei Verbaltnisse denken, in welchen der Mensch zu sich selbst, d.i. sein sinnlicher Teil zu seinem vernunftigen, stehen kann. Unter diesen haben wir dasjenige aufzusuchen, welches ihn in der Erscheinung am besten kleidet und dessen Darstellung Schonheit ist. Der Mensch unterdriickt entweder die Forderungen seiner sinnlichen Natur, um sich den hohern Forderungen seiner vernunftigen gemaB zu verbal ten; oder er kehrt es um und ordnet den vernunftigen Teil seines Wesens dem sinnlichen unter und folgt also bloB dem StoBe, womit ihn die Naturnotwendigkeit 14. "To enrich one [masculine] among all, this world of gods had to perish."

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gleich den andern Erscheinungen forttreibt; oder die Triebe des letztern setzen sich mit den Gesetzen des erstern in Harmonic, und der Mensch ist einig mil sich selbst. (46i) 15

The apparent subject of this much-quoted passage is not metaphysics but ethics, or the aesthetic dimension of ethics, and it contains none of the cosmological apparatus of Renaissance Neoplatonism. The structural similarity of Schiller's argument to Pico's, however, should give us pause. Schiller's anthropology assumes that man is a mixed being with a rational and a natural part, each of which is integrated in a wider rational and natural order. As an ethical being, it is man's duty to subordinate his natural to his rational self. From a less rigorous point of view, however, it is his right to assert the dignity of his natural self and to seek a harmony between reason and nature, at least to the extent that he can without descending to the level of the beasts. Schiller thus continues to posit a middle realm of purified nature as the distinctively human sphere and as the sphere of beauty. As with Pico, however, the inner complexity of this notion should not be overlooked. True, Schiller sometimes adopts the symmetrical structure best known from Aristotle's use of it throughout the Nicomachean Ethics; this is the doctrine of mesotes, in which each virtue is characterized as a mean between extremes, with both extremes representing moral faults or vices. In taking up this model, Schiller is pressing the development of the twofold into a threefold Venus even further than was attempted in the Renaissance texts discussed here. For implicit in this use of the Aristotelian structure is the claim that the human realm is a mean between an excess of abstract reason and an excess of brute nature, each of which is as bad as the other. Thus, for example, while introducing the theory of the aesthetic state, Schiller suggests an equivalence between the coercion experienced in the states of reason and of nature: "Der dynamische Staat kann die Gesellschaft bloB moglich machen, indem er die Natur durch Natur bezahmt; der ethische Staat kann sie 15. "It is possible to conceive of three relationships in all in which man can stand to himself, i.e., his sensible to his rational part. Of these we must choose the one that suits him best and the representation of which is beauty. Either man suppresses the demands of his sensible nature in order to comport himself in accordance with the higher demands of his rational nature; or, conversely, he subordinates the rational to the sensible part of his being, merely following the pressure by which natural necessity drives him, along with all other natural phenomena, along. Or else die impulses of the latter place themselves in harmony with the laws of the former, in which case man will be at one with himself."

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bloB (moralisch) notwendig machen, indem er den einzelnen Willen dem allgemeinen unterwirft; der asthetische Staat allein kann sie wirklich machen, well er den Willen des Ganzen durch die Natur des Individuums vollzieht" (667).l6 Even here, we sense Schiller's uneasiness with the symmetrical structure, for the anaphoric construction forces him to draw a parallel between natural possibility and moral necessity, and his discomfort at this parallel is signalled by the parenthetical location of the word "moralisch," which is moreover preceded, incongruously enough, by the adverb "bloB" (merely). The reason for Schiller's uneasiness here (and this is a central contention of the present study) is that the Aristotelian doctrine of mesotes is misapplied to the relation between reason and nature, and on grounds that can be concisely stated. To employ that structure here is to imply that reason and nature, or, in Platonic terms, the intelligible and the material worlds, are of equal value, such that each of them represents a deplorable state of excess. But that is simply not the relation that obtains between them. Whether one considers the reason / nature polarity in its Platonic or Kantian formulations, the intelligible is the source of moral value and the material is the antithesis of moral value. The relation between them is an unequal and asymmetrical relation of hierarchical precedence. To impose the mean-between-extremes structure upon that polarity implies a radical distortion of the Platonic-Kantian tradition that, in the last resort, Schiller was simply not prepared to carry through. As we shall see repeatedly, he was as deeply committed to the precedence of the intelligible as his predecessors. The symmetrical structure should thus not be assumed to reflect Schiller's ultimate thoughts on the human condition, but rather only one component in the logical and metaphysical struggle enacted in his theoretical writings. Here then is the explanation for Schiller's repeated abandonment of the symmetrical pattern and his retreat to a more orthodox dualistic position, a change of tack that generally coincides with a shift from the standpoint of beauty to that of the sublime. A good example can be found in Uber Anmut und Wtirde, where, in a reversal that has constantly puzzled Schiller's interpreters, the proclamation of the "schone Seele" (beautiful soul) is followed by the wholly antithetical affirmation of the 16. "The dynamic state can merely make society possible, by taming nature through nature; the ethical state can merely make it (morally) necessary, by subjecting the individual will to the general; only the aesthetic state can make it real, because it carries out the will of the whole through the nature of the individual."

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"erhabene Gesinnung" (sublime disposition). Schiller abruptly denies the possibility of the harmony between reason and nature in the beautiful soul that he has proclaimed shortly before. While that harmony was originally introduced as a kind of pragmatism in response to the inhuman rigor of the Kantian ethic, Schiller now allows it fade away as an inherently unrealizable ideal. Instead, and adopting a rigorism worthy of Kant himself, he insists relendessly on the choice that man has to make in real moral situations between his spiritual and animal natures, and from this perspective the notion of a beautiful soul appears as a selfindulgent dream. Whereas beauty is associated with mediation, the function of the sublime here seems to be to reassert the original bipolar schema, the "either-or" confronted by Hercules at the crossroads and presented in Pausanias' version of the two Venuses. The same pattern can be illustrated also by a passage from Uber das Erhabene. Schiller begins here by qualifying beauty as effective up to a certain point ("Zwar reichen schon die entwickelten Gefuhle fur Schonheit dazu hin, uns bis auf einen gewissen Grad von der Natur als einer Macht unabhangig zu machen," 794),1? but in view of the momentous choice that has to be made between reason and nature, beauty must accept a subordinate position. In his allegory of the two genii, in whom we can surely recognise close relatives of the two Venuses, if not the goddesses themselves, Schiller then reverts to the bipolar structure with its inherently hierarchical sense: Zwei Genien sind es, die uns die Natur zu Begleitern durchs Leben gab. Der eine, gesellig und hold, verkiirzt uns durch sein munteres Spiel die muhvolle Reise, macht uns die Fesseln der Notwendigkeit leicht und fuhrt uns unter Freude und Scherz bis an die gefahrlichen Stellen, wo wir als reine Geister handeln und alles Korperliche ablegen miissen, bis zur Erkenntnis der Wahrheit und zur Ausubung der Pflicht. Hier verlaBt er uns, denn nur die Sinnenwelt ist sein Gebiet, uber diese hinaus kann ihn sein irdischer Fliigel nicht tragen. Aber jetzt tritt der andere hinzu, ernst und schweigend, und mit starkem Arm tragt er uns iiber die schwindlichte Tiefe. (795-96)l8 17. "Developed feelings for beauty, it is true, suffice to make us independent, up to a certain point, of nature as of a power." 18. "There are two genii that nature has given us as companions through life. The one, convivial and charming, shortens the laborious journey for us by his high-spirited play, lightens the chains of necessity and leads us, amidstjoy and pleasantry, up to the dangerous places where we must act as pure spirits and divest ourselves of everything corporeal, as far as knowledge of truth and as far as action prescribed by duty. Here he leaves us, for his territory is only the sensible world, and his earthly wing cannot bear him beyond it. But now

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The identification of the two figures with the lower and the higher Venus, suggested by their respective alignment with the corporeal and the spiritual worlds, is confirmed when we recall Schiller's interpretation of "Die Kiinstler" as "the veiling of truth and morality in beauty"; like Venus Urania, the second genius here has tutelage over knowledge and morality, which are once again bracketed together as twin aspects of man's spiritual nature. This echo suggests that, for all the development in Schiller's philosophical understanding under the impact of Kant, there is a strong continuity of preoccupation linking his poems of the 17808 to his treatises of the 17905. Where the allegory of Uber das Erhabene differs from "Die Kiinstler," of course, is that in the treatise the two genii do not reveal themselves to be one. As we have seen, however, the sublime and the beautiful can in other places coalesce to form the ideal. To express the point in a provisional form, we should see the beautiful and the sublime as conceptualizations of the two Venuses, but the question of their unity or distinctness is one to which Schiller gives different answers at different times. In his portrayal of the genii, Schiller implies the precedence of the sublime over the beautiful, though in such a way as to leave the beautiful a respectable sphere of influence. In his interpretation of the allegory in the paragraph that follows the portrayal of the genii, he goes further and tries to allow equal dignity to each. Even so, the first, or corporeal, genius strikes us as a superficial kind of figure, and his departure at the first hint of trouble identifies him as a fair-weather friend. The underlying drift of Schiller's argument in Uber das Erhabene towards the intelligible and away from nature is made clear by another mythological passage later in the same work: "Die Schonheit unter der Gestalt der Gottin Kalypso hat den tapfern Sohn des Ulysses bezaubert, und durch die Macht ihrer Reizungen halt sie ihn lange Zeit auf ihrer Insel gefangen. Lange glaubt er einer unsterblichen Gottheit zu huldigen, da er doch nur in den Armen der Wollust liegt—aber ein erhabener Eindruck ergreift ihn plotzlich unter Mentors Gestalt, er erinnert sich seiner the other genius, solemn and silent, intervenes and carries us over the vertiginous abyss with his strong arm." Compare the following passage on the two types of music in Ficino's De amorer. "But there are said to be two kinds of musical melody. For one is ponderous and steady. The other is delicate and playful.... Some people love the first type; others, the second. The love of the former people should be tolerated, and the sounds which they desire should be permitted; but the appetite of the latter people should be resisted. For the love of the former is heavenly; of the latter, vulgar" (p. 67). Ficino cites the authority of the Platonic texts Symposium, Republic, and Laws.

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bessern Bestimmung, wirft sich in die Wellen und ist frei" (800).ig Instead of being the estimable but limited deity of the corporeal world, beauty is now allegorized as the voluptuous and undivine Calypso, who tempts man by her physical charms to neglect his moral duty and to linger in the material world. She has thus become an exclusively reprehensible figure, resuming the role orginally designed for Venus Pandemos in the Symposium. Instead of complementing beauty, the sublime emerges here as a kind of antidote or talisman for man's protection from the danger that beauty poses. The hierarchical relationship could not be clearer; the antithesis has here been assimilated to that between virtue and vice, placing the son of Odysseus in the identical situation to that of Hercules at the crossroads.20 If we now think back to the analysis of "Das Ideal und das Leben," it will be clear that the situation in Uber das Erhabene is the complete reverse: in the poem, we were enjoined to flee from material reality—"aus dem engen dumpfen Leben" (from narrow, dull life)—into a world of art, "In des Ideales Reich," a locality also referred to as "der Schonheit stille Schattenlande" (the silent shadowlands of beauty). In the allegory of Calypso and Minerva, by contrast, we are warned to flee from the isle of beauty, a place of illusion and seduction, and to confront the moral choices required by the grim reality of the world: "Stirn gegen Stirn zeige sich uns das bose Verhangnis" (806). (Let evil fate show itself to us, brow to brow.) In the Platonic schema of higher and lower levels of reality, it appears, beautiful art can occupy both positions, that is, by virtue of its peculiar intermediate position, it can represent both mastery of the senses (as in "Das Ideal und das Leben") and carnal temptation 19. "Beauty, in the form of the goddess Calypso, has enchanted Ulysses' brave son and holds him prisoner through the power of her charms. For a long time he believes he is doing homage to an immortal goddess, though he is only lying in the arms of lust. But suddenly he is seized by a sublime impression in the form of Mentor; he recalls his better destiny, hurls himself into the waves, and is free." 20. As so often, however, the later writings explore tensions that, with the aid of hindsight, can be detected in the earlier writings also. Thus, in "Die Kunstler" (439-43), the self-revelation of Venus Cypria as Urania is immediately compared to a later episode from Fenelon's Telemaque: "So suB, so selig iiberraschet / Stand einst Ulyssens edler Sohn,/Da seiner Jugend himmlischer Gefahrte / Zujovis Tochter sich verklarte." (So sweetly, so blissfully astonished stood once Ulysses' noble son when the heavenly companion of his youth transformed himself to the daughter of Zeus.) In 1789 Schiller confines the comparison of Cypria / Urania to Mentor / Minerva; it is only in UDE that he draws more radical consequences and identifies Cypria with Calypso, a step that would have destroyed the already unwieldy structure of "Die Kunstler." More will be said about Fenelon's novel below.

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(as in Uber das Erhabene). In the first case, it is endowed with the dignity of the idea and is played off against the material world; in the second, it is identified with the world of changing and possibly deceptive appearances, accessible only to opinion, and is contrasted with the stable world of true reality, accessible only to abstract thought.21 Both interpretations are thus grounded in Platonic ontology. (The Aristotelian perspective, for which beauty represents a middle ground between higher and lower and preferable to both, is yet another possibility.) It would be tempting to think of the first perspective as an aesthetic one, the second as a moral one, but of course the context in which Schiller expresses the second is a discussion of the sublime, that is, of an aesthetic concept. To make the picture of confusion complete, we should recall that in the poem "Das Ideal und das Leben," the contemplative aesthetic life was dignified precisely by comparison with the active life of Hercules, on the grounds that the capacity to see the world as "Schein" already presupposes a moral mastery of it. Schiller's aesthetic thought thus seems to encompass, in a manner that is extraordinarily difficult to pin down, the antithesis between aesthetic and moral thought, setting them against each other and reconciling them while striving to keep the entire debate in the aesthetic mode. Returning now to Schiller's allegorical use of Calypso in Uber das Erhabene, it should be noted that a precedent for this exists in the Platonic tradition. In his treatise on beauty, Plotinus urges the reader to recognize the manifestations of material beauty for the "copies, vestiges, shadows" that they are, and to press beyond them towards the intelligible beauty to which they point. In this context, the Homeric parallel occurs to him as it subsequently did to Schiller also: '"Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland': this is the soundest counsel. But what is this flight? How are we to gain the open sea? For Odysseus is surely a parable to us when he commands the flight from the sorceries of Circe or Calypso— 21. In a dialectical skirmish of a kind quite common in Schiller's writings, UDE contradicts "Das Ideal und das Leben" in so direct a manner that one can hardly believe tha Schiller was unaware of it. Where the poem celebrates the "married beam" ("vermahlter Strahl") of pleasure and virtue on the brow of Jupiter, the treatise attacks this synthesis as a lie: "Also hinweg mit ... dem schlaffen, verzartelten Geschmack, der ..., um sich bei den Sinnen in Gunst zu setzen, eine Harmonic zwischen dem Wohlsein und Wohlverhalten liigt, wovon sich in der wirklichen Welt keine Spuren zeigen" (p. 806). (Away, then, with ... the soft and degenerate taste that . . . , in order to curry favour with the senses, creates the lie of a harmony between good fortune and good conduct, a harmony of which no trace can be found in the real world.)

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not content to linger for all the pleasure offered to his eyes and all the delight of sense filling his days" (ENN 1.6.8). I shall explore the reasons for this harsh judgment on beauty in chapter 3, but I should note here that Schiller's reference is not to Odysseus but to his son Telemachus, and that he is thinking not of the Odyssey but of Les aventures de Telemaque (1699), Fenelon's popular amalgamation of the courtly novel with the humanistic "Furstenspiegel" (educational narratives for young princes). As Schiller will hardly have had any knowledge of Plotinus, we must assume the echo to be fortuitous. We are looking, not at a deliberate literary reference, but at a case of a shared metaphysical framework giving rise to similar figurative illustrations at times and places completely remote from each other. I should note further that while Plotinus is contrasting material and intelligible beauty, Schiller has converted the latter concept into the sublime, thus adapting the Platonic antithesis to the terms and ideas of his own century.22 Schiller's integration of modern elements into the traditional schema of course goes well beyond terminology, and his understanding of beauty and sublimity was influenced, as has been shown countless times, by his reading of Kant in the early 17905. The underlying continuity with ancient tradition, which makes itself felt in the passage from Uber das Erhabene, still deserves to be pointed out, however, and not only because it is less obvious. It also shows that, though in some respects the birth of philosophical aesthetics was a genuine innovation of the eighteenth century, it was by no means a creation ex nihilo. We need to be aware of its borrowings and dependences if we are to understand it adequately. If the lower Venus has been transformed into Calypso (who, in both Homer and Fenelon is actually divine, though of sub-Olympian status), her heavenly sister now appears in the guise of Mentor, a mere mortal. This is not as serious a demotion as it appears, however, for throughout Fenelon's novel, Mentor is actually Minerva in disguise. Minerva is the goddess of wisdom and is thus an appropriate embodiment, as we shall now see, for the spiritual qualities that Schiller is interested in.23 A reading of Fenelon's novel alerts us to the significance of this shift, for Venus 22. The first text in which the terms are systematically juxtaposed is Edmund Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). 23. There is a precedent, or at least the trace of one, for Schiller's new preoccupation with Minerva in the 17905, for, in "Der Triumph der Liebe," the goddess whom we identified as Venus Urania was merely named "Weisheit mit dem Sonnenblick" (wisdom with the sunlike gaze), and, as observed in note 11 above, the goddess of wisdom is Minerva.

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is throughout the arch-enemy of the hero and his divine adviser. Thanks to the novel's pervasive spirit of Stoic asceticism, she and her domain are portrayed in a consistently hostile tone.24 Edgar Wind has written memorably of the "characteristic glow of Renaissance Platonism" and its inherent hostility to "the frigidity which the Stoic mistakes for virtue." Paradoxically, the Platonic cult of Divine Love "fostered a spiritual cult of the senses," and this tendency was "latent in it from the start."25 Something of this Platonic glow can be felt in "Die Cotter Griechenlandes" and in other texts from the 17805. Though it does not vanish in the next decade, the reference to Fenelon in Uber das Erhabene seems to signal a shift in spirit in Schiller from his more sensualistic Platonism of the 17808 to a more ascetic version in the 17905. The Asthetische Briefe contain only a passing reference to the dual Venus motif. During his account of the spiritual impoverishment of man in the modern administered state, Schiller comments that this state has an interest in limiting the mental horizons of its officials: "So eifersiichtig ist der Staat auf den Alleinbesitz seiner Diener, daB er sich leichter dazu entschlieBen wird (und wer kann ihm unrecht geben?), seinen Mann mit einer Venus Cytherea als mit einer Venus Urania zu teilen" (585).26 The lower Venus is here clearly meant in the derogatory sense characteristic of the Symposium; the state, Schiller is saying, would prefer to have debauched servants than people capable of independent thought.27 In the context, the higher Venus stands for "das hohere Geistesbediirfnis 24. See, for example, Telemachus' dream as he approaches the island of Cyprus in book 4: " [Cupid] laughed when he looked at me; his laughter was malicious, scornful, and cruel. From his golden quiver he drew the sharpest of his arrows, bent his bow, and was going to pierce me, when all of a sudden Minerva appeared and covered me with her aegis. In the face of that goddess there was nothing of that effeminate beauty, or that amorous languishment, which I had remarked in the face and person of Venus. On the contrary, her beauty was modest, negligent, unaffected: her whole demeanor was noble, grave, stately, spirited, and majestic" (Telemachus, p. 48). On the influence of the novel, see Volker Kapp 's interesting postscript to the German edition. 25. Pagan Mysteries, p. 141. 26. "So jealous is the state of being sole owner of its servants that it will more easily bring itself (and who can say it is wrong?) to share its man with Venus Cytherea than with Venus Urania." 27. For another example of a negative understanding of the lower Venus, see AW (p. 484): "Das Feuer, welches die himmlische Venus entziindete, wird von der irdischen benutzt, und der Naturtrieb racht seine lange Vernachlassigung nicht selten durch eine desto unumschranktere Herrschaft." (The fire kindled by the heavenly Venus is used by the earthly one, and the natural impulse often avenges its long neglect through a domination that is all the more boundless.)

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des Mannes von Genie" (the higher intellectual needs of the man of genius), that is, an ability to transcend one's particular professional skill. It is thus not surprising that Schiller later substitutes Minerva as symbol for this higher "Geistesbedurfhis," for, while Venus Urania evokes a contemplation of things beyond the material world, Schiller is clearly thinking here of a type of mental ability that can engage with sociopolitical reality and even, like Fenelon's Mentor, challenge bad rulers. (It makes no difference to a repressive state whether its servants spend their free time in debauchery or in contemplating the eternal forms.) Thus, in the eighth letter of the Asthetische Briefe, where Schiller comes closest to Kant's Beantwortung derFrage: Was ist Aufkldrungf, he repeats the famous challenge sapere aude ("Dare to be wise"), and continues with a mythological reference: "Nicht ohne Bedeutung Ia6t der alte Mythus die Gottin der Weisheit in voller Rustung aus Jupiters Haupte steigen; denn schon ihre erste Verrichtung ist kriegerisch. Schon in der Geburt hat sie einen harten Kampf mit den Sinnen zu bestehen, die aus ihrer siiBen Ruhe nicht gerissen sein wollen" (591).28 If the heavenly Venus has been transformed into Minerva, a goddess of mental enlightenment and civic virtue, her lower counterpart, though not named, is associated with sensualistic indolence (and also political subservience) and hence can be identified as Calypso. The mythological shifts—the demotion of Venus Cypria to the sluttish Calypso, the transformation of Venus Urania into the war- and statesmanlike Athene—thus again suggest an abandonment of the position of "Die Kunstler" that the two Venuses are basically one. This underlines Schiller's tendency in the 17905 to take a hierarchical view of the relation of reason to nature, and hence to set the sublime over the beautiful, though we should not forget that he simultaneously hopes for their fusion in the ideal. By his insistence in the eighth Brief on the need for a "hard struggle with the senses," however, he undermines his arguments elsewhere in the treatise for a "middle state" ("mittlerer Zustand") in which reason and nature can find harmony. Schiller has not abandoned the Venus myth altogether, however. In the "Ankiindigung zu den Horen," for example, he seeks to convert it into the editorial policy for his new journal: "Man wird streben, die Schonheit zur Vermittlerin der Wahrheit zu machen und durch die 28. "It is not without meaning that the ancient myth has the goddess of wisdom springing from Jupiter's head in a full suit of armour, for wisdom's very first deed is warlike. Al ready at its birth it has to endure a hard struggle with the senses, which are reluctant to be roused from their sweet repose."

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Wahrheit der Schonheit ein daurendes Fundament und eine hohere Wiirde zu geben" (87i). 2 9 But in order to illustrate both the pervasive ambivalence of his theoretical writings and also the continuity of his thought, I should point out that a later passage from the Asthetische Briefe recapitulates the subject matter dealt with years before in "Der Triumph der Liebe." Again, Schiller describes the condition of primitive man as one of brute unresponsiveness to nature. For example, the idea expressed in the poem as follows, UngegruBet stieg Aurora Aus dem SchoB Ocean us' Ungekusset sank die Sonne In die Arme Hesperus' (25-28)3°

is reformulated in the analytical mode of the treatise: "Umsonst laBt die Natur ihre reiche Mannigfaltigkeit an seinen Sinnen vorubergehen; er [der Mensch] sieht in ihrer herrlichen Fulle nichts als seine Beute" (646).3l And while, according to the poem, the birth of Venus brought this sad condition to an end, the treatise attributes the change to a revolution in consciousness by which man suddenly put a distance between himself and nature: "Die Notwendigkeit der Natur, die ihn im Zustand der bloBen Empfindung mit ungeteilter Gewalt beherrschte, laBt bei der Reflexion von ihm ab, in den Sinnen erfolgt ein augenblicklicher Friede, die Zeit selbst, das ewig Wandelnde, steht still, indem des BewuBtseins zerstreute Strahlen sich sammeln, und ein Nachbild des Unendlichen, die Form, reflektiert sich auf dem verganglichen Grunde" (651-52).32 This passage should be understood again as an analytical treatment of the event described in the poem as follows: 29. "We shall strive to make beauty the vehicle of truth and, by means of truth, to give beauty a lasting foundation and a higher dignity." 30. "Aurora rose unwelcomed from the lap of Oceanus, the sun sank unkissed into the arms of Hesperus." 31. "It is in vain that nature lets its rich multiplicity pass before his senses; he [man] sees in its wonderful abundance nothing but his prey." 32. "The necessity of nature, which in the state of mere sensation dominated him with undivided force, relaxes its grip on him in the state of reflection. In his senses there follows a momentary peace; time itself, the ever-changing one, stands still as the scattered beams of consciousness gather; and form, an image of the eternal, is reflected against the transient background."

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Und sieh! der blauen Flut entquillt Die Himmelstochter sanft und mild, Getragen von Najaden Zu trunkenen Gestaden. Ein jugendlicher Maienschwung Durchwebt wie Morgendammerung Auf das allmachtge Werde Luft, Himmel, Meer und Erde. Schon schmilzt der wiitende Orkan (Einst zuchtigt' er den Ozean Mit rasselndem GegeiBel) In lispelndes Gesausel. (35-46)33

In the prose treatise, Schiller uses the same imagery of the dawning light and the calm after the tempest: "Sobald es Licht wird in dem Menschen, ist auch auBer ihm keine Nacht mehr [compare here lines 11-12 of the poem, quoted above: "Stein und Felsen ihre Herzen,/Ihre Seelen Nacht"]; sobald es stille wird in ihm, legt sich auch der Sturm in dem Weltall, und die streitenden Krafte der Natur fmden Ruhe zwischen bleibenden Grenzen" (652).34 The passage ends with an allusion to Greek myth to give figurative reinforcement to the overall message: "Daher kein Wunder, wenn die uralten Dichtungen von dieser groBen Begebenheit im Innern des Menschen als von einer Revolution in der AuBenwelt reden und den Gedanken, der iiber die Zeitgesetze siegt, unter dem Bilde des Zeus versinnlichen, der das Reich des Saturnus endigt" (652).35 In view of the continuity linking poem and treatise, we are bound to wonder why 33. "And lo! from the blue tide arises the mild and gentle daughter of heaven, borne by Naiads to drunken shores. Upon this almighty 'Let there be life!,' a youthful May energy penetrates air, sky, sea, and earth like the dawn. Already the raging tempest dies down into a soft murmur; once it had chastised the ocean with howling lash." 34. "As soon as it has become light within man, there is no longer any night outside him; as soon as it grows silent within him, the storm in the universe subsides and die contending forces of nature come to rest between lasting boundaries." 35. "No wonder, then, that ancient works of poetry speak of this great event within man as though it were a revolution in the external world, and symbolize thought conquering the laws of time by the image of Zeus putting an end to the reign of Saturn."

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Schiller has avoided an explicit repetition of the birth of Venus, choosing the revolt of Zeus instead; the emergence of eternal form "auf dem verganglichen Grunde" (against a background of transience) virtually demands the emergence of Venus from the waves as its figurative expression. We can surmise, however, that this is connected with his change of the two Venuses into Minerva and Calypso, and that the connotations of Venus, whether heavenly or earthly, are now too sensual for his taste. Schiller's use of the verb "siegen," for example, a favourite term of his in the 17gos, reflects his fundamentally antagonistic view of the relation between reason and nature, a view that is more adequately expressed by the war goddess. The latter's bellicose appearance is reflected in Schiller's argument: when he refers to the war against matter ("Krieg gegen die Materie," 645), and the victory over the old gods is given a philosophical interpretation in the account of Mediterranean culture, "wo das Reich der bliriden Masse schon in der leblosen Schopfung gesturzt ist und die siegende Form auch die niedrigsten Naturen veredelt" (655).36 But I must repeat that, appearances to the contrary, Schiller has not completely abandoned the harmonious vision epitomized by the unity of the two Venuses. At the end of Letter 25, for example, he can still affirm the sense of that allegorical unity, writing: "Es kann ... nicht mehr die Frage sein, wie [der Mensch] von der Schonheit zur Wahrheit iibergehe, die dern Vermogen nach schon in der ersten liegt" (655).37 The new preference for Minerva nonetheless indicates, at the very least, a profound uneasiness with the Venus allegory and what it signified. This uneasiness is reflected in the ambivalence and occasional incoherence of 36. " where, even in the inanimate creation, the empire of blind mass has been overthrown, and victorious form ennobles even the lowest natures." See also the 4th AB (p. 579): "gleich weit von Einformigkeit und Verwirrung ruht die siegende Form" (at equal distance from monotony and from confusion rests victorious form), and the 27th (p. 666), where Schiller compares the civilized Greeks and the barbarous Trojans in the Iliad: "Dort sehen wir bloB den Ubermut blinder Krafte, hier den Sieg der Form und die simple Majestat des Gesetzes." (There we see only the wild energy of blind forces, here the victory of form and the simple majesty of law.) The quotations exemplify the plurality of models used by Schiller: in the first quotation, form appears as mean between extremes, in the second as idea against matter. The view that beauty represents the victory of form over matter can be found in Ficino's commentary on Plotinus, ENN i .6: "It is something divine and majestic because it both signifies the empire of ruling form and also carries off the victory of art and divine reason over matter [artis rationisque divinae victoriam refert super materiam], clearly representing the idea itself (Opera Omnia, vol. 2, p. 1575)37. "The question ... can no longer be how he [man] is to pass from beauty to truth, for the latter is potentially contained in the former."

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Schiller's arguments in the 17905, caused by his struggles to balance and reconcile what are fundamentally irreconcilable beliefs. A further example illustrates the connection between myth and argument in Schiller's thought, while also indicating the intractable nature of the logical problems he is wrestling with. Interpreting the allegory of the genii in Uber das Erhabene, Schiller goes beyond allocating the sublime to the spiritual and the beautiful to the natural realm. Instead, the sublime is said to arise from the separation of the two realms, the beautiful from their integration: "Wir fuhlen uns frei bei der Schonheit, weil die sinnlichen Triebe mit dem Gesetz der Vernunft harmonieren; wir fuhlen uns frei beim Erhabenen, weil die sinnlichen Triebe auf die Gesetzgebung der Vernunft keinen Einflufi haben" (796) .38 On top of the simple antithesis of higher and lower is thus superimposed a more complex antithesis of separation and synthesis. The separation of higher and lower should be linked to the hierarchical constellation of Mentor / Minerva and Calypso, and their synthesis to the more harmonious allegory of the two Venuses who are actually one (or to the "vermahlter Strahl" of pleasure and virtue). I can thus modify my earlier and provisional identification of the higher and lower Venus with the sublime and the beautiful; more accurately, the beautiful represents the identity of the two goddesses, the sublime their nonidentity.39 In his poetic version of the allegory of the geniuses, "Die Fuhrer des Lebens" (entitled "Schon und Erhaben" on its first appearance in 1795), Schiller concludes by aligning beauty with happiness and the sublime with dignity: "Vertraue dem erstern [der Schonheit] / Deine Wiirdenicht an, nimmer dem andern dein Gliick" (g-io).40 These lines allow us to link the allegory with a further passage from the Asthetische Briefe. "Es ist dem Menschen einmal eigen, das Hochste und das Niedrigste in seiner Natur zu vereinigen, und wenn seine Wiirde auf einer strengen Unterscheidung des einen von dem andern beruht, so beruht auf einer geschickten Aufhebung dieses Unterschieds seine 38. "We feel free with beauty because the sensory impulses harmonize with the law of reason; we feel free with the sublime because the sensory impulses have no influence on the legislation of reason." 39. One might suggest further that, whereas an insistence on the separateness of the Venuses leads to one transformation, namely into the antagonistic figures Minerva and Calypso, their unity suggests the contrary transformation into Juno, celebrated in the 15th AB

(pp. 618-19) as at once female god and godlike woman ("weiblicher Gott" and "gottgle-

iches Weib"). 40. "Do not entrust your dignity to beauty nor your happiness to the other."

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Gluckseligkeit."41 This idea gives rise to what must be one of the more curious definitions of culture to have emerged from the pen of a great writer: "Die Kultur, welche seine Wurde mit seiner Gluckseligkeit in Ubereinstimmung bringen soil, wird also fur die hochste Reinheit jener beiden Prinzipien in ihrer innigsten Vermischung zu sorgen haben" (647).42 This demand for simultaneous union and division is repeated at the end of the same letter: "die Natur soil [den Menschen] nicht ausschliefiend und die Vernunft soil ihn nicht bedingt beherrschen. Beide Gesetzgebungen sollen vollkommen unabhangig von einander bestehen, und dennoch vollkommen einig sein" (651).43 The antithesis of nature and reason is thus outbid by a second antithesis of beauty/happiness (nature united to reason) and sublimity/dignity (nature separated from reason), and this second antithesis is itself succeeded by a demand that happiness and dignity, manifestations respectively of unity and division, be simultaneously united and divided. Whether one considers this demand from a logical, a psychological, or an administrative standpoint, one can hardly deny that Schiller's demand is highly eccentric. It should be clear, however, that it represents the perplexing culmination of the same line of thought that he pursued by mythological means through the poems and the figurative prose passages we have looked at. Thomas Kuhn tells us that he has given his students the following advice: "When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them. When you find an answer, ... when these passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages, ones you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning."44 I shall attempt to follow this excellent maxim, and will therefore return frequently to Schiller's definition of culture. Though apparently absurd in Kuhn's sense, this definition in fact serves as a kind of 41. "It is a property of man to unite within his nature the highest and the lowest; and if his dignity depends on a strict distinction between the one and the other, his happiness rests on a deft annulment of this difference." 42. "Culture, which is supposed to bring his dignity into concord with his happiness, will therefore have to ensure the highest degree of purity of those two principles combined with their most intimate fusion." 43. "Nature is not supposed to rule him [man] exclusively, nor reason to rule him conditionally. Both these legislations should exist in complete independence of each other, but nonetheless be in perfect unity." 44. Quoted by Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 323.

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Archimedean point from which to understand what is at stake in Schiller's thought, and it gives us a more advantageous entry point into his writings than the approach used by the majority of scholars, who tend to limit their attentions to the more accessible and apparently more central passages. As we shall see in chapter 3, Schiller's dilemma is generated by an interpretative crux arising from Plato's theory of ideas, the question, that is, whether nature and reason are to be thought of as reconcilable or as mutually exclusive. The hallmark of Schiller's peculiar brand of Platonism is that, as in his definition of culture, he defies everyday logic by struggling to hold both positions simultaneously.45 Summarizing the present chapter, I should observe that Schiller's preoccupation with mythical figures creates the impression of an interdependence 45. An earlier passage from the Asthetische Briefe gives a fuller, though no less puzzling, account of die contradictory workings of aesthetic culture, where, as above, Schiller attempts to resolve the contradiction by resorting to the ambiguous term "aufheben." In so doing, he anticipates an important instrument of the Hegelian dialectic: "Die Schonheit, heiBt es, verkniipft zwei Zustande miteinander, die einander entgegensetzt sind und niemals eins werden konnen. Von dieser Entgegensetzung mussen wir ausgehen; wir miissen sie in ihrer ganzen Reinheit und Strengigkeit auffassen und anerkennen, so daB beide Zustande sich auf das bestimmteste scheiden; sonst vermischen wir, aber vereinigen nicht. Zweitens heiBt es: jene zwei entgegengesetzten Zustande verbindet die Schonheit und hebt also die Entgegensetzung auf. Weil aber beide Zustande einander ewig entgegengesetzt bleiben, so sind sie nicht anders zu verbinden, als indem sie aufgehoben werden. Unser zweites Geschaft ist also, diese Verbindung vollkommen zu machen, sie so rein und vollstandig durchzufuhren, daB beide Zustande in einem dritten ganzlich verschwinden und keine Spur der Teilung in dem Ganzen zuriickbleibt; sonst vereinzeln wir, aber vereinigen nicht" (p. 625). (Beauty, we have said, joins together two conditions which are opposed to each other and can never become one. It is from this opposition that we must proceed; and we must first grasp it and acknowledge it in all its purity and strictness, so that these two conditions are distinguished with the greatest precision; otherwise we shall only confuse them but never unite them. In the second place, it was said, beauty unites these two opposed conditions and thus [annuls / preserves / elevates] the opposition. But because both conditions remain eternally opposed to each other, there is no way of uniting them other than by [annulling / preserving/elevating] them. Our second task, therefore, is to make this union perfect, and to carry it out with such purity and completeness that both these conditions totally disappear in a third and that no trace of a division remains behind in the resulting whole; otherwise we shall isolate them but never unite them.) M. H. Abrams comments, "In this passage Schiller introduces the use of aufheben in the multiple dialectical sense (which Hegel later annexed) in which it signifies both the annulment and preservation, and suggests also the elevation, of contraries in a synthesis, or third thing" (Natural Supernaturalism, pp. 212-13). If Abrams is right, it would mean that Hegel's dialectic was born indirectly from the dual Venus myth.

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in his mind between myth and concept. This impression not only confirms his own judgment on his own hybrid thought processes, as he described them in the famous letter to Goethe of 31 August 1794, quoted in chapter i, above. It also suggests a presumably unconscious parallel between his method and the Neoplatonic technique of mythological interpretation, such as we observed in texts of Ficino and Pico. The fact that Schiller remained concerned with the dual Venus motif in the 17908, albeit in a somewhat veiled fashion, underlines the continuity between the pre- and post-Kantian phases of his thought, while the shift from the "both/and" structure of "Die Kiinstler" in the direction of the "either/ or" structure of the later texts quoted suggests that, despite this underlying unity, there is, if not a complete change of outlook, then at least a change of tone that needs to be investigated. This change is associated with the movement away from the Venus motif towards Minerva, and seems to denote a new reluctance to defend the middle realm of nature, art, and humanity against the claims of pure mind. At the same time, his unwillingness altogether to abandon the more optimistic views of the 17805, signalled by the "vermahlter Strahl" of virtue and happiness on Jupiter's brow, leads him into curious logical territory, with his aporetic demand for simultaneous unity and division between principles of unity and division.

Ill Logic and Metaphysics

The peculiarly complex and problematic logical pattern in Schiller's later thought, revealed in chapter 2, reflects his struggles with the doctrines and dilemmas that he inherited from the Platonic tradition. The implications of the logical problem lead to the field of metaphysics, and from there into anthropology and aesthetics, where parallel problems are generated by the logical one. CHORISMOS AND METHEXIS

Surveying the ideas of his precursors in the first book of his Metaphysics, Aristotle cites as Socrates' contribution to philosophy the turn from physical to ethical questions and the search for the universal by means of definitions. Plato's divergence from his teacher Socrates is next characterized as follows: Plato followed him and assumed that the problem of definition is concerned not with any sensible thing but with entities of another kind; for the reason that there can be no general definition of sensible things which are always changing. These entities he called "Ideas," and held that all sensible things are named after them and in virtue of their relation to them; for the plurality of things which bear the same name as the Forms exist by participation in them. (With regard to the "participation," it was only the term that he changed; for whereas the Pythagoreans say that things exist by imitation of numbers, Plato says that they exist by participation—merely a change of term. As to what this "participation" or "imitation" may be, they left this an open question.)l i. Metaphysics 98704-15. Quotations from Aristotle's works will henceforth be identified in the text.

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In this summary, and especially in the closing parentheses, Aristotle is preparing the ground for his critique of the theory of ideas. Plato, he writes, sought to solve the problem of universals by setting up a separate realm of unchanging metaphysical entities that are the true referents of the terms of our language. Particular objects, which are caught up in a world of change and decay, cannot be what they are in more than a provisional sense; they are thus said to acquire such identity as they have through their relationship with the ideas. Plato refers to this relationship as "participation" but beyond that tells us little about it. Later in the Metaphysics, Aristotle airs his disagreements with his teacher's doctrine polemically and at length. Two of his objections need to be brought out here: first, there is no reason to believe in the existence of a separate realm of universal essences, a realm that (absurdly) would have to duplicate every type of physical object with an ideal exemplar, and second, even if there were such a separate realm, it could not fulfil the purpose that Plato requires it to fulfil, since the notion of participation is inherendy incoherent. It is riot necessary here to note Plato's own attempts to solve the problem, of which he was certainly aware, in the Parmenides and the Sophist, nor to inquire whether Aristotle's doctrine of substance and the concrete universal succeeded in solving the problem where Plato allegedly failed. Nor indeed is it necessary to trace the further history of this famous controversy through the Middle Ages. All that is of interest here is the broad outline of the dilemma: first, that the idealist's search for stable referents for human language leads to the positing of a separate realm—a realm whose existence sceptics are inclined to dispute; and second, that, even if the existence of this realm is accepted, its function in relation to the world of sensible experience requires urgent definition, or else the realm of being will seem divided into two unconnected parts. We should recall that the special task of love in Platonism is to prevent such a division from coming about. To possess the permanence required by the theory, the world of ideas, or the intelligible world, must, in a meaningful way, be separate from and superior to the material or phenomenal world. But the more separate it is, the more difficult it is to understand how the material world can participate in it. The Greek terms for the two horns of this dilemma, which arises with seeming inevitability from the idealist approach to philosophy, are chorismos (separation) and methexis (participation). The dilemma of separation and unity is of central importance in Schiller's thought, and I shall therefore use these two Greek terms, together with the neologistic adjectives "choristic" and

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"methectic," to designate the two major and contradictory impulses or strategies in Schiller's thought.2 Schiller's aporias are the descendants of Plato's. On the one hand, Schiller takes for granted the existence of an ideal or intelligible realm that is not only distinct from and superior to the world of experience but also needs to be protected from all sullying contact with it (cf. "der Unrat des Wirklichen"). Here is the austere and moralistic side that so many critics have found in Schiller, and it is what I term the choristic impulse of his thought. On the other hand, he also felt the need to reconcile the two worlds, to show the immanence of the ideal in the sensible and the participation of the sensible in the ideal; nature was hence worthy of being treated as an equal partner of the intelligible, and from the human estate at the interface of the two it was possible to deduce a unique metaphysical dignity. This I term the methectic impulse. It will be clear from the last chapter that Schiller's methectic and choristic impulses find their respective allegorical expressions in the unity in duality of the two Venuses and in the disjunction of Mentor / Minerva and Calypso. Simplifying the point somewhat, we might think of Venus a the goddess of methexis, Minerva as the goddess of chorismos. Similarly, the either / or logic of the story of Hercules at the crossroads exemplifies the choristic perspective, while the both / and pattern, or the coincidence of sensory pleasure and peace of soul ("Sinnengluck" and "Seelenfrieden") in his Olympian afterlife, represents the achievement of methexis. To introduce a new analogy, we might also think of methexis and chorismos as Schiller's major and minor keys.3 2. See Ernst Cassirer, "Eidos und Eidolon" (p. 10): "Plato's theory of ideas is informed by the thought of the separation of idea and phenomenon but also by the thought of their connection. One does not understand the systematic sense of the separation [chorismos] without the sense of the participation [methexis]." ("Platons Ideenlehre ist wie von dem Gedanken der Trennung zwischen 'Idee' und 'Erscheinung,' so auch von dem Gedanken der Verknupfung beider beherrscht. Man versteht den systematischen Sinn der Trennung, des [chorismos], nichtohne den Sinn derTeilhabe, der [methexis}.") The present study is indebted for its understanding of Platonic metaphysics to Cassirer's seminal study. 3. Spranger's discovery ("Schillers Geistesart," pp. 218-19) of an alternating rhythm of division and separation in Schiller's writings is a different way of making the same point. Kerry (Schiller's Writings on Aesthetics, p. 9) expresses this point, in my view a metaphysical one, in existential terms when he distinguishes between Schiller the poet and Schiller the philosopher: "It is characteristic of Schiller's aesthetic speculations that, while he is intellectually preoccupied with the Kantian barrier between reason and nature, his poetic instinct anticipates the dissolution of the barrier." It is false to suggest that the "Kantian barrier" is of secondary relevance for Schiller as poet, for it is in fact the source of the theory

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As we can now see, Schiller's eccentric definition of culture in the twenty-fourth Asthetischer Brief as a simultaneous union and separation of union and separation expresses a commitment to reconcile chorismos and methexis. This is of course a logical impossibility, for a successful rec onciliation would represent a victory of methexis; it is in the nature of chorismos precisely that no such reconciliation is possible. Schiller's aporia can thus be expressed as a need to reconcile while also not reconciling, or perhaps to make participation participate in separation and vice versa. While he does not often pursue the logical consequences of his strategy to the aporetic extremities of the twenty-fourth Brief, we can see him throughout his philosophical writings searching for formulae or constructs that can successfully reconcile the ideal and the sensible (or reason and nature, or any of the many alternative terms that Schiller uses for this basic dichotomy) in a way that also preserves their antagonism. We should note further that Schiller tends to regard nature not only as the lower term of the polarity but also as the source of the urge towards methexis. Reason, similarly, is not merely the superior term but is the source of the urge towards chorismos. Nature, therefore, strives for unity and fusion, reason for separateness and purity. Despite representing a fusion of reason and nature, beauty and its cognates thus tend to be more closely identified with nature, while the ascendancy of reason in the sublime requires no particular emphasis. BEAUTY DIVIDED

Despite his hostility to the poets, Plato devised a theory of beauty that has proved irresistible to artists and critics ever since antiquity. The fact that he presented this theory in contexts unrelated to art, notably in the discussion of love in the Symposium, did not prevent later generations of Platonists, particularly Plotinus, from thinking the theory through to its consequences.4 The result was that once art was accepted as an activity pertaining to beauty (and not merely to mimesis, the concept at the heart of Plato's condemnation of the poets), it ceased to be just one

of the sublime. Interpretative moves of this kind give rise to the harmonizing view of Schiller's aesthetics. 4. For- the aesthetic thought of later Neoplatonists, see James A. Coulter, The Literary Microcosm, and Anne D. R. Sheppard, Studies on the $th and 6th Essays, as well as the discussion of both works by Beierwaltes in his Denken desEinen, pp. 296-318.

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techne among many, one topic calling for specialized investigation apart from other topics. Instead, its rationale was defined in terms of the central concerns of metaphysics and ethics. Implicitly, at least, it was promoted to the status of themia—we recall Plotinus' inclusion of the musician in Enneads (1.3)—and hence became an activity of unique significance for mankind.5 In a nutshell, Platonism holds that beauty is the reflection of the intelligible in the material world.6 Things are beautiful in so far as they bear the stamp of the ideal forms from which they were created. Beauty enables objects to transcend their materiality. Human beings, who can recognize the beauty in material objects by comparing them with the rational formulae implanted in their minds before birth, are enabled to transcend their own ontological limitations and to partake of the intelligible realm. As Ficino expresses this process: "when the figure of some body meets the eye, and through the eyes penetrates into the spirit, if that figure, on account of the preparation of its matter, corresponds closely to the figure which the divine Mind contains in its Idea of the thing, it immediately pleases the soul since it corresponds to those Reasons which both our intellect and our power of procreation [that is, the two Venuses in us] preserve as copies of the thing itself, and which were originally received divinely" (De amore, 119). A thing of beauty is matter shaped by a divine idea. The experience of beauty is unique because it is the only kind of sensible testimony by which man, so long as he remains a material being in the material world, can be alerted to his own divine and immaterial status. "Our interpretation," writes Plotinus in his treatise on beauty (ENN 1.6.2), "is that the Soul—by the very truth of its nature, by its affiliation to the noblest Existents in the hierarchy of Being—when it sees anything of that kin, or any trace of that kinship, thrills with an immediate delight, takes its own to itself, and thus stirs anew to the sense of its nature and of all its affinity." A beauty thus conceived binds the intelligible and sensible realms to each other, and it is clear that this connection is of vital importance for the

5. For an expert outline of Plato's attack on art and Aristotle's response to it, see the second chapter of Manfred Fuhrmann, Die Dichtungstheorie der Antike. Page references to this work appear in the text. 6. See Ficino's commentary on Plotinus, ENN 1.6: "Corporeal beauty is a moulded likeness of the idea, as if the idea itself had been removed from matter" (Opera Omnia, vol. 2, p. 1576).

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Platonic system, since it is perhaps the most effective evidence of methexis that could be devised.7 It is not hard to find evidence of such ontological concerns in Schiller's writings. In Michaelis' record of Schiller's Asthetische Vorlesungen of 1792-93, for example, we find the statement: "Das Schone veredelt die Sinnlichkeit und versinnlicht die Vernunft" (1041) .8 One thinks here also of Kant's dilemma as to how to bridge his own (critically reformulated) chorismos, the gap between the orders of nature and of freedom. As I shall argue in chapter 4, it is not entirely coincidental that, like Plato, he had recourse to beauty to do the job. Plato's negative views about the role of art and artists in the state are notoriously hard to square with the prominent role he assigns to beauty in his metaphysics and the eloquence with which he writes of it. In the myth of the charioteer in the Phaedrus, in which his own considerable poetic talents are on display, he pays tribute to the uniqueness of beauty by setting it apart from the forms of the moral virtues: Now in the earthly likenesses of justice and temperance and all other prized possessions of the soul there dwells no lustre; nay, so dull are the organs wherewith men approach their images that hardly can a few behold that which is imaged, but with beauty it is otherwise. Beauty it was ours to see in all its brightness in those days when, amidst that happy company, we beheld with our eyes that blessed vision. ... Now beauty, as we said, shone bright amidst these visions, and in this world below we apprehend it through the clearest of our senses, clear and resplendent. For sight is the keenest mode of perception vouchsafed us through the body; wisdom, indeed, we cannot see thereby—how passionate had been our desire for her, if she had granted us so clear an image of herself to gaze upon—nor yet any other of those beloved objects, save only beauty; for beauty alone this has been ordained, to be most manifest to sense and most lovely of them all.9 Besides the uniqueness of beauty, one notes here that it is in one respect a second best. Precisely because it is accessible to the physical sense (albeit the clearest sense), it represents a form of apprehension inferior to 7. Beauty can of course provide only intuitive, i.e., not discursive or dialectical evidence of methexis, hence Aristotle's dismissal of methexis (ggia2i-25) as "empty phrases" and (sic) "poetical metaphors." 8. "Beauty purifies the sensibility and makes reason sensible." 9. Phaedrus 25ob-d. Plato's works are quoted from The Collected Dialogues. References will henceforth be given in the text.

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knowledge, one which, in view of the ineluctable deficiencies of our cognitive equipment, we have to make do with. Beings of superior purity, it is implied, would be able to apprehend the purer forms, for example, self-discipline and justice, better than we can, while beauty would be meaningless to them. On the other hand, however, beauty is said to be uniquely resplendent, not only here but in the intelligible world also, a step that places the hierarchical relation of the two worlds in question. For, if sensible beauty represents human striving to overcome the sensible, the concept of an intelligible beauty, implicit in the passage, betokens a contrary striving of the ideas for sensible immediacy. The quotation thus reveals the paradoxical character of Plato's attitude to beauty, in that he contrives to exalt and degrade it at the same time. The paradox is especially germane to a discussion of Schiller. On the one hand, beauty thus defined recommends itself, because of its greater accessibility, for propaedeutic use in moral training, and Plato indeed proposes just such an aesthetic education in the Republic and the Laws. However, beauty's proximity to the material world simultaneously raises unique dangers of illusion and corruption to which the purer ideas are not subject, and it is because of these dangers that, in Schiller's thought, the sublime is constantly invoked as a corrective to beauty. As the passage also shows, there is a philosophical explanation for Plato's opposition to art and not merely a personal blind spot. By defining beauty as a lower kind of knowledge, but at the same time speculating longingly about a manifestation of knowledge to the eyes, Plato sets the stage for a centuries-long battle between art and philosophy, the echoes of which can still be heard in Schiller's philosophical poems and treatises.10 Instead of allowing some validity to art as a distinct activity with rules and objectives of its own, Plato's theory of beauty in essence assigns it a place in the antechamber of philosophy, while philosophical 10. See Plato's reference to the long-standing quarrel between poetry and philosophy at REP 10.6070. Schiller takes a particularly strict "philosophical" view in NG, e.g., "Zur Uberzeugung des Verstandes kann ... die Schonheit der Einkleidung ebensowenig beitragen, als das geschmackvolle Arrangement einer Mahlzeit zur Sattigung der Gaste, oder die auBere Eleganz eines Menschen zu Beurteilung seines innern Werts" (p. 671). (Beauty of presentation can ... contribute just as litde to convincing the understanding as the tasteful arrangement of a meal can to satisfying the guests' appetite, or a person's external elegance to assessing his inner worth.) The superiority of beauty is proclaimed in "Die Kiinsder" as well as in AE, e.g., "Aus den Mysterien der Wissenschaft fiihrt der Geschmack die Erkenntnis unter den offenen Himmel des Gemeinsinns heraus und verwandelt das Eigentum der Schulen in ein Gemeingut der ganzen menschlichen Gesellschaft" (p. 668). (Taste leads

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knowledge is itself implied to be, potentially at least, a kind of vision. For, despite his rejection of a possible vision of knowledge in the passage quoted, Plato still employs a visual analogue for philosophy in his term theoria, and the culmination of the philosophical quest in both the Symposium and the Republic is portrayed (in the latter by narrative parable in preference to abstract reasoning) as a kind of vision, that is, as an effortless and sensuously replete intuition of goodness and beauty by which the laborious and ascetic process of dialectic is rewarded.11 Not only does beauty aspire towards the incorporeal purity of knowledge, it appears that knowledge also aspires towards the sensuous immediacy of beauty. The ambiguous term contemplation (the Greek theoria, the German "Betrachtung") encompasses this paradox of a seeing and a thinking that strive to unite with each other.12 Having allowed beauty to advance so far, Plato is hard put to prevent it from conquering the philosophical sanctuary itself, and this explains

knowledge out from the mysteries of science into the broad daylight of common sense, and transforms the property of the schools into the common possession of human society as a whole.) Such antinomies are founded in the Platonic metaphysics that feeds Schiller's thought, 11. Symposium 211 e—212a: "if, I say, it were given to man to see the heavenly beauty face to face, would you call his, she asked me, an unenviable life, whose eyes had been opened to the vision, and who had gazed upon it in true contemplation until it had become his own forever? And remember, she said, that it is only when he discerns beauty itself through what makes it visible that a man will be quickened with the true, not the seeming, virtue—for it is virtue's self that quickens him, not virtue's semblance." In books 6 and 7 of the Republic, the entire Parable of the Cave, with its analogy of the Sun to the idea of the Good, reinforces the suggestion that the highest form of knowledge is an intuition, e.g., 5i8c: "But our present argument indicates, said I, that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body. Even so this organ of knowledge must be turned around from the world of becoming together with the entire soul ... until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence and the brightest region of being. And this, we say, is the good, do we not?" (5i8c). On Plato's visual conception of nous, see Snell, DieEntdeckung des Geistes, p. 28. 12. Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is conceived as an investigation of the confusions that have accrued to European philosophy as a result of this original ocular metaphor. See pp. 38-39: "The notion of'contemplation,' of knowledge of universal concepts or truths as [theoria], makes the Eye of the Mind the inescapable model for the better sort ol knowledge."

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the paradoxical vigour of his resistance to the art that might create such beauty.13 The context of the quotation from the Phaedrus, it should be noted, is a discussion of the philosophical lover, who in this dialogue represents the highest type of divine madness; earlier (244-45) the artist has been dismissed as possessed by a lower type (together with the priest and the inheritor of an ancestral curse). What is striking here is that, as Manfred Fuhrmann points out, Plato lays claim on behalf of the philosopher to precisely that divine possession that elsewhere (in the Apology and the Ion) he had seen as the prerogative of the poet.14 There is clearly a vicious territorial war going on; not content to dispute the artist's claim to knowledge, Plato also carries the war into the enemy's own territory by laying claim to divine inspiration for philosophy. Not only is the artist not a philosopher, it seems, the philosopher is actually the true artist. But the problem arises in the first place only because beauty, the object of the artist, has been placed in such dangerous proximity to the philosopher's truth. The consequences of this warfare for Schiller's thought will occupy us later. 13. See Cassirer, "Eidos und Eidolon" (p. 21): "The higher [Plato] ... places the idea of beauty, the lower mimetic art now sinks in the scales of his estimation." ("Je hoher [Platon] ... die Idee der Schonheit riickt, um so tiefer sinkt fur ihn jetzt die Schale der nachbildenden Kunst herab.") Earlier in the article (p. 4), he has explained that, since for Platonism philosophy is uncomfortably close to art, so art has to struggle to free itself of philosophy: "When art seeks a foundation for itself in Platonism, it must also simultaneously try to free itself from its spell. ... Again and again the history of aesthetic idealism confronts this antinomy: the question how the basic concept of form, as it had been grasped and defined by Plato, is to be made fertile for aesthetics without allowing the particular nature and purpose of artistic creation to dissolve in a mere universal or an all-encompassing abstraction." ("Indem die Kunst sich im Platonismus zu begrunden sucht, mufi sie immer zugleich versuchen, sich aus seinem Bannkreis zu befreien.... Immer wieder steht die Geschichte des asthetischen Idealismus vor dieser Antinomic—vor der Frage, wie der Grundgedanke der Form, wie er von Platon erschaut und bestimmt worden war, fur die Asthetik fruchtbar gemacht werden konne, ohne die besondere Art und Richtung der kiinstlerischen Gestaltung in einem bloBen Universale, in einer allumfassenden Abstraktion aufgehen zu lassen.") 14. Fuhrmann, Die Dichtungstheorie der Antike, p. 80: "Plato claims ... enthusiasm, which had hitherto counted as a hallmark of the other side, that is, of traditional poetry, for philosophy, and he even includes poetry ... in this comprehensive conception; in the Phaedrus Plato appears in the role less of the critic of poetry than of its true representative." (" [Platon] beansprucht ... den Enthusiasmus, der zuvor als Merkmal der Gegenseite, der traditionellen Dichtung gegolten hatte, fur die Philosophic, und er bezieht selbst die Dichtung ... in diese umfassende Konzeption ein; im Phaidros tritt Platon nicht mehr so sehr als Kritiker der Dichtung auf wie als deren wahrer Reprasentant.")

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In the Kallias-Briefe, Schiller proposes a definition of beauty as "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" (freedom in the appearance). While the term and the specific features of the theory are his own, the theory is unquestionably a derivative of the Platonic tradition. True, we can observe the impact of Kant in the replacement of goodness by freedom as the paramount concept of moral theory, but this is the only non-Platonic aspect. Otherwise the pattern is the same: freedom is an idea that derives from the intelligible realm, and beauty is the way in which it can be made manifest to the senses.15 "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" thus reflects the methectic impulse behind Plato's doctrine of love, and it is significant that, in these letters, Schiller makes no allusion to the sublime, the aesthetic standard-bearer of chorismos. The difficulties in the theory arise from Schiller's equal commitment to chorismos, which entails that freedom, since it belongs to the separate intelligible world, cannot be made manifest to the senses. To escape from this problem, Schiller has recourse to the notion of illusion, a manoeuvre that anticipates the theory of "Schein" (semblance).16 The details of Schiller's theory, which take up much space in the Briefe, thus have to do with the way in which a material object can appear to be free while being, ex hypothesi, unfree, and they need not concern us yet. It is worth pointing out, however, that while Schiller soon gave up the attempt to validate this theory in its narrower formulation, he adhered consistently to the broader theory that beauty is a sensible manifestation of the intelligible. Even within the Kallias-Briefe, for example, he glosses the phrase "[der] zusammengesetzt[e] Begriff der Freiheit und

15. The hybrid mixture of "transcendental" (i.e., Kantian) and metaphysical arguments in this text is well brought out by Werner Strube, "Schillers Kallias-Briefe."John Ellis's interpretation of the text (Schiller's Kalliasbriefe), which is informed by the English analytical tradition and is correspondingly hostile to metaphysics, is of limited value for our purposes. 16. "Weil aber diese Freiheit dem Objekt bloB dem Objekt von der Vernunft geliehen wird, da nichtsfrei sein kann ah das Ubersinnlicheund Freiheit selbst nie als sokhe in die Sinnefallen kann—kurz—da es hier bloB darauf ankommt, daB ein Gegenstand frei erscheine, nicht wirklich ist: so ist diese Analogic eines Gegenstandes mit der Form der praktischen Vernunft nicht Freiheit in der Tat, sondern bloB Freiheit in der Erscheinung, Autonomie in der Erscheinung" (p. 400). (But this freedom is merely lent to the object by reason, since nothing can be free but the intelligible and freedom itself can never be perceived by the senses, or, in short, since it is merely a question of the object appearing free, not really being free. For this reason this analogy of an object with the form of practical reason is not freedom in fact but merely freedom in appearance, autonomy in appearance.) This aspect is brought out by Sigbert Latzel, "Die asthetische Vernunft," especially p. 40.

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der Erscheinung" (the composite concept of freedom and appearance) as "[die] mit der Vernunft harmonierend[e] Sinnlichkeit" (sensibility in harmony with reason) and it is this latter, more recognizably Platonic, formulation that remains important in the completed treatises, for example, in a passage already quoted: "ein Nachbild des Unendlichen, die Form, reflektiert sich auf dem verganglichen Grund."17 Beauty in the material world therefore leads us towards a truth that we can grasp only as disembodied spirits, a doctrine already advanced in "Die Kunstler" (63-64): "Was wir als Schonheit hier empfunden, / Wird einst als Wahrheituns entgegengehn."18 But the logic of the Platonic system does not permit such a stable resolution to the problem. The necessity for ambiguity in the Kallias-Briefe and the need to resort to illusion are symptomatic of this. By this point we should have become aware that beauty is not entirely capable of overcoming the ontological chorismos, for the logic of idealist metaphysics imposes a new chorismos on the very concept postulated to bridge the gulf. Here is where we see the dialectic of love at work, and this new separation can be observed in Plato's own writings. As we saw in the quotation from the Phaedrus, Plato distinguishes between the idea of beauty and beauty in the material world, and in the myth of the charioteer in the same dialogue we read that "he whose vision of the mystery is long past, or whose purity has been sullied, cannot pass swiftly hence to see beauty's self yonder, when he beholds that which is called beautiful here" (2506). The same division appears in Plotinus, where the continuation of the passage quoted above reads: "But, is there any such likeness between the loveliness of this world and the splendours in the Supreme? Such a likeness in the particulars would make the two orders alike: but what is there in common between beauty here and beauty There? We hold that all loveliness of this world comes by communion in Ideal-Form" (1.6.2). Since "beauty here" and "beauty There" are not of metaphysically equal rank, sensible beauty is validated by a non-sensible criterion, leading to the paradox (alluded to also by Keats in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn") that "harmonies unheard in sound create the harmonies we hear and wake the Soul to the consciousness of beauty." The soul, having learnt to apprehend beauties of sense, must therefore pass beyond them: "But 17. "There is reflected against the background of transience an image of the infinite, namely form." 18. "What we have felt here as beauty will hereafter come to meet us as truth."

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there are earlier and loftier beauties than these. In the sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the Soul, taking no help from the organs, sees and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense to its own low place" (1.6.4). The Platonic imageiy of height is reasserted here, causing the methexis to appear only as a rung on the ladder towards the intelligible; once we have ascended the ladder, we are established in a choristic world of pure mind where we have no further need for materiality. Beauty may thus be the bulwark by which Platonism fends off an irremediable dualism, but this role causes beauty to incur a dualistic structure of its own; that is, it comes to comprise a synthesis of sensible and non-sensible beauty. Where the former presents to our physical sense an intuition of a world of pure thought, the latter seems to imply a thought that can be apprehended with the immediacy and vividness of sense perception. Thought and sense perception are thus made each to aspire to the condition of the other. Moreover, this synthesis of "beauty here" and "beauty There" is soon revealed as inherently antagonistic; the enjoyment of sensible beauty, as valuable as it is, also threatens to delude us that what we are enjoying is a sensible quality, making it not less but more likely that we will allow ourselves to be entrapped in the filth of matter. By exercising its (apparently benign) unifying role, methexis also poses a danger to the idealist system, for a move towards reconciliation threatens the integrity of the intelligible and has to be countered with an immediate reassertion of chorismos. Once acknowledged as a means of ascent, physical beauty is spurned; as Plato writes of the corrupted man in the Phaedrus, "he looks upon it with no reverence, and surrendering to pleasure he essays to go after the fashion of a four-footed beast, and to beget offspring of the flesh, or consorting with wantonness he has no fear nor shame in running after unnatural pleasure" (25 la). The implications of this thought are worked out by Plotinus: He that has the strength, let him arise and withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made his joy. When he perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows, and hasten away towards That they tell of. For if anyone follow what is like a beautiful shape playing over water—is there not a myth telling in symbol of such a dupe, how he sank into the depths of the current and was swept away to nothingness? So too, one that is held by material beauty and will not break free shall be precipitated,

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not in body but in Soul, down to the dark depths loathed of the IntellectiveBeing, where, blind even in the Lower-World, he shall have commerce only with shadows, there as here. (1.6.8) Interpreted rightly, beauty is an incomparable blessing; interpreted wrongly, it is a chain that hinders the soul in its flight to the intelligible world.19 A similar hermeneutic problem is posed by beauty in Schiller's writings. Though in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung he avoids the terms beauty, the opening account of the naive in nature displays an identical logical structure. While Schiller had previously defined beauty as "Freiheit in der Erscheinung," this formula is now, though not explicitly repeated, implicitly transferred to the concept of nature. The question of interpretation now assumes central importance. Viewed rightly, nature presents us with a symbol of moral self-determination: "Natur in dieser Betrachtungsart ist uns nichts anders als das freiwillige Dasein, das Bestehen der Dinge durch sich selbst, die Existenz nach eignen und unabanderlichen Gesetzen" (694).20 The possibility of a wrong way of viewing nature is hinted at in the rhetorical question: "Was hatte auch eine unscheinbare Blume, eine Quelle, ein bemooster Stein, das Gezwitscher der Vogel, das Summen der Bienen usw. fur sich selbst so Gefalliges fur uns?" (694-95).21 Behind this question lurks the possibility of a non-ideal contemplation of nature, a danger that is raised again in a later passage usually seen as an attack on Rousseau: "Frage dich also 19. The paradoxical character of the theory of beauty passed down by Platonism has been summed up with characteristic elegance by Panofsky in Idea (pp. 31-32): "Thus the Platonic attack accuses the arts of continually arresting man's inner vision within the realm of sensory images, that is, of actually obstructing his contemplation of the world of ideas; and the Plotinian defence condemns the arts to the tragic fate of eternally driving man's inner eye beyond these sensory images, that is, of opening to him the prospect of the world of ideas but at the same time veiling the view." Panofsky's book treats its subject with masterly economy and precision and is still unrivalled after sixty years. 20. "For this way of seeing, nature for us is nothing but existence according to free will, the being of things through their own agency, existence according to immutable laws originating in oneself." The passage develops an idea presented in the KB as follows (p. 400): "Es gibt also eine solche Ansicht der Natur oder der Erscheinungen, wo wir von ihnen nichts weiter als Freiheit verlangen, wo wir bloB darauf sehen, ob sie das, was sie sind, durch sich selbst sind." (There is thus a way of seeing nature or phenomena where we demand from them nothing but freedom, where we merely look to see if they are what they are through their own agency.) 21. "What could an ordinary flower, a mossy stone, the twitter of birds, the buzzing of bees, and so forth, have in themselves that was so pleasing to us?"

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wohl, empfindsamer Freund der Natur, ob deine Tragheit nach ihrer Ruhe, ob deine beleidigte Sittlichkeit nach ihrer Ubereinstimmung schmachtet" (708).22 The beauty that, understood as an ideal form ("Ubereinstimmung"), can guide us, to our moral benefit, towards the intelligible world, can also make us slothful and trap us in that material world of which it appears to be the quintessence.^ But Schiller is not always so indirect in his condemnation of an aesthetic experience based on "mere" nature. His most eloquent attack on a merely sensible beauty can be found in the treatise Uber das Pathetische, in the following remarkable tirade on the effects of contemporary music on its audience: "Ein bis ins Tierische gehender Ausdruck der Sinnlichkeit erscheint dann gewohnlich auf alien Gesichtern, die trunkenen Augen schwimmen, der offene Mund ist ganz Begierde, ein wollustiges Zittern ergreift den ganzen Korper, der Atem ist schnell und schwach, kurz alle Symptome der Berauschung stellen sich ein: zum deutlichen Beweise, daB die Sinne schwelgen, der Geist aber oder das Prinzip der Freiheit im Menschen der Gewalt des sinnlichen Eindrucks zum Raube wird" (5i6). 24 The revulsion with the merely sensible expressed here is in no way weaker than Plato's; like "Begierde" and "GenuB" in "Das Ideal und das Leben," the notion of "Sinnlichkeit" invariably arouses Schiller's disgust. Even the familiar Platonic 22. "Ask yourself, then, sentimental friend of nature, whether it is your slothfulness that thirsts for her rest or your outraged morality that thirsts for her harmony." 23. The Asthetische Vorlesungen (p. 1037) exemplify the Platonic distrust of beauty: "Die ausschliefiende Kultur des Schonheitsgefuhls verfuhrt uns leicht zur Oberflachlichkeit, bringt uns Erschlaffung, Weichlichkeit und Abneigung gegen Griindlichkeit." (Exclusive cultivation of the feeling of beauty easily seduces us to superficiality, bringing us enervation, softness and aversion to thoroughness), where the terms "Erschlaffung" and "Weichlichkeit" make us think of the allegory of Calypso in UDE. Schiller has not yet discovered the sublime as an antidote to beauty's dangerous aspects, and instead he proposes "Vereinigung der Wahrheit mit der Schonheit" (unification of truth with beauty), i.e., the union of the two Venuses, as the ultimate solution. The fact that beauty already represents a fusion of the sensible and the intelligible means that the renewed fusion with truth will not solve the problem, for the new construct will again be vulnerable to the charge of excessive "sensuality." The union of the beautiful and the sublime can thus be seen as successor to the earlier formulation, and the same doubts remain as to whether it can redeem beauty from its materiality. 24. "An expression of sensuality verging on the bestial appears then normally on all faces, the drunken eyes are floating, the open mouth is full of desire, a lustful tremor seizes the whole body, the breath comes fast and weakly; in short, all symptoms of intoxication occur, proving clearly that the senses are running rampant while the spirit, the principle of freedom in man, is falling prey to the power of sensory impression."

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associations of the sensible with bestiality, intoxication, and sexual lust can all be heard. Sexual lust, of course, reminds us of the Calypso allegory, confirming that the transformation of Venus Cypria into Calypso accords with the dialectical movement, implicit in the Platonic theory of beauty, from approbation towards rejection. It is worth adding that the present quotation is preceded by a Kantian reference, for the modern music is described as belonging to the realm not of the beautiful but of the pleasant ("zurh Gebiet des Angenehmen"). As we shall see in chapter 4, Kant's differentiation of the beautiful from the pleasant bears a close similarity to the Platonic distinction between intelligible and sensible beauty. This lends support to the thesis that a Platonic interpretation of Schiller's thought does not exclude the possibility of a strong Kantian influence on him. In its elevation of form over matter, of the idea symbolized over the symbolizing object (which, once the ideal referent has been apprehended, can be dismissed as inferior), the argument summarized here represents Schiller's choristic strategy. To prevent us from losing sight of his complementary impulse towards reconciliation, the quoted passages should therefore be supplemented by a methectic counterpart, and this can be found in the concluding paragraph of the 15th Asthetischer Brief. Schiller is here evoking the impression created on the spectator by the Juno Ludovisi, and, instead of setting the material against the ideal effect, he portrays the two as coexisting: "Indem der weibliche Gott unsre Anbetung heischt, entzundet das gottgleiche Weib unsre Liebe; aber indem wir uns der himmlischen Holdseligkeit aufgelost hingeben, schreckt die himmlische Selbstgeniigsamkeit uns zuriick" (6i8). 25 The ideally beautiful object here simultaneously pulls us towards the material world and propels us beyond it, and the total effect is thus an oxymoronic combination of attraction and repulsion. The Platonic background helps us to understand the puzzling character of arguments of this kind. Schiller's dual aesthetic arises, as I have suggested, out of his attempt in "Die Kiinstler" to fuse the two Venuses into a Platonic identity of metaphysical truth and sensible beauty, and the statue of Juno should be seen as just such a fusion. Instead of performing its mediating role, beauty reproduces the original ontological rift, giving rise, in the passage cited, to the contradictory effect 25. "While the womanly god demands our worship, the god-like woman arouses our love; but even as, beside ourselves, we surrender to her heavenly grace, her heavenly selfsufficiency causes us to shy away."

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described. The contradiction manifests itself in other ways too: while the music he denounced in Uber das Pathetische is dismissed as "melting" (schmelzend), in the Asthetische Briefe he attempts to rehabilitate "melting beauty" as a component of ideal beauty. Such aporias are the result neither of sloppiness, nor of indecision; nor are they the result of a putative maturing process on Schiller's part. Rather, they are an inescapable consequence of his Platonic heritage. In the writings of Plato and Plotinus, beauty fragments into sensible and intelligible varieties (or a polarity of beautiful things and "beauty itself"). Though Schiller does not use the concept of intelligible beauty as such, he is not immune to the metaphysical logic that necessitates it.26 In the fifteenth Asthetischer Brief, for example, we find him justifying artistic beauty by reference to an intelligible idea, which, in a significant hesitation, the artist is said to obtain "von einer edleren Zeit, jajenseits aller Zeit" (from a nobler time, yes, from beyond all time): "Hier aus dem reinen Ather seiner damonischen Natur rinnt die Quelle der Schonheit herab" (593),27 he writes, and it is clearly "beauty itself and not particular beauties that is intended. As for the source, in the first 26. An exception can be found in UDE (p. 799), where intelligible beauty, or the sensible display of it, is treated with hostility: "wenn es [der verfeinerten Sinnlichkeit] gelungen ist, sich in der verfuhrerischen Hulle des geistigen Schonen in den innersten Sitz der moralischen Gesetzgebung einzudrangen und dort die Heiligkeit der Maximen an ihrer Quelle zu vergiften, so ist oft eine einzige erhabene Ruhrung genug, dieses Gewebe des Betrugs zu zerreiBen." (When [refined sensuality] has succeeded, in the seductive guise of intellectual beauty, in penetrating the innermost seat of moral legislation and in poisoning the sanctity of moral maxims at their source there, a single sublime emotion can suffice to tear this web of deception to shreds.) From the perspective of an uncompromising chorismos, a sensible intimation of intelligible beauty is suspect precisely because it is sensible; we see here that for Schiller the sublime functions as the aesthetic voice of such a chorismos, and provides an aesthetic experience without flattering the senses. A possible source for this suspicious attitude may be a passage from Wieland's Geschichte des Agathon (first version), bk. 5, chap, i, in which Danae is plotting to confuse the hero, attacking his mind through the senses by means of a Platonic deception: "Danae knew very well that intelligible beauty arouses no passion, and that if virtue itself in visible form were (as Plato says) to instil ineffable love, it would owe this effect more to the dazzling whiteness and the charming line of a fair bosom than to the innocence that shines forth from it." ("Danae wuBte sehr wohl, daB die intelligible Schonheit keine Leidenschaft erweckt, und daB die Tugend selbst, wenn sie (wie Plato sagt) in sichtbarer Gestalt unaussprechliche Liebe einfloBen wurde, diese Wurkung mehr der blendenden WeiBe und dem reizenden Contour eines schonen Busens, als der Unschuld, die aus demselben hervorschimmerte, zuzuschreiben haben wurde.") Quoted from Wieland, Werkevol. 3, p. 139. 27. "Here, from the pure aether of his daemonic nature, the living spring of beauty flows down."

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instance the "nobler" age is Greek antiquity, and so Schiller can subscribe to a concrete program of Winckelmannian classicism, but then then nobler age is redefined as timelessness, in order to confer the full dignity of the intelligible on the classical style, which would be impossible if that style were confined to a particular time and place. Finally, the reference to the artist's "daemonic nature" seems to be a nod in the direction of Kant, suggesting that this "jenseits aller Zeit" is not an old-style metaphysical entity but rather a critically redefined postulate of practical reason. On the other hand, the term "daemonic" points unequivocally to ancient sources, for Plato's Diotima identifies love as a "great daemon" who performs the characteristic mediating function: "since they are between the two estates they weld both sides together and merge them into one great whole."28 The gesture towards Kant's reinterpretation thus makes remarkably little difference to what remains a basically Platonic theory. The discovery of the inescapable antagonism of the sensible and intelligible components of beauty results, in Schiller's mature aesthetic treatises, in the reformulation of intelligible beauty as the sublime, an alternative and even antithetical concept to beauty, but one that simultaneously promises to keep the attack on beauty within the sphere of aesthetic discourse. Attempts to impose a methectic solution on the new duality as an inclusive "ideal beauty" (and hence to reaffirm the original program of mediation) thus alternate with reemergences of the original chorismos, a pattern that repeats itself time after time. As we have seen, in the Kallias-Briefe Schiller has not yet started to set beauty and sublimity against each other; instead, the tensions are kept within the concept of beauty itself. As noted, he first resorts to illusion to deal with the problem of the embodiment of the intelligible: the beautiful object appears to be free but is not. In the letter of 23 February 1793, however, a shift of paradigm from artifacts to natural forms leads to the emergence of the quite different opinion that organisms possess a genuine, that is, non-illusory, self-determination (referred to now as "heautonomy") that does not require a special kind of contemplation ("Betrachtungsart") to present itself to our consciousness: "Du wirst auch mit mir dariiber einig sein, daB diese Natur und diese Heautonomie 28. Symposium 2O2e. Referring to this passage in The Greeks and the Irrational, Dodds writes, "Eros as a [daemon] has the general function of linking the human with the divine" (p. 231). Schiller seems to interpret the term daemon as identical with the intelligible, while the linking function devolves more on the term "Mensch."

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objektive Beschaffenheiten der Gegenstande sind, denen ich sie zuschreibe, denn sie bleiben ihnen, auch wenn das vorstellende Subjekt ganz hinweggedacht wird" (4i6).29 If Schiller has previously demanded illusion, he seems here to have succumbed to his own artifice, for a freedom in the phenomenal world, even in organisms, contradicts the initial axiom. We become aware at this point of the rationale for the peculiar expression "Freiheit in der Erscheinung," which can be construed to mean both an (illusory) appearance of freedom and a (genuine) freedom in the phenomenal world. For as long as Schiller adheres to his choristic premise that ideas cannot appear, the first interpretation is the only thinkable one; when the organic alternative appears, however, the second interpretation, resting on methexis, becomes thinkable also. The division of beauty, which led in the fifteenth Asthetischer Brief to an oxymoronic effect, can thus enter into the very semantics of the terminology with which it is discussed. Here, then, is a second example of functional ambiguity to set alongside the verb "aufheben" in the eighteenth Asthetischer Brief (see p. 65 n. 45, above). The consequences of this shift of meaning are made more explicit in the transcript of the Asthetische Vorlesungen, a text that provides a useful paraphrase for some aspects of the Kallias-Briefe and anticipates central arguments of the treatises. Here Schiller posits two varieties of beauty, one organic and the other moral, a formulation recalling the antithesis of sensible and intelligible beauty, though it raises the further difficulty of how organisms are to be dealt with in a fundamentally idealist philosophical system. (We shall see below that the spontaneity of nature represents a problem that Schiller was never able to accommodate satisfactorily in his system.) The dichotomy of organic and moral beauty modifies the Platonic division of beauty, in that its purpose is not, or at least not overtly, to set the moral above the organic variety; the Platonic background, however, makes us question whether Schiller's evenhanded strategy can succeed, that is, whether the lower form of beauty can indeed be vindicated vis a vis the higher. Furthermore, the dichotomy of organic and moral beauty is displaced when Schiller starts using the dichotomy of the beautiful and the sublime, but it returns in modified form in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. In both cases, the same question remains pertinent: is it 29. "You will agree with me also that this nature and this heautonomy are objective properties of the objects to which I ascribe them, for they remain their properties when the idea of the perceiving subject ceases to be entertained."

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possible, while using concepts of Platonic provenance, to escape from the Platonic prejudice against the material (and organic) world, or must the argument inevitably end with the triumph of the "intelligible" concepts, that is, the sublime and the sentimental, at the expense of their lower material partners? METAPHYSICAL

ANTHROPOLOGY

The ambivalence of Platonism about beauty is typical of the problems that arise at the borderline between the intelligible and material realms. The dilemma of chorismos and methexis, from Aristotle's point of view largely a matter of logic, is inherent in the metaphysical doctrine itself and hence reproduces itself in a variety of forms. Plotinus pointed out the metaphysical dimension of the problem, that is, that the theory of ideas could lead both to a negative and to a positive evaluation of the material world and the soul's existence in it: Everywhere, no doubt, [Plato] expresses contempt for all that is of sense, blames the commerce of soul with body as an enchainment, an entombment, and upholds as a great truth the saying of the Mysteries that the Soul is here a prisoner. In the Cavern of Plato ... I discern this universe, where the breaking of the fetters and the ascent from the depths are figures of the wayfaring towards the Intellectual Realm. ... In all these explanations he finds guilt in the arrival of the Soul at body. But treating, in the Timaeus, of our universe he exalts the Cosmos and entitles it a blessed god, and holds that the Soul was given by the goodness of the Creator to the end that the total of things might be possessed of intellect, for thus intellectual it was planned to be, and thus it cannot be except through soul. There is a reason, then, why the Soul of this All should be sent into it from God: in the same way the Soul of every single one of us is sent, that the universe may be complete; it was necessary that all beings of the Intellectual should be tallied by just so many forms of living things here in the realm of sense. (ENN 4.8.1)

The material world, which from the choristic point of view is dark, base, impure and infinitely remote from the realm of the forms, is from the methectic point of view the necessary outcome and beneficiary of the productive urge within the intelligible, and hence a place of indescribable beauty. In both cases the intelligible is related to the material as the One to the Many, but in the first case the relation is one of positive to

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negative, in the second of potentiality to actuality. Indeed, according to the second view, the perfection of the intelligible world would actually be diminished by the absence of a material one. That view is implicit in the passage just quoted, and also in the following: "The act reveals the power, a power hidden, and we might almost say obliterated or nonexistent, unless at some moment it became effective: in the world as it is, the richness of the outer stirs us all to the wonder of the inner whose greatness is displayed in acts so splendid" (ENN 4.8.5). What emerges from the struggle to reconcile chorismos and methexis is thus not just a theodicy of the created universe, but also a highly paradoxical aesthetic in which a beautiful and various physical world is asserted to be our visible token of a unified realm of pure thought.30 The habitat of the human soul is the borderline between the two realms, and our existence is thus subject to the logical and metaphysical strains we have analysed.31 These strains lead to the bifurcation in the definition of man that we observed in Pico, in chapter 2. To the extent that the intelligible is the source of all value, it is appropriate for us to treat our soul as a battlefield on which our rational part must be helped to victory. And yet, since the material realm has been produced, of necessity, by the divine mind, it is wrong for us to behave as if it were nonexistent or evil in itself, and, to that extent, our soul must become a crucible in which nature and reason are fused. The metaphysical problem thus gives rise to competing anthropologies, one choristic and one methectic, each with its own ethical implications. 30. For this metaphysical dilemma and its consequences, see Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, lecture 2 and passim. 31. On the intermediate position of the human soul, see also Ficino, Theologia Platonica, vol. i, p. 139, who compares it as a "third essence" to air, which mediates between fire and water: " In the same way, the third essence has at once to cleave to the divine beings and to fill the mortal ones. While it adheres to the divine beings, it knows them, because it is joined to them spiritually and spiritual union engenders knowledge. While it fills bodies, it moves them from within and makes them alive. It is therefore the mirror of the divine beings, the life of mortal beings, and the connection between them." In his edition of Proclus, The Elements of Theology, E. R. Dodds alludes to Plato (Timaeus 353) as "the main source of the conception of the soul as the frontier between the two worlds, which gained wide currency from the time of Poseidonius onwards and dominates the Neoplatonic psychology" (p. 297). The Platonic passage reads: "From the being which is indivisible and unchangeable, and from that kind of being which is distributed among bodies, he compounded a third and intermediate kind of being." Proclus (prop. 190) adheres to the same conception: "Every soul is intermediate between the indivisible principles and those which are divided in association with bodies."

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Schiller's philosophical writings are pervaded by this version of the dilemma. It emerges nowhere with such clarity as in a footnote to the nineteenth Asthetischer Brief, where, somewhat naively, he admits to having two concepts of freedom, one pertaining to man "als Intelligenz betrachtet" (considered as intelligence) and the other to man as of "gemischte Natur" (mixed nature) (631, n. i). These two anthropological concepts coincide respectively with the concepts of moral sublimity and moral beauty expounded in Uber Anmut und Wurde, and that treatise's concluding call to unite these two ethical ideals reflects Schiller's strategy of demanding simultaneous unity and separation. This strategy derives, as we have seen, from Schiller's Platonic inheritance and from his desire to retain it in both its interpretations. FORM How can a material object point beyond itself towards the world of ideas? The answer is, by its form. The duality of form and matter goes back to the Timaeus (5oaf£). Though Plato does not exploit the possibilities of this doctrine in other works, Aristotle took it up and turned it against his master, positing a more eirenic and teleological version of the relationship than Plato had envisaged. Plotinus then inherited the duality in the generalized form it had received from Aristotle, but while Aristotle had conceived of form and matter as coexisting in every material thing, Plotinus turned them instead into deadly metaphysical foes. The dichotomy, reinterpreted by Aristotle as a remedy for the Platonic chorismos, is redesigned by Plotinus as, in fact, a vehicle for chorismos. Without form, matter is undifferentiated substrate; without matter, form is incorporeal idea: "in things of sense the Idea (Form) is but an image of the authentic, an image thrown upon Matter, and every Idea thus derivative and exiled traces back to that original and is no more than an image of it" (ENN 5.9.5). Once integrated into matter, however, all form allows the intelligible to become manifest to the senses, and the difference between a beautiful and an ugly thing resides in the degree to which the form has mastered or subdued the matter: All shapelessness whose kind admits of pattern and form, as long as it remains outside of Reason and Idea, is ugly by that very isolation from the Divine Reason-Principle. And this is the Absolute Ugly: an ugly thing is something that has not been entirely mastered by pattern, that is by Reason, the Matter not yielding at all points and in all respects to Ideal-Form.

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But where the Ideal-Form has entered, it has grouped and co-ordinated what from a diversity of parts was to become a unity: it has rallied confusion into cooperation: it has made the sum one harmonious coherence: for the Idea is a unity and what it moulds must come to unity as far as multiplicity may. (ENN 1.6.2)

By form, Plotinus does not mean merely visual shape. The harmony of music, for example, is said to derive from "the Principle whose labour is to dominate Matter and bring pattern into being" (1.6.3), and even colour is no different: "The beauty of colour is also the outcome of a unification: it derives from shape, from the conquest of the darkness inherent in Matter by the pouring-in of light, the unembodied, which is a Rational-Principle and an Ideal-Form" (ENN 1.6.3). Form, related in this last quotation to Plotinus' metaphysics of light, thus comprises all aspects of a thing other than its sheer materiality, and the object itself is deemed to have resulted from the victorious struggle of form over that materiality, which is conceived of as an evil. But if, as the last passage suggests, form is what allows the object to be perceived in the first place, all perception (and here is another anticipation of Kant) must have an aesthetic component. (The sense of touch, as the sense with most affinity to the body, is to be excluded here, as is implied by Plotinus' pervasive association of the material world with filth.) 32 Form is of course a concept of central importance in Schiller's mature aesthetics, and, like Plotinus, he conceives of it as being in permanent struggle with the world of matter.33 (Schiller's liking for the 32. As Panofsky points out in Idea (p. 27), the never-ending struggle of form against matter is an example of a universal theme in Plotinian metaphysics that reappears in identical form in the specific sphere of the artist: "Plotinus, then, considered the artist's mind to share the nature and, if we may say so, the fate of the creative [Nous]. ... Just as Plotinus considers the beauty of nature to be a radiance of the idea shining through matter formed after its own image but never completely formable, so does he consider the beauty of a work of art to depend upon the 'injection' of an ideal form into matter, overcoming the latter's inertia and inspiriting, spiritualizing, enlivening it—or at least attempting to do so. Thus art is fighting the same battle as [Nous], the battle for victory of form over the formless. " The proximity of these thoughts to Schiller's in "Das Ideal und das Leben," especially lines 71-90, needs no underscoring. 33. It is necessary to insist on the metaphysical character of Schiller's concept of form. One must firmly resist all attempts to psychologize it into a "representation of subjectivity," a view that portrays Schiller's theory as one of personal expression. See Wolfgang Busing's otherwise excellent article "Asthetische Form als Darstellung der Subjektivitat."

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metaphor of "the victory of form" was noted in chapter 2, above.) Form and matter being merely the particular manifestations of the intelligible and the material at their point of interface, we find them in a similarly antagonistic relation to each other, evoking the same kind of bellicose imagery, while the description of matter as seductive ("verfuhrerisch") of course reminds us of the temptress Calypso: "Darin also besteht das eigentliche Kunstgeheimnis des Meisters, daft er den Staff durch die Form vertilgt; und je imposanter, anmaBender, verfuhrerischer der Stoff an sich selbst ist, je eigenmachtiger derselbe mit seiner Wirkung sich vordrangt, oder je mehr der Betrachter geneigt ist, sich unmittelbar mit dem Stoff einzulassen, desto triumphierender ist die Kunst, welche jenen zuriickzwingt und uber diesen die Herrschaft behauptet." (639-40) ,34 Schiller thus associates the concept of form primarily with the choristic tendency of his thought (though we should not forget the attempt to absorb it into a methectic synthesis in the construct "lebende Gestalt" in the fifteenth Asthetischer Briefe (614), where Schiller forces the individual concepts "Leben" and "Gestalt" into the mean-between-extremes structure).35 34. "Therein, then, lies the real secret of the master of an art: that he annihilates his material through the form; and the more imposing, the more overbearing, the more seductive this material is in itself, the more presumptuously it presses itself upon us with its effects, or the more the beholder is inclined to get directly involved with it, then the more triumphant the art that forces it back and asserts its dominion over him." (Wilkinson and Willoughby translate "vertilgen" as "consume," justifying their decision in a note. The reason for my own preference, "annihilate," will be explained in chapter 9, below.) The violent tone of this frequently quoted passage is anticipated in the KB, e.g., p. 413: "Dagegen nehmen wir iiberall Schonheit wahr, wo die Masse von der Form ... vollig beherrschtwird." (We perceive beauty in all cases where mass is completely dominated by form.) For an application to artistic representation, see also p. 428: "Die Natur des Mediums oder des Stoffs muB also von der Natur des Nachgeahmten vollig besiegt erscheinen. Nun ist es aber bloB die Form des Nachgeahmten, was auf das Nachahmende iibertragen werden kann; also ist es die Form, welche in der Kunstdarstellung den Stoff besiegt haben muB." (The nature of the medium or the material must thus appear completely conquered by the nature of the imitated object. But it is merely the form of that imitated object that is transferred on to the imitating material, and therefore it is the form that must have conquered the material in artistic representation.) 35. See also the fourth AB (p. 579): "gleich weit von Einformigkeit und Verwirrung ruht die siegende Form" (At equal distance from monotony and confusion rests victorious form), and also the 25th (p. 654): "[Die Schonheit] ist also zwar Form, weil wir sie betrachten, zugleich aber ist sie Leben, weil wir sie fuhlen." (True, [beauty] is form, because we contemplate it; but it is also life, because we feel it.")

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Schiller's theory of "Schein" (discussed more fully below) is a variant of the theory of form; form is understood in the Plotinian sense to include those aspects of an object that are accessible to sight and hearing. What is again excluded is the sense of touch, which is affected in a purely passive way by the object's materiality, and which, of course, has sexual overtones: "In dem Auge und dem Ohr ist die andringende Materie schon hinweggewalzt von den Sinnen, und das Objekt entfernt sich von uns, das wir in den tierischen Sinnen unmittelbar beriihren. ... Der Gegenstand des Takts ist eine Gewalt, die wir erleiden; der Gegenstand des Auges und des Ohrs ist eine Form, die wir erzeugen" (657).36 If we compare this with the earlier statement, "ein Gemiit, das sich am Scheme weidet, ergotzt sich schon nicht mehr an dem, was es empfangt, sonderri an dem, was es tut" (656),37 the identity of form and "Schein" becomes evident.38 It would be a mistake to view the theory of "Schein" as a technical theory devised to solve a localized problem of aesthetics: the occurrence of the term in "Das Ideal und das Leben" (line 14) indicates that it is embedded in a full-blown metaphysical system.39 As in Plotinus, an antithesis is set up between contemplation (by sight and hearing) and enjoyment (by the sense of touch). Contemplation presents the temporal and 36. "In the eye and the ear, matter, which presses itself on us, is rolled back from the senses, and the object, which in the case of our animal senses we directly touched, retreats from us. ... The object of touch is a force that we suffer; the object of eye and ear a form that we create." Compare the "EinschluB" to the AUB of 11 November 1793 (NA vol. 26, p. 311): " Wenn das Bedurfnis seinen Gegenstand unmittelbar ergreift, so riickt die Betrachtung den ihrigen in die Feme. Die Begierde zerstort ihren Gegenstand, die Betrachtung beruhrt. ihn nicht. Die Naturkrafte, welche vorher driickend und beangstigend auf den Sklaven cler Sinnlichkeit eindrangen, weichen bei der freien Kontemplation zuriick." (When need takes immediate hold of its object, contemplation sets its object at a distance. Desire destroys its object, contemplation does not touch it. Natural forces, that had previously pressed intimidatingly in on the slave of sensibility, fall back in free contemplation.") For the sense of touch, see also the 24th As (p. 646), where primitive man's relationship to his environment is said to alternate between appetite and revulsion: "In beiden Fallen ist sein Verhaltnis zur Sinnenwelt unmittelbare Beriihrung." (In both cases his relation to the sensible world is immediate touching.) 37. "A mind that revels in semblance is no longer taking delight in what it receives, but in what it does." 38. See also "Sobald der Mensch einmal so weit gekommen ist, den Schein von der Wirklichkeit, die Form von dem Korper zu unterscheiden, so ist er auch imstande, sie von ihm abzusondern" (pp. 657-58, my emphasis; translation chap, i, n.n, above). 39. The line "An dem Scheine mag der Blick sich weiden" (The eye may take delight in semblance) of course echoes the phrase from the AE, "ein Gemut, das sich am Scheine weidet" (a mind that takes delight in semblance).

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material world to us while keeping it at a safe distance, but enjoyment traps us in it by arousing our sensual desire and making us subject to mutability. The sense of touch is the paradigm for this latter type of perception, a perception that is unable to discern the intelligible component in the material, and I shall therefore refer to it as tactile perception. Implicit in the theory of form and the theory of "Schein" is thus the Platonic and Plotinian distinction between a right and a wrong way of looking at the beautiful object. The wrong way assumes that the materia component is the source of beauty arid leads to the truly Platonic paradox that the world of material objects is also a world of illusion—hence Plotinus attributes this erroneous type of perception to the "dupe" who drowned after confusing his reflection in a pool with reality. The corollary of this paradox is found in the theory of "Schein": if the material world is illusory, then, conversely, what is commonly taken for illusion may lead us to true reality. Ficino refers to Plotinus's dupe, but does not leave him nameless: "the soul, in pursuing the body, neglects itself, but finds no gratification in its use of the body. For it does not really desire the body itself; rather, seduced, like Narcissus, by corporeal beauty, which is an image of its own beauty, it desires its own beauty. And since it never notices the fact that, while it is desiring one thing, it is pursuing another, it never satisfies its desire" (De amore, 141). I shall refer to this error, which plays a prominent role in Schiller's thought, as "metaphysical narcissism."40 The right way to interpret the beautiful object is thus to recognize the form for the immaterial thing it is, and this recognition can serve as a provisional definition of contemplation ("Betrachtung" or "Reflexion"; see chapter 5, below). Schiller described the capacity for contemplation as "das erste liberale Verhaltnis des Menschen zu dem Weltall" (651),41 and it is the development of this capacity, a revolution in the history of 40. The term is used in this sense by Dodds in Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety: "The soul's motive [for uniting with body] is described as a love for Nature or Matter, or more subtly as narcissism—she falls in love with her own image reflected upon the material world—or again as ambition or tolma" (p. 24). 41. "Man's first liberal relationship to the universe." See also the "EinschluB" to the A UB of 11 November 1793 (NA vol. 26, p. 311): "Das Wohlgefallen der Betrachtung ist das erste liberale Verhaltnis des Menschen gegen die ihn umgebende Natur." (Pleasure of contemplation is man's first liberal relationship to surrounding nature.) For this metaphor, compare Kant (KDU, p. 358), where pleasure in natural beauty is said both to presuppose and to enhance "eine gewisse Liberalitat der Denkungsart, d.i. Unabhangigkeit des Wohlgefallens vom bloBen Sinnengenusse" (a certain liberality in our mental attitude, i.e., a satisfaction independent of mere sensible enjoyment, pp. 135-36).

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human consciousness, that he compares figuratively to the deposition of Saturn by Zeus. By contemplation, we separate matter from form, turn our relation with nature from a passive to an active one, and hence pave the way for our existence as free beings: "Da alles wirkliche Dasein von der Natur, als einer fremden Macht, aller Schein aber ursprunglich von dem Menschen, als vorstellendem Subjekte, sich herschreibt, so bedient er sich bloB seines absoluten Eigentumsrechts, wenn er den Schein von dem Wesen zurucknimmt und mit demselben nach eignen Gesetzen schaltet" (658).4a We can therefore identify as contemplation in this special sense the "Betrachtungsart" referred to in the Kallias-Briefe (400) and in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (especially 694-96) that enables us to see natural objects as representations of ideas. GOODNESS, TRUTH, BEAUTY

Since beauty in Platonism forms part of an all-embracing metaphysical system, functioning like a promontory of the intelligible jutting into the phenomenal world, one cannot say that the aesthetic is clearly distinguished from the ethical or the epistemological. In the passage quoted from the Phaedrus, beauty is related to both knowledge and morality. The ascent from the material to the intelligible is portrayed in the Symposium in terms of beauty and love, in the Republic in terms of ever higher kinds of knowledge. The ethical significance of the ascent is never in doubt, but we should recall that in the Republic the highest object of the philosopher's contemplation is the form of the good, while in the Phaedo Socrates describes the philosopher's conquest of the senses in terms of ritual purification. Although one cannot point to a single resounding affirmation in Plato's writings that the good, the true, and the beautiful are identical, their identity is nonetheless built into the system.43 We thus find it asserted in the Renaissance by Lorenzo de' Medici as a commonplace: "The highest beauty and the highest goodness and the highest truth being the same thing, according to Plato, in true beauty there are necessarily goodness and truth, connected in such a

42. "Since all real existence derives from nature as alien force, whereas all semblance derives from man as conscious subject, he is only making use of his absolute right of ownership when he claims back the semblance from the reality, and deals with it in accordance with laws of his own." 43. But see Philebus 64e-65a.

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way that the one is converted into the other."44 Similarly in its Plotinian version, the duality of form and matter is universal. We purify ourselves morally as we ascend from matter through ever more abstract forms, and what awaits us at the top is knowledge and intelligible beauty. In later chapters I consider the relevance of this metaphysics to Schiller's aesthetics; suffice it to say here that in Uber Anmut und Wurde Schiller is mainly preoccupied with the Platonic identity of beauty and goodness, and in the Asthetische Briefe more with the identity of beauty and truth. Both relationships are located at the borderline between the intelligible and the sensible, and both are thus complicated by the dilemma of chorismos and methexis, causing beauty to split into an antithesis of beauty and the sublime. To the extent that Schiller's thought continues to move within the Platonic framework, within which goodness, truth, and beauty are one, we must question whether he succeeded in demonstrating the autonomy of the aesthetic, or even whether he wished to demonstrate it at all. EXCEPTIONS Three characteristic elements of Schiller's thought—the use of triadic arguments, the doctrine of harmony, and the tendency to attribute an immanent teleology to nature itself—cannot readily be accommodated in the analysis presented thus far. Each element represents an effort to treat the natural and human realm in a way that mitigates the supremacy of the intelligible, and so at first sight it might appear possible to treat them as reflecting the methectic tendency of his thought. It is possible to do so, but only up to a point. What requires special attention is that, in their defence of nature, they break the Platonic framework and 44. From his Comento sopra alcune de' suoi sonetti, quoted and translated by Nelson, Renaissance Theory of Love, p. 50. Compare the statement by the unknown author of the socalled "Altestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus" (Oldest Programme for a System of German Idealism): "Finally the idea that unifies all others, the idea of beauty, the word taken in a higher Platonic sense. I am now convinced that the highest act of reason is an aesthetic act, in that it embraces all ideas, and that the kinship of truth and goodness resides only in beauty: the philosopher must possess just as much aesthetic strength as the poet." ("Zuletzt die Idee, die alle vereinigt, die Idee der Schonheit, das Wort in hoherem platonischen Sinne genommen. Ich bin nun iiberzeugt, daB der hochste Akt der Vernunft, der, indem sie alle Ideen umfaBt, ein asthetischer Akt ist, und daB Wahrheit und Giite, nur in der Schonheit verschwistert sind—der Philosoph muB ebensoviel asthetische Kraft besitzen, als der Dichter.") Quoted from Beierwaltes, F. W.J. Schelling, p. 97.

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make claims that cannot be reconciled with the premises more commonly treated by Schiller as inviolable. The use of triadic arguments (touched on in chapter 2) is prefigured in Platonic authors and is dependent on the doctrine of man's central position in the cosmos. As Plotinus argues, humanity "is poised midway between gods and beasts, and inclines now to the one order, now to the other; some men grow like to the divine, others to the brute, the greater number stand neutral" (ENN 3.2.8). Once one imagines man's estate bounded above and below in this way, it is natural to divide mankind itself according to a similar vertical scale. Plotinus' valuation, of course, corresponds to the spatial metaphor: the man who inclines most to the divine is clearly the best. Such schemata remained popular in the Renaissance. I have already quoted Pico's account of the Rational Soul with its middle position, and it is worth adding Ficino 's exposition of a threefold love of beauty in order to show how easily this schema can be expanded from anthropology to embrace a topic more closely related to aesthetics: For we are born or brought up inclined and disposed toward the contemplative, active, or voluptuous life. If we are disposed to the contemplative life, we are immediately elevated by the sight of bodily beauty to the contemplation of spiritual and divine beauty. If to the voluptuous life, we descend immediately from sight to the desire to touch. If to the active and moral life, we continue in the mere pleasure of seeing and conversing. Those of the first type are so intelligent that they rise to the heights; those of the last type are so stupid that they sink to the bottom; and those of the middle type remain in the middle region. (De amore, 119)

Though Ficino again clearly sets the contemplative above the active life, this kind of argument tends nonetheless to underline the dignity of the human sphere as a middle realm, the realm that Schiller consistently associates with beauty. Schiller sometimes succumbs to the temptation to go beyond the original intention of the argument, which was to propose the middle realm as a kind of honourable compromise, and to interpret the scheme, instead, according to the Aristotelian doctrine of mesotes. As I said, this is a fateful step, for it elevates our middle state above the divine realm and implies a symmetry between higher and lower. Arguments based on this scheme thus break down when confronted with the premises on which they are ultimately based. As tempted as we might be to proclaim our

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unique privilege in occupying the central point of the chain of being,45 we have to remember that value derives from the higher; it would in fact be better for us to be closer to the intelligences and further from the material. Plotinus wrestles with this dilemma in the following passage: The Kind, then, with which we are dealing is twofold, the Intellectual against the sensible: better for the Soul to dwell in the Intellectual, but, given its proper nature, it is under compulsion to participate in the sense-realm also. There is no grievance in its not being, through and through, the highest; it holds mid-rank among the authentic existences, being of divine station but at the lowest extreme of the Intellectual and skirting the sense-known nature; thus, while it communicates to this realm something of its own store, it absorbs in turn whenever ... it plunges in an excessive zeal to the very midst of its chosen sphere. (4.8.7)

One notices the contradiction here between the human "compulsion to participate in the sense-realm" and the designation of the material world as our "chosen sphere"; given the precedence of the intelligible over the material, Plotinus is evidently hard put to it to allow some dignity to the human condition, and he attributes to man an otherwise inexplicable freedom of choice in the matter. A second doctrine, similar but not identical to the first, is that of harmony. As Fuhrmann tells us, harmony is a traditional attribute of beauty going back to pre-Socratic times, but it: usually operates at the phenomenal, as opposed to the ontological, level.46 It can be seen in this capacity even in Plotinus (ENN 1.6.2), for whom, as we saw, form serves to rally "confusion into cooperation" and to make "the sum one harmonious coherence," on the grounds that "the Idea is a unity and what it moulds must come to unity as far as multiplicity may." The restriction of this argument to phenomena is important, however. Nothing could be more alien to the spirit of Plotinus' transcendentalism than the notion that beauty might represent a harmony of the sensible and the intelligible, for it is precisely the preponderance of the intelligible that enables form to bring the order of unity into the chaotic sensible manifold. 45. See, for example, Pico, Comento, (p. 91): "Human nature, the tie and knot of the world, is located in the middle of the hierarchy of being and just as every middle participates in the extremes, so Man, through his various parts, has some relation or correspondence to every part of the world. For this reason he is often called a Microcosm, that is, a little world." 46. Die Dichtungstheorie der Antike, p. 84.

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It is left to Schiller to take this step and to reformulate the harmony argument at the ontological level. The most obvious result is the doctrine of the beautiful soul, a soul in which impulse and duty harmonize. However, and despite the Fichtean source of the idea of "Wechselwirkung" (reciprocal interaction), the same idea is manifested in the "Spieltrieb" (play impulse), with its mutual subordination of the drives of form and matter. Here in particular it is clear how Schiller has reinterpreted Plotinian materials, for he proposes here too a harmonious relationship between form and matter that is wholly antithetical to Plotinus' use of this polarity. As with the mesotes argument, however, Schiller's abandonment of the Platonic structure is somewhat half-hearted, and he is prone to cancel out his methectic affirmations of harmony with choristic reassertions of the ascendancy of the intelligible. The final recalcitrant element that needs to be mentioned here is rather more troublesome. This is Schiller's frequent attribution of an immanent teleology to nature itself, a doctrine that, like the doctrine of the mean, seems to derive from the Aristotelian rather than the Platonic tradition. A good example is the point in the Kallias-Briefe, discussed above, where Schiller suddenly abandons his insistent restriction of freedom to the intelligible: "Der Ausdruck Natur ist mir darum lieber als Freiheit, weil er zugleich das Feld des Sinnlichen bezeichnet, worauf das Schone sich einschrankt, und neben dem Begriffe der Freiheit auch sogleich ihre Sphare in der Sinnenwelt andeutet" (411).47 From here on, it becomes possible for Schiller to speak of an actual rather than an illusory selfdetermination in nature. As we have seen, this change of ground coincides with a change of paradigm from beauty in artifacts to beauty in organisms, and is connected with Schiller's adoption of the ancient paradox, restated by Kant, that beauty in nature and art resemble each other. If beauty is a representation of freedom, as it is according to Schiller's theory here, and if it is also the victory of nature over art, then there must be some natural freedom that the work of art is to represent or evoke, a view clearly at odds with Schiller's earlier insistence that "nichts frei sein kann als das Ubersinnliche" (400) (nothing can be free but the supersensible). Alongside the Platonic view that beauty is the sensible representation of an idea, a view inherently hostile to the material world, 47. "I prefer the expression 'nature' to 'freedom' because it both designates the field of sensory experience, to which beauty is confined, and, in addition to the concept of freedom, it indicates its place in the sensible world."

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there now stands an organic view of beauty. Schiller struggles to reconcile the two views by attributing beauty to organic forms on the basis of lightness, so that their conquest of gravity can stand as a symbol for the conquest of nature by reason (or matter by form). Unwittingly, Schiller here echoes the myth of the charioteer in Plato's Phaedrus (246!!), with its magnificent metaphor of the "wings of the soul." While it would be both unnecessary and arduous to follow every twist and turn of Schiller's argument, we should merely recall his shift from the choristic position that "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" can only be an illusion to the methectic one that autonomy (or even "heautonomy") in the object can indeed be an objective property that exists even in the absence of a perceiving subject (416). With this shift of position, Schiller lays the foundation for some important statements in the treatises of the next two years. In his definition of "architectonic beauty" in Uber Anmut und Wiirde, for example, he affirms the existence of a purposive force in nature: "Mit diesem Namen will ich also denjenigen Teil der menschlichen Schonheit bezeichnet haben, der nicht bloB durch Naturkrafte ausgefuhrt worden (was von jeder Erscheinung gilt), sondern der auch nur allein durch Naturkrafte bestimmt ist." (438).4§ Nature's purposes are not confined to the development of organic forms, however. In the third Asthetischer Brief, nature is attributed a will in the social formation of man also: "Die Natur fangt mit dem Menschen nicht besser an als mit ihren ubrigen Werken: sie handelt fur ihn, wo er als freie Intelligenz noch nicht selbst handeln kann" (573).49 In the early stages of history, man thus falls under the sway of natural purposes ("Naturzwecke") and lives under a "Naturstaat"; as he indicates in the early letters, Schiller believes that this stage is still continuing. It is man's destiny, however, to pass from natural to rational purposes, a hazardous transition that has just been botched in France. This notion of a dual teleology is problematic and only sketchily worked out. In one place Schiller speaks of man's passage from one jurisdiction to another: "Soil er fahig und fertig sein, aus dem engen Kreis der Naturzwecke sich zu Vernunftzwecken zu erheben, so mufi er sich 48. "By this term I mean that part of human beauty that is not merely executed by natural forces (for that is true of all phenomena) but which also is determined only by natural forces." 49. "Initially, nature treats man no better than the rest of its works: it acts for him when he is not yet able to act for himself as a free intelligence."

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schon innerhalb der erstern fur die letztern geiibt ... haben" (643).5° In other places, following Kant's Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher Absicht (Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View), he implies that rationality itself is in some way a part of nature's purpose. Hence, in sharp contrast to his bellicose language about the war of form against matter, he can write that aesthetic freedom, the precursor of rational freedom, must be a gift of nature ("[e]in Geschenk der Natur"): "Die Natur selbst ist es, die den Menschen von der Realitat zum Scheme emporhebt" (655, 657).51 Where he writes of the course of history as a journey from nature back to nature by the path of reason, Schiller thus implies that reason itself falls under the jurisdiction of nature: "alle ohne Unterschied [miissen] durch Vernunftelei von der Natur abfallen ..., ehe sie durch Vernunft zu ihr zuriickkehren konnen" ( 5 81).5»

Another puzzling but related aspect should be mentioned here. At the end of the Letter 4, nature is linked to the principle of multiplicity and set against the unity of the moral form: "Wenn ... die Vernunft in die physische Gesellschaft ihre moralische Einheit bringt, so darf sie die Mannigfaltigkeit der Natur nicht verletzen" (579) .53 This interpretation of nature is consistent with the Neoplatonic antithesis of the One and the Many, which leads to a notion of beauty as unity in multiplicity.54 However, rather more frequently, Schiller exchanges the antithesis nature / reason for the antithesis nature / art and thus gives rise to an interpretation of nature not as multiplicity but as unity. Distinguishing the ancient Greeks from modern man, for example, he explains the difference by saying that they were formed respectively by "die alles vereinende Natur" (all-unifying nature) and "der alles 50. "If he is to be able and ready to raise himself from the narrow circle of natural ends to the ends of reason, then he must already have trained himself for the latter within the former." 51. "It is nature itself that raises man from reality to semblance." 52. "All without exception must break with nature through the misuse of reason before they can return to it through the right use of reason." 53. "When reason brings its moral unity into physical society, it must not harm the multiplicity of nature." 54. See Plotinus, ENN i .6.2: "an ugly thing is something that has not been entirely mastered by pattern, that is by Reason, the Matter not yielding at all points and in all resepcts to Ideal Form. But where the Ideal-Form has entered, it has grouped and co-ordinated what from a diversity of parts was to become a unity: it has rallied confusion into co-operation: it has made the sum one harmonious coherence: for the Idea is a unity and what it moulds must come to unity as far as multiplicity may."

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trennende Verstand" (all-separating understanding) (AE, 583), and this pattern underlies the theory of history as a journey from nature into art and back to a higher nature: "Die Natur macht [den Menschen] mit sich eins, die Kunst trennt und entzweiet ihn; durch das Ideal kehrt er zur Einheit zuriick" (NSD, 718).55 It is clear from cases like this that, in addition to the problem of chorismos and methexis, some components of Schiller's theories are incompatible with each other and that this sometimes leads to contradictions.56 Of more interest here, however, is the observation that Schiller's historical schema reproduces the triadic movement of the soul in Neoplatonic theory away from and back to the One in proodos and epistrophe, where the "otherness" of the soul divided from the One provides the basis for plurality as such. It is clear that, whether Schiller happens to identify nature with the One that stands at the beginning and end of the process or with the multiplicity that comes between, he is in both cases adapting a piece of metaphysical equipment inherited from the Neoplatonic tradition and using it to construct a supposedly Enlightened philosophy of history. In a footnote to Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (752, n. i), Schiller justifies his triadic historical schema—comprising the stages (i) nature / naive feeling; (2) art/reflective understanding; (3) nature=art / ideal—by citing Kant's doctrine of the categories from the first Critique. But what seems to have happened is this: by giving anthropological and historical substance to a fragment of Kant's transcendental theory, Schiller has unwittingly come up with a piece of pure Neoplatonism, for the resulting triad bears an uncanny resemblance to the type of dialectical triad characteristic of the thought of Proclus. Werner Beierwaltes explains the dialectical character of Proclus's central triad of mone, proodos, and 55. "Nature makes man one with himself; art separates and disunites him; through the ideal he returns to unity." See also the i8th AB, n. i: "Die Natur (der Sinn) vereinigt iiberall, der Verstand scheidet iiberall, aber die Veniunftvereinigtwieder." (Nature [sense] always unites, the understanding always divides, but reason reunites.) 56. The juxtaposition of the two models, however, can help us understand the dilemma of natural freedom in the KB. According to the nature / reason antithesis, reason is the source of freedom (and all intelligible values); nature is identified with matter and is merely the passive receptacle of form. According to the nature / art antithesis, however, nature is the positive term; organic beings are here the paradigm and are seen as self-determining. Against them is set a negative notion of art and culture, which are seen as products of the understanding. When Schiller therefore reverses himself as to the possibility of a nonillusory freedom or self-determination in nature, we can say that he is switching from the first antithesis to the second.

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epistrophe (persistence, procession, and return), interpreted as a movement of the mind, as follows: "The return presupposes the self-unfolding of the spirit just as it preserves and annuls it. In so doing, it adds a degree of mediation to the unity of the spirit; for that unity remains conscious of the differentiation of the manifold eide [forms] through the mediating proodos even when that differentiation is annulled. Epistrophe is thus the reflexivity of the origin that persists within itself, the origin that is reintegrated with itself after enduring the self-unfolding but that still contains within itself the multiplicity and diversity constituted by the proodos."^ It is by the reinvention of a dialectical logic akin to this that Schiller reaches his definition of culture as union and separation of union and separation. As we shall see in the next chapter, Schiller's Neoplatonic adaptation of Kant's doctrine in this instance is symptomatic of his relation to Kant in general.

57. "Indem der Ruckgang die Selbstentfaltung des Geistes ebensosehr voraussetzt wie er sie bewahrend aufhebt, macht er die Einheit des Geistes zu einer vermittelten, der die Unterschiedenheit der mannigfaltigen [eide, i.e., forms] durch die vermittelnde [proodos] auch als aufgehobene immer bewufit bleibt. So ist [epistrophe] die Reflexivitat des in sich verharrenden Ursprungs, der durch die Selbstentfaltung hindurch wieder mit sich selbst zusammengegangen ist, aber die durch die [proodos] konstituierte Mannigfaltigkeit und Unterschiedenheit immer in sich hat." Beierwaltes, Proklos, p. 125. The same author shows in his study Platonismus und Idealismus (pp. 154-83) that Proclus had a determining influence on the formation of Hegel's dialectic.

IV

Schiller, Kant, and Plato

Schiller's relation to Kant, involving, as it does, indeterminate proportions of acceptance and rejection, of understanding and confusion, has been treated by numerous scholars of both philosophy and literature, and could be described without much exaggeration as one of the central cruces of the discipline of Germanistik. In a culture that has traditionally placed a high value on philosophy and its power to illuminate literary questions, the spectacle of a great poet subjecting his feelings and visions to the test of the most advanced philosophical system available to him has proved endlessly fascinating to scholars and critics.1 The fact that Kant is at least as difficult an author as Schiller himself lends the problem an additional dimension, for the interpreter's understanding of Kant becomes as much a factor in the analysis as Schiller's understanding of Kant.

i. In the vast literature on this question it is possible to discern three basic standpoints: the neo-Kantian (e.g., Vorlander, Kant-Schiller-Goethe, and Heuer, "Zu Schillers Plan"), for which Schiller supplements and extends Kant's aesthetics in a fundamentally legitimate way; the pre-idealist (e.g., Henrich, "Der Begriff der Schonheit"), which emphasizes Schiller's anticipations of the "objective idealism" of Schelling and Hegel; and the anthropological (e.g., Busing, "Asthetische Form") and psychological (e.g., Wilkinson and Willoughby, introduction to Friedrich Schiller) for which Schiller fills Kant's abstract framework with a more empirical content. One could further add approaches such as Baumecker's biographical one (Schillers Schonheitslehre) and Ellis's analytical one (Schiller's Kalliasbriefe), for which the philosophical relation to Kant is not central. Koopmann ("'Bestimme Dich aus Dir selbst' ") finds Schiller's engagement with Kant's thought a problematic detour ("problematischer Umweg") that diverted him from his formerly political concept of autonomy into the dead end of aesthetics. This superficial view overlooks the high degree of continuity between Schiller's concerns in the 17805 and his treatises of the 17905.

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My approach to Schiller's aesthetics permits me, if not to sidestep the issue, then at least to reformulate it. As the analysis of mythological motifs in chapter 2 suggested, Schiller's preoccupations and methods in the treatises of the 17905 show a high degree of continuity with some texts composed in the previous decade, which one could term his preKantian period, and this continuity will emerge even more strongly below. It seems doubtful, given this underlying continuity, if there is much room for a revolution in Schiller's intellectual development in the years 1791-93. And yet, on the other hand, it is impossible to deny Schiller's close and attentive reading of Kant, which is evident on nearly every page of his writings on aesthetics from 1792 on, while his letters attest the profound impact Kant's ideas had on him.2 There is clearly a paradox here. It is to be hoped that the introduction of Platonism as a third partner in the relationship can throw some new light on the old puzzle. As we saw in chapter i, in his article of 1957 Dieter Henrich rightly stresses that Schiller's preoccupation with his early theory of love continues into the 17905, and Henrich sees this preoccupation as the cause of Schiller's breach with Kantian principles. Schiller's loyalty to his older metaphysical construct thus led him, according to this view, to posit beauty as sensible mirror of an idea of reason and to attribute an inclination ("Neigung") to reason as the cause of this objedification; both of these steps, which Henrich illustrates from Uber Anmut und Wiirde, conflict with the principles of the critical philosophy.3 2. Schiller's copy of the KDU, which is on display at the Schiller Nationalmuseum in Marbach, displays numerous strokes and cross-references in the margins. While his written notes are few and mostly unrevealing, the density of the cross-references indicate a very careful study of the text. 3. "When Schiller says that only the pure spirit can love, and further, that love is an inclination, this amounts to a pure contradiction in a Kantian position. ... Schiller is trying to comprehend the objectification of subjectivity, which is not included in Kant's system, with the aid of the concepts of Kant's theory of subjectivity" ("Der Begriff der Schonheit," p. 539). ("Wenn Schiller sagt, dap nur der reine Geist lieben konne, und weiter, dap Liebe eine Neigung sei, so bedeutet dies in einer Kantischen Position einen reinen Widerspruch. ... Schiller versucht, die im Kantischen System nicht einbezogene Vergegenstandlichung der Subjektivitat mit Hilfe der Begriffe von Kants Subjektivitatstheorie zu erfassen.") Henrich's blind spot, shared by Manfred Frank, whose Einfuhrungin diefruhromantischeAsthetik (7th Lecture) follows his argument closely, is caused by a narrow focus on the theory of beauty and a corresponding inattention to the sublime. Both scholars approach Schiller from the direction of Hegel and Schelling, and they praise Schiller wherever he anticipates the "objective" idealism of his younger contemporaries, i.e, in our terms, in his most methectic

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If one looks at the letter of the text, of course, Henrich is right: inclination belongs to sensibility, and to attribute it to reason is, for a strict Kantian, inadmissible. And yet, as Julian Roberts points out, the whole point of the critical project, and especially of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, is precisely to discover, after all the proper distinctions between reason and sensibility have been made, "how reason can become real."4 Thus, in section 42, "Vom intellektuellen Interesse am Schonen," Kant posits, not an inclination, but an interest of reason in an objedification of itself, and he invokes moral feeling, a somewhat hybrid instance left out of account by Henrich, as a mediating possibility: Da es ... die Vernunft ... interessiert, daB die Ideen (fur die sie im moralischen Gefuhle ein unmittelbares Interesse bewirkt) auch objektive Realitat haben, d.i. daB die Natur wenigstens eine Spur zeige, oder einen Wink gebe, sie enthalte in sich irgend einen Grund, eine gesetzmaBige Ubereinstimmung ihrer Produkte zu unserm von allem Interesse unabhangigen Wohlgefallen ... anzunehmen: so muB die Vernunft an jeder AuBerung der Natur von einer dieser ahnlichen Ubereinstimmung ein Interesse nehmen; folglich kann das Gemut iiber die Schonheit der Naturnicht nachdenken, ohne sich dabei zugleich interessiert zu finden. (8:397-98)5

Kant's language, to be sure, is ponderous and full of qualifications, but the passage shows that, just like Schiller, Kant is aiming at establishing a positions. Henrich and Frank thus deplore the entire choristic dimension of Schiller's thought as a failure to overcome Kant's dualism. In essence, what they propose is a biographical interpretation of the tension in Schiller's mind between methexis and chorismos. This is misleading in that it implies that chorismos is a less integral part of his intellectual personality than methexis. As we shall see in chapters 6 and 7, Schiller's choristic standpoint develops from positions taken in his texts of the 17805 and thus cannot be attributed to Kantian influence. Biographical interpretations of this kind generally serve to mitigate the conflict between the two standpoints, whereas, according to the view being advanced here, that conflict is not only irremediable but also of inherent philosophical and not merely psychological interest. 4. German Philosophy, p. 65. 5. "But it also interests reason that the ideas (for which in moral feeling it arouses an immediate interest) should have objective reality; i.e., that nature should at least show a trace or give an indication that it contains in itself a ground for assuming a regular agreement of its products with our entirely disinterested satisfaction.... Hence reason must take an interest in every expression on the part of nature of an agreement of this kind. Consequently, the mind cannot ponder upon the beauty of nature without finding itself at the same time interested therein" (p. 179).

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relationship between beauty and morality according to which beauty can be portrayed as a sensible token of morality, proving its possibility and even helping to bring it about. Schiller is of course unaware of the critical reservations that make this such a difficult matter for Kant, and he writes of love where, more circumspectly, Kant merely writes of interest. But the fact remains that, for both Kant and Schiller, beauty is a vehicle for the methexis of the intelligible in the sensible, and indeed that this is largely beauty's raison d'etre. It is the essence of Schiller's relation to Kant that, by an extraordinary intuition, he was able to detect the Platonic elements latent in Kant's thought, to bring them to the light of day, and, at least sometimes, to call them by their proper names. In the present case, the reference to love, where Kant speaks of interest, is not merely an example of the poet's freedom of language but almost an intuitive act of scholarship, for, by alluding to the ancient tradition of Platonic ems, Schiller manages to place Kant's aesthetic theory in an unfamiliar but arguably correct historical context. In this and the next chapter, I elaborate on this view of Kant, discussing various aspects of Schiller's relationship with him and suggesting that the model sketched here can indeed help us to grasp its elusive nature. TELEOLOGY

The ideological question, discussed in the last chapter, offers a first step towards resolving the paradox of Schiller's relationship with Rant. Schiller's lack of inhibition in affirming an inherent purpose in nature raises doubts about whether he understood or was interested in the critical dimension of Kant's work, that is, in Kant's reformulation of the traditional problems of metaphysics as a new scientific metaphysics of experience. For the critical Kant, it is axiomatic that nature, which we only know as appearance, is subjected by the structure of our cognitive faculties to the categories of the understanding, one of which is causation. The category of purpose is confined to the realm of freedom and the thing-in-itself, within which we live as in a "kingdom of ends"; the ancient tradition of viewing nature ideologically, rejected by Bacon and Descartes but revived by Leibniz,6 thus falls victim to the new 6. See Discourse on Metaphysics, sec. 18, in Selections, p. 317: "It appears more and more clear that although all the particular phenomena of nature can be explained mathematically or mechanically by those who understand them, yet nevertheless, the general principles of

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method.7 In the Kritik der UrteilskraftKant sets himself the task of proving, without resorting to a preordained harmony, that mechanistic causality and teleology need nonetheless not exclude each other, that is, of proving that the gulf between the orders of nature and of freedom can be bridged. Even in the redefined framework, therefore, the traditional problem of chorismos and methexis reasserts itself. The reasons that Kant gives for desiring reconciliation fall into two main categories, one moral and one cognitive. The first can be summarized as our need to believe that, despite the radical divorce between the worlds of efficient and final causes, the natural world of experience is nonetheless amenable to actions that we initiate by reference to our moral ends: "der Freiheitsbegriff soil den durch seine Gesetze aufgegebenen Zweck in der Sinnenwelt wirklich machen; und die Natur muB folglich auch so gedacht werden konnen, daB die GesetzmaBigkeit ihrer Form wenigstens zur Moglichkeit der in ihr zu bewirkenden Zwecke nach Freiheitsgesetzen zusammenstimme" (8:247-48).8 The second reason, more difficult to summarize and less important for Schiller, has to do with our capacity to grasp nature as an orderly system of laws. Kant's solution is provided by the reflective use of the faculty of judgment according to the principle of the purposiveness of nature, which we employ when we make aesthetic and teleological judgments. Though we cannot show the existence of purposes in nature, the intimation of a purposiveness that we cannot prove leads us to infer the existence of a supersensible substrate beyond our experience,

corporeal nature and even of mechanics are metaphysical rather than geometric, and belong rather to certain indivisible forms or natures as the causes of the appearances, than to the corporeal mass or extension." 7. Not the least paradox of the Kant-Schiller relationship is that Schiller probably derived his notion of a natural teleology from Kant himself, who, in his Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher Absicht, in flagrant contradiction to the anti-metaphysical project of the Critiques, had posited precisely such a teleology as working itself out through human history. See Kondylis, Die Aufkldrung, p. 643: "At the level of history and the species, ... reason is located not outside sensibility but within it; it is, so to speak, its secret guiding and propulsive force." ("Auf der Ebene der Geschichte und der Gattungliegt ... dieVernunft nicht au(3erhalb der Sinnlichkeit, sondern in ihr, sie ist gleichsam deren geheime vorwartstreibende und leitende Kraft") 8. "The concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that the conformity to law of its form at least harmonizes with the possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to laws of freedom" (p. 12).

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and it is at the level of this substrate that we are to believe that causation and teleology are reconciled. It is of the essence of Kant's method, which deals in cognitive faculties rather than metaphysical entities, that the purposiveness of nature is admissible only as a subjective principle: "Dieser transzendentale Begriff einer ZweckmaBigkeit der Natur ist nun weder ein Naturbegriff, noch ein Freiheitsbegriff, well er gar nichts dem Objekte (der Natur) beilegt [my emphasis] , sondern nur die einzige Art, wie wir in der Reflexion iiber die Gegenstande der Natur in Absicht auf eine durchgangig zusammenhangende Erfahrung verfahren mussen, vorstellt, folglich ein subjektives Prinzip (Maxime) der Urteilskraft" (8:257).9 The consequence of this for Kant's aesthetics is that beauty must call to our minds the notion of a "ZweckmaBigkeit ohne Zweck" (purposiveness without purpose), for to attribute an inherent purposiveness to a natural object would be to relapse into dogmatism. (In the case of artifacts, purposiveness will lead to perfection or usefulness but not to beauty.) As we saw, the possibility of inherent natural purposes was not a problem that troubled Schiller unduly. In the Kallias-BriefofS February 1793, however, he attempts to recast Kant's analysis of the varieties of reason while still remaining relatively faithful to the spirit of the original. Whereas Kant had justified the application of the (subjective) principle of purposiveness to nature on both moral and epistemological grounds, Schiller now separates these fields again. Taking up Kant's distinction between constitutive and regulative uses of reason, he defines ideological judgment restrictively as the regulative application of theoretical reason, that is, of cognition, while the aesthetic is seen as the regulative use of practical reason, for which freedom rather than purpose has now become the dominant concept. While the teleological judgment thus attributes a non-existent purpose to an object, the aesthetic judgment attributes to it a non-existent freedom, or "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" (freedom in the appearance).10 9. "This transcendental concept of a purposiveness of nature is neither a natural concept nor a concept of freedom, because it ascribes nothing to the object (of nature) [my emphasis], but only represents the peculiar way in which we must proceed in reflection upon the objects of nature in reference to a thoroughly connected experience, and is consequently a subjective principle (maxim) of the judgment" (p. 23). 10. While it is not until later that Schiller forgets the critical reservation and attributes real freedom to organic beings, this theory still represents a methodological departure, for the attempt to derive the specific features of the beautiful object from the formula "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" contrasts with Kant's account, in which, as we saw, the formula "Zweckmapigkeit ohne Zweck" (purposiveness without purpose) is applied in such a way as to fall short of defining the nature of the object.

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What is the sense of Schiller's shift from "ZweckmaBigkeit ohne Zweck" to "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" (which, at least in its initial exposition, one can legitimately gloss as "FreiheitsmaBigkeit ohne Freiheit" [similarity to freedom without freedom]) ? First, Kant does not believe that beauty can be defined; "ZweckmaBigkeit ohne Zweck" is therefore not a definition, but rather an attempt to describe the concept relationally. Schiller dispenses with Kant's critical scruples in defining beauty. Second, Schiller has moved "ZweckmaBigkeit" from its central position, disregarding the systematic function it fulfils for Kant. Although Kant uses this concept to unite theoretical and practical reason, Schiller allows them to fall apart again, inadvertently underlining his fundamental indifference to the questions of epistemology. Third, in his reception of Kant's ethical theory, the concept of freedom monopolizes his attention, while that of purpose is overlooked. The allocation of aesthetic judgement to practical reason (which one can see as a compressed form of Kant's argument in section 59, "Von der Schonheit als Symbol der Sittlichkeit" [Of Beauty as a Symbol of Morality]) establishes a closer connection between aesthetics and morality than anything Kant had envisaged and underlines the moral nature of Schiller's undertaking. Finally, this solution enables Schiller to return the concept of purpose to its original function as a natural teleology analogous to divine providence, working itself out in history through human deeds.11 Schiller's indifference to epistemology is already suggested by his silence on the "Ding an sich"; he is concerned with the Platonic distinction between contemplative and tactile perception, outlined in chapter 3 above, not with Kant's distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves. (Kant's doctrine of space and time, one of his most important contributions to philosophy, finds no echo at all in Schiller.) But the move in the direction of Platonism is also reinforced by Schiller's substitution of freedom for purposiveness, for, by thinking of beauty as the result of an interaction between a material object and the idea of freedom, he departs decisively from the Kantian method and moves into the realm of Plotinian metaphysics of form and matter. Whereas Kant is concerned with the metaphysics of experience and the validity of different types of judgment, Schiller, more conventionally, wants to find out not only what kinds of object can be proved to be 11. In the KB, purpose also becomes an aspect of the beautiful object, viz., a primary form, which beauty, as a secondary form, has to overcome. This "dual form" theory will be examined in the next chapter.

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beautiful, he also wants to understand the metaphysical process by which the objects become beautiful in the first place.12 Such knowledge will not be an end in itself, however, and here we see Schiller striving to make his doctrine, despite its ancient metaphysical lineage, fruitful for the Enlightenment project. Put at the service of mankind, the new aesthetics will directly assist future generations in their efforts to bring about a rational society. KANT AND PLATO

It is neither surprising nor shocking that, as many scholars have stressed, Schiller was looking in Kant for solutions to his own problems of poetic creativity, rather than seeking a scholarly understanding of his great contemporary. Even the academic philosophers, we should recall, had considerable difficulties interpreting the demanding new system, and the creative philosophers of the next generation used Kant as a starting point for their own independent speculations. We need to ask, however, what help Kant's thought might have provided to a writer with Schiller's very different concerns, and what impression it might have made on a reader who was uninterested in epistemology, in the philosophy of science and mathematics, or in the struggle to make metaphysics scientifically respectable. Since this study offers a Platonic interpretation

12. Eva Schaper, "Schiller's Kant" (pp. 108-9), brings out the methodological difference between Kant and Schiller, signalled by the latter's substitution of the terms "objective" arid "subjective" for Kant's a priori and a posteriori. Kant thus "saw the [aesthetic] investigation as one into the mode in which beauty is experienced. ... Whereas what we needed, Schiller thought, was a definition of beauty, and only secondarily and consequentially an analysis of aesthetic experience." The disagreement rests on Schiller's un-Kantian understanding of "subjective" and "objective." While for Kant the terms represent complementary aspects of the process by which objects are constituted in experience, "Schiller in fact reached back beyond Kant to the ontological sense [for 'objective'] of'independently real,' or 'real in itself,' to be set against, or opposed to, 'subjective.' " In her earlier article "Friedrich Schiller: Adventures of a Kantian," Schaper wrote of the misinterpretation of the synthetic a priori by Kant's idealist successors, "who transposed Kant's insight, which was predominantly methodological, into a key in which Kant himself never meant his music to be played" (p. 350). In the later treatment, however, Schaper speculates suggestively that Schiller's reading of Kant led not only to misunderstandings but also to "a number of profound and original insights into the unacknowledged aims and suppressed tendencies of Kant's own thought" (p. 99). The view presented in the present study that Kant was more of a Platonist than he realized might perhaps be one of these "suppressed tendencies."

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of Schiller's thought, we need to inquire what features of Kant's works could have confirmed him in his Platonic ways of thinking.13 As a defender of a priori knowledge who postulates an intelligible world beyond the realm of sensible experience, Kant opposes the sceptical empiricism of thinkers like Hume and Cmsius in a manner comparable to Plato's opposition to his naturalistic precursors. In the account of his philosophical development in the Phaedo, for example, Socrates rejects a scientific method that is based solely on observation. Comparing this method to watching a solar eclipse without eye protection, he continues, "I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether. So I decided that I must have recourse to theories, and use them in trying to discover the truth about things" (gge).14 This account should be compared to Kant's words from the introduction to the second edition of the first Critique, where a similar stress is laid on the non-empirical component in recent scientific discoveries: "[Die Naturforscher] begriffen, daB 13. The following discussion is indebted to Heinz Heimsoeth's article "Kant und Plato," and also to Julian Roberts, whose chapter on Kant in his recent German Philosophy (pp. 9-67) is particularly attentive to Kant's dependence on the metaphysical tradition; the use of the duality of form and content in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the first Critique, for example, is described by Roberts as "an epistemological restatement of an ontological problem—i.e., a statement in terms of how we know things rather than what it is that we know" (p. 14). This dependence is even more pronounced in Kant's writings on morality; referring to a passage from the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, in which Kant differentiates between man as intelligence and as phenomenal being, Roberts comments, "From such a perspective, it would seem, human beings are in this world, but not of it—surely metaphysics of precisely the kind that the critical philosophy set out to avoid" (p. 56). For the possibility of a metaphysical reading of Kant, see especially Wundt, Kant als Metaphysiker, and also Marquard, Skeptische Methode mit Blick aufKant (pp. 45-51) and the literature cited there. For further discussions of Kant's relationship to Plato, see Hoffmann, Platonismus und christliche Philosophic (pp. 428-37) and Perls, "Plato und Kant: ein Dialog." Werner Beierwaltes deals with three anticipations of Kantian doctrines by Nicholas of Cusa in "Subjektivitat, Schopfertum, Freiheit." In a polemical essay on "Kant and the English Platonists," Arthur O. Lovejoy contends that the Cambridge Platonists "anticipated Kant in his so-called 'Copernican revolution, ' and, incidentally thereto, in his general doctrine of a priori mental elements, in his main line of argument for the existence of such elements, and in the particular type of 'transcendental idealism' which resulted from that epistemological doctrine" (p. 269). 14. See also Socrates' account of the proper astronomical method at REP 7, 52Qc-d: "These sparks that paint the sky, since they are decorations on a visible surface, we must regard, to be sure, as the fairest and most exact of material things, but we must recognize that they fall far short of the truth, the movements, namely, of real speed and real slowness in true number and in all true figures.... These can be apprehended only by reason and thought, but not sight, or do you think otherwise."

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die Vernunft nur das einsieht, was sie selbst nach ihrem Entwurfe hervorbringt, da6 sie mit Prinzipien ihrer Urteile nach bestandigen Gesetzen vorangehen und die Natur notigen miisse, auf ihre Fragen zu antworten, nicht aber sich von ihr allein gleichsam am Leitbande gangeln lassen miisse; denn sonst hangen zufallige, nach keinem vorher entworfenen Plane gemachte Beobachtungen gar nicht in einem notwendigen Gesetze zusammen, welches doch die Vernunft sucht und bedarf" (B xiii).1^ Despite the enormous advances in scientific understanding during the two intervening millennia, the philosophic hostility to the senses remains a constant (a hostility inherited, of course, by Schiller), and A. E. Taylor can thus identify Plato and Kant as "the two philosophers who most emphatically assert the total disparity of sense and thought."16 Similarly, Kant's insistence on the unshakable certainty of the moral law against the moral sense theorists can be compared to Plato's resistance to the sophistic philosophy of "man is the measure."17 With his intertwining of ethics and metaphysics, finally, Kant has been credited by an eminent modern philosopher with the restoration of a unity that was originally posited by Plato but was disrupted by Aristotle.18 Kant acknowledges his debt to Plato early in the "Transcendental Dialectic" of the first Critique in the section headed "Von den Ideen iiberhaupt" (The Ideas in General), where he calls Plato "der erhabene 15. "They [natural scientists] learned that reason has insight only into that which it produces after a plan of its own, and that it must not allow itself to be kept, as it were, in nature's leading-strings, but must show itself the way with principles of judgment based upon fixed laws, constraining nature to give answer to questions of reason's own determining. Accidental observations, made in obedience to no previously thought-out plan, can never be made to yield a necessary law, which alone reason is concerned to discover." 16. Platonism and its Influence, p. 49. 17. In his comparison of the sophist and the public to a wild animal and its keeper at REP 6.493a-c, Plato similarly warns against abstracting moral standards from an empirical model: "It is as if a man ... , knowing nothing in reality about which of these opinions [of the beast] is honourable or base, good or evil, just or unjust, ... should apply all these terms to the judgments of the great beast, calling the things that pleased it good, and the things that vexed it bad." 18. See Henrich, "Der Begriff der sittlichen Einsieht," p. 90: "Like Kant's restriction of causality to the phenomenon, the Platonic theory of ideas is a theory about the possibility of the good. It serves to found the ontological hypothesis of moral insight and to defend it against the sophistry of the understanding, which falls under the dominion of 'pleasure.' " ("Die platonische Ideenlehre ist ebenso wie Kants Begrenzung der Kausalitat auf blo|3e Erscheinung eine Theorie iiber die Moglichkeit des Guten. Sie dient dazu, die ontologische Hypothese der sittlichen Einsieht zu begriinden und gegen die Sophistik des Verstandes zu rechtfertigen, der unter der Herrschaft der 'Lust' steht")

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in

Philosoph" (the sublime philosopher) and recognises him as his greatest precursor. The common feature Kant cites is their shared belief in the need to go beyond phenomena, an insight that is epitomised in the doctrine of ideas: "Plato bediente sich des Ausdrucks Idee so, daB man wohl sieht, er habe darunter etwas verstanden, was nicht allein niemals von den Sinnen entlehnt wird, sondern welches so gar die Begriffe des Verstandes, mit denen sich Aristoteles beschaftigte, weit iibersteigt, indem in der Erfahrung niemals etwas damit Kongruierendes angetroffen wird" (B 370 / A gig). 1 9 The idea is a requirement not only of science; on the next page, in a characteristically Platonic transition, Kant explains that experience must also be transcended if ethics is to be placed on a sound footing: Wer die Begriffe der Tugend aus Erfahrung schopfen wollte, wer das, was nur allenfalls als Beispiel zur unvollkommenen Erlauterung dienen kann, als Muster zum Erkenntnisquell machen wollte (wie es wirklich viele getan haben), der wiirde aus der Tugend ein nach Zeit und Umstanden wandelbares, zu keiner Regel brauchbares zweideutiges Unding machen. Dagegen wird ein jeder inne, daB, wenn ihm jemand als Muster der Tugend vorgestellt wird, er doch immer das wahre Original bloB in seinem eigenen Kopfe habe, womit er dieses angebliche Muster vergleicht, und es bloB darnach schatzt. (B 371-7 2 / A 315)20

Kant follows this espousal of an a priori ethics with a vigorous defence of Plato's ideal republic against "die pobelhafte Berufung auf vorgeblich widerstreitende Erfahrung" (the vulgar appeal to so-called adverse experience); one observes here the customary Platonic antithesis of aristocratic rationality and sensualistic rabble. In his summary, Kant then distinguishes between Plato's moral thought, which he praises without qualification, and his philosophy of knowledge and nature, to which he appends the caveat "Wenn man das Ubertriebene des Ausdrucks 19. "Plato made use of the expression 'idea' in such a way as quite evidently to have meant by it something which not only can never be borrowed from the senses but far surpasses even the concepts of understanding (with which Aristotle occupied himself), inasmuch as in experience nothing is ever to be met with that is coincident with it." 20. "Whoever would derive the concepts of virtue from experience and make (as many have actually done) what at best can only serve as an example in an imperfect kind of exposition, into a pattern from which to derive knowledge, would make of virtue something which changes according to time and circumstance, an ambiguous monstrosity not admitting of the formation of any rule. On the contrary, as we are well aware, if anyone is held up as a pattern of virtue, the true original with which we compare the alleged pattern and by which alone we judge of its value is to be found only in our minds."

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absondert" (B 375/A 3i8). 21 The overall pattern is clear, however: on the one hand we have a changing and treacherous world accessible to the senses, on the other an unchanging and perfect world accessible only to reason, recourse to reason being necessary if we are to form sound opinions on questions both of empirical fact and of moral value. Despite all the necessary distinctions that philosophers would rightly draw between Kant's and Plato's positions, there is a fundamental affinity in the philosophical stance and, no less important, in the pathos that the doctrine elicits from them. In this pathos of the intelligible, rather than in the doctrinal detail, we see Kant's most important gift to Schiller. Kant is aware that in some respects Plato represents a part of the dogmatic heritage that he is trying to destroy, and he qualifies his admiration in a revealing footnote, criticising him for attempting a "mystical" deduction of his ideas or for hypostatising them, "wiewohl die hohe Sprache, deren er sich in diesem Felde bediente, einer milderen und der Natur der Dinge angemessenen Auslegung ganz wohl fahig ist" (B 371 / A 3i4). 22 Elsewhere in the first Critique, Kant names Plato as the source of the intellectual tradition in philosophy, or as the chief of the "noologists" ("das Haupt der Noologisten" [B 882 / A 854]; the head of the empiricists is, of course, Aristotle), and he also coins a memorable metaphor to accuse Plato of making the characteristic mistake of this school: "Die leichte Taube, indem sie im freien Fluge die Luft teilt, deren Widerstand sie fuhlt, konnte die Vorstellung fassen, daB es ihr im luftleeren Raum noch viel besser gelingen werde. Eben so verlieB Plato die Sinnenwelt, weil sie dem Verstande so enge Schranken setzt, und wagte sichjenseit derselben, auf den Flugeln der Ideen, in den leeren Raum des reinen Verstandes" (B 8-9/A 5).23 If we consider Kant's criticism in connection with the footnote just cited and the warning about Plato's exaggerated language, we can infer that Plato's doctrine of ideas was, in Kant's view, capable of a "milder" interpretation that would be "commensurate with the nature of things" and that would therefore prevent it from soaring beyond the realms of possible experience. There is no question that Kant believed he had 21. "If we set aside the exaggerations in Plato's methods of expression." 22. "Although, as must be allowed, the exalted language, which he employed in this sphere, is quite capable of a milder interpretation that accords with the nature of things." 23. "The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space. It was thus that Plato left the world of the senses, as setting too narrow limits to the understanding, and ventured out beyond it on the wings of the ideas, in the empty space of the pure understanding."

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found this interpretation, under which the ideas were to be conceived not as entities really existing but rather as transcendental conditions of subjectivity or as rules for the use of reason. The reformulated intelligible was experienced not in mystical contemplation or dialectical ascent but only indirectly in moral action. Kant thus offers us a de-ontologized Platonism, but he retains the grandiose Platonic claim to have got behind the world of appearances, even if the higher reality behind appearances can never be directly known. Since it seems unlikely that Schiller grasped this de-ontologizing strategy and since this strategy does not deter Kant himself from at times employing the exalted language that he attributes to Plato, I am perhaps exaggerating only a little if I claim that Schiller's study of Kant was, to all intents and purposes, an education in Platonism. An example of Kant's relation to Plato that is relevant here is the problem of the chorismos outlined in the introduction to the Kritik der Urteilskraft. Kant writes of "eine uniibersehbare Kluft zwischen dem Gebiete des Naturbegriffs, als dem Sinnlichen, und dem Gebiete des Freiheitsbegriffs, als des Ubersinnlichen" (8:247)24 and of the need to find a transition ("Ubergang") or even a bridge ("Briicke") to link them (8:270). In accordance with the critical project, the traditional problem of metaphysics is redefined as an epistemological problem. The gulf between the material and the intelligible has thus become a gulf between the theoretical and the practical uses of reason, and it is to be bridged not by a Platonic eros or dialectic but by the reflective use of the faculty of judgment. In this bridging operation, at least when we think of the aesthetic use of the faculty of judgment, we are perhaps also entitled to see a critical version of the Platonic unity of goodness, truth, and beauty. Schiller's relation to Kant has been justly described as one of "anthropological reinterpretation."25 The gulf between two uses of reason thus 24. "An immeasurable gulf ... between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and die supersensible realm of the concept of freedom" (p. 12). 25. Diising, "Asthetische Form," p. 189: "The conceptual contents of Kantian aesthetics are anthropologically reinterpreted into aesthetic behaviours and states of subjectivity." ("Die Begriffsinhalte der Kantischen Asthetik werden 'anthropologisch umgedeutet zu asthetischen Verhaltensweisen und Befindlichkeiten der Subjektivitat.") Eva Schaper ("Schiller's Kant," p. 99) finds a felicitous way of expressing the same point: "Schiller's manipulation of Kantian concepts is like nothing so much as an attempt to persuade the stylised figures on an antique vase to step down and begin living." For the current popularity of eighteenth-century anthropology as a focus for scholarly research, see the contributions collected in two recent volumes Anthropologie und Literatur um 1800, ed. Barkhoff and Sagarra, and Der ganze Mensch, ed. Schings.

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becomes, in Schiller's account, a gulf between reason and nature in man. We have seen how the logical categories of unity, multiplicity, and totality are transformed in Schiller's hands into a theory of history. Similarly, beauty and sublimity can become, in Uber Anmut und Wurde, designations of psychological dispositions, and Kant's free play of imagination and understanding (KDU, 8:296) is anthropologically reinterpreted into the Schillerian "Spieltrieb," or play-impulse (AE, 612 ff.). Something more substantial than a mental faculty is needed to bridge Schiller's gulf (while at the same time, choristically, not bridging it), and it is the fulfillment of this task that he entrusts to aesthetic culture, with the result that beauty receives the name "unsre zweite Schopferin" (636) (our second creator). Unquestionably, this is an attractive and plausible way of approaching Schiller's relation to Kant, based as it is on Schiller's invocation of a "vollstandig[e] anthropologischfe] Schatzung" (complete anthropological mode of appraisal) in the fourth Asthetischer Brief (577). What the notion of the "anthropological reinterprelation" leaves unsaid, however, is that the resulting anthropology is as infected with the categories of traditional metaphysics as is the supposedly new science of aesthetics. Schiller's anthropology places man on a cosmic borderline and confronts him with the ancient dilemma, analysed in chapter 3, of rational beings in a material world. Expressing the point in a slightly dramatic fashion, we might say that, while Kant transposed Platonism into an epistemological key, Schiller transposed Kantianism back into its original metaphysical key, and hence, without having studied the Platonic sources and believing that he was building on the most advanced philosophy available, he unwittingly produced an aesthetics and an anthropology that, despite all his industry and ingenuity, remain firmly within centuries-old logical and metaphysical structures. P L A T O N I C E L E M E N T S IN THE THIRD

CRITIQUE

In the light of my hypothesis of a subliminal relationship between Kant and Plato, it is natural in the present context to inquire whether Kant's aesthetic theory offers any support for such a view, and there are in fact a number of areas of contact. The most obvious one has been alluded to already in chapter i. Kant's theory of disinterestedness, a central requirement of aesthetic pleasure, is derived from the Platonic notion of contemplation. In section 5 of the third Critique, Kant distinguishes our approbation of the beautiful from that of the pleasant and the good, in

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both of which latter cases our pleasure is linked to the existence of the object. "[Dagegen]," he continues, "ist das Geschmacksurteil bloB kontemplativ [Kant's emphasis], d.i. ein Urteil, welches, indifferent in Ansehung des Daseins eines Gegenstandes, nur seine Beschaffenheit mit dem Gefuhl der Lust und Unlust zusammenhalt" (8:286).a6 This distinction clearly relies on the Platonic distinction between sensible and intelligible beauty; someone whose pleasure is dependent on the physical existence of the object is in the same position as Narcissus who, as we recall, fell victim to the world of matter. This does not mean that there is no difference between the pleasant and the good. In the next paragraph, Kant proceeds to set up a typology of the three kinds of approbation, and this passage bears an unmistakable similarity to the cosmological triads I considered in chapters 2 and 3: "Angenehm heifit jemandem das, was ihn vergniigt; schon, was ihm bloB gefallt; gut, was geschatzt, gebilligt, d.i. worin von ihm ein objektiver Wert gesetzt wird. Annehmlichkeit gilt auch fur vernunftlose Tiere; Schonheit nur fur Menschen, d.i. tierische, aber doch vernimftige Wesen, aber auch nicht bloB als solche (z.B. Geister) sondern zugleich als tierische; das Gute aber furjedes vernunftige Wesen uberhaupt" (8:287).*? The critical Kant may superficially be discussing types of judgment, but the discussion clearly rests on the ancient cosmology, familiar from our earlier examples, according to which man occupies a middle station between the animals and the intelligible beings. Implicitly, then, a person who succumbs to sensible beauty (or to the pleasant) is no different from an animal, a typically Platonic view. The passage contains, further, the traditional duality in the definition of man such as we found in Plotinus and Pico: on the one hand, a methectic view, that he is simultaneously a rational animal, but also a choristic view that he can be judged merely as a rational being. The passage is significant, finally, because it ties beauty, more clearly than any of our other quotations, to the notion 26. "On the other hand, the judgment of taste is merely contemplative; i.e., it is a judgment which, indifferent as regards the existence of an object, compares its character with the feeling of pleasure and pain" (p. 53). 27. "That which gratifies a [person] is called pleasant; that which merely pleases him is beautiful; that which is esteemed or approved by him, i.e., that to which he accords an objective worth, is good. Pleasantness concerns irrational animals also, but beauty only concerns [human], i.e., animal, but still rational, beings—not merely qua rational (e.g., spirits), but qua animal also—and the good concerns every rational being in general" (P-54)-

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of humanity with its central cosmic position. This identification is of course implicit in the Platonic theory of beauty itself, even if here Kant has omitted the concept of love, a usual feature of the Platonic texts; if beauty is the sole outpost of the intelligible in the sensible world, then in that regard it must resemble man, who is himself the sole corporeal being endowed with an intelligible capacity. This passage prepares the way for Schiller to speculate in Uber Anmut und Wurde about beauty as a possible attribute of the human soul, and to argue in the tenth Asthetischer Brief (600) that beauty is a necessary condition of humanity ("eine notwendige Bedingung der Menschheit"). The Platonic character of Kant's theory declares itself also in the Third Moment of the Analytic of the Beautiful. Here Kant, supporting his differentiation of the beautiful from the good, insists on a distinction between normal and formal purposiveness. If an object's purpose is known to us (normal purposiveness), then interest will supervene, detracting from the judgment's aesthetic status. Instead, in one of the most difficult concepts of a difficult treatise, the beautiful object is said to display the form of purposiveness without the substance (formal purposiveness): "Also konnen wir eine ZweckmaBigkeit der Form nach, auch ohne da6 wir ihr einen Zweck (als die Materie des nexus finalis) zum Grunde legen, wenigstens beobachten, und an Gegenstanden, wiewohl nicht anders als durch Reflexion, bemerken" (8:299) .28 It is not necessary for us to inquire closely into Kant's meaning here or whether the concept is coherent. What matters for our purposes is that his concept of the contemplative or reflective judgment confirms its Platonic nature by calling forth the old dichotomy of matter and form for its explication. The objective purpose of an object is classified as part of its material nature, and the aesthetic vision, as we have repeatedly seen, is one that has been trained to see the ideal in the material. This analysis is confirmed by Kant's polemic against "Reiz und Running" (charm and emotion) in the following sections 13 and 14, where he trains his sights on the pleasant as something to be excluded from the pure judgment of taste. A judgment of the pleasant is, for Kant, a lower type of aesthetic judgment, and here again he resorts to the antithesis of form and matter to differentiate: "Asthetische Urteile konnen ... in empirische und reine eingeteilt werden. Die erstern sind 28. "Thus we can at least observe a purposiveness according to form, without basing it on a purpose (as the material of the nexus finalis), and remark it in objects, although only by reflection" (p. 69).

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die, welche Annehmlichkeit oder Unannehmlichkeit, die zweiten die, welche Schonheitvon einem Gegenstande, oder von der Vorstellungsart desselben, aussagen; jene sind Sinnenurteile (materiale asthetische Urteile), diese (als formale) allein eigentliche Geschmacksurteile" (8:303).29 The Platonic rejection of empirical experience in the name of purity and the axiom that form is purer than matter are both prominent in such passages. This attitude leads, as has been noted frequently by the commentators, to a pronounced formalism of taste, a formalism that can be traced back to Plato's own penchant for pure geometrical forms.30 As in Platonism, it is the function of the beautiful object to point beyond itself into an incorporeal world, and this intelligible norm dictates both a particular mode of perception and also a particular canon of beautiful things. THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME

Schiller's antithetical aesthetic system, with its constant shifts between standpoints of the beautiful and the sublime, is the indirect descendant, I have argued, of the ambivalent Platonic judgment on beauty. True, there is no Platonic concept of the sublime, but this does not invalidate my thesis. We have seen how, in Plato's thought, sensible beauty immediately calls forth intelligible beauty as a corrective to its own materiality, and we can observe the same process at work in Schiller. Schiller's beauty corresponds to the first moment in the Platonic theory, that is, to the recognition of an intelligible idea expressed to the senses in a bodily form, an experience reflecting the positive evaluation of the world connected by Plotinus with the Timaeus. The second moment, that is, the insight that not the body but the idea is the true bearer of beauty, reappears in accentuated form in the sublime, and this reflects the negative evaluation of the material world that Plotinus associates with the Parable of the Cave. 29. "Aesthetical judgments can be divided ... into empirical and pure. The first assert pleasantness or unpleasantness; the second assert the beauty of an object or of the manner of representing it. The former are judgments of sense (material aesthetical judgments); the latter (as formal) are alone strictly judgments of taste" (p. 73). 30. See Phikbus 51 c: "The beauty of figures which I am now trying to indicate is not what most people would understand as such, not the beauty of a living creature or a picture; what I mean, what the argument points to, is something straight, or round, and the surface and solids which a lathe, or a carpenter's rule and square, produces from the straight and the round."

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One might object that in the aesthetic theory of the eighteenth century, sublime objects are quite different from beautiful ones, with Alpine avalanches and Arcadian idylls serving respectively as visual stereotypes for each concept. Since Schiller's writings draw on this type of discourse, it might be argued, it is inappropriate to see the beautiful and the sublime as aspects of a single experience. In response to this, recall, first, the dual perspective of Platonism on the beautiful object, which is first acclaimed and then spurned. In the duality of the beautiful and the sublime, this contradictory perspective on a single object is transformed into the notion of two disparate objects calling forth the two responses (hence Kant's insistence that, strictly speaking, the object judged sublime is not itself sublime, but rather the ideas to which it points are sublime). Second, one must stress that the ultimate aim of Schiller's theory, affirmed repeatedly, is the fusion of the beautiful and the sublime; the sublime is therefore forced to function in his system in a way that had no precedent in the eighteenth century. In so far as we can imagine anything corresponding to this oxymoronic construct, he means an entity that is both organic and ideal, something that represents the highest product of nature, while also being purged of all corporeality, that is, an entity that simultaneously epitomizes and overcomes nature. The fact that the term "sublime," before it is integrated into this ideal, is applied to quite different objects, merely enhances the logical and metaphysical tension with which Schiller's synthesis is charged. It requires us to postulate, so to speak, a landscape that is simultaneously Alpine and Arcadian, or a way of looking at the Arcadian that permits us to see the lineaments of the Alpine behind it. Far from refuting our argument, this point merely underlines how, in his reception of the Platonic tradition, Schiller reproduces the tensions at its heart in such an acute form. How does the union of the beautiful and the sublime come to play such a prominent role in Schiller's thought? The question requires an answer, since Kant, the predominant influence on him in this period, never considers such a fusion. At the systematic level, of course, this union answers the need for methexis of the intelligible in the material, and, in the context of Schiller's work, it reflects the same idea as the unity of the two Venuses in "Die Kiinstler." However, it is still worth investigating at a more localized level exactly how Kant's theory is altered in the transmission. As we have seen, Kant had solved the problem of chorismos by his theory of the reflective use of judgment with reference to the subjective

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idea of the purposiveness of nature, and, as we saw further, in the KalliasBrief of 8 February 1793, Schiller implicitly rejected Kant's solution. Though Schiller does not directly address the topic of the sublime in the Kallias-Briefe, the unification of the beautiful and the sublime is nonetheless necessitated by the alternative theory he proposes there. Already in the letter of 25 January, he had asked a provocative question: "eben darin zeigt sich die Schonheit in ihrem hochsten Glanz, wenn sie die logische Natur ihres Objektes iiberwindet, und wie kann sie uberwinden, wo kein Widerstand ist?" (395)31 The feeling of beauty implied here incorporates the moment of struggle and opposition recognized by modern critics as the hallmark of the sublime. As such, it stands in sharp contrast to the standard rationalist notion of perceptible perfection, an understanding that tied beauty to the theodicy and hence to the distinctively eighteenth-century sense of being at home in the physical world. Instead, the quintessentially Schillerian sense of conflict, a new feature in the eighteenth-century landscape of beauty, reproduces the tension inherent in the Platonic concept. As we have seen, Schiller went on to redefine aesthetic judgment as the regulative use of practical reason. This step brought aesthetics into closer connection with morality than Kant had envisaged, but also echoed the moral imperative, inherent in Platonic metaphysics, to rise from sensibility to ideas. As we shall now see, this redefinition also causes beauty to look more like the sublime.32 In section 59 of the third Critique, a highly elusive and speculative argument portrays beauty as symbol of morality ("Symbol der Sittlichkeit"); Schiller's alignment of beauty with morality therefore does not represent a complete break with the Kantian precedent. In the earlier Analytic of the Beautiful, however, where he lays the groundwork for what follows later, Kant defined the experience of beauty as a pleasurable state of free play between imagination and understanding, the faculties that are involved in normal acts of cognition. To be sure, Kant emphasizes repeatedly that aesthetic judgments are not cognitive and that no concept is involved in making them. It needs to be stressed, however, that the pleasure we feel when beholding beauty is connected in Kant's eyes with cognition, though not with the cognition of a particular 31. "Beauty shows itself in its highest splendour when it overcomes the logical nature of its object, and how can it overcome where there is no resistance?" 32. Busing deserves particular credit for stressing this aspect of the KB. See Schillers Idee desErhabenen, pp. 60-70, which builds on Latzel's analysis.

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thing but with cognition in general. The second moment of the judgment of taste ("der Quantitat nach") is general assent, and in Kant's view the only possible basis for such universality is knowledge, "weil Erkenntnis, als Bestimmung des Objekts, womit gegebene Vorstellungen (in welchem Subjekte es auch sei) zusammen stimmen sollen, die einzige Vorstellungsart ist, die fur jedermann gilt" (8:296).33 If the imputation of general assent to the judgment of the beautiful is therefore explicable only on this assumption, and if the judgment contains ex hy pothesi no particular piece of knowledge, the inference must be that it is aligned with knowledge as such: "Soil nun der Bestimmungsgrund des Urteils iiber diese allgemeine Mitteilbarkeit der Vorstellung bloB subjektiv, namlich ohne einen Begriff vom Gegenstande gedacht werden, so kann er kein anderer als der Gemutszustand sein, der im Verhaltnisse der Vorstellungskrafte zu einander angetroffen wird, sofern sie eine gegebene Vorstellung auf Erkenntnis uberhaupt beziehen" (8:295-96; Kant's emphasis) ,34 This argument, which is elaborated and reinforced in subsequent paragraphs, bears out the concern in Kant's introduction that the subjective principle of purposiveness should play a role in our knowledge of nature as an orderly system of laws. Schiller, who, as we saw, fails to respond to this concern, thus has no interest in taking over Kant's alignment of the judgment of the beautiful with cognition. Instead, by placing aesthetic judgment under the tutelage of practical reason, he echoes Kant's treatment of the sublime.35 In the important section 23, "Ubergang von dem Beurteilungsvermogen des Schonen zu dem des Erhabenen" (Transition from the faculty 33. "Because cognition, as the determination of the object with which given representations (in whatever subject) are to agree, is the only kind of representation which is valid for everyone" (p. 64). 34. "If the determining ground of our judgment as to this universal communicability of the representation is to be merely subjective, i.e., is conceived independently of any concept of the object, it can be nothing else than the state of mind, which is to be met with in the relation of our representative powers to each other, so far as they refer a given representation to cognition in general' (p. 64). 35. In The Ideology of the Aesthetic Terry Eagleton gives delightful expression to the relation between beauty and knowledge in Kant's thought: "The aesthetic ... is simply the state in which common knowledge, in the act of reaching out to its object, suddenly arrests and rounds upon itself, forgetting its referent for a moment and attending instead, in a wonderful flash of self-estrangement, to the miraculously convenient way in which its inmost structure seems geared to the comprehension of the real" (pp. 65-66). Eagleton's identification of the judgment of beauty with "the aesthetic" is open to criticism, however, in that it omits the differently structured sublime.

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which judges of the beautiful to that which judges of the sublime) Kant writes that we experience the feeling of the sublime when we are confronted with an object that does not correspond to our cognitive capacity, whether by virtue of its size or its power (hence the "mathematical" and the "dynamic" subcategories). Whereas the beautiful object appears "fur unsere Urteilskraft gleichsam vorherbestimmt" (seemingly preadapted to our judgment) by virtue of its form, the sublime object (or, more accurately, the object that occasions the feeling of the sublime) overwhelms our cognitive faculties. It is "der Form nach zwar zweckwidrig fur unsere Urteilskraft, unangemessen unserm Darstellungsvermogen, und gleichsam gewalttatig fur die Einbildungskraft" (81330),s6 but it is judged to be sublime despite this seeming incompatibilty. In this experience, the failure of our cognitive faculties causes us to become aware of our rational capacity, which alone is truly sublime, and in comparison to which empirical cognition is a lower function. It is not necessary to trace all the steps of Kant's analysis here. What matters for us is that, since reason governs the moral realm and is the source of ideas, the sublime leads Kant naturally to the subject of morality and the associated dualism of the intelligible and sensible worlds. The sublime is thus aligned with the field of morality in a manner corresponding to the alignment of beauty with cognition. The feeling of the sublime, he writes, is "Achtung fur unsere eigene Bestimmung, die wir einem Objekte der Natur durch eine gewisse Subreption ... beweisen, welches uns die Uberlegenheit der Vernunftbestimmung unserer Erkenntnisvermogen uber das groBte Vermogen der Sinnlichkeit gleichsam anschaulich macht" (8:344).37 The affinity of this experience to moral judgment, in which our rational being asserts its superiority over our sensible being, could hardly be clearer, and Kant makes this explicit in the following summary of the two kinds of aesthetic experience: "Beide, als Erklarungen asthetischer allgemeingultiger Beurteilung, beziehen sich auf subjektive Griinde, namlich einerseits [viz. beauty] der Sinnlichkeit, so wie sie zugunsten des kontemplativen Verstandes, andererseits [viz. the sublime], wie sie wider dieselbe, dagegen fur die Zwecke der praktischen Vernunft, und 36. "That which excites in us ... the feeling of the sublime may appear as regards its form to violate purpose in respect of the judgment, to be unsuited to our presentative faculty, and, as it were, to do violence to the imagination" (p. 103). 37. "Respect for our own destination, which by a certain subreption we attribute to an object of nature. ... This makes intuitively evident the superiority of the rational determination of our cognitive faculties to the greatest faculty of our sensibility" (p. 119).

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doch beide in demselben Subjekte vereinigt, in Beziehung auf das moralische Gefuhl zweckmaBig sind" (8:357).s8 To be sure, Kant is already thinking here of his concluding argument in section 59, and he thus specifies that not merely the sublime but also beauty is purposive in relation to moral feeling; he clearly wishes beauty to fulfil the task of uniting nature and freedom without assistance from the sublime. Nonetheless, it is in his analysis of the sublime that Kant calls on the pathos of the intelligible that is also so characteristic of his moral thought. 39 Writing of the dynamically sublime, he therefore uses language of considerable solemnity to describe how the power of nature reinforces our consciousness of participation in the intelligible world: "Auf solche Weise wird die Natur in unserm asthetischen Urteile nicht, sofern sie furchterregend ist, als erhaben beurteilt, sondern weil sie unsere Kraft (die nicht Natur ist) in uns aufruft, um das, wofur wir besorgt sind (Giiter, Gesundheit und Leben), als klein, und daher ihre Macht (der wir in Ansehung dieser Stiicke allerdings unterworfen sind) fur uns und unsere Personlichkeit demungeachtet doch fur keine solche Gewalt ansehen, unter die

38. "Both, as explanations of aesthetical universally valid judging, are referred to subjective grounds; in the one case to grounds of sensibility, in favour of the contemplative understanding; in the other case in opposition to sensibility, but on behalf of the purposes of practical reason. Both, however, united in the same subject, are purposive in reference to the moral feeling" (p. 134). 39. See also vol. 8, p. 358, where the affinity of the sublime to morality is set above that of beauty: "In der Tat lafit sich ein Gefuhl fur das Erhabene der Natur nicht wohl denken, ohne eine Stimmung des Gemiits, die der zum Moralischen ahnlich ist, damit zu verbinden; und, obgleich die unmittelbare Lust am Schonen der Natur gleichfalls eine gewisse Liberalitat der Denkungsart, d.i. Unabhangigkeit des Wohlgefallens vom blopen Sinnengenusse, voraussetzt und kultiviert, so wird dadurch doch mehr die Freiheit im Spiele, als unter einem gesetzlichen Geschafte vorgestellt: welches die echte Beschaffenheit der Sittlichkeit des Menschen ist, wo die Vernunft der Sinnlichkeit Gewalt antun mu|3, nur da|i im asthetischen Urteile uber das Erhabene diese Gewalt durch die Einbildungskraft selbst, als [durch ein Werkzeug] der Vernunft, ausgeiibt vorgestellt wird." (In fact, a feeling for the sublime in nature cannot well be thought without combining therewith a mental disposition which is akin to the moral. And although the immediate pleasure in the beautiful of nature likewise presupposes and cultivates a certain liberality in our mental attitude, i.e., a satisfaction independent of mere sensible enjoyment, yet freedom is thus represented as in play rather than in that law-directed occupation that is the genuine characteristic of human morality, in which reason must exercise dominion over sensibility. But in aesthetical judgments upon the sublime this dominion is represented as exercised by the imagination, regarded as an instrument of reason [pp. 135-36].)

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wir uns zu beugen batten, wenn es auf unsre hochste Grundsatze und deren Behauptung oder Verlassung ankame" (8:350).4° The philosopher's exemplar of moral courage and indifference to physical danger is of course Socrates. In his memorable account of the philosophical life in the Phaedo (64-69), Plato's Socrates inveighs against the body and its needs as distractions from the quest for pure knowledge. Taking his hostility to sense experience to its logical conclusion, he asserts that dying is the philosopher's true profession, for the philosophical life is dedicated to the "separation of the soul from body" in the interests of truth. As an experience that weakens our attachment to corporeal things, to "goods, health, and life," the Kantian sublime thus appeals strongly to the Platonic conception of the philosophical life and might almost have been designed as a way of reconciling the Platonist with the suspect area of aesthetic experience. It is not a coincidence that, having entered onto this Platonic territory, Kant should also refer to the intelligible ideas which in the first Critique had provided the occasion for his tribute to Plato. Of the stormy ocean, a favourite sublime object in eighteenth-century aesthetics, he writes, "Sein Anblick ist graJBlich; und man muB das Gemut schon mit mancherlei Ideen angefullt haben, wenn es durch eine solche Anschauung zu einem Gefuhl gestimmt werden soil, welches selbst erhaben ist, indem das Gemut die Sinnlichkeit zu verlassen und sich mit Ideen, die hohere Zweckmafiigkeit enthalten, zu beschaftigen angereizt wird" (8:330).41 Not only is the intelligible ontologically superior to the material, Kant also draws the inference here that a superior moral character is required if one is to be capable of experiencing the sublime, whereas (implicitly) beauty, dwelling at the lower level of cognition, is accessible to everybody. This discrimination between aesthetic experiences on the basis of the moral character required for their enjoyment is, of course, taken up by Schiller. But it also parallels the Platonic duality of sensible and intelligible beauty discussed in chapter 3, above. To the passages from 40. "In this way nature is notjudged to be sublime in our aesthetical judgments in so far as it excites fear; but because it calls up that power in us (which is not nature) of regarding as small the things about which we are solicitous (goods, health, and life), and of regarding its might (to which we are no doubt subjected in respect of these things) as nevertheless without any dominion over us and our personality to which we must bow where our highest fundamental propositions, and their assertion or abandonment, are concerned" (p. 126). 41. "Its aspect is horrible; and the mind must be already filled with manifold ideas if it is to be determined by such an intuition to a feeling itself sublime, as it is incited to abandon sensibility and to busy itself with ideas that involve higher purposiveness" (p. 103).

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the Phaedrus cited there, we can add the passage in the Republic (4760) where Socrates says, "The lovers of sounds and sights ... delight in beautiful tones and colors and shapes and in everything that art fashions out of these, but their thought is incapable of apprehending and taking delight in the nature of the beautiful itself." It is clear that the fusion of Kant's beauty and sublimity into a single construct of ideal beauty, such as Schiller repeatedly attempts, gives rise to a concept that, in its inherent duality, is closely akin to the Platonic concept: Schiller's ideal beauty is delightful as an experience of sense but also capable of leading us to the mental enjoyment of "Beauty itself." A person who has received an aesthetic education consisting only of beauty, Schiller writes in Uber das Erhabene (807), will, like Plato's "lovers of sounds and sights," be trapped in the sensible world; his reference to the "Erschlaffung eines ununterbrochenen Genusses" (the enervation of uninterrupted pleasure) shows that he is thinking of the carnal temptations of Telemachus. The sublime is needed as a complement and corrective to remind us of our "true fatherland" in the Ithaca of the intelligible, and this is equivalent to the ascent to "Beauty itself." Arguing methectically, Schiller concludes by reconciling the higher and the lower type in an ideal of human perfection, according to which we can become "vollendete Burger der Natur, ohne deswegen ihre Sklaven zu sein und ohne unser Burgerrecht der intelligiblen Welt zu verscherzen."42 While Kant's aesthetic theory as a whole is intended to serve a methectic function, the sublime, in stressing the antagonism between nature and the intelligible, threatens to reintroduce an awkward new chorismos. It is therefore understandable that, having once broached this dangerous subject, Kant retreats from it quickly, dismissing it as "ein blo6[er] Anhang zur asthetischen Beurteilung der ZweckmaBigkeit der Natur" (8:331) .43 It is worth observing, however, that even though, for the reasons outlined, Kant does not attempt to fuse the beautiful and the sublime, this step is to some extent required by his premises, and that Schiller was not necessarily perverting the sense of Kant's system by undertaking this step. In his cosmological schema in section 5 (quoted above), Kant alluded to the Platonic dual definition of man, as rational animal and as rational being: our enjoyment of the beautiful was accounted for by reference to 42. "Perfected citizens of nature, without thereby being its slaves and without throwing away our citizenship of the intelligible world." 43. "A mere appendix to the aesthetical judging of [the purposiveness of nature]" (p. 104).

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the first of these definitions. From what I have said, however, it is now clear that the sublime is an experience that can be explained only by reference to our identity as beings of pure spirit, for here our physical and empirical being is irrelevant. To this extent we can see that even in Kant, the duality of the beautiful and the sublime rests on the traditional assumptions of metaphysics, and that, more importantly, their fusion is required: though the metaphysician divides us into two beings, we are in common experience nonetheless one, and the goal of a philosophy must surely be to reflect that unity in a final synthesis. Moreover, once the aesthetic concepts have been aligned with the anthropological ones, the requirement of a single theory of man requires, as Schiller evidently sensed, an aesthetic synthesis also. As noted, Kant tries to accomplish his synthesis by means of beauty alone, and for this reason he fails to pursue the line of thought initiated in the Analytic of the Sublime. The account of the sublime, however, is too splendid to be sidelined in this fashion, and Schiller was so impressed by it that he allowed it not merely to influence his own concept of the sublime but to infiltrate his understanding of beauty also. This happens as follows. In section 23, Kant writes of beauty and the sublime as representations ("Darstellungen") of indefinite concepts of the understanding and of reason respectively: "das Schone [scheint] fur die Darstellung eines unbestimmten Verstandesbegriffs, das Erhabene aber eines dergleichen Vernunftbegriffs genommen zu werden" (8:329).44 In bypassing Kant's theory of formal purposiveness and making beauty a representation of a concept of reason (for that is what freedom is), Schiller draws on the theory of the sublime for the definition of beauty, hence rendering more feasible their fusion into a single experience.45 44. "The beautiful seems to be regarded as the presentation of an indefinite concept of understanding; the sublime as that of a like concept of reason" (p. 102). 45. Kant writes of the contradictory effect of the sublime on our minds: "indem das Gemiit von dem Gegenstande nicht blo|3 angezogen, sondern wechselweise auch immer wieder abgesto|3en wird, [enthalt] das Wohlgefallen am Erhabenen nicht sowohl positive Lust als vielmehr Bewunderung oder Achtung" (vol. 8, p. 329). (As the mind is not merely attracted by the object but is ever being alternately repelled, the satisfaction in the sublime does not so much involve a positive pleasure as admiration or respect [p. 102].) This response reappears in Schiller's account of the effect of ideal beauty (in the form of the Juno Ludovisi) in the 15th AB (p. 618; translation chap. 3, n.25, above): "Indem derweibliche Gott unsre Anbetung heischt, entziindet das gottgleiche Weib unsre Liebe; aber indem wir uns der himmlischen Holdseligkeit aufgelost hingeben, schreckt die himmlische Selbstgenugsamkeit uns zuriick."

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For both Kant and Schiller, the sublime poses a metaphysical problem, in that ideas of reason are not capable of sensible representation: "keine ihnen angemessene Darstellung [ist] moglich" (Kant, 8:330) (no adequate presentation is possible for them [103]); "Freiheit selbst [kann] nie als solche in die Sinne fallen" (Schiller, 400) (freedom as such can never be perceived by the senses). Kant devises a theory of the sublime by which the idea of reason is called indirectly to our attention by the crushing spectacle of the avalanche, or whatever the particular occasion is, and Schiller follows him in this. For beauty, however, which he has also related to reason, Schiller has to resort to an elaborate argument from illusion by which the object feigns a self-determination that it cannot possibly possess. By both retaining Kant's theory of the sublime as such and also drawing on it for his theory of beauty, Schiller places himself in a peculiar logical position. While the sublime object gives an indirect representation of freedom, beauty represents it directly, albeit illusorily, and while the two concepts might thus seem to complement each other, we must recall that the premise for the sublime is precisely that ideas cannot be represented directly. In his important study of theories of symbolism, E. H. Gombrich brings in an antithesis, drawn from the writings of the Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius, between cataphatic and apophatic representations: "There are two contrasting ways in which God speaks to man in symbols: either representing like through like [i.e., kataphasis] or like through unlike [i.e., apophasis]. The result in our terms is either Beauty or Mystery. Both these qualities are or can be a token of the Divine."46 In these terms, beauty is a cataphatic, sublimity an apophatic representation of 46. Gombrich, "Icones Symbolicae," p. 152. Bearing in mind Platonism's suspicion of beauty, Gombrich's analysis of theological suspicions of kataphasis is of interest here, since it shows that Christianity was not immune to the structural dilemmas of its Platonic inheritance (p. 151): "But there is a danger in this kind of symbolic language. It may lead to the very confusions the religious mind must avoid. The reader of the Scriptures might take it literally and think that the heavenly beings are really 'god-like men, radiant figures of transcending beauty, clad in shining robes ... or similar figures through which the Revelation has given a sensible representation of the heavenly spirits.' [Qtd. from Edwyn Bevan, Holy Images: An Inquiry into Idolatry and Image-Worship in Ancient Paganism and Christianity, 1940.] It is to avoid this confusion that the holy authors of the revealed writings have deliberately used inappropriate symbols and similes so that we should not cling to the literal meaning. The very monstrosities of which they talk, such as lions and horses in the heavenly regions, prevent us from accepting these images as real and stimulate our mind to seek a higher significance. Thus the apparent inappropriateness of the symbols found in the Holy Writ is in effect a means through which our soul is led on towards spiritual truth. To the profane

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freedom, and we can see how the new antithetical pair is correlated with our other classical dichotomy. From a strictly choristic point of view, no direct representation of ideas is conceivable, and so chorismos and apophasis belong together. Conversely, the premise of methexis allows for some degree of presence of the idea in matter, and therefore a methectic ontology leads to a cataphatic image. This relationship can be seen in the following important passage from Uber Anmut und Wurde (482) where the ontological premises of dignity and grace are presented with particular clarity: "In der Wurde ... wird uns ein Beispiel der Unterordnung des Sinnlichen unter das Sittliche vorgehalten, welchem nachzuahmen fur uns Gesetz, zugleich aber fur unser physisches Vermogen iibersteigend ist.47 In der Anmut hingegen, wie in der Schonheit uberhaupt, sieht die Vernunft ihre Forderung in der Sinnlichkeit erfullt, und iiberraschend tritt ihr eine ihrer Ideen in der Erscheinung entgegen."48 The word "iiberraschend" here is a signal of logical embarrassment, for, according to the premise of chorismos, the appearance of an idea in the phenomenal world is not surprising but unthinkable; indeed, in the original context from which Gombrich took the terms apophasis and kataphasis, the direct representation of the Deity could be considered blasphemous. The theological background illuminates why it is that Schiller's concepts of the beautiful and the sublime do not merely compete over the same territory, they seem even to challenge each other's right of existence.

these enigmatic images conceal the holy arcanum of the supernatural; to the initiate, however, they serve as the first rung of the ladder through which we ascend to the Divine." Like intelligible beauty for Plato and sublimity for Kant and Schiller, the katophatic image requires a spectator of superior spiritual power, perpetuating the distinction between rational elite and sensualistic mass. Gombrich sees the relevance of this antithesis in the context of the later eighteenth century also, though without bringing in the concept of the sublime. He thus cites Schiller's "Die Kunstler," continuing (p. 187): "And while German classicism had thus taken die upward path on the ladder of analogy through the image of harmonious forms to the idea of harmony, Romanticism rediscovered the Areopagite's alternative, the power of the mysterious and shocking to rouse the mind to higher forms of thought." 47. For a further explanation of the apophatic character of the sublime, see the first paragraph of the treatise Uber das Pathetische (p. 512). 48. "In dignity ... we are presented with an example of the subordination of the sensible to the moral, the imitation of which is obligatory for us, but also exceeds our physical capability. ... In grace, on the other hand, reason sees its demand fulfilled in sensible form, and, to its surprise, it finds one of its ideas made manifest to it as a phenomenon."

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The distinction between cataphatic and apophatic representations helps us understand Schiller's difficulty in defining a theoretical relationship that will allow the beautiful and the sublime to coexist peacefully. But at this point it also becomes clear that the struggle between the beautiful and the sublime recapitulates in the aesthetic mode the struggle in Plato's writings between art and philosophy. As we recall, Plato was forced to resist the claims of art precisely because, with his metaphysical understanding of beauty, he had supplied the artist with such a powerful claim to portray the intelligible that the philosopher felt his monopoly threatened, that is, Plato had suggested the possibility of artistic kataphasis even though his own discipline depends for its existence on the denial of kataphasis. For Schiller, the sublime itself becomes the vehicle for the claim that the cataphatic representation of the intelligible is illicit, hence paradoxically integrating the Platonic attack on art into an aesthetic concept. But this brings us back to his fundamental logical dilemma, that of how to simultaneously unite and separate unity and separation. Methexis is the premise of beauty, chorismos the premise of philosophy and morality (both of them rest on the supremacy of the intelligible). The function of the sublime is to render chorismos harmless for art by transforming it into an aesthetic principle. But it can perform this act of co-option only at the price of introducing the conflict between art and philosophy (and also morality) into art itself. The antinomies of the Platonic doctrine of ideas cannot be defused so easily. Where Schiller makes the eirenic claim, as in Uber das Erhabene, that we can be citizens of both realms, he cannot simultaneously take into account the superiority of the intelligible to the material, and hence, he fails to convince us. KNOWLEDGE

What happens to cognition in Schiller's account, since he has seemingly banished it from the aesthetic realm? When he abandons the Kantian theory of formal purposiveness and consequently subsumes both the beautiful and the sublime under practical reason, that is, under morality, he is left with a Platonic or Plotinian model in which the universe, consisting of an intelligible and a material realm, is simultaneously structured as a hierarchy of forms and contents in ascending degrees of abstraction. Morality consists in imposing forms on contents, and aesthetic experience comprises both the sensible enjoyment of the form in material bodies and the intellectual flight that raises the observer above

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the body to the incorporeal form that is imposed on it by the artist. Is there any room in this model for cognition as a distinct function? Two examples should suffice to show that in Schiller's fundamentally Platonic model knowledge and ethics are both subsumed under form or reason as parallel manifestations of man's intelligible part. In "Die Kunstler," first, human history is portrayed as an ascent from nature to reason, and already here, before his study of Kant, we can see Schiller using Platonic instruments such as the distinction between contemplation and tactile perception. Before art began to change humanity's relation to the world, for example, we were "Durch der Begierde blinde Fessel nur/An die Erscheinungen gebunden" (112-13).49 However, under the artists' influence ("Von der Betrachtung angehalten, / Von eurem Spaheraug umstrickt" [i39-40]),5° the eye takes over from the physical appetites in determining man's relation to his environment. The beginnings of artistic creation attest a new active quality in man's perception: "Zu edel schon, nicht miifiig zu empfangen, / Schuft ihr im Sand" (i34-35)-51 This quality is attributed to the role of mind: "Zum erstenmal genieBt der Geist,/Erquickt von ruhigeren Freuden,/Die aus der Feme nur ihn weiden" (i 74-76).52 The foundation is thus laid for a human history consisting of continuous progress as the mind ascends to ever greater degrees of abstraction, which, in accordance with the underlying Plotinian model, are also depicted as ever higher degrees of formal purity: "So fuhrt ihn," Schiller tells the artists, "in verborgnem Lauf, / Durch immer reinre Formen, reinre Tone, / Durch immer hohre Hohn und immer schonre Schone/Der Dichtung Blumenleiter still hinauf" (425-28).53 As the metaphor of the ladder indicates, Schiller is working with a fundamentally one-dimensional model that allows him litde room for differentiation. The ascent from matter to form has to serve as explanation for both scientific and moral progress, and the simplicity of the model thus condemns Schiller to a moral intellectualism. While the poem is mainly concerned with increases in human knowledge of nature, numerous passages suggest that the ascent brings moral as well as 49. "bound to phenomena solely through the blind chain of desire." 50. "halted by contemplation, trapped by your scouting eye." 1i. "Too noble now for idle reception, you created in the sand." 52. "For the first time the spirit enjoys, refreshed by calmerjoys that delight it only from a distance." 53. "So lead him, by a hidden path, through ever purer forms and tones, through ever higher heights and more beautiful beauties, silently up the flowered ladder of poetry."

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intellectual advance. The emergence of contemplation, for example, simultaneously represents the elevation of humans over the status of the beasts: Jetzt fiel der Tierheit dumpfe Schranke, Und Menschheit trat auf die entwolkte Stirn, Und der erhabne Fremdling, der Gedanke Sprang aus dem staunenden Gehirn. (183-86)54

The reference to "Tierheit" (animality), together with the term "Gier" (appetite) a few lines above, tells us that the new consciousness will also enable us to control our sensual impulses in a way that was previously impossible. Despite the more difficult terminology of the Asthetische Briefe, Schiller is working there with an intellectual model fundamentally similar to that of "Die Kunstler." Behind the antithesis of the "Formtrieb" and "Stofftrieb" (form-impulse, matter-impulse) is the familiar Aristotelian antithesis of form and matter, and with his assumption of an "ursprungliche und radikale Entgegensetzung" (original and radical opposition) between them (607), Schiller shows once again his allegiance to the Plotinian reinterpretation of that antithesis. What matters here is that both knowledge and morality are allocated to the "Formtrieb." The "Formtrieb" produces laws, as opposed to the "cases" ("Falle") produced by the "Stofftrieb," and Schiller argues systematically that both knowledge and morality can be seen as manifestations of the one drive to reduce a changing material world to the timelessness of the mind: Es sei nun, daB wir einen Gegenstand erkennen, dafi wir einem Zustande unsers Subjekts objektive Giiltigkeit beilegen, oder daB wir aus Erkenntnissen handeln, daB wir das Objektive zum Bestimmungsgrund unsers Zustandes machen—in beiden Fallen reiBen wir diesen Zustand aus der Gerichtsbarkeit der Zeit und gestehen ihm Realitat fur alle Menschen und alle Zeiten, d.i. Allgemeinheit und Notwendigkeit zu. ... Wenn ... das moralische Gefuhl sagt: das soil sein, so entscheidet es fur immer und ewig—wenn du Wahrheit bekennst, weil sie Wahrheit ist, und Gerechtigkeit ausiibst, weil sie Gerechtigkeit ist, so hast du einen

54. "Now the dull constraint of animality dropped away, and humanity appeared on the clearing brow. Thought, sublime and foreign, leapt from the amazed brain."

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einzelnen Fall zum Gesetz fur alle Falle gemacht, einen Moment in deinem Leben als Ewigkeit behandelt. (6o5~6)55

As in "Die Kiinstler," the capacity to think automatically entails the capacity to resist natural impulse. With this detection of a structural identity in cognition and ethics, Schiller thus commits himself to the Socratic identification of virtue with knowledge, expressed most vividly in the Parable of the Cave, where the certainty of all kinds of knowledge is guaranteed only by the idea of the Good.56 I need hardly emphasize that Schiller's one-dimensional hierarchy of forms and contents represents a gross simplification of the Kantian system and a perversion of its intent. To be sure, Kant believed in a single rational faculty that was capable of both theoretical and practical applications, but the extreme intricacy of the theories presented in the first two Critiques is simply bypassed in Schiller's version. Kant's allocation of beauty and the sublime to cognition and ethics respectively thus loses its raison d'etre. Having aligned beauty with morality in the Kallias-Briefe, Schiller is then free to subsume both cognition and morality under the same principle of intelligible form in the Asthetische Briefe, with the result that beauty and the sublime can be fused and separated as his argument requires.

55. "Whether it is the case that we have knowledge of an object, that is, that we attach objective validity to a condition of our subject, or that we act upon knowledge, that is, that we make that objective principle into the determining ground of our condition—in both cases we seize this condition from the jurisdiction of time and confer upon it reality for all people and all times, that is, universality and necessity. ... When ... moral feeling says, this ought to be, it decides the matter for ever—when you avow the truth because it is truth and practise justice because it is justice, then you have made an individual case into a law for all cases, and treated one moment of your life as eternity." 56. For a further example of the equation of cognition and morality, see the last pages of AE, where Schiller develops the idea of the aesthetic state ("Staat") as a mean between the (rational arid natural) extremes of the ethical and dynamic states, but defines the former in such a way as to include the cognitive as well as the moral capacity: "Der Notwendigkeit strenge Stimme, die Pflicht, muf} ihre vorwerfende Formel verandern, die nur der Widerstand rechtfertigt.... Aus den Mysterien der Wissenschaft fuhrt der Geschmack die Erkenntnis unter den offenen Himmel des Gemeinsinns heraus" (p. 668). (Duty, the stern voice of necessity, must change its censorious mode of expression, which only resistance can justify. ... Taste leads knowledge out from the mysteries of science into the daylight of common sense.)

V

Ideals and Illusions

Schiller generally thinks of the synthesis of beauty and sublimity as giving rise to an "Ideal" which, like his other key concepts, transcends the narrower sphere of aesthetics. In the sixteenth Asthetischer Brief, for example, he plainly sets out the correspondence, always implicit, between his doctrine of beauty and his doctrine of man, tying them together by means of a somewhat mechanistic "Wirkungsasthetik": "Ich werde die Wirkungen der schmelzenden Schonheit an dem angespannten Menschen und die Wirkungen der energischen an dem abgespannten priifen, um zuletzt beide entgegengesetzte Arten der Schonheit in der Einheit des IdealSchonen auszuloschen, so wie jene zwei entgegengesetzten Formen der Menschheit in der Einheit des Ideal-Menschen untergehn" (621-22).* Although he attempts by the terms "angespannt" (tensed) and "abgespannt" (relaxed) to give his concepts a more modern and physiological look, Schiller is still thinking here of Platonic man at the borderline of the intelligible and the material, but with his situation interpreted according to the doctrine of mesotes; if he ventures too high, he is "angespannt," if he sinks too low, he is "abgespannt." The function of ideal beauty is thus to give man the right degree of "Spannung," hence placing him at his proper station. But Schiller's desire to affirm both interpretations of Platonism, that is, both to balance reason and nature and to make reason vanquish nature, prevents him from completing the program outlined in the quotation, i. "I shall examine the effects of melting beauty on the person who is tensed, and the effects of energizing beauty on the person who is relaxed, in order finally to extinguish the two opposite kinds of beauty in the unity of ideal beauty, just as those two types of humanity vanish in the unity of ideal man."

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for (to return to the spatial metaphor) an ideal man who took account of both of Schiller's strategies would have to be simultaneously at the middle point ("gemischte Natur") and above the middle point ("Intelligenz"). It is this aporia, deriving from the central dilemma of chorismos and methexis, that prevents Schiller from carrying out the announced program and thus leads to the fragmentary character of the treatise. Frequently, however, he resorts to arguments from illusion to resolve the logical dilemma. In the Kallias-Briefe, as we saw, the appearance of an impossible internal determination has to be evoked by an illusion that external determination is absent, and we shall see in this chapter that this paradigm still determines Schiller's portrayal of artistic creation in "Das Ideal und das Leben." It is therefore appropriate to deal with the topics of ideals and illusions together. IDEALIZATION

Schiller's commitment to an aesthetics of idealization predates his study of Kant. In his controversial review Uber Burgers Gedichte (published January 1791), he announces the task of poetry in an enlightened age: "Die Sitten, den Charakter, die ganze Weisheit ihrer Zeit miiBte sie [die Dichtkunst], gelautert und veredelt, in ihrem Spiegel sammeln und mit idealisierender Kunst aus dem Jahrhundert selbst ein Muster fur das Jahrhundert erschaffen" (971). 2 This kind of idealization cannot be a mere stylistic device that anybody could learn. In order to "ennoble" and "purify" the material in the specified manner, the poet must first have performed the same operations on himself: "Alles, was der Dichter uns geben kann, ist seine Individualitat. Diese muB es also wert sein, vor Welt und Nachwelt ausgestellt zu werden. Diese seine Individualitat so sehr als moglich zu veredeln, zur reinsten herrlichsten Menschheit hinaufzulautern, ist sein erstes und wichtigstes Geschaft, ehe er es unternehmen darf, die Vortrefflichen zu ruhren."3 Besides the identity of structure between Schiller's aesthetic and anthropological conceptions, we should therefore note his emphasis on the moral dimension of his 2. "Poetry must gather, purified and ennobled, the customs, the character, the whole wisdom of its time, creating from the century itself, and by means of idealizing art, a model for the century." 3. "All that the poet can give us is his individuality, and the latter must therefore be worth displaying to the world and posterity. His first and most important task is to ennoble this his individuality, to refine it to the point of the purest and most glorious humanity before he is permitted to stir the emotions of excellent men."

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demand: "Vom Asthetischen gilt eben das, was vom Sittlichen; wie es hier der moralisch vortreffliche Charakter eines Menschen allein 1st, der einer seiner einzelnen Handlungen den Stempel moralischer Giite aufdriicken kann; so ist es dort nur der reife, der vollkommene Geist, von dem das Reife, das Vollkommene ausflieBt" (972). 4 The Platonic anthropology dictates its own moral requirements, and an aesthetic that is built on these foundations can hardly escape from imposing the same requirements on both the practitioner and the consumer of art. The explicit alignment of the aesthetic with the moral in the first part of the quotation thus supports my scepticism towards the claim that Schiller stood for an "autonomy of the aesthetic."5 Though in the Burger review Schiller has not yet worked out the mechanics of his antithetical aesthetics, in which the ideal will play the role of coincidentia oppositorum between the beautiful and the sublime, one can already note a characteristic ambivalence in the argument. On the one hand, the malady of the age is said to be the fragmentation caused by the advanced division of labour, and poetry's great contribution is to 4. "What is true of the aesthetic applies also to the moral: as, in the one case, it is only a person's morally excellent character that puts the stamp of moral quality on one of his actions, so, in the other, it is only the mature and perfect spirit from whom maturity and perfection can flow." 5. The metaphors of purity and purification, frequent both in the Burger review and elsewhere, point back to Platonism and its sources in religious cults. Morgan, "Plato and Greek Religion," describes the language of the Phaedo as "Bacchic, Orphic, and Pythagorean all at once," and continues; "Plato here first introduces the Forms as unchanging, pure, eternal objects of knowledge; some of their features arise from his critique of physical items and characteristics as proper objects of knowledge ..., but some derive from the need for such objects to be of divine status" (pp. 238-39). A parallel can be found for Schiller's favourite metaphor "Veredelung" (meaning "refinement" as a process to which materials such as metals can be subjected; see Adelung, Grammatisch-kritisches Worterbuch, vol. 4, pp. 1022-23: "In the narrower sense the products of a country are refined when they are processed, in the widest sense, when they thereby receive a higher value" ["In engerm Verstande werden die Erzeugnisse eines Landes veredelt, wenn sie verarbeitet weren, im weitesten Verstand, in dem sie dadurch einen groBern Werth erhalten"]) in Plotinus' treatise on beauty (ENN 1.6.5), in close association with the language of purity: "a Soul becomes ugly—by something foisted upon it, by sinking itself into the alien, by a fall, a descent into body, into Matter. The dishonour of the Soul is in its ceasing to be clean and apart. Gold is degraded when it is mixed with earthy particles; if these be worked out, the gold is left and is beautiful, isolated from all that is foreign, gold with gold alone. And so the Soul; let it be but cleared of the desires that come by its too intimate converse with the body, emancipated from all the passions, purged of all that embodiment has thrust upon it, withdrawn, a solitary, to itself again—in that moment the ugliness that came only from the alien is stripped away." See also Plato's allegory of the metals in REP 3: 4i4d~4i5e.

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restore our unity to us: "Bei der Vereinzelung und getrennten Wirksamkeit unsrer Geisteskrafte, die der erweiterte Kreis des Wissens und die Absonderung der Berufsgeschafte notwendig macht, ist es die Dichtkunst beinahe allein, welche die getrennten Krafte der Seele wieder in Vereinigung bringt, welche Kopf und Herz, Scharfsinn und Witz, Vernunft und Einbildungskraft in harmonischem Bunde beschaftigt, welche gleichsam den ganzen Menschen in uns wieder herstellt" (971).6 Contrasting with this vision of restored harmony, the passages of the same text cited earlier speak of moral purification and elevation. Already, therefore, the pre-Kantian Schiller seems undecided between two models of human perfection, a methectic one defending the validity of the human realm, and a choristic one calling for man to overcome his lower natural self. While in the Burger review, the term "idealisierend" is attached to the second of these models, Schiller's later use of the term "Ideal" is generally linked to his aspiration to affirm both models simultaneously, a strategy one should think of as an enhanced methexis. In Uber Anmut und Wiirde, for example, the synthesis of rational freedom ("Vernunftfreiheit") and natural necessity ("Naturnotwendigkeit") is said to yield the ideal of human beauty (481), and the same point is repeated in Uber das Erhabene, where that synthesis is portrayed as the coincidence of happiness and dignity: "Das hochste Ideal, wornach wir ringen, ist, mit der physischen Welt als der Bewahrerin unserer Gliickseligkeit, in gutem Verhaltnis zu bleiben, ohne darum genotigt zu sein, mit der moralischen zu brechen, die unsre Wiirde bestimmt" (804-5).7 Schiller, we recall, had used the terms "Gliickseligkeit" and "Wiirde" to interpret the allegory of the two genii in the poem "Die Fiihrer des Lebens," and, as I argued above, this allegory is to be understood as successor to the allegory 6. "The expansion of knowledge and the differentiation of professional activities have necessitated the isolation and separate effectiveness of our mental powers, and in this situation it is virtually poetry alone that reunites the separate powers of the soul, that occupies head and heart, discernment and wit, reason and imagination in a harmonious alliance, that, so to speak, restores the whole man in us." 7. "The highest ideal for which we strive is to remain on good terms with the physical world as protector of our happiness, without therefore being compelled to break with the moral world that determines our dignity." See also NSD, pp. 768-69: "Denn endlich miissen wir es doch gestehen, dafi weder der naive noch der sentimentalische Charakter, fur sich allein betrachtet, das Ideal schoner Menschlichkeit ganz erschopfen, das nur aus der innigen Verbindung beider hervorgehen kann." (For we must finally admit that, when taken alone, neither the naive nor the sentimental character exhausts the ideal of beautiful humanity, which can proceed only from the intimate connection of the two.)

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of the two Venuses. While, therefore, Schiller in the 17908 frequently de mands the separation of reason and nature (or rather the separateness of their union and their separation, as symbolized by the separateness of the two genii), his concept of the ideal nonetheless preserves and expresses the aspiration of "Die Kiinstler" that the two Venuses should actually be one. While the term "ideal" itself can be traced back only to the Renaissance and represents a modern compromise with the Platonic tradition, the notion of an idealizing aesthetics has Platonic roots. Indeed, it is implicit in the Plotinian theory of form and matter, which, when applied to artistic: representation, leads to the demand that the subject matter be altered from its imperfect natural state in order to bring it as close as possible to the perfect idea that was its intelligible pattern. As Cassirer observes, the Platonic doctrine of the purity of the idea condemns only the mimetic artist, but Plato generally refrains from drawing the obvious conclusion, namely, that a non-mimetic art, oriented towards beauty itself rather towards individual beautiful things, would escape his objection.8 Panofsky, who stresses the pioneering role of Plotinus, is also able to show that Plato himself—"in a most remarkable instance"9—implies that the work of art surpasses reality. Questioned by Glaucon in the fifth book of the Republic as to the merit of designing a perfect state without regard to its feasibility in the real world, Socrates defends his methodology as follows: "Do you think, then, that he would be any the less a good painter, who, after portraying a pattern [paradeigma] of the ideally beautiful man and omitting no touch required for the perfection of the picture, should not be able to prove that it is actually possible for such a man to exist?" "Not I, by Zeus, he said." "Then were not we, as we say, trying to create in words the pattern of a good state?" "Certainly." "Do you think, then, that our words are any the less well spoken, if we find ourselves unable to prove that it is actually possible for a state to be governed in accordance with our words?" "Of course not, he said." (472d-e)

8. "Eidos und Eidolon," pp. 19-22. 9. Panofsky, Idea, p. 7.

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Socrates, or rather Plato, proceeds to justify his method by arguing the value of theory as a guide to practice, even if theory can never be fully realized. To be sure, the term paradeigma lacks the metaphysical resonance of eidos and idea. But by citing this (evidently non-mimetic) painter as an example in this context, Plato nonetheless confers on art some of the dignity of theoretical contemplation, contradicting his more frequent view that, as an imitator of imitations, the artist is confined to the realm of illusion.10 Plato's implicit admission here of the aesthetic character of his ideal state, taken together with the unique role of beauty as link between the intelligible and phenomenal, confirms the suspicion, explored in chapter 3 above, that an unacknowledged aesthetic component is contained in the very conception of the theory of ideas.11 As noted in chapter i, the seventeenth-century critic Bellori occupies a central position as a transmitter of idealist aesthetics, and his influence 10. See also the analogy between the guardians and artists at REP 6.4840^: "Do you think, then, that there is any appreciable difference between the blind and those who are veritably deprived of the knowledge of the veritable being of things, those who have no vivid pattern in their souls and so cannot, as painters look to their models, fix their eyes on the absolute truth, and always with reference to that ideal and in the exactest possible contemplation of it establish in this world also the laws of the beautiful, the just, and the good, when that is needful, or guard and preserve those that are established." 11. For Aristotle's adoption of the term paradeigma in the Politics and Poetics, see Panofsky, Idea, p. 8 and n. 34. The term, defined by Panofsky as a "paragon ..., an adequate example of which can never actually exist," corresponds closely to Schiller's use of the term "Idee," e.g., in A w (p. 470), where the "schone Seele" is said to be "bloB eine Idee, welcher gemaB zu werden er [der Mensch] mit anhaltender Wachsamkeit streben, aber die er bei aller Anstrengung nie ganz erreichen kann" (merely an idea; he [man] can strive with unceasing vigilance to approach that idea, but he can, with all his exertions, never completely reach it). Schiller presumably derives this understanding of the term from Kant's theory of ideas, both varieties of which (aesthetic and rational) have the transcendent quality of Plato's paradeigma. See, for example, KDU, sec. 49 (vol. 8, pp. 413-14): "unter einer asthetischen Idee ... verstehe ich diejenige Vorstellung der Einbildungskraft, die viel zu denken veranlaBt, ohne daB ihr doch irgend ein bestirnmter Gedanke, d.i. Begriff adaquat sein kann, die folglich keine Sprache vollig erreicht und verstandlich machen kann.—Man sieht leicht, daB sie das Gegenstiick (Pendant) von einer Vernunftidee sei, welche umgekehrt ein Begriff ist, dem keine Anschauung (Vorstellung der Einbildungskraft) adaquat sein kann." (By an aesthetic idea I understand that representation of the imagination that occasions much thought, without however any definite thought, i.e., any concept, being capable of being adequate to it; it consequently cannot be completely compassed and made intelligible by language. We easily see that it is the counterpart [pendant] of a rational idea; which, conversely, is a concept to which no intuition [or representation of the imagination] can be adequate [pp. 197-98].) It follows that, in Schiller's parlance, an "Ideal," in that it is unrealizable, must be an "Idee," but that an "Idee" need not have the characteristic synthetic quality of his "Ideal."

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was passed on to eighteenth-century Germany by Winckelmann.12 As far as we can judge from his best-known work, the speech L'idea delpittore ..., Bellori was not a particularly incisive or original thinker. The Platonic paradox that he grapples with unsuccessfully is alluded to in the title of the speech, which, translated into English, reads "The Idea of the Painter, the Sculptor and the Architect, Selected from Natural Beauty and yet Superior to Nature." As Bellori writes in his first paragraph, "Born from nature, [the idea of beauty] overcomes its origin and becomes the model of art";13 the temporal priority accorded here to nature, the hallmark of the doctrine of the ideal (as opposed to that of the idea), is of course incompatible with the strict Platonic doctrine. The artistic image must, in Bellori's view, be selected from actual beauties of nature, which the artist is commanded to observe attentively. (The prototype for this technique of selection is the frequently repeated story of Zeuxis and the maidens of Croton.) And yet, in a way that Bellori is unable to explain, the resulting picture will be a representation not of nature but of the idea. On what epistemological basis are we to suppose the artist to select and reject his models? Indeed, why does the representation of an idea look like a natural object at all, and not, say, a circle or a square? These are dilemmas of idealist aesthetics that are not really clarified by the postulate of a hybrid ideal hovering uncertainly between the intelligible and the material. Two points are significant for us here as we try to grasp the essence of the classical creed: first, that Bellori conducts a war on two fronts, against both the naturalist artists who portray reality without idealization—here Caravaggio is the butt of criticism, as Demetrius had been in antiquity and as Burger will be for Schiller—and the Mannerists who 12. In his posthumous edition of Winckelmann's Kleine Schriften (p. 412), Walthe Rehm asserts that Bellori's writings were "of decisive importance for W.'s Platonizing concept of beauty, even when he is silent about them or only cites them polemically" ("fur W.s platonisierende Schonheitsauffassung bestimmend, auch dann, wenn er sich uber sie ausschweigt oder sie nur polemisch ... zitiert"). On Bellori, see Panofsky, Idea, pp. 57-63; on his mediating historical role, Panofsky writes (pp. 108-9): "Bellori's essay ... is nothing but a restatement of the idea concept prevailing in the classic Renaissance. But it was Bel lori who gave this concept the form in which it entered into French and German art criticism." On Bellori and his predecessors, see also Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory. 13. Quoted in Panofsky, Idea, p. 157. Bellori personifies the idea of beauty as a goddess: "This idea, or truly the goddess of painting and sculpture, when the sacred curtains of the lofty genius of a Daedalus or an Apelles are parted, is revealed to us and enters the marble and the canvases." For a similar allegory of beauty in Schiller, compare "Die Kiinstler," lines 91-98.

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stray too far into a world of fantasy and metaphysical abstraction.14 Secondly, Bellori advises artists to avoid the various temptations of the modern scene by taking as their models the works of classical antiquity, on which the Platonic argument confers an atemporal and almost sacral status. In both respects, Schiller's classicism thus follows a blueprint designed in the previous century and passed on by Winckelmann. The concept of the ideal appears in the "Transcendental Dialectic" of Kant's first Critique (third "Hauptstuck") as a part of his refutation of the traditional proofs for the existence of God, and Kant defines it as "die Idee, nicht bloB in concrete, sondern in individuo, d.i. als ein einzelnes, durch die Idee allein bestimmbares, oder gar bestimmtes Ding" (B 596 / A 568).15 As in the treatment of ideas discussed in chapter 4 above, Kant introduces his discussion of the ideal with a reference to Plato. Unwittingly displaying his lack of direct knowledge of Plato's texts, which know nothing of this concept, he argues as before that Plato's treatment of the ideal harbours a grain of truth, but that it is necessary to purge the concept of all mysticism: "Ohne uns aber so weit zu versteigen, mussen wir gestehen, daB die menschliche Vernunft nicht allein Ideen, sondern auch Ideale enthalte, die zwar nicht, wie die platonischen, schopferische, aber doch praktische Kraft (als regulative Prinzipien) haben, und der Moglichkeit der Vollkommenheit gewisser Handlungen zum Grunde liegen" (B 597/A 569).l6 Again, therefore, Kant offers a demystified Platonism, with the ontological concepts of the latter transposed into an epistemological or ethical key. But despite this attempt to cut free of the Platonic tradition, Kant's warnings about the danger of

14. We are perhaps justified in seeing in this double-edged quality, characteristic also of Schiller's criticism, the tactical grounds for the hybridity of Bellori's concept, for a strictly Platonic doctrine would justify only the condemnation of naturalism. See Panofsky, Idea, pp. 106-7. 15. "The idea, not merely in concrete, but in individuo, that is, as an individual thing, determinable or even determined by the idea alone." Another version of this definition can be found in section 17 of the KDU (vol. 8, p. 314): "Idee bedeutet eigentlich einen Vernunftbegriff, und Ideal die Vorstellung eines einzelneri als einer Idee adaquaten Wesens." (Idea properly means a rational concept, and ideal the representation of an individual being, regarded as adequate to an idea [p. 85].) 16. "Without soaring so high, we are yet bound to confess that human reason contains not only ideas, but ideals also, which although they do not have, like the Platonic ideas, creative power, yet they have practical power (as regulative principles), and form the basis of the possible perfection of certain actions."

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trying to represent this ideal have a familiar ring when we recall the Platonic suspicion of sensible beauty, epitomized in the fate of Narcissus.17 The same warning can be heard in the last section of the aesthetic part of the Kritik der Urteihkraft (titled "Von der Methodenlehre des Geschmacks" [Of the Method of Taste]), again in connection with the term "Ideal." After stressing the unattainability of the ideal, a quality it shares with the Platonic paradeigma, Kant continues, Nur durch die Aufweckung der Einbildungskraft des Schiilers zur Angemessenheit mit einem gegebenen Begriffe, durch die angemerkte Unzulanglichkeit des Ausdrucks fur die Idee, welche der Begriff selbst nicht erreicht, weil sie asthetisch ist, und durch scharfe Kritik, kann verhiitet werden, dafi die Beispiele, die ihm vorgelegt werden, von ihm nicht sofort fur Urbilder und etwa keiner noch hohern Norm und eigener Beurteilung unterworfene Muster der Nachahmung gehalten, und so das Genie, mit ihm aber auch die Freiheit der Einbildungskraft selbst in ihrer GesetzmaBigkeit erstickt werde, ohne welche keine schone Kunst ... moglich ist. (8:463-64)l8

17. "Das Ideal aber in einem Beispiele, d.i. in der Erscheinung, realisieren wollen, wi etwa den Weisen in einem Roman, ist untunlich, und hat uberdem etwas Widersinnisches und wenig Erbauliches an sich, indem die naturlichen Schranken, welche der Vollstandigkeit in der Idee kontinuierlich Abbruch tun, alle Illusion in solchem Versuche unmoglich und dadurch das Gute, das in der Idee liegt, selbst verdachtig und einer bloBen Erdichtung ahnlich machen" (B 598 / A 570). (But to attempt to realize the ideal in an example, that is, in the [field of] appearance, as, for instance, to depict the [character of the perfectly] wise man in a romance, is impracticable. There is indeed something absurd, and far from edifying, in such an attempt, inasmuch as the natural limitations, which are constantly doing violence to the completeness of the idea, make the illusion that is aimed at altogether impossible, and so cast suspicion on the good itself—the good that has its source in the idea—by giving it the air of being a mere fiction.) What is unclear here is how the ideal per se, as intuition ("Anschauung") of the idea, can be affirmed if the representation of that ideal is judged to be so inherendy reprehensible. What is the sense of the notion of an intuition (as opposed to an idea) if representation of that intuition is to be resisted? To be consistent, one feels, Kant ought to condemn the notion of the ideal itself, as a dangerous methexis that besmirches the purity of the idea. 18. "It is only through exciting the imagination of the pupil to accordance with a given concept, by making him note the inadequacy of the expression for the idea, to which the concept itself does not attain because it is an aesthetical idea, and by severe [critique], that he can be prevented from taking the examples set before him as types and models for imitation, to be subjected to no higher standard or independent judgment. It is thus that genius, and with it the freedom of the imagination, is stifled by its very conformity to law; and without these no [fine] art ... is possible" (pp. 253-54).

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Despite the Kantian transposition of the problem of narcissism into the mode of epistemology and philosophical psychology, the situation is familiar: methexis requires an intuition of the idea, called an ideal, and chorismos warns against it as inherently dangerous. The concept of the ideal is less important in the Kritik der Urteilskraft than that of the aesthetic idea, the Platonic character of which has been underlined by Gombrich.19 An early section (17), entitled "Vom Ideale der Schonheit" (On the Ideal of Beauty) goes against the formalistic character of this part of the work. In the previous section, Kant has contended that the judgment of beauty in a functional object is inferior in purity to the judgment of a wholly "free" beauty (more on this argument below). In section 17, however, he argues that an ideal presupposes a concept and a purpose. This leads to the conclusion, reached somewhat precipitately, that only man, as the sole entity containing its purpose in itself, can represent the ideal of beauty, as he also does the ideal of perfection. The consequence, stated at the end of the section, is that a judgment of an object by reference to such an ideal cannot be purely aesthetic. While this argument is not really at home in the "Analytik des Schonen" (Analytic of the Beautiful), it looks forward to the later parts of the "Kritik der asthetischen Urteilskraft" (Critique of Aesthetic Judgment) where Kant's concerns are less formalistic and more concerned with the practical and moral benefits of art. Here I would merely cite his reflections on culture in section 60, where the mention of the ideal in the first paragraph brings his thoughts to the tradition of humanitas. In a passage that is entirely compatible with the thoughts of Bellori, Winckelmann, and Schiller, he recommends the classical age of Greece and Rome as the only subject matter capable of providing an adequate cultural training to modern man, and one can observe here how the notion of the individual ideal, that is, man as end in himself, expands to imply a vision of a complete communal life: Das Zeitalter sowohl, als die Volker, in welchen der rege Trieb zur gesetzlichen Geselligkeit, wodurch ein Volk ein dauerndes gemeines Wesen ausmacht, mit den groBen Schwierigkeiten rang, welche die schwere Aufgabe, Freiheit (und also auch Gleichheit) mit einem Zwange (mehr der Achtung und Unterwerfung aus Pflicht, als Furcht) zu vereinigen, umgeben: ein solches Zeitalter und ein solches Volk muBte die Kunst der wechselseitigen Mitteilung der Ideen des 19. Gombrich, "Icones Symbolicae," p. 184.

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ausgebildetsten Teils mil dem roheren, die Abstimmung der Erweiterung und Verfeinerung der ersteren zur naturlichen Einfalt und Originalitat der letzteren, und auf diese Art dasjenige Mittel zwischen der hoheren Kultur und der genugsamen Natur zuerst erfinden, welches den richtigen, nach keinen allgemeinen Regeln anzugebenden Mafistab auch ftir den Geschmack, als allgemeinen Menschensinn, ausmacht. (8:464)20 This splendid passage illustrates how the traditional problem of methexis can receive not only the anthropological reinterpretation discussed in chapter 4, but also a sociological reinterpretation. Despite its origin in Platonic metaphysics, the resulting cultural program can be used to answer the question, discussed by Hume among many others, of the "standard of taste," and to do so moreover in a politically challenging fashion, for we should not miss the veiled references to liberty, equality, and fraternity, the slogans of the French Revolution. As we have seen repeatedly, the respective social equivalents of form and matter are a rational elite and the sensualistic populace. Kant's call, echoed by Schiller in the Asthetische Briefe and elsewhere, for a polity marked by a harmonious interaction of high and low culture can thus be seen to be derived from the structural idiosycrasies of Platonism that I have been analysing.21 The corollary, of course, is that the call for methexis will be negated by countervailing calls for social chorismos. 20. "The age and peoples, in which the impulse towards a law-abiding social life, by which a people becomes a permanent community, contended with the great difficulties presented by the difficult problem of uniting freedom (and equality) with compulsion (rather of respect and submission from a sense of duty than of fear)—such an age and such a people naturally first found out the art of reciprocal communication of ideas between the cultivated and uncultivated classes, and thus discovered how to harmonize the large-mindedness and refinement of the former with the natural simplicity and originality of the latter. In this way they first found that mean between the higher culture and simple nature which furnishes that true standard for taste as a sense universal to all men which no general rules can supply" (p. 254). 21. More will be said about Schiller's cultural program in chapter 7 below. An early precedent for the Platonic topos of ascent and descent, linking it to the doctrine of love and also seeking a social application for it, is a passage from Pseudo-Dionysius's De divinis nominibus, 4.15, quoted by Ficino (De amore, p. 64): "Love, whether we have called it divine or angelic or spiritual or animal or natural, we understand to be a certain grafted and mixing virtue which certainly moves superior things to the care of inferior things, also reconciles equals to social intercourse with each other, and lastly, urges any inferior things to turn toward greater and higher things." A parallel transposition of the problem of methexis into a project for rapprochement between the social classes can be found in the demand for a new mythology in the "Altestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus," reprinted in

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THREE D I S T I N C T I O N S

In his study of the varieties of aesthetic idealism, Panofsky makes three valuable distinctions that can help us to gain a more differentiated understanding of Schiller's idealism. (i) The first distinction concerns the epistemological status of the idea in relation to the artist, and hence addresses the relation of the work of art to the artist's personality. According to one alternative, the idea represents a reality independent of the artist; according to another, it is a mental picture, that is, an object of the artist's consciousness endowed with no particular metaphysical privilege. In antiquity, for example, Seneca is noted as espousing the latter, more psychological version of the theory, while Plotinus emerges as the champion of the metaphysical version. Where does Schiller stand on this question? There can be little doubt that he is a good deal closer to the Plotinian than to the Senecan position. As we saw from the quotations from Uber Burgers Gedichte, he has no time for the artist's random subjectivity, and this is confirmed by the following passage, which is perhaps his most thorough definition of idealization: Eine der ersten Erfodernisse des Dichters 1st Idealisierung, Veredlung, ohne welche er aufhort, seinen Namen zu verdienen. Ihm kommt es zu, das Vortreffliche seines Gegenstandes ... von grobern, wenigstens fremdartigen Beimischungen zu befreien, die in mehrern Gegenstanden zerstreuten Strahlen von Vollkommenheit in einem einzigen zu sammeln, einzelne, das EbenmaB storende Ziige der Harmonic des Ganzen zu unterwerfen, das Individuelle und Lokale zum Allgemeinen zu erheben. Alle Ideale, die er auf diese Art im einzelnen bildet, sind gleichsam nur Ausfliisse eines inneren Ideals von Vollkommenheit, das in der Seele des Dichters wohnt. Zu je groBerer Reinheit und Fiille er

Beierwaltes, F. WJ. Schelling (p. 98): "Until we make ideas aesthetic, i.e., mythological, they are of no interest to the lower classes; conversely, the philosopher must be ashamed of mythology until it is rational. The enlightened and the unenlightened must thus reach out their hands to each other; mythology must become philosophical and the lower classes rational, while philosophy must become mythological in order to turn philosophers into corporeal beings." ("Ehe wir die Ideen asthetisch d.h. mythologisch machen, haben sie fur das Volk kein Interesse und umgekehrt ehe die Mythologie vernunftig ist, muB sich der Philosoph ihrer schamen. So miissen endlich Aufgeklarte und Unaufgeklarte sich die Hand reichen, die Mythologie muB philosophisch werden, und das Volk vernunftig, und die Philosophic muB mythologisch werden, um die Philosophen sinnlich zu machen.")

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dieses innere allgemeine Ideal ausgebildet hat; desto mehr werden auch jene einzelrien sich der hochsten Vollkommenheit nahern. (979) 22

While the reference in the penultimate sentence to the soul of the poet might seem to point to a psychological understanding, the last sentence makes clear that the artist can only command our attention and become the mouthpiece for worthwhile ideas once he has undergone the process of moral perfection and purification (as Burger had not). Only then will he able to rise from the individual level to universality, which is the locus of the perfection that he seeks. Also noteworthy in the passage is Schiller's reference to the selection theory, according to which the artist idealizes by selecting the excellent parts from a number of empirical models. This notion (traditionally linked to the story of Zeuxis) by no means demands a metaphysical interpretation, but it is nonetheless given a Platonic dignity by Schiller's use of light imagery ("die ... zerstreuten Strahlen" [the beams of perfection]) to describe it.23 To be sure, Schiller's ideal is to be understood as a synthesis of form and matter, but form, a metaphysical concept, as we saw, is to hold the upper hand. In the ninth Asthetischer Brief, for example, he summons up the full force of his rhetorical pathos to describe the creation of the ideal, that is, the imposition of form on matter: "Den Stoff zwar wird er von der Gegenwart nehmen, aber die Form von einer edleren Zeit, ja jenseits aller Zeit, von der absoluten unwandelbaren Einheit seines Wesens entlehnen. Hier aus dem reinen Ather seiner damonischen Natur rinnt die Quelle der Schonheit herab, unangesteckt von der Verderbnis der Geschlechter und Zeiten, welche tief unter ihr in triiben Strudeln sichwalzen" (593).24 22. "One of the chief requirements of the poet is idealization, ennoblement, without which he ceases to merit his name. His task is to free the excellence of his object ... from coarser and alien admixtures, to gather up the beams of perfection that are scattered among many objects into one beam, to subject individual features disturbing the symmetry to the harmony of the whole, to raise the individual and the local to the universal. All par ticular ideals that he forms in this way are but emanations, as it were, of an inner ideal of perfection that lives in the poet's soul. The greater the purity and richness to which he has developed this inner universal ideal, the more those particular ones too will approach the highest perfection." 23. For the selection theory, see Panofsky, Idea, p. 15 and passim. 24. "True, he will take his material from the present; but his form he will borrow from a nobler time, yes, from beyond time altogether, from the absolute and immutable unity of his being. Here, from the pure aether of his daemonic nature, the living stream of beauty flows down, uncontaminated by the corruption of the generations and ages that wallow in the murky eddies far below it."

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The reference to man's "damonische Natur" here echoes (of course via Kant's moral theory) Neoplatonic cosmology and the notion of man's membership in the order of intelligible beings. Clearly, a form derived from reflection on this "daemonic" nature is not to be confused with a subjective mental picture. The artist as empirical individual is confined to the realm of temporality and corporeality, and a mere mental picture would not escape that realm. The imagery of filth and purity ("triibe Strudeln"/ "reiner Ather") harks back to Platonic sources, and the familiar sexual innuendos can be heard in the next sentence: "Seinen Stoff kann die Laune entehren, wie sie ihn geadelt hat, aber die keusche Form ist ihrem Wechsel entzogen" (593-94)-25 Consistently with his attack on Burger, Schiller is unremittingly hostile to artists who remain confined within their own time and place. He thus asks, "Wie verwahrt sich ... der Kunstler von den Verderbnissen seiner Zeit, die ihn von alien Seiten umfangen?"26 To transcend these corruptions, a metaphysical concept of form is required, and the ideal, even as a synthesis arising "aus dem Bunde des Moglichen mit dem Notwendigen" (from the union of the possible and the necessary) must plainly be metaphysical in nature if it is to perform the task required of it. (2) Panofsky's second distinction refers to the status of the theory itself and once again envisages a more metaphysical alternative, that is, a theory that establishes a "Kunstmetaphysik" in the style of the Mannerists, which is contrasted with the type of theory that, like the theory of Alberti, limits itself to giving practical guidance to the artist. Since it is clear that Schiller's aesthetic thought is charged with metaphysical significance, we might feel tempted to place him once more at this end of the spectrum. It would be misleading, however, to suggest that Schiller was so deeply committed to abstract visions that he paid no heed to the practical tasks facing the poet. True, once he embarks upon the gruelling task of dramatizing Wallenstein's botched coup d'etat, he finds Aristotle's Poetics more congenial than anything more lofty, and for the reason that it is founded in experience.27 One might argue that the discussion about technical questions of plot (punctum 25. "The material of his work may be dishonoured, as it has been ennobled, by shifts of mood; but its chaste form is immune to such mutability." 26. "How is the artist ... to preserve himself from the corruptions of his age that surround him on all sides?" 27. See Schiller's letter of 5 May 1797 to Goethe (NA vol. 29, p. 73): "Seine ganze Ansicht des Trauerspiels beruht auf empirischen Griinden." (His whole view of tragedy is based on empirical grounds.)

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saliens, and so forth) and character in the correspondence with Goethe replaces the metaphysical speculations of the treatises precisely because those speculations are of so little practical use. Against this one must recall that, as the letters also show, the "victory of form over matter" remains axiomatic in Schiller's mind. On 2 October 1797, for example, he writes of his work on Wallenstein: "das Ganze ist poetisch organisiert und ich darf wohl sagen, der Stoff ist in eine reine tragische Fabel verwandelt" (NA 2g:i4i), a8 where the hard labour of restructuring the historical events into a viable plot takes precedence over the emotional or religious criteria that we might more readily associate with tragedy. To be sure, the precedence of form is a metaphysical axiom, but, with sufficient ingenuity (which Schiller had in abundance), it can be translated into a set of practical precepts for the poet, so for Schiller there is really no contradiction between metaphysics and practical poetics. That, precisely, is his achievement in the correspondence and also in the prologue to Die Braut von Messina, where the chorus is justified as a "Kunstorgan" that precisely enables form to conquer matter. (3) Panofsky's third distinction pertains to the relation between the idea and nature, that is, to the referential character of the work of art, and again we confront alternatives of a more and a less metaphysical type. The more metaphysical view insists on the absolute difference of the idea from nature; the more empirical sees it arising from a process of selection or combination from natural examples but as essentially reflecting a perfection of nature itself. Panofsky sees the more empirical view as a kind of fruitful compromise and as one that informed the art of the High Renaissance, in the sense that it mediated between the mediaeval objective of overcoming nature and the revolutionary new notion of accurate representation: "The constantly repeated admonitions to be faithful to nature are matched by the almost as forceful exhortations to choose the most beautiful from the multitude of natural objects, to avoid the misshapen ... , and in general ... to strive for beauty above and beyond mere truth to nature."29 The two demands, which were seen by later ages as irreconcilable, were for the Renaissance merely two sides of a single coin. Although a 28. "The whole is poetically organized, and I can say that the material has been transformed into a tragic plot." 29. Idea, p. 48.

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theorist like Leone Battista Alberti, who is fundamentally a phenomenalist, uses the term "idea," he does so, paradoxically, to urge the artist to an even closer study of nature. In the seventeenth century, this type of thought leads to the emergence of the concept of the "ideal," which, in Panofsky's phrase, strips the Platonic idea of its metaphysical nobility: "Renaissance thinkers understood the idea concept in the light of a fundamentally novel attitude toward art which identified the world of ideas with a world of heightened realities. Even though this thought was not explicitly formulated before the rise of seventeenth-century classicism, the concept of the 'idea' was already transformed into the concept of the 'ideal' ... during the Renaissance."30 It seems, therefore, that Schiller had historical precedents for using the term "Ideal" to denote what is essentially a compromise or a hybrid. It was not until the age of Mannerism towards the end of the sixteenth century that the metaphysical theory of the idea, drawing particularly on Ficino's De amore, reasserted itself. In the seventeenth century, again, another swing of the pendulum led Giovanni Pietro Bellori to establish a classical doctrine described by Panofsky as a "constructive theory for art" in contrast to the "speculative art metaphysics" of Mannerism.31 Where one decides to place Schiller on this spectrum will depend largely on one's reading of that exceptionally difficult treatise Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. It is axiomatic that Schiller deplores crude naturalism, hence his "forthright and honest" declaration of war on it in his prologue to Die Braut von Messina (NA 10:11), but he nonetheless envisages the possibility of a legitimate mimetic art—"die moglichst vollstandige Nachahmung des Wirklicheri" (NSD, 717) (the most complete imitation of reality possible)—under the special conditions, whether historical or psychological, of the naive. Typically, therefore, he seems to be mediating between extremes. The concept of the ideal presented in the prologue to Die Braut is once more a synthesis: art is "zugleich ganz ideell und doch im tiefsten Sinne reell" (NA 10:9).32 Art, like man, is thus placed at the borderline between the intelligible and the material, and, as so often, this methectic strategy leads Schiller to adopt the mean-between-extremes argument. Artists who depart too far from the mean in either direction are thus judged to go astray. One type of aberration is that of the crude 30. Ibid., pp. 64-65. 31. Ibid., p. 110. 32. "At once completely ideal and yet, in the deepest sense, real."

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mimetic artist ("ein treuer Maler des Wirklichen"), who is capable of apprehending content but not of subjecting it to form, and who therefore (like Burger) will leave us trapped in mean and narrow reality ("in die gemeine enge Wirklichkeit" [NA 10:9]). When we come to seek Schiller's definition of the contrary failing, however, we see that, by pursuing methexis to the exclusion of chorismos, he has placed himself in a quandary. The opposite of a preponderance of content must surely be a preponderance of form, and, as we have seen, Schiller has called repeatedly for a victory of form over matter, even for the artist to annihilate matter ("den Stoff durch die Form vertilgt"). Given the precedence of form, how can he now equate an excess of form with an excess of matter and treat them as symmetrical and equivalent departures from the golden mean? The more form, one would think, the better. Schiller escapes from this difficulty by introducing, as mirror image to the crude naturalist, the poet who suffers from an undisciplined imagination ("cine rege Phantasie aber ohne Gemiith und Charakter") and who is therefore able to produce only fantastic constructions ("[p]hantastische Gebilde"), dismissed by Schiller as froth and illusion ("Schaum und Schein" [NA 10:9]). While it is clear enough what type of poetry he is criticizing, it is not at all clear that this deficiency can be convincingly attributed to an excess of form over matter. Instead, it harks back to the weaker and more empirical version of the Platonic idea referred to above, according to which the artist goes beyond nature by a process of selection and variation of natural examples. Carried to excess, this approach can lead to a surfeit of the centaurs and chimaeras referred to by Pariofsky.33 From the point of view of a strict metaphysical idealist, an art of this kind would be condemned not for excessive formalism but for its unrefined naturalism.34 Though ingenious, Schiller's citation of 33. Idea, p. 48. 34. Compare also UDE (p. 795), where, in the course of a comprehensive attack on beauty, Schiller offers precisely such a metaphysical critique of "Schein," rejecting it not because of its excessive abstractness, but on the contrary because of its excessive proximity to nature: "Aber endlich will doch auch der Schein einen Korper haben, an welchem er sich zeigt, und solange also ein Bedurfnis auch nur nach schonem Schein vorhanden ist, bleibt ein Bedurfnis nach dem Dasein von Gegenstanden iibrig, und unsre Zufriedenheit ist folglich noch von der Natur als Macht abhangig, welche uber alles Dasein gebietet." (But ultimately semblance needs a body on which it shows itself. As long, therefore, as the need exists even for beautiful semblance, a need for the existence of objects remains also, and our contentedness is consequently still dependent on nature as power, for that rules over all existence.)

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this artist of the fantastic in the present context serves to elude rather than resolve the logical problems in which he has entangled himself. Similarly, the golden mean that is beyond the powers of each aberrant type requires close scrutiny. Schiller describes this variously as truth ("die Wahrheit"), nature itself ("die Natur selbst"), the spirit of nature ("der Geist der Natur"), or the spirit of the universe ("der Geist des Alls"), and such formulations lend plausibility to the notion that this is indeed something that can mediate between extremes of corporeality and spirituality, that this ideal is, as Panofsky puts it, reality in an intensified form ("gesteigerte Wirklichkeit") rather than a metaphysical abstraction. However, instead of allowing this "true nature" ("die wahre Natur," as it is called in NSD, 755), to hover suggestively between idea and reality, Schiller proves unable to conceal his (choristic) allegiance to the intelligible. Art does not just abstract or select from empirical reality, he writes: "die Kunst [ist] nur dadurch wahr ..., daB sie das Wirkliche ganz verlaBt und rein ideell wird" (NA 10:9-1 o).35 He then proceeds to define his "true nature" as an idea of the mind transcending sense perception ("eine Idee des Geistes, die nie in die Sinne fallt"). As he proceeds with his description of idealizing art, which is "wahrer ... als alle Wirklichkeit und realer als alle Erfahrung" (NA 10:10) (truer than all reality and more real than all experience), he stresses the battle against naturalism, while the mirror image of naturalism, the undisciplined imagination, recedes into the background. The undisciplined imagination does not vanish altogether, however. Justifying his introduction of the chorus, Schiller is careful to show that it is no mere figment: "Der Chor ist selbst kein Individuum, sondern ein allgemeiner Begriff, aber dieser Begriff reprasentiert sich durch eine sinnlich machtige Masse, welche durch ihre ausfullende Gegenwart den Sinnen imponiert" (NA io:i3).36 It is as important that the chorus should be a concept—so that matter should be thoroughly subjugated— as it is that this concept should be filled with sensory content, so that matter should (appear to) consent to its subjugation. Schiller attempts, therefore, a two-stage process: the initial chorismos, in which form subjugates matter, is followed by a display of methexis, in 35- "Art is only true ... by completely relinquishing the real and becoming purely ideal." 36. "The chorus itself is not an individual but a general concept, but this concept represents itself through a sensible mass that impresses the senses by its abundant presence."

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which the resulting ideal is presented as a mean between extremes of form and matter. This kind of sleight of hand is Schiller's characteristic method of harmonizing his two strategies, and the resulting synthesis of incompatible models, a necessarily questionable synthesis, is the characteristic profile of his thought. I conclude, therefore, that in Schiller's usage the term "Ideal" appears to imply the weaker and more empirical of Panofsky's two alternatives, for which the ideal represents merely a heightened version of nature. On closer inspection, however, this more conciliatory approach is an illusion that has merely been superimposed on the more radical and metaphysical alternative. THE DUAL FORM ARGUMENT

The fusion of chorismos and methexis into an ideal can thus be achieved by means of illusion; the reconciliation, or triadic, model turns out on closer inspection to mask a subjection of nature (matter) to reason (form). The middle realm, often invoked by Schiller, in which reason and nature coexist in a happy symbiosis, turns out to be a conjuring trick. It could be compared to a relationship between two partners that appears to be balanced and harmonious but actually rests on the complete subjection of one partner to the other. (As we shall see, the model has inescapable political implications.) In that vital and difficult text, the Kallias-Briefe, the theoretical foundation of Schiller's version of the ideal is worked out, not only for the first time but also most fully. As we saw in chapter 3, Schiller's theory of "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" faces the aporia of the relationship of the sensible to the intelligible: on the one hand, the idea of freedom must be made manifest to the senses; on the other, the purity of the intelligible may not be sullied. At the semantic level the contradiction is reconciled by means of a functional ambiguity. The formula "Freiheit in der Erscheinung," the Kantian meaning of which would be "freedom in the phenomenon," is made to carry the additional meaning of "the illusory appearance of freedom," for Schiller, with his indifference to the Kantian thing-in-itself, is able to use the verb "erscheinen" to distinguish between false appearance and reality. (This point helps us to grasp the continuity between "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" and "Schein.") But at the theoretical (as opposed to the semantic) level, Schiller devises a two-stage model as a basis for illusion, a model expressed in the formula that beauty is "die Form einer Form" (395). This "dual form" theory plays a significant but less than explicit role in UberAnmut und Wilrdeand the Asthetische Briefe.

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The origin of the theory, as Schiller himself tells us, is Kant's distinction between free and adherent beauty (pulchritudo vaga and fixd), which is set forth in section 16 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft. As a consequence of his theory of beauty as the object of disinterested approbation (as opposed to our approval of the good, the pleasant, the perfect or the useful, in which we have an interest in the object of judgment), Kant finds himself arguing that the purity of an aesthetic judgment is impaired if it takes account of the conceptual nature of the object. He thus distinguishes between the "freie Naturschonheiten," such as the beauty of flowers, and the beauty of, for example, a horse, on the grounds that our greater knowledge of the horse's "purpose" (he means our biological understanding), compared to our limited knowledge of flowers, restricts the freedom of the imagination as we contemplate it. The argument certainly takes the theory of disinterestedness to an extreme and should be probably read in the context of Kant's polemic against Baumgarten in the previous section. His rejection of the rationalist tenet of "Vollkommenheit" (perfection) has caused him here to erect an impenetrable barrier between aesthetic and cognitive judgments and hence, implicitly, to treat with suspicion any aesthetic judgment of an object that we know anything about. Schiller objects quite reasonably that Kant's argument excludes too much and leads to absurd consequences, "daB also eine Arabeske und was ihr ahnlich ist, als Schonheit betrachtet, reiner sei als die hochste Schonheit des Menschen" (Kallias-Briefe, 395).37 In fact, Kant is aware of this problem, and he copes with it by suggesting that the observer "abstract from" his knowledge as he makes the judgment, an argument that actually falls back on his earlier distinctions of beauty from other forms of pleasure. Already in section 2, for example, he has amusingly compared various possible reactions to a palace, concluding, "Man sieht leicht, daB es auf dem, was ich aus dieser Vorstellung in mir selbst mache, nicht auf dem, worin ich von der Existenz des Gegenstandes abhange, ankomme, um zu sagen, er sei schon, und zu beweisen, ich habe Geschmack" (8:281).38 What matters is evidently not so much the object as the manner in which we look at it and judge it. If an arabesque is a good example of a 37. " that an arabesque and such like is therefore, when considered as beauty, purer than the highest human beauty." 38. "We easily see that, in saying it is beautiful and in showing that I have taste, I am concerned, not with that in which I depend on the existence of the object, but with that which I make out of this representation in myself" (p. 47).

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"free" beauty, this is because there is no purpose, no "perfection," to be abstracted from. The key is evidently that we learn to look at the functional object as if it were not functional, to judge the palace as if it were an arabesque. So Schiller's theory of contemplation, as a way of looking at the form and not the material of an object, could also be described as a theory of abstraction in this sense, and it thus accords well enough with Kant's view. Where Schiller differs from Kant is in the suggestion that the problem can be solved by merging free and adherent beauty, a step that anticipates his merging of the beautiful and the sublime. Schiller's dual form theory arises from this synthesizing strategy. As we saw, it introduces the characteristically Schillerian element of conflict into beauty, and hence contributes to Schiller's assimilation of beauty to the sublime. Significantly, however, he has transformed Kant's purely logical distinction into a theory about how things become beautiful, that is, into a metaphysical distinction. The transformation is thus characteristic of Schiller's metamorphosis of Kant's logical and epistemological doctrines into metaphysical ones. The dual form theory can now be briefly summarized. The initial phase of the process subjects matter to a human purpose by means of a technical form and, where successful, causes the object to be perfect ("vollkommen"), though not free. In the second phase, the object is represented ("dargestellt") so as to appear, per impossibik, as if it had brought about its form through its own volition, and hence its appearance can correspond to free self-determination, which, as Schiller says, is "die Form der praktischen Vernunft" (the form of practical reason). Both phases of the forming process are violent, since that is its essence according to Schiller's Plotinian metaphysics, but the paradox of the second phase is that it compels the object to appear to consent to its own form: "Das Vollkommene, dargestellt mit Freiheit, wird sogleich in das Schone verwandelt. Es wird aber mit Freiheit dargestellt, wenn die Natur des Binges mit seiner Technik zusammenstimmend erscheint, wenn es aussieht, als wenn diese aus dem Dinge selbst freiwillig hervorgeflossen ware" (419).39 From this passage (which exemplifies Schiller's use of "erscheinen" to distinguish false appearance from reality), we can draw the connection of the dual form theory to my analysis of Schiller's notion of the ideal. On the one hand, the form must subdue the matter, hence the 39. "When represented with freedom, the perfect is transformed at once into the beautiful. But it is represented with freedom when the nature of the thing appears to be in agreement with its technical form, when it looks as if this form had flowed voluntarily from the thing itself."

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stalwart resistance to naturalistic mimesis; on the other, the resultant synthesis must appear as the result of the object's autonomy, and now it can be portrayed as corresponding to the law of mesotes, halfway between excesses of form and matter. Schiller gave definitive expression to his Plotinian conception of the artistic process and also to the dual form theory, which is his own modification of it, in "Das Ideal und das Leben": Wenn, das Tote bildend zu beseelen, Mit dem Stoff sich zu vermahlen, Tatenvoll der Genius entbrennt, Da, da spanne sich des Fleifies Nerve, Und beharrlich ringend unterwerfe Der Gedanke sich das Element. Nur dem Ernst, den keine Muhe bleichet, Rauscht der Wahrheit tief versteckter Born, Nur des Meifiels schwerem Schlag erweichet Sich des Marmors sprodes Korn. Aber dringt bis in der Schonheit Sphare, Und im Staube bleibt die Schwere Mit dem Stoff, den sie beherrscht, zuruck. Nicht der Masse qualvoll abgerungen, Schlank und leicht, wie aus dem Nichts gesprungen, Steht das Bild vor dem entzucktem Blick. Alle Zweifel, alle Kampfe schweigen In des Sieges hoher Sicherheit, AusgestoBen hat es jeden Zeugen Menschlicher Bedurftigkeit. (71-90)40

40. "When the genius takes fire with the effort to fill dead matter with life by giving it form, or to marry itself to material, there let the strenuous sinew tense itself; let thought, struggling without cease, subdue the element to its will. The spring of truth, hidden deep, rushes only for the earnest seeker who shirks no labour, and the marble's stubborn corn softens only to the heavy blow of the chisel. But, once the sphere of beauty has been attained, the strenuousness remains behind in the dust together with the matter that it has mastered. The statue stands before the delighted gaze, not wrested tormentedly from the mass but rather slender and light, as if it had leapt into being from nothingness. All doubts and struggles are silenced in the lofty certainty of victory, for the work has expelled all evidence of human deficiency."

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These magnificent lines are the culmination of the argument traced here. The necessary struggle between form and matter is evoked in the first stanza as the dense sounds and convoluted syntax convey the poet's own struggle with the language. The "appearance of freedom" is then evoked in the second stanza, as the reality of chorismos is succeeded by the illusion of methexis. The victory over the material is so complete that no sign of a struggle can be detected.41 AESTHETIC AND POLITICAL ILLUSION

The dual form argument gives rise to political analogies of, to put it mildly, a troubling nature. Such issues have been stressed in recent scholarship. However, the clarity and eloquence of Schiller's figurative passages often have a misleading effect, in that they can tempt the reader to draw premature conclusions about the political implications of the underlying arguments.42 Such passages, I shall argue, are primarily analogies for metaphysical relationships and not political declarations. 41. The stanzas can also be analyzed in terms of the antithesis "Voninnenbestimmtsein" and "NichtvonauBenbestimmtsein" (determination from within and non-determination from without). The statue is of course determined externally, but the second stage of the artist's task consists in obliterating the traces of his own work, so that the finished work appears to have determined itself. 42. A prime example of this tendency is Terry Eagleton's chapter on Schiller in The Ideology of the Aesthetic, especially p. 113, where, despite many perceptive observations, we read: "Indeed the whole text is a kind of political allegory, in which the troubled relations between sense drive and formal drive, or nature and reason, are never far from a reflection on the ideal relations between populace and ruling class, or civil society and absolutist state." While such reflections are indeed frequent, it is still a mistake to infer from them that the aesthetic can be understood as "ideological reconstruction and hegemonic strategy." Such a view fails to notice that ( i ) as the overall structure of Schiller's arguments shows, their roots are in the metaphysical tradition, not in any personal experience of political or economic reality; (2) Schiller's political analogies are too vague and conventional, dealing merely with rational rulers and sensual mob, to provide support for the specifically bourgeois (i.e., capitalistic and entrepreneurial) reference point that Eagleton's argument requires; (3) the backward state of German industry, which developed a properly capitalistic structure only in the mid- to late nineteenth century, makes it exceedingly implausible that Schiller's aesthetic thought could have any connection whatever, however unconscious or subliminal, with the ideological needs of an industrial ruling class. Eagleton's comment (p. 118) that Karl Marx's "critique of industrial capitalism is deeply rooted in a Schillerian vision of stunted capacities, dissociated powers, the ruined totality of human nature," far from authenticating Schiller's political vision, in fact denigrates that of Marx, for it suggests that Marx's supposedly materialist analysis of bourgeois society is actually based on older ideas whose metaphysical character he failed to recognize.

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Furthermore, when they are read carefully and in the context of the entire argument, their political implications turn out to be by no means as progressive as liberal critics tend to believe. As observed above, it is quite understandable that the dual form theory should have evoked political analogies in Schiller's mind. He uses them in the Kallias-Briefe, and not merely in casual fashion: "Die Technik ... muB ... durch die Natur des Binges bestimmt erscheinen, welches man den freiwilligen Konsens des Dinges zu seiner Technik nennen konnte" (414) ,43 This analogy takes on a life of its own in two later passages from the same text: "In der asthetischen Welt ist jedes Naturwesen ein freier Burger, der mit dem Edelsten gleiche Rechte hat, und nicht einmal urn des Ganzen willen darf gezwungen werden, sondern zu allem schlechterdings konsentieren muB" (421).44 The second passage is as follows: "Darum ist das Reich des Geschmacks ein Reich der Freiheit— die schone Sinnenwelt das gluckliche Symbol, wie die moralische sein soil, und jedes schone Naturwesen auBer mir ein glucklicher Burger, der mir zuruft: Sei frei wie ich" (424-25).45 These passages of course contain the seeds of the theory of the aesthetic state, presented later in the twenty-seventh Asthetischer Brief. But one must recall that, despite the liberal sound of the sentiments in such analogies, the freedom of the aesthetic realm is only an illusion. Schiller's premise of the antagonism of matter and form actually leads, when applied to the political sphere, to a highly illiberal model in which a show of (methectic) consent masks a (choristic) despotic reality. Since one cannot readily accept the idea of Schiller as a spokesman for despotism, the question thus arises of how literally the analogies should be taken in the first place. The dual form model reappears in the fourth Asthetischer Brief in a crucially important passage distinguishing three types of art. Art itself is understood throughout in the Aristotelian sense of a combination of form

43. "The technical form must ... appear determined by the nature of the thing, and this could be called the thing's voluntary consent to its technical form." 44. "In the aesthetic world, every natural being is a free citizen possessing equal rights with the noblest; he may not be subjected to compulsion even for the good of the whole, but must absolutely consent to everything." 45. "The realm of taste is thus a realm of freedom, the beautiful sensible world the happy symbol of how the moral world ought to be, and every beautiful natural being is a happy citizen who calls to me: Be free like me."

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and matter,46 but subject to the Plotinian reinterpretation. Hence artists of the first two types, the "mechanical artist" and the "fine artist" have no compunction about subjecting matter to violence as they put it into the form they want. Where the fine artist differs is that he conceals the violence: "Den Stoff, den er bearbeitet, respektiert er nicht im geringsten mehr als der mechanische Kunstler; aber das Auge, welches die Freiheit dieses Stoffes in Schutz nimmt, wird er durch eine scheinbare Nachgiebigkeit gegen denselben zu tduschen suchen" (578, my emphasis).47 The mechanical artist is thus satisfied with the first form, producing perfection, but the fine artist imposes a second form on the material, overcoming the "logical form" of the artifact by means of the representation and giving rise to the appearance of freedom. Turning now to the political application of this model, we note that Schiller is again in a quandary. For his "pedagogical and political artist," human beings are the material, and they, we are told, cannot be treated like the wood or marble of the two previous types: "Mit einer ganz andern Achtung, als diejenige ist, die der schone Kunstler gegen seine Materie vorgibt, muB der Staatskunstler sich der seinigen nahen, und nicht bloB subjektiv und fur einen tauschenden Effekt in den Sinnen, sondern objektiv und fur das innre Wesen muB er ihrer Eigentumlichkeit und Personlichkeit schonen" (578).48 If the chorismos of reason and nature thus requires the violent subjugation of matter to form, the possibility of a peaceful political order seems to hinge on the possibility of a methexis that is no mere illusion. Schiller is aware of what is at stake here. The state is in his view the vehicle of moral self-determination: "der Staat [soil] eine Organisation 46. Metaphysics logsa: "Things are generated artificially whose form is contained in the soul." 47. "He does not respect the material he is working on any more than the mechanical artist does; but he will seek to deceive the eye that wants to protect the freedom of this material by a show of accommodating it" (my emphasis). 48. "The political artist must approach his material with a quite different kind of respect from that which the fine artist pretends towards his. He must make concessions to its unique personality, not merely subjectively and with a view to deceiving the senses, but objectively and with respect to its inner being." This passage can be compared to an extended metaphor in Plato (REP 6.5006-50 ic), where the philosopher's task of designing a constitution after a divine pattern is compared to the various stages of a painter's work. Schiller's adoption of the Plotinian theory of form leads him to use the analogy of the sculptor rather than the painter. The "form of a form" argument, the necessity of illusion, and the consequent distinction between the artist and the politician-philosopher are Schiller's own innovations.

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sein ... , die sich durch sich selbst und fur sich selbst bildet."49 Since it represents humanity in its purity, the state can brook no compromise. This is of course a choristic premise harbouring a threat of violence. If citizens wish to be treated by this state with respect and without violence, they will have to purify or idealize themselves from "subjective" to "objective" humanity; they must, in other words, rise to the state's level, for the state cannot descend to theirs. But how are the citizens to raise themselves? Schiller's answer involves the presentation of two alternative scenarios and is unlikely to strike us as either clear or reassuring. The problem posed is also addressed in UberAnmut und Wiirde, and it is worth looking at how Schiller deals with it there. The question is this: can individuals train their emotions to the point where they unfailingly make the correct moral choice without consulting reason, or must they resign themselves to subjugating their emotions? Even in the earlier treatise Schiller is unable to speak with a single voice. In his initial exegesis of the "schone Seele," he states that moral harmony is possible: "Eine schone Seele nennt man es, wenn sich das sittliche Gefuhl aller Empfindungen des Menschen endlich bis zu dem Grad versichert hat, daB es dem Affekt die Leitung des Willens ohne Scheu (iberlassen darf und nie Gefahr lauft, mit den Entscheidungen desselben in Widerspruch zu laufen" (468).5° With the phrase "bis zu dem Grad" (up to the point), Schiller implies that there is indeed a point where the emotions can be trusted to act without rational tutelage. In our terms, this is a methectic statement, for the emotions, which belong to nature, are assumed to participate in the intelligible world, at least enough to lead infallibly to right action. In the following pages, however, the choristic argument reasserts itself. In states of strong emotion ("Affekt"), Schiller writes, harmony between duty and inclination is impossible, and the "beautiful soul" must become sublime if it is not to succumb to "Sinnlichkeit." The methectic premise, that after a certain point the emotions can be trusted, is thus retracted. Instead, Schiller insists that reason must invariably be master, and the inner life of the soul is now seen as shaped by the unending struggle between matter and form. True, as he works towards the culminating synthesis of the beautiful and the sublime, Schiller attempts to 49. "The state should be an organization... that is formed through itself and for itself." 50. "One speaks of a beautiful soul when moral feeling has made sure of all a person's emotions, up to the point that it can entrust the conduct of the will to affect without fear and without running the risk of coming into conflict with its decisions."

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defend the "willkiirliche Bewegungen" (movements subject to the will) as a protected enclave in which moral beauty is nonetheless possible as a real option. It becomes increasingly clear, however, that the foundation for even this harmony is the subjection of nature to reason, and that harmony is in fact only tolerated as an illusion: "Die Anmut lafit der Natur da, wo sie die Befehle des Geistes ausrichtet, einen Schein von Freiwilligkeit; die Wiirde hingegen unterwirft sie da, wo sie herrschen will, dem Geist" (477).51 Parallel to the analogies of political liberalism elicited by beauty, we thus notice a tendency for the sublime to provoke analogies of despotism. As in the Kallias-Briefe and the Asthetische Briefe, Schiller resorts in Uber Anmut und Wiirde to a political analogy: "Bei der Wiirde also fiihrt sich der Geist in dem Korper als Herrscher auf, denn hier hat er seine Selbstandigkeit gegen den gebieterischen Trieb zu behaupten, der ohne ihn zu Haridlungen schreitet und sich seinem Joch gern entziehen mochte. Bei der Anmut hingegen regiert er mit Liberalitdt, weil er es hier ist, der die Natur in Handlung setzt und keinen Widerstand zu besiegen findet" (477).5a Schiller is evidently doing his best to make a case for liberality, but the familiar logic reasserts itself. Despite the parallel construction of the last quotation, grace and dignity are not two equally viable options. As the following sentence makes clear, dignity represents the reality of subjection that is masked by a display of liberal consent: "Nachsicht verdient aber nur der Gehorsam, und Strenge kann nur die Widersetzungrechtfertigen."53 Where, we wonder, is the merit in showing leniency to obedient subjects? The distinction between the "willkiirliche" and "unwillkiirliche Bewegungen" turns out to have been a smokescreen. The mind can afford to treat the emotions with liberality only when it has previously destroyed all emotional resistance to its dictates.54 51. 'Grace permits nature a show of free will in cases where it executes the commands of the mind; dignity, by contrast, subdues nature to mind when it [nature] wishes to be master." 52. "In dignity the mind comports itself in the body as a ruler, for here it has to uphold its autonomy against the imperious impulse, which proceeds to actions without [the mind] and would like to escape its yoke. In grace, by contrast, [the mind] governs with liberality, because it is the one that sets nature in action, finding no resistance to be overcome." 53. "Only obedience merits indulgence, and only insubordination can justify severity." 54. Schiller's statement of the human ideal as the unification of grace and dignity can be seen to correspond to this model. Such a person is said to be "gerechtfertigt in der Geisterwelt und freigesprochen in der Erscheinung" (p. 481) (justified in the spirit world and set free in the world of appearance), the former through actual sublime chorismos in his moral character, the latter through a beautiful but illusory methexis in his physical behaviour.

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Returning now to the fourth Asthetischer Brief, we observe that the two political alternatives correspond exactly to the methectic and choristic anthropologies designed in Uber Anmut und Wurde, with the state in the role of reason and the citizens in the role of the emotions. In reply to the question how the citizens are to be brought into line with the state, Schiller once again outlines a liberal and an illiberal option. The first is expressed in a somewhat cautious fashion: "1st der innere Mensch mit sich einig, so wird er auch bei der hochsten Universalisierung seines Betragens seine Eigentumlichkeit retten, und der Staat wird bloB der Ausleger seines schonen Instinkts, die deutlichere Formel seiner innern Gesetzgebung sein" (578).55 The "inner unity" here is of course the condition of the "schone Seele," and we again notice that, in order to be tolerated by the state, the "beautiful" individuality must have identified itself entirely with the state's demands ("Nachsicht aber verdient nur der Gehorsam"). In view of Schiller's commitment to chorismos, we wonder what room can be left for genuine individuality. This commitment to the supremacy of the moral law leads him to spell out the illiberal alternative as follows: "Setzt sich hingegen in dem Charakter eines Volks der subjektive Mensch dem objektiven noch so kontradiktorisch entgegen, da6 nur die Unterdruckung des erstern dem letztern den Sieg verschaffen kann, so wird auch der Staat gegen den Burger den strengen Ernst des Gesetzes annehmen, und, um nicht ihr Opfer zu sein, eine so feindselige Individualitat ohne Achtung darniedertreten mussen" (578-79).s6 If these are the consequences of applying the choristic ontology to politics, it is not surprising that Schiller should have invested so much effort in advocating an option that would render such an application unnecessary. For what is at stake in the theory of aesthetic education is the avoidance of the violence that he has so vividly evoked. It is hard to see, however, how Schiller can envisage a coherent alternative that is not based on illusion without departing from his Plotinian premises. Since his arguments point so firmly towards illusion as the necessary condition of harmony, the political choice he faces is not so 55. "If the inner man is at one with himself, he will be able to preserve his individuality in spite of universalizing his behaviour to the highest degree, and the state will be merely the interpreter of his beautiful instinct, a clearer formulation of his inner legislation." 56. "But if, on the other hand, in the character of a people, the subjective man sets himself against the objective man in such a spirit of contradiction that only the suppression of the former can ensure the victory of the latter, then the state too will have to adopt towards the citizen the severe rigour of the law, and, in order not to become its victim, it will have to crush such a hostile individualism without mercy."

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much between despotism and liberalism as between overt and covert despotism. This becomes clear in the controversial ending to the Asthetische Briefe, \vhere the goal of a rational state, envisaged at the outset, gives way to the alternative of an aesthetic state: "In dem asthetischen Staate ist alles—auch das dienende Werkzeug ein freier Burger, der mit dem edelsten gleiche Rechte hat, und der Verstand, der die duldende Masse unter seine Zwecke gewalttatig beugt, muB sie hier um ihre Beistimmung fragen" (669).57 Taken by itself, this sentence might be interpreted as calling for the realization of the ideas of the French Revolution. This is mere wishful thinking, however. The reference to the understanding must alert us to the fact that the passage is only an embellished restatement of the "form of a form" argument from the Kallias-Briefe: understanding imposes (violently) a logical form on matter, and then, in a second (and equally violent) phase, it bestows on the object the illusory appearance of consent and self-determination. This interpretation is confirmed by Schiller's next sentence: "Hier also, in dem Reiche des asthetischen Scheins, wird das Ideal der Gleichheit erfullt, welches der Schwarmer so gern auch dem Wesen nach realisiert sehen mochte."58 "Schein," though admittedly an ambiguous term, cannot be misunderstood here, since it is expressly set against the phrase "dem Wesen nach." Like freedom, equality is treated as an intelligible idea whose appearance in the world can only be illusion. To think otherwise is to make the mistake of Narcissus, who can thus be seen as the forefather of the Jacobins and other modern "Schwarmer." The distinction between contemplation and tactile perception, rooted in Platonic metaphysics, thus provides the foundation for the political critique. Schiller's conclusion to the paragraph, his answer to the regicides, then leaves us in no doubt where he stands on the issues of the day: "und wenn es wahr ist, daB der schone Ton in der Nahe des Thrones am fruhesten und am vollkommensten reift, so muBte man auch hier die gutige Schickung erkennen, die den Menschen oft nur deswegen in der Wirklichkeit einzuschranken

57. "In the aesthetic state everything—even the servile tool—is a free citizen that has equal rights with the noblest; and the understanding, which [normally] subjugates the patient mass to its purposes, must here first ask for its consent." 58. "Here, then, in the realm of aesthetic semblance, we see the fulfilment of that ideal of equality that the enthusiast would so dearly like to see become a concrete reality."

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scheint, um ihn in eine idealische Welt zu treiben" (669) .59 Only an authoritarian state, we must infer, can provide the real (choristic) circumstances in which men can safely contemplate the (methectic) ideals. CONTEMPLATION

I have repeatedly used the distinction, implicit in Plotinus, between tactile and contemplative perception, but this now requires further elaboration in the light of my analysis of Schiller's notion of the ideal. Since the notion is inherently complex, a similarly complex form of perception is required to apprehend it, and to illuminate the issues it will be necessary to reintroduce the terms kataphasis (direct representation based on methexis) and apophasis (indirect representation based on chorismos). The statue described in "Das Ideal und das Leben," it will be recalled, has been executed so perfectly by the sculptor that the form appears to correspond to the marble's own will. All signs of the violent struggle to impose form having been obliterated, the finished work stands as a direct, that is, a cataphatic representation of freedom and self-determination. The spectator who contemplates this work in our special sense must above all avoid the trap of tactile perception; this would put him in the same situation as Narcissus, whom the cataphatic image deluded into believing that the object offered the prospect of freedom in the material world. However, even to reach the stage where he might make this mistake, our spectator must first conceive the idea of freedom, and this he can do only by looking at the statue. His initial impression of freedom must thus be the forbidden one, that of a freedom in the material world, and it must be instantly succeeded by the reflection that the only true freedom is intelligible. Freedom has entered into the statue not from an immanent will in the marble but rather against the marble's resistance and from an idea in the sculptor's mind, and the process has not been instantaneous ("wie aus dem Nichts gesprungen") but laborious. The parallel between this transition from kataphasis to apophasis and the transition from sensible to intelligible beauty in Plato's Phaedrus (summarized in chapter 3 above) will not have escaped the attentive reader. 59. "And if it is true that beautiful manners mature most quickly and most perfectly near to the throne, one would have to recognize here another instance of the kindly dispensation which often seems only to restrict man in the real world in order to impel him into an ideal world."

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Though, by Schiller's conceptual shorthand, the statue presents us with "Freiheit in der Erscheinung," the phrase has to be analysed into its two component meanings. These meanings correspond to the two moments of the experience: a visual impression of freedom in the phenomenal world, which is instantly negated by an intellectual reflection that this is only the appearance of freedom resting on a reality of subjugation. The image must be apprehended as apophatic, that is, as pointing us towards towards an idea accessible only to pure thought, but the precondition for this insight is precisely that the image should first be apprehended by the senses as cataphatic. Schiller's strategy of fusing opposites, which we have already observed in his fusions of the beautiful and the sublime and of pulchritudo vaga and fixa, therefore seems to extend also to apophasis and kataphasis. This insight is of decisive importance for understanding the argument of the Kallias-Briefe. My interpretation, according to which contemplation comprises not one step but two, is confirmed here in a passage where, referring to natural instead of artistic beauty and using the terms "Regel" and "Natur" instead of form and matter, Schiller describes the paradox in the following way: "Bei dem Naturschonen sehen wir mit unsern Augen, daB es aus sich selbst ist; daB es durch eine Regel ist, sagt uns nicht der Sinn, sondern der Verstand. Nun verhalt sich aber die Regel zur Natur wie Zwang zur Freiheit. Da wir uns nun die Regel bloB denken, die Natur aber sehen, so denken wir uns Zwang und sehen Freiheit" (4i8).6° The premise of the passage is that organic forms are really like artifacts, with the difference that the artificer is divine rather than human. The contemplative process is therefore no different from that described in "Das Ideal und das Leben." We see the leaf, or whatever the object is, and it seems on the basis of our visual impression to possess freedom, that is, to be a cataphatic image of freedom. Reflection supervenes and tells us that it is not and cannot possibly be free, but is rather subjected to a purpose. We then reflect further that the divine purpose 60. "With natural beauty we see with our eyes that it exists through itself; it is not sense but our understanding that tells us that it exists through a rule. Now the relation of rule to nature is as that of compulsion to freedom. But as we merely think the rule but see nature we think compulsion and see freedom." Note, however, that only a few lines above, Schiller has allocated the roles of sense and thought in this judgment differently: "Wir mussen erstlich wissen, daB das schone Ding ein Naturding ist, d.i. daB es durch sich selbst ist; zweitens muB es uns vorkommen, als ob es durch eine Regel ware." (We must first know that the beautiful thing is a natural thing, that is, that it exists through itself; secondly, it must appear to us as though it existed through a rule.)

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that has subjected the material of the leaf is one of pure freedom that cannot possible be manifested in the world, that is, that the leaf represents freedom apophatically. This insight, however, has been vouchsafed to us only because of the foregoing illusion that the leaf does manifest freedom in the world. I should add here that, like "Freiheit in der Erscheinung," the term "Betrachtung" (like "contemplation") is inherently and functionally ambiguous, in that it can mean both a type of sense perception and a type of purely mental act. True, Schiller does not use the term "Betrachtung" in the passage quoted, but the two moments of seeing and thinking constitute it nonetheless. Like the Platonic theoria, contemplation of the beautiful object comprises both a sensory and an intellective moment, and it is characteristic of Schiller's theory that the two moments should be not just different but in diametrical contradiction, one revealing freedom and the other unfreedom. Once again, therefore, Platonic dualism of sensible and intelligible worlds thus enters into the semantics of Schiller's philosophical language and into the act of perception itself. Schiller's strategy of employing terms in two contrasting senses corresponds to the structure of his ideal, in that an actual opposition is masked by an illusory harmony; "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" seems to mean one thing (illusory methexis) but in fact means two contradictory things (actual chorismos). The term contemplation is similarly complex, or even more so. In its sensory meaning ("seeing freedom"), it is doubly methectic, in that (i) in its operation it connotes an intellective use of the senses, and (2) in what it sees it implies the presence of the intelligible in the material. The intellective meaning of contemplation ("thinking compulsion"), again, is doubly choristic, in that ( i ) in its operation, it connotes the separateness and superiority of the intellect to the senses, and (2) in what it apprehends, it discovers the same separateness and superiority. Schiller's theory of contemplation thus reproduces the logical structure that I noted (at the end of chapter 2) in his theory of culture, a structure calling for simultaneous unity and separation of principles of unity and separation. The Platonic aporias, we see, pervade all parts of Schiller's aesthetic thought. Schiller's ideal thus corresponds closely to his theory of contemplation, and that theory can be seen to harbour within itself both the beautiful and the sublime, which are generated respectively by the methectic (sensory) and the choristic (intellective) moments within it.

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I have noted that in the Asthetische Vorlesungen, Schiller appears to use the term "organic beauty" explicitly, though he does not in the KalliasBriefe. I have noted, further, that the idea of a teleology emerging directly from nature and not indirectly from the intelligible via nature represents an Aristotelian fragment that cannot be accommodated within the prevailing Platonic structure of his thought. These concepts of organic beauty (despite Schiller's coyness about the term) and natural teleology occur regularly in the published treatises, and it is therefore necessary to see how the question is treated in the Kallias-Briefe, a text of such importance for their genesis. Schiller cites with approval Kant's dictum "Natur ... ist schon, wenn sie aussieht wie Kunst; Kunst ist schon, wenn sie aussieht wie Natur" (4i7). bl However, as I noted in the previous section, Schiller's interpretation of aesthetic perception, "so denken wir uns Zwang und sehen Freiheit," applies equally to nature and art, and for the reason that on his Platonic premises there is no difference between the two. If so, we wonder, where is the merit in the view that the two should resemble each other? The question brings us to the heart of this difficult text. In his examples, as opposed to his theoretical explanations, Schiller seems to base his argument on the unspoken assumption that nature is different from art, that is, that there is a genuine and non-illusory freedom in all organic life. Consider the following, for example: "Eine Birke, eine Fichte, eine Pappel ist schon, wenn sie schlank emporsteigt, eine Eiche, wenn sie sich krummt; die Ursache ist, weil diese sich selbst iiberlassen die krumme, jene hingegen die gerade Richtung lieben. Zeigt sich also die Eiche schlank und die Birke verbogen, so sind beide nicht schon, weil ihre Richtungen fremden EinfluB, Heteronomie verraten" (421). 62 A simpler argument than this would be hard to devise, and its application to art leads to a simple organic view: the artifact, in which the material is subjected to a human purpose, should look as though it were an organism, that is, as though its shape were the outcome of a process of natural growth. 61. "Nature is beautiful when it looks like art; art is beautiful when it looks like nature." Compare KDU, section 45. 62. "A birch, a spruce or a poplar is beautiful when it is slender and upright, an oak when it is crooked; the reason being that, left to themselves, the latter tends naturally to the crooked, the former to the straight growth. If then the oak appears slender and the birch bent, neither is beautiful, because their growth betrays alien influence, or heteronomy."

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Much of the letter of 23 February 1793 reads as though Schiller's view is really as simple as that, for example, the following sentences quoted above (translation, n. 39, above): "Das Vollkommene, dargestellt mit Freiheit, wird sogleich in das Schone verwandelt. Es wird aber mit Freiheit dargestellt, wenn die Natur des Binges mit seiner Technik zusammenstimmend erscheint, wenn es aussieht, als wenn diese aus dem Dinge selbst freiwillig hervorgeflossen ware" (419). In the terms of the dual form theory, the first form makes the object technically perfect, the second one makes it look like an organism. Applied to a specific case, the model leads to the following kind of argument: "Schon ist ein GefaB, wenn es, ohne seinem Begriff zu widersprechen, einem freien Spiel der Natur gleichsieht. Die Handhabe an einem GefaB ist bloB des Gebrauchs wegen, also durch einen Begriff, da; soil aber das GefaB schon sein, so muB diese Handhabe so ungezwungen und freiwillig daraus hervorspringen, daB man ihre Bestimmung vergiBt" (420).6s Schiller's other illustrations, drawn inter alia from painting, from acting, from poetry, all make basically the same point. Why then, if his fundamental view is so simple, can Schiller not be more forthright and declare that artistic beauty should aspire to the freedom of the organic world? The answer, of course, is that his ontological premises allow no room for such an organic freedom, and that he is able to argue for the latter only to the extent that he loses sight of the former. There is only one freedom, and that is the freedom of the intelligible. Schiller's deepest conviction emerges with greater clarity from the examples of the light Spanish horse, which is opposed to the coachhorse, and of the bird in flight, which is opposed to a duck or other animals whose weight is evident in their forms. Unhampered organic growth is not enough, for it lacks the moment of conquest: "Ein Vogel im Flug ist die glucklichste Darstellung des durch die Form bezwungenen Stoffs, der durch die Kraft uberwundenen Schwere" (413-14) .64 Organic nature, like the technical form of the artifact, is only the first form, and it must be overcome if freedom is to be adequately represented. The bird in flight and the Spanish horse perform this feat, for their conquest of gravity causes them to appear to burst out of their 63. "A vessel is beautiful when, without contradicting its concept, it resembles a free play of nature. The handle of a vessel is there solely for use, i.e., for a concept. If the vessel is to be beautiful, this handle must emerge from it with such unconstrained freedom that one forgets what it is for." 64. "A bird in flight is the happiest representation of matter conquered by form, of gravity overcome by force."

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material limitations. The effect of artistic beauty is no different, as the sculpting stanzas from "Das Ideal und das Leben" show. Another consequence of the dual form theory should be noted. Natural organisms, whether simple ones such as the trees or enhanced ones like the bird in flight, might appear free, and can hence remind us of the idea of freedom, and a work of art, by resembling an organism, might have the same effect by a double instead of a single illusion. In each case, the cataphatic image, operating on the principle of like through like, calls the idea to our mind. Once the idea is present to us, however, it is not the similarity but the dissimilarity that obtrudes itself. Sensible beauty has been transformed into intelligible beauty, and the object, which had at first exerted its effect cataphatically, is now recognized as only an apophatic image. In so far as Schiller implies that organic beauty is something different from artistic beauty, his theory of it, parallel to that of natural teleology, therefore represents a moment of philosophical inconsistency in his system, and one that he is perpetually struggling to absorb.65 SUMMARY AND PROSPECT

In the preceding chapters, I have approached the elusive moment of synthesis and illusion from different angles and using different terminologies. Schiller, to recapitulate, seeks to accomplish the methexis of the 65. The treatment of the issue in the sculpting stanzas of "Das Ideal und das Leben" is interesting. If the finished work is to resemble an organic product—"Schlank und leicht, wie aus dem Nichts gesprungen" (line 85) (Slender and light, as if it had leapt into being from nothingness)—this is only on the basis of the nonorganic process that has produced it. The next lines stress the priority of the violent conception of the form-matter relationship over a more gentle organic concept: "Nur des MeiBels schwerem Schlag erweichet/ Sich des Manners sprodes Korn" (lines 79-80) ("The marble's stubborn corn softens only to the heavy blow of the chisel"). The implicit chronology here is applied to natural history in AE (p. 589): "Nicht eher, als bis der Kampf elementarischer Krafte in den niedrigern Organisationen besanftiget ist, erhebt sie [die Natur] sich zu der edeln Bildung des physischen Menschen." (Not until the struggle of elemental forces in the lower organisms has been alleviated does [nature] raise itself to the nobler formation of physical man.) A political parallel is suggested earlier in the same work in Schiller's diagnosis of the failure of the French Revolution (p. 580): "Die losgebundene Gesellschaft, anstatt aufwarts in das organische Leben zu eilen, fallt in das Elementarreich zuruck." (Instead of hastening upwards into organic life, liberated society is falling back into the realm of the elements.) Implied here are the notions that (i) the rational state, if realized, would also be in some unclear sense an organic state, and (2) that true organism, as a product of methexis, can exist only in the state of "Schein."

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intelligible in the material by fusing the moments of sensible and intelligible beauty (which operate, respectively, by cataphatic and apophatic representation) in his notion of ideal beauty; and the mechanism by which the artist is to create this fusion is laid down in the dual form theory. I wish to conclude this chapter and the analytical section of this study by underlining the following three points. First, Schiller's efforts to synthesize the incompatible, despite the variety of forms taken by this synthesis, all respond to the same need, implicit in the Platonic theory of love, for a connecting and reconciling link between the intelligible and the material. Second, his attempts to secure this link philosophically, both in the Kallias-Briefe and in the works that grew out of them, follow from his poetic and allegorical fusion of the two Venuses in "Die Kiinstler," and hence his philosophical labours can justly be described as a dialectic of love—as in the title of this study. Finally, Schiller is committed to chorismos as strongly as to methexis, if not more so, and this commitment causes his syntheses constantly to disintegrate. This fragility, implicit in the Platonic heritage itself, is only increased by Schiller's residual commitment to Aristotelian notions of natural teleology and organicism. The ideal thus fragments into cataphatic beauty and apophatic sublimity, both of which, as we shall see, engage in a struggle for supremacy throughout Schiller's published treatises.

VI

The Departure of Venus: "Die Goiter Griechenlandes " In December 1787, Schiller left Weimar, where he had taken up residence six months before, to pay a visit to his former friend and patroness, Henriette von Wolzogen, in Bauerbach, near Meiningen. Frau von Wolzogen, the mother of two boys whom Schiller had known at the ducal academy in Stuttgart, had helped him out of some difficulties in Mannheim by allowing him to live on her Bauerbach estate for some months in 1782-83. She had pressed him to visit her again, now that he was living nearby, and he obliged by spending twelve days with her, being led, as he commented ironically in a letter to Korner (8 December 1787), from one nobleman's estate to another. What interests us here is Schiller's comment in the same letter on the passage of time between the earlier visit and the later one, and the changes that he was able to observe in his own response to the familiar environment: Ich war also wieder in der Gegend wo ich von 82 bis 83 ein Einsiedler lebte. Damals war ich noch nicht in der Welt gewesen, ich stand sozusagen schwindelnd an ihrer Schwelle und meine Phantasie hatte ganz erstaunlich viel zu tun. Jetzt nach 5 Jahren kam ich wieder, nicht ohne manche Erfahrungen iiber Menschen, Verhaltnisse und mich. Jene Magie war wie weggeblasen. Ich fuhlte nichts. Keine von alien Platzen, die ehmals meine Einsamkeit interessant machte, sagte mir jetzt etwas mehr. Alles hat seine Sprache an mich verloren. An dieser Verwandlung sah ich, dafi eine groBe Veranderung mit mir selbst vorgegangen war. (NA 24:1 So)1 i. "So I was once more in the region where I had lived as a hermit from '82 to '83. At that time I had not yet been in the world; I stood, so to speak, swaying on its threshold and my imagination was amazingly hard at work. I now returned after five years, not without

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While this is perhaps not a particularly surprising account of the emotional distance between the twenty-three-year-old and the twenty-eightyear-old, with the growth of worldly experience leading to a loss of imaginative spontaneity, there can be no doubting the intensity with which Schiller experienced this universal loss of illusion. Schiller's literary creativity in this decade, on which he hoped to found his existence, was bound up in his own mind with a somewhat amorphous collection of ideas that are generally known as his philosophy of love. These ideas are not without philosophical interest, but their most important aspect for our purposes is that they attempt to translate a subjective experience of the emotions and the imagination into discursive terms. Though purporting to have the objective firmness of a philosophy, they are nonetheless dependent on the imaginative rapport with the surrounding world that Schiller refers to in the passage quoted, and they are consequently threatened by the inherent vulnerability of that state of mind. "Jene Magie war wie weggeblasen" (The magic had been blown away), Schiller writes in the letter, and the metaphor may be connected with the fact that in 1783 he had been able to enjoy the spring in the countryside, whereas it was now late autumn. In March 1788, only four months after the letter, his elegy "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" appeared in Wieland's paper Teutscher Merkur. In the later stanzas of this poem, the dense mythological references relent sufficiently to make room for some personal statements on the part of the poet, for example, "Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde, / Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blick,"2 and "Alle jenen Bliiten sind gefallen/Von des Nordes winterlichem Wehn" (149-50, 153-54) .3 Is it fanciful to see the biographical seed of this great poem in Schiller's visit to Bauerbach? We can do so while still remaining sceptical of biographical interpretations of Schiller's thought, for here Schiller was confronted, not by an extraneous influence (such as his friendship with Goethe), but by an occurrence that revealed to him the inner law of his own creative personality. The experience would thus have been an "epiphany" in the Joycean sense. It is only too easy to imagine Schiller's dismay as he visited the familiar places and observed the absence of the some experience of people, society, and myself. That magic had been blown away. I felt nothing. None of the places that at that time had made my solitude interesting had anything to say to me any more. Nothing speaks to me any more. I saw from this transformation that a great change had occurred in me." 2. "The dead fields are in mourning, no deity presents itself to my gaze." 3. "All those blossoms have fallen before the wintry blast of the north wind."

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inner response that had previously been his guarantee of genius. "Alles hat seine Sprache an mich verloren," he writes, and in the poem this loss is expressed as follows: "Durch die Walder ruf ich, durch die Wogen,/ Ach! sie widerhallen leer!" (159-60).4 Schiller's letters to Korner of January 1788 confirm this picture of a crisis of creativity. On 7 January, he defends his decision, deplored by Korner, to devote himself exclusively to history, citing his deteriorating mental state, for which he believes that marriage and domesticity can alone provide a remedy: "Alle meine Triebe zu Leben und Tatigkeit sind in mir abgenutzt. ... Ich fuhre eine elende Existenz, elend durch den inneren Zustand meines Wesens" (NA 25:4) .5 In a turn of phrase that again makes us think of "Die Cotter Griechenlandes," he writes, "Eine philosophische Hypochondrie verzehrt meine Seele, alle ihre Bliiten drohen abzufallen."6 He returns to the same imagery in his letter of 18 January, in which he again defends himself from Korner's criticisms, this time even drawing up a list of numbered arguments. Under argument number 8 we read: "1st es wahr oder falsch daB ich darauf denken muss, wovon ich leben soil, wenn mein dichterischer Friihling verbluht?" (NA 25:6).7 It is hard to imagine that when he wrote in the poem (145-46), "Schone Welt, wo bist du?—Kehre wieder, / Holdes Bliitenalter der Natur!"8 Schiller could not have been thinking also of the personal crisis that had elicited similar language from him only a short time before. To be sure, Schiller went to some lengths to conceal the autobiographical nature of the poem, turning it into a meditation about man's changed relation to God and nature in the modern world, and, indeed, in all periods of his work, even the earliest, he shows remarkably little overt concern with his own personal experience. If accepted, however, the biographical interpretation has great explanatory value, allowing "Die Cotter Griechenlandes" to emerge as the pivot between Schiller's early and later creative periods. The early period is underpinned by his belief in the philosophy of love, the later one by his loss of belief in it 4. "Through the woods I call, through the waves. Alas, they re-echo emptily." 5. "All my impulses to life and activity are worn o u t . . . . I lead a wretched existence, wretched through the inner state of my being." 6. "A philosophical hypochondria consumes my soul; all its blossoms are threatening to fall." 7. "Is it true or false that I must consider what I am to live on once my poetic spring has passed?" 8. "Beautiful world, where are you? Return, nature's blossom-time!"

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and his search for a philosophical and dialectical substitute that will perform the same function as his philosophy of love without requiring the youthful gush of emotion necessary to fertilize it. LOVE The complex of ideas that is called Schiller's philosophy of love seems to have been important to him for more than ten years. His letter to a fellow pupil named Georg Friedrich Boigeol, one of the earliest letters that have come down to us, was probably written in 1776 when Schiller was seventeen. It contains a passionate protest against accusations that Schiller had been insincere in his friendship with Boigeol and that his concept of friendship was merely a literary conceit: "Sagten Sie nicht immer, ich hatte das wahre Gefiihl des Herzens nicht, alles sei Phantasei, Poesie, die ich mir durchs Lesen Klopstocks angeeignet hatte, ich fuhlte Gott nur im Gedicht, und die Freundschaft liege nicht in meinem Innersten!" (NA 23:8).9 Whatever the truth of the charge, it is clear that even at this stage Schiller was keenly propounding the ideas that later appeared in the poem "Die Freundschaft." This poem was published in the Anthologie auf dasjahr 1782, a year after Schiller's departure from the ducal academy, together with a note stating that it formed part of an unpublished epistolary novel. Parts of the poem were then reprinted with prose commentary in what is the most important single document of the philosophy of love, the "Theosophie des Julius," which was published in 1786 as part of the Philosophische Briefe, the fragmentary novel referred to four years earlier. Other texts containing expressions of the philosophy are the opening of the first medical dissertation, Philosophie der Physiologie (1779), entitled "Bestimmung des Menschen" (Destiny / Nature of Man) and the speech "Die Tugend in ihren Folgen betrachtet" (1780), as well as various other poems from the Anthologie, notably "Phantasie an Laura" and "Der Triumph der Liebe." In its context in the Briefe, the "Theosophie" is prefaced by several letters, in the last of which Julius presents the text in a rather apologetic spirit to his philosophical friend Raphael, explaining that it was written at a time when he still commanded the gift of poetic enthusiasm: "Ich finde einen verlorenen Aufsatz wieder, entworfen in jenen gliicklichen 9. "Did you not always say that I did not have the true feeling of the heart, that all was fantasy and poetry, absorbed from reading Klopstock, that I felt God only in a poem and that friendship is not part of my innermost being!"

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Stunden meiner stolzen Begeisterung. Raphael, wie ganz anders fmde ich jetzo das alles! Es 1st das holzerne Geriist der Schaubiihne, wenn die Beleuchtung dahin 1st" (343-44).10 Schiller is thus putting some distance between himself and the philosophy of love by this stage, and the reference to "Begeisterung" here alerts us to the fact that, despite its theological and cosmological moments, the philosophy also contains a strong affective, even psychological dimension. While the titles of its first and last sections, "Die Welt und das denkende Wesen" (The World and the Thinking Being) and "Gott," point in the direction of cosmology, the last section ends with Christ's injunction to the disciples to love each other, and with a quotation from the poem "Der Triumph der Liebe": "Liebe, Liebe leitet nur/zu dem Vater der Natur,/Liebe nur die Geister" (354). 1L Schiller's concept of love is thus sufficiendy broadly conceived to cover all these different subject matters. Julius, we have observed, presents his "Theosophie" as testimony to a lost gift of enthusiasm. We discovered a similar preoccupation in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" and the circumstances of its composition, and it is therefore of interest to find that this crisis did not break upon Schiller suddenly. Rather, it seems to have cast its shadow over the period at least from the time of Schiller's journey to Saxony in 1785 until his engagement in 1789. (As we shall see, it can be traced back even further.) In his letter to his future brother-in-law, Reinwald, of 14 April 1783, dated from Bauerbach "Fruh in der Gartenhiitte" (Early morning in the garden pavillion), Schiller expounds the philosophy and applies it to the psychology of literary creation. In the first months of 1785, there are frequent references to it in his letters to Korner and Huber, and of course the famous ode "An die Freude" (published February 1786) is full of its ecstatic spirit. In a letter to Huber of 5 October 1785, however, we get a hint of disillusionment: "Enthusiasmus und Ideale, mein Teurester, sind unglaublich tief in meinen Augen gesunken."12 Though by no means succumbing to despair like Julius in the Philosophische Briefe, Schiller seeks a point of balance and intellectual detachment from which he can criticize enthusiasm without being blind to its benefits: "Ich lobe die Begeisterung und Hebe die schone atherische Kraft, sich in eine groBe EntschlieBung entziinden zu konnen. Sie 10. "I have found a lost essay, drafted in those happy hours of my proud enthusiasm. Raphael, how differently I feel now about all that! It is the wooden structure of the stage when the lights are turned off." 11. "Love alone leads spirits to the father of nature." 12. "Enthusiasm and ideals, dear friend, have fallen unbelievably far in my eyes."

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gehort zu dem bessern Mann, aber sie vollendet ihn nicht" (NA 24:2526).13 The letter then continues with a fine analogy between enthusiasm and the trajectory of a ball, illustrating the inevitable return to earth that must follow the moment of inspired exaltation.l* As we shall see, this sequence of enthusiasm and disillusion is the psychological origin of Schiller's duality of the beautiful and the sublime and the experiential foundation for his inheritance of the Platonic dilemmas we have analysed. For in the treatises of the 17905, with their alternate affirmation and denigration of nature in the beautiful and the sublime, the subjective dilemma finds metaphysical expression, and the aspiration for a synthesis of the beautiful and the sublime contains the hope of a resolution to the psychological crisis. The content and the sources of the "Theosophie des Julius" have been well analysed in a recent study of Schiller's early anthropology by Wolfgang Riedel.15 Riedel groups the anthropological concerns of the little treatise under two headings, the destiny of man ("Bestimmung des Menschen") and the doctrine of love as a cosmic force, and he has no trouble in showing, first, that both of these ideas derive from powerful currents in the popular philosophy of the age, and second, that Schiller drew on academically respectable authors (for example, Adam Ferguson, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Joachim Spalding) as well as on two more marginal figures usually classified as "hermetic" (Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Jakob Hermann Obereit). Riedel's discussion of the "Theosophie" is prefaced by an investigation of Schiller's medical dissertations and their relation to the medical and "anthropological" thought of the period. While this is of course an entirely valid line of inquiry, it is by no means the only way to approach the "Theosophie," and one wonders whether it causes the religious 13. "I praise enthusiasm and love the beautiful ethereal power to kindle oneself to a great decision. It belongs to the better kind of man, but it does not perfect him." 14. The metaphor of flight looks forward to the KB, pp. 412-14. A Platonic parallel for the passage can be found in Nicholas of Cusa, De coniecturis, 2.16.158: "As the strength of one throwing up a stone lifts the heavy stone, but in such a way that it speeds downwards as that strength fades away, the strength of the soul similarly moves the body, and death is nothing other than to lack this vivifying strength." The same metaphor is used by Ficino; see Kristeller, DiePhilasophie des MarsilioFicino, p. 209. The comparison highlights Schiller's practice of adapting the materials of the metaphysical tradition to serve an aesthetic function. 15. Die Anthropologie desjungen Schiller. Riedel's book is an outstanding work of scholarship that has greatly expanded our knowledge of eighteenth-century intellectual life. Kondylis' analysis of the "Liebesphilosophie" in his EntstehungderDialektikpp. 22-45, *salso of great value.

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aspects of Schiller's early thought to be slightly overshadowed. The first and most theological section of the "Theosophie," called "Die Welt und das denkende Wesen" for example, is treated by Riedel as peripheral to Schiller's main concerns. As Riedel himself recognizes, however, the anthropology of the "Theosophie" is saturated with metaphysical assumptions and is presented in a very different tone from that of the medical dissertations. It would be unfortunate if the term anthropology (which meant something quite different then from what it means today), as well as the apparently scientific context within which Riedel places the "Theosophie," gave rise to the impression that there was anything particularly scientific about this text. Such additional comments as we have here are prompted by the desire to probe the "Theosophie" for clues about the origins and development of Schiller's mature aesthetics, and hence I shall be less interested in Schiller's sources for the ideas than in his treatment of them. With reference, for example, to the equivalence of love and gravitation, which is a prominent aspect of Schiller's "Liebesphilosophie," it has been frequently noted that the idea is derived in part from Adam Ferguson's Institutes of Moral Philosophy, Christian Garve's translation of which (1772) was one of Schiller's favourite books. Riedel alludes to Ferguson's "Second Law of the Will," which holds that "men are disposed to society," and notes that, after stating some objections to the analogy between sociability and gravitation, Ferguson (in Garve's version) defends it along the following lines: Schwere Korper fallen nicht immer, und gesellige Wesen wirken nicht immer zum allgemeinen Besten. Wenn Korper fallen, so beschleunigt die Schwerkraft ihre Bewegung; sind sie unterstiitzt und in Ruhe, so bringt sie einen Druck hervor; werden sie in die Hohe geworfen, so macht sie nur die Bewegung langsamer; werden sie schief bewegt, so verandert sie ihre Richtung, und bringt sie in eine krumme Linie. Die Analogic dieses Gesetzes kann das Gesetz der Geselligkeit vollkommen erklaren. Dieses Gesetz, befordert in einigen Fallen das Wohlthun, in andern verzogert es bloB das Schadenthun.—Es vermehrt unsern Eifer, bey wohlthatigen, es vermindert unsre Hitze bey schadlichen Einrichtungen.16 16. Ferguson, Grundsdtze der Moralphilosophie, p. 82. Ferguson's original text reads as follows: "Heavy bodies are not always falling, nor social natures always acting for the common good. When bodies are falling, gravitation accelerates; when placed on a support at rest, it

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This passage should be compared with Schiller's use of the analogy, for example, in his Anthologie poem "Phantasie an Laura": Meine Laura! Nenne mir den Wirbel, Der an Korper Korper machtig reifit, Nenne, meine Laura, mir den Zauber, Der zum Geist monarchisch zwingt den Geist.

Sonnenstaubchen paart mit Sonnenstaubchen Sich in trauter Harmonic, Spharen ineinander lenkt die Liebe, Weltsysteme dauren nur durch sie. (1-4, 13-16)'? The first stanza of "Die Freundschaft," not quoted in the "Theosophie,' opens the poem with the same motif: Freund! geniigsam ist der Wesenlenker— Schamen sich kleinmeisterische Denker, Die so angstlich nach Gesetzen spahn— Geisterreich und Korperweltgewiihle Walzet eines Rades Schwung zum Ziele, Hiersah es mein Newton gehn. (i-6)18

is a pressure; when they are thrown upwards, it is a retardation; when they are moved obliquely, it is a continual change of direction, &c. The analogy of this law may fully illustrate the law of society. This law, in some cases, excites to beneficence; in other cases, only retards mischief. It increases our ardour in actions beneficial to our fellow creatures; it restrains or diminishes our ardour in actions hurtful" (pp. 88-89). The idea of love as a cosmic force, while still popular in the Enlightenment, has a much longer history. It is traditionally associated with Empedocles, and forms the basis of Eryximachus' speech in Plato's Symposium. An example from the Renaissance is Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore, pp. 74ff 17. "My Laura! Tell me the name of the whirlwind that mightily presses body to body; tell me the name of the spell that regally forces spirit to spirit. Sunbeam couples with sunbeam in intimate harmony; love guides the spheres into each other and planetary systems only exist through it." 18. "Friend! the ruler of beings is modest, and those small-minded thinkers who search so anxiously for laws should be ashamed. For the spirit realm and the tumult of the corporeal world are rolled by the impetus of a single wheel to their goal. That is what Newton saw."

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While Ferguson, a proponent of the theory of a moral sense, is in all sobriety trying to defend the validity of the analogy as a means of explaining human behaviour, it has become for Schiller the object of an ecstatic vision. For him the idea of the equivalence is not an instrument of analysis but rather enters into his experience of love itself; his feelings for Laura and for Raphael are actually enhanced by his sense of participation in the psycho-kinetic movements of the universe, and of course the experience would not be complete without the thought of the benevolent and loving Creator, to whom the emotion of love draws him closer and who guarantees a cosmic meaning to his creature's passions. Finally, of course, the emotional exaltation to which the analogy gives rise issues in the poetic outburst that records it, hence the proximity, pervasive in Schiller's early work but alien to Ferguson, of love and "Begeisterung."19 Schiller's adoption of the love / gravity analogy is therefore marked by two seemingly incompatible features. On the one hand, it is given a more theological character, in the sense that both physical and emotional attraction are viewed in what we can call a physico-theological context. On the other hand, the analogy is also subjectivized, in the sense that Schiller not merely explores the emotional experience of personal love but also expands that experience to embrace, with intensifying effect, the physico-theological context in which it occurs: Wars nicht dies allmachtige Getriebe, Das zum ewgen Jubelbund der Liebe Unsre Herzen aneinander zwang? Raphael, an deinemArm—o Wonne! Wag auch,ich zur groBen Geistersonne Freudigmutig den Vollendungsgang. ("Die Freundschaft," i3-i8) 20 This emotional heightening is also characteristic of other parts of the "Theosophie." In the first section, for example, Schiller's starting point seems quite conventional: "Das Universum ist ein Gedanke Gottes. 19. One should note also that, in the analogy of enthusiasm with the flight of a ball (letter to Huber, 5 October 1785, NA, vol. 24, pp. 26-27), gravity fulfils an opposite function, symbolizing the return to reality after the "flight" of enthusiasm. Here, love and enthusiasm are compared not to gravity but to an escape from it. 20. "Was it not this almighty mechanism that forced our hearts together to the eternal jubilation-bond of love? On your arm, Raphael—O bliss!—I too venture on the path of perfection to the great spirit-sun in joyful courage."

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Nachdem dieses idealische Geistesbild in die Wirklichkeit hinubertrat und die geborene Welt den RiB ihres Schopfers erfullte ... so ist der Beruf aller denkenden Wesen, in diesem vorhandenen Ganzen die erste Zeichnung wiederzufmden, die Regel in der Maschine, die Einheit in der Zusammensetzung, das Gesetz in dem Phanomen aufzusuchen und das Gebaude riickwarts auf seinen GrundriB zu iibertragen" (344).21 The basic idea is the perfection of the created universe, which is deduced from a reconstruction of the moment in which the Creator formed the idea of it. Since he possesses infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, the universe must necessarily be the best possible one, and the proper human attitude to it should be one of gratitude, praise, and wonder. As in the first section of the dissertation Philosophie der Physiologie, Schiller seems at first concerned here to use this standard Leibnizian argument as a justification for the natural sciences rather than for religious apologetics; by the discovery of ever more natural laws, scientists gain increasing insight into what, in our own time, Stephen Hawking has called "the mind of God." As the section proceeds, however, we again notice the shift of attention towards the individual human experience, and it is notable that God and man are brought together under the rubric of "thinking being": "Also gibt es fur mich nur eine einzige Erscheinung in der Natur, das denkende Wesen. Die groBe Zusammensetzung, die wir Welt nennen, bleibt mir jetzo nur merkwurdig, weil sie vorhanden ist, mir die mannigfaltigen AuBerungen jenes Wesens symbolisch zu bezeichnen. Alles in mir und auBer mir ist nur Hieroglyphe einer Kraft, die mir ahnlich ist" (344).22 God and nature seem to have been swallowed up here into an all-embracing subjectivity that communes with itself by means of natural hieroglyphics, rendering all scientific interest in natural objects insignificant. Schiller gives some conventional examples of such symbolism, and sums up, "Jetzt, Raphael, ist alles bevolkert um mich herum. Es gibt fur mich keine Einode in der 21. "The universe is a thought of God. Now that this ideal spirit-picture has crossed over into reality and the world has fulfilled by its birth its creator's design, ... it is the task of all thinking beings to discover the original blueprint in the totality before us, to search for the rule in the machine, the unity in the manifold, the law in the phenomenon, and to visualize the edifice transferred back on to its ground-plan." 22. "There exists for me therefore only a single phenomenon in nature, the thinking being. The great manifold that we call the world merits my attention only because it exists to designate symbolically the numerous utterances of that being. All within me and without is merely a hieroglyph of a force that is akin to me."

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ganzen Natur mehr" (345).23 In view of the occurrence of the opposite term, "entvolkert" (depopulated) in "Die Cotter Griechenlandes" (182), we surely do not go astray when we connect this feeling of being at home in a "populated" nature with the experience of poetic inspiration, whose loss Schiller laments in that letter of December 1787. Schiller has thus started with a conventional statement of the theodicy, has followed it with a gesture towards the natural sciences, and has concluded with the evocation of an exalted subjective state in which the individual feels at one with nature. We may well wonder what is going on here. It will be helpful to refer at this point to Riedel's reference to Mendelssohn's Phaedon (first edition 1767), a text that, like Ferguson/ Garve's Grundsatze, unquestionably influenced Schiller during this period. Commenting on the strongly emotive character of a speech from the "Drittes Gesprach," Riedel reminds us that the Phaedon is to be understood as a work written in defence of Leibnizian optimism, and he suggests plausibly that the peculiar urgency detectable in Socrates' words is attributable to the increasing vulnerability of that philosophy in the later decades of the century: "For our purposes it is essential to see that the situation in which the Phaedon was written was such that the urgency of proving its case had intensified significantly over the course of the century, in comparison with the metaphysical optimism of the early Enlightenment."24 Riedel mentions Voltaire's satire Candide (1759) and La Mettrie's L'homme machine (1748) as symptoms of the new sceptical spirit that threatened Leibnizianism, but perhaps we should simply reflect that, by the decade of the 17705, that philosophy had been dominant for a long period, at least two generations, and that it failed adequately to reflect the experience of those born from the mid-century onwards. Riedel refers also to Thomas Abbt's sceptical response to Spalding's Die Bestimmung des Menschen (an understandable response, it must be said, in view of that book's irritating smugness and superficiality), and this too is an eloquent symptom of the decline of popular Leibnizianism. The emotional excitement with which Mendelssohn defends Leibniz and Spalding in 1767 thus results from the lateness of that defence and is a symptom of weakness rather than of strength. 23. "Now, Raphael, everything is populated around me. For me there exists no desolation in all nature." 24. "Es 1st fur unseren Zusammenhang entscheidend zu sehen, daB der Phaedon unter den Voraussetzungen einer Beweislast verfaBt wurde, die sich gegenuber dem metaphysischen Optimismus der Fruhaufklarung im Verlauf desjahrhunderts merklich erhoht hat." Riedel, Anthropologie, p. 161.

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The emotional agitation in Mendelssohn is the precursor of the even greater agitation evident in Schiller's "Theosophie." As we shall see in a moment, Julius's effusions are unable to conceal the shakiness of his belief, and his theoretical constructions bear the signs of this inner crisis. Transparently, the new emphasis on powerful subjective experience is required because the rational theodicy, universally acceptable in the early decades of the century, can no longer command uncomplicated general assent. The apparent religious zeal of the "Theosophie," then, may well conceal an actual loss of religious faith, and it is not hard to find more evidence that it does. The immortality of the soul, for example, to the demonstration of which Mendelssohn's Phaedon is dedicated, is only of secondary interest for Schiller. In the section "Aufopferung" (self-sacrifice) Julius is determined to account for the possibility of altruistic death by reference to his theory of love alone, that is, without resorting to the notion of immortality. As we shall see, he has defined love in a surprisingly egoistic way as, essentially, self-love, but this definition raises the problem of how sacrifice of one's life for others can be possible. Immortality and reward in the afterlife provide a solution that he rejects: "Die Voraussetzung von einer Unsterblichkeit hebt diesen Widerspruch— aber sie entstellt auch auf immer die hohe Grazie dieser Erscheinung. Riicksicht auf eine belohnende Zukunft schlieBt die Liebe aus. Es muB eine Tugend geben, die auch ohne den Glauben an Unsterblichkeit auslangt, die auch auf Gefahr der Vernichtung das namliche Opfer wirkt" (35 i)- 2 5 While personal immortality is not denied, therefore, it has become irrelevant for Schiller, and self-sacrifice can thus be justified in terms solely of momentary subjective experience.26 The corollary of this move away from the traditional religious agenda is a shift towards aesthetics. As I have argued, the philosophy of love is, more than anything else, a doctrine of poetic inspiration, and the letter of 14 April 1783 to

25. "The assumption of immortality removes this contradiction, but disfigures for ever the exalted grace of the phenomenon. Consideration of future reward rules out love. Vi tue must exist that suffices without a belief in immortality, which effects the same sacrifice even at the risk of annihilation." 26. In "Der Triumph der Liebe" (168-80), immortality is proclaimed, but is made dependent on the philosophy of love: "Liebe, Liebe leitet nur / zu dem Vater der Natur, / Liebe nur die Geister" (Love, love alone leads spirits to the father of nature). The lines are quoted at the end of the "Theosophie."

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Reinwald is the best evidence of this.27 Schiller seems to be borrowing religious motifs that no longer command his straightforward assent, adapting them and reusing them in an aesthetic context. The concept of love thus reappears later in UberAnmut und Wurde (482) as closely associated with the doctrine of beauty, and the experience of self-sacrifice, described in the "Theosophie," looks forward to the type of overwhelming subjective experience that Schiller will later associate with the aesthetic condition. The procedure I have outlined is characteristic of Schiller's aesthetics as a whole and is a sign of the religious crisis of the times. The fate of Ferguson's concept of sociability ("Geselligkeit") can be mentioned here as a further illustration. Ferguson had argued that sociability was a natural law of human nature comparable to gravity in the physical universe. If we look at the twenty-seventh Asthetischer Brief, we see that Schiller retains the concept of "Geselligkeit," but that he now confines it to the aesthetic state ("asthetischer Staat"): "Wenn schon das Bediirfnis den Menschen in die Gesellschaft notigt und die Vernunft gesellige Grundsatze in ihm pflanzt, so kann die Schonheit allein ihm einen geselligen Charakter erteilen" (667).28 As we saw in chapter 5, this means that realized "Geselligkeit" is located in the problematic middle ground between reason and nature; that is, it is an ideal that can exist in this world only as "Schein" and not in material fact. In the third Brief, Schiller has described the natural human character, implicitly still dominant as he writes, as selfish and violent ("selbstsuchtig und gewalttatig," 575), and so, realized "Geselligkeit" is evidently a long way off. In this case also, therefore, the aesthetic, in particular the aesthetic of the beautiful, functions as a kind of modality for the preservation of the optimistic beliefs, whether religious or moral, of the early eighteenth century, even though historical reality appears to refute them. This applies as much to Schiller's treatment of 27. "Wenn Freundschaft und platonische Liebe nur eine Verwechslung eines fremden Wesens mil dem unsrigen, nur eine heftige Begehrung seiner Eigenschaften sind, so sind beide gewissermaBen nur eine andere Wirkung der Dichtungskraft" (NA vol. 23, p. 80). (If friendship and Platonic love are just an exchange / confusion of an alien being with our own, then both are to a certain extent just another effect of the poetic faculty.) There is a parallel for this view in the "Theosophie," p. 347: "Ich bin uberzeugt, daB in dem glucklichen Momente des Ideals der Kimstler, der Philosoph und der Dichter die groBen und guten Menschen wirklich sind, deren Bild sie entwerfen" (I am convinced that, in the happy moment of the ideal, the artist, the philosopher and the poet really are the great and good men whose images they are designing). 28. "Though it is need that forces man into society, and reason that instils sociable principles in him, beauty alone can give him a sociable character."

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the Leibnizian belief in harmony as to his treatment of Ferguson's sociability. (The sublime, as we saw, tends to function as a realistic corrective to the illusions of the beautiful, but as one operating paradoxically within the aesthetic mode.) SOURCES Wolfgang Riedel follows Hans-Jiirgen Schings in observing that the theological parts of the "Theosophie" show clear echoes of ideas expressed by the hermeticists Oetinger and Obereit.29 This important discovery suggests that when the theodicy and the physico-theological view of nature are defended in an enthusiastic rather than a calm, rational spirit, the orthodoxies of the early Enlightenment can rapidly take on a rather different aspect. One example is the notion of a semiotic of nature: "Alles in mir und auBer mir ist nur Hieroglyphic einer Kraft, die mir ahnlich ist" (344).3° While the affinity of this idea to the physicotheology of the early Enlightenment is clear enough, the enthusiastic desire for spiritual contact with God causes Schiller to venture onto preEnlightened territory; Hans Blumenberg can thus discuss this section in his metaphorological study Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (220—22), placing it in a context that goes back to antiquity. Another example is the view of love and friendship propounded in the "Theosophie," according to which the two partners are taken out of themselves and exchange personalities; this theory influences even Julius's theory of knowledge, such that "Welchen Zustand wir wahrnehmen, in diesen treten wir selbst. ... Wir selber werden das empfundene Objekt" (346).31 A parallel for this combination can be found, Riedel points out, in Oetinger's doctrine of "Central-Erkenntnis" (central knowledge) which is also conceived by analogy with love. The relevant treatise by Obereit, we should observe, presents itself as a defence of Leibniz; while Leibniz himself would certainly have scorned such assistance, the situation is nonetheless indicative of the alliances that metaphysical optimism was obliged to seek in the later decades of the century. I must add here, however, that Oetinger's and Schiller's views of love and friendship are rooted in Renaissance Platonism, and in particular in the cult of Platonic love, by which Ficino ensured the inner unity of 29. Schings, "Philosophic der Liebe." 30. "Everything inside and outside me is but a hieroglyph of a force that is similar to me." 1i. "We enter into the state that we perceive. We ourselves become the perceived object."

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his Platonic Academy.32 In Ficino's De amore, for example, we read: "Whenever two men embrace each other in mutual affection, this one lives in that; that one, in this. Such men exchange themselves with each other; and each gives himself to the other in order to receive the other" (55). Schiller follows Ficino both in his refusal to distinguish between love and friendship—"Eine Regel leitet Freundschaft und Liebe" (35o)33—and also in his insistence that God is the vital third partner in the human relationship.34 We can see from this example how Schiller's adherence to Leibnizian optimism, albeit an optimism transformed by personal emotion and augmented by borrowings from hermetic authors, led him to formulations that hark back to Renaissance Platonism. In chapter 3 I discussed the role of beauty and love in uniting the spiritual and material parts of the cosmos. This Platonic conception is stated with great force in the speech "Die Tugend in ihren Folgen betrachtet": "Liebe ist es, die Seelen an Seelen fesselt; Liebe ist es, die den Unendlichen Schopfer zum endlichen Geschopfe herunterneigt, das endliche Geschopf hinaufhebt zum unendlichen Schopfer" (283).35 Particularly in view of the emergence of a Platonic eros as the keystone of this new philosophy, we are justified in broadening the context in which we interpret it, looking beyond Schiller's immediate German sources to the much earlier origins of the ideas concerned. In this connection, Riedel refers (184, n.i63) to Lucretius as a precursor of Schiller's "Liebesphilosophie." The proem to book i of De re rum natura is a memorable invocation of Venus that has inspired many imitations, and Riedel sees it as the ultimate source for "Der Triumph der Liebe." While in a purely literary sense this may be true, it is also slightly misleading in a philosophical sense, in that Lucretius, the defender of Epicurean materialism, celebrates love as an instinctual force operating throughout organic nature and stimulating reproduction among all species: "Then wild beasts and cattle bound over the fat pastures, and swim the racing rivers; so surely enchained by delight each 32. Schiller refers to Platonic love three times in the letter of 14 April 1793 to Reinwald. (For one occurrence, see n. 4, above.) Discussing the possibility of marriage with Wieland's daughter in his letter of 19 November 1787 to Korner (NA vol. 24, p. 178), he writes, "Ich kenne weder das Madchen, noch weniger fuhle ich einen Grad von Liebe, weder Sinnlichkeit noch Platonismus." (I neither know the girl, nor even less do I feel a degree of love, whether sensuality or Platonism.) Schiller's knowledge of Platonic love is most likely to have been derived from his reading of Wieland and Winckelmann. 33. "Friendship and love are guided by one law." 34. Rristeller, Die Philosophic des Marsilio Ficino, pp. 259-7 * • 35. "It is love that binds soul to soul, love that inclines the infinite creator down to the finite creature, that raises the finite creature to the infinite creator."

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follows in hot desire whither thou dost hasten to lead him on" (lines 14-16). But Schiller was a consistent opponent of materialism, and his love, by contrast, is exclusively human, elevating us above the animals, civilizing us and making us godlike (lines 3, 65, 105, 131). Before the coming of Venus, mankind is evidently able to reproduce, that is, it already participates in the materialistic sexuality extolled by Lucretius, but for Schiller, now as later, that basic form of love is something to be overcome by a new spiritual and aesthetic capacity: "Noch mit sanften Rosenketten / Banden junge Amoretten/Ihre Seelen nie" (i5~i7). 36 This idea reappears in "Die Kiinstler" (204-6): "Geadelt zur Gedankenwurde,/Flo6 die verschamtere Begierde / Melodisch aus des Sangers Mund."37 It is then taken up in the twenty-seventh Asthetischer Brief, again in the context of the "asthetischer Staat": "Eine schonere Notwendigkeit kettet jetzt die Geschlechter zusammen, und der Herzen Anteil hilft das Biindnis bewahren, das die Begierde nur launisch und wandelbar kniipft" (666).38 The parallel, of course, illustrates the continuity between Schiller's thought in the 17805 and 17905, and underlines the extent to which the mature aesthetics are indeed a dialectic of love. But to find the sources for this idealistic conception of love, we have to look not at Lucretius but at the Platonic writings referred to in earlier chapters. SCEPTICISM I have noted Schiller's doubts about his philosophy of love and enthusiasm, expressed in his letter to Huber of 5 October 1785 as well as in Julius's letters that precede the "Theosophie" in the Philosophische Briefe. However, scepticism is not merely a threat that Julius constantly needs to ward off; it is written into the central conception of love itself. In the section titled "Idee," Julius proposes the epistemological view, mentioned above, according to which we effectively become what we perceive or imagine. The argument soon takes a turn towards the aesthetic, as Julius argues that when a heroic deed is narrated, the audience and, even more, the narrator become momentarily capable of performing that deed themselves. Julius now considers the objection that the opposite is sometimes the case: "Wende mir nicht ein, daB bei lebendi36. "As yet, young amoretti had never bound their souls with soft chains of roses." 37. "Ennobled to the dignity of thought, a more modest desire flowed melodically from the mouth of the singer." 38. "Now a more beautiful necessity binds the sexes together, and a sympathy between hearts helps to preserve the alliance that desire had established in its capricious and inconstant way."

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ger Erkenntnis einer Vollkommenheit nicht selten das entgegenstehende Gebrechen sich finde."39 (This is the objection that he later cites in the tenth Asthetischer Brief.} He next refers to Albrecht von Haller, a great poet who was not above petty vanity, as a case supporting the objection. Without any argument to meet the objection, however, the initial position is simply restated: "Ich bin iiberzeugt, daB in dem glucklichen Momente des Ideales der Kunstler, der Philosoph und der Dichter die groBen und guten Menschen wirklich sind, deren Bild sie entwerfen" (347).4° We notice in this restatement, however, how the original claim that imagination is always equivalent to the acquisition of a quality has been narrowed by being subjected to two qualifications, first, that this state is confined to the class of artists, poets, and philosophers, and second, that even here it occurs only in moments of "the ideal," that is, in moments of inspiration. (Both here and in the letter to Huber of 5 October 1785 [NA 24:25-26], the term "Ideal" is interpreted in a psychological sense and identified with the state of enthusiasm.) The next step of the argument requires close attention. In his letter accompanying the "Theosophie," Julius has pointed out how dependent his former ideas were on his passing moods: "Mein Herz suchte sich eine Philosophic, und die Phantasie unterschob ihre Traume. Die warmste war mir die wahre."41 When the moment of warmth is past, the philosophy collapses: "Ein kuhner Angriff des Materialismus stiirzt meine Schopfung ein" (344) -42 Love, we can infer, is a warm philosophy, and materialism a cold one. Returning to the section "Idee," we notice that Julius himself now employs a materialistic argument to explain how the moment of the ideal, which is genuine with the artists, poets, and philosophers, is counterfeited in other cases: "aber diese Veredlung des Geistes ist bei vielen nur ein unnaturlicher Zustand, durch eine lebhaftere Wallung des Bluts, einen rascheren Schwung der Phantasie gewaltsam hervorgebracht" (347).43 This is a most harmful admission, for it implies that "in many cases" the original position, that we become what we perceive, is actually a 39. "Do not object that, despite living knowledge of a perfection, the opposite failing often occurs also." 40. "I am convinced that, in the happy moment of the ideal, the artist, the philosopher, and the poet really are the great and good men whose images they are designing." 41. "My heart sought a philosophy for itself, and fantasy offered dreams instead. The warmest was the true one for me." 42. "A bold assault of materialism causes my creation to collapse." 43. "But this refinement of the spirit is in many cases merely an unnatural state, violently brought about by a more lively surge of the blood, a faster movement of the fantasy."

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delusion attributable to physiological causes. But if this is so in many cases, why not in all? It is not explained how we are to distinguish the artist, and the like, from "the many," nor how these individuals come to be exempted from the physiological causality that holds sway for the majority. Julius even increases the force of this concession by arguing that such cases of physiological (as opposed to actual) enthusiasm are actually harmful, leaving the subject in a worse condition than before. Despite this aporia, Julius continues by merely restating the original position: "Ich wollte erweisen, mein Raphael, daB es unser eigener Zustand ist, wenn wir einen fremden empfmden, ... und ich glaube, ich habe es erwiesen" (347)-44 Far from proving it, of course, he has actually given us good grounds for doubting it. It seems that even in the "Theosophie" Julius is afflicted by doubts. His enthusiasm has faltered, bringing on "an attack of materialism," and he has attempted to resist this attack by admitting the materialist case for "the many" and denying it only for the cases that really matter to him, the artist, poet, and philosopher.45 To a sceptic, however, the distinction between the poets and "the many" is merely subjective, resting on an arbitrary refusal to apply the materialistic logic to the poets. Already here, therefore, we can see how the aesthetic is beginning to function in Schiller's mind as a refuge for unsustainable optimistic 44. "I wanted to prove, Raphael, that it is our own condition when we feel the condition of another, and I think I have proven it." Significantly, during the critical period between the visit to Bauerbach in late 1787 and the composition of "Die Gotter Griechenlandes," Schiller describes his own creative enthusiasm in disillusioned and materialistic terms reminiscent of the "Theosophie," in his letter of 20 January 1788 to Huber (NA vol. 25, p. 8): "Was ist jetzt mein Zustand oder was war er, seitdem Du mich kennst? Eine fatale fortgesetzte Kette von Spannung und Ermattung, Opiumsschlummer und Champagnerrausch." (What is now my state, or what has it been since you have known me? A wretched, unceasing sequence of exertion and exhaustion, opium-induced sleep and champagneinduced intoxication.) 45. The distinction between the materialistic majority and the idealistic few is expounded at length in Schiller's letter to Korner of 7 May 1785. The relevant paragraph concludes (NA vol. 24, p. 6): "Tausend Menschen gehen wie Taschenuhren, die die Materie aufzieht, oder, wenn Sie wollen, ihre Empfindungen und Ideen tropfeln hydrostatisch, wie das Blut durch feine Venen und Arterien, der Korper usurpiert sich eine traurige Diktatur iiber die Seele, aber sie kann ihre Rechte reklamieren, und das sind dann die Momente des Genius und der Begeisterung. Nemo unquam vir magnus fuit sine aliquo afflatu divino." (Thousands of people run like watches that are wound up by matter. Or, if you like, their sensations and ideas drip hydrostatically like blood through the fine veins and arteries. The body usurps a sorry dictatorship over the soul, but the latter can reclaim its rights, and these are the moments of genius and enthusiasm. [No man was ever great without some divine inspiration.])

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beliefs, a kind of protected enclave within which the harsh laws of the material world are suspended. Schiller's understanding of love in these early texts is peculiarly vulnerable to sceptical attacks. The axiom from which it is derived is the universal law that minds, desiring to increase their own force and activity, are attracted by all perfections that they perceive outside themselves, for such perfections become properties of the mind that perceives them. Applied to the emotion of love, this view entails that self-love is primary: "Ich begehre das Gliick aller Geister, weil ich mich selbst liebe.... Ich begehre fremde Gliickseligkeit, weil ich meine eigne begehre. Begierde nach fremder Gliickseligkeit nennen wir Wohlwollen, Liebe" (348).46 A conception of love presented in such terms must at once provoke the objection that it is merely a disguised form of egoism, and it is surprising, therefore, that Julius at once erects an impenetrable barrier to keep love and egoism apart: "Egoismus [ist] die hochste Armut eines erschaffenen Wesens" (348).47 Two pages later Julius is deploring the fact that this kind of egoism is particularly widespread in the modern world and that prominent thinkers (presumably he means the French materialists) prefer selfishness to love as their universal explanatory principle. He ends the section in some desperation: "Ich bekenne es freimutig, ich glaube an die Wirklichkeit einer uneigenniitzigen Liebe" (351).48 Love, we note, is now a matter not of proof but of belief, and the reason for that belief is not its inherent cogency but the awfulness of the alternative: "Ein Geist, der sich allein liebt, ist ein schwimmender Atom im unermeBlichen leerenRaum."^ The desire to separate love and egoism returns in the section "Aufopferung" in a striking political analogy that prefigures all the analogies that I considered in chapter 5. The passage is introduced by a portrayal of self-sacrifice, in line with the definition of love as self-love, as "die edelste Stufe des Egoismus" (the highest state of egoism) but Julius immediately recoils from this notion: "aber Egoismus und Liebe scheiden die Menschheit in zwei hochst unahnliche Geschlechter, deren Grenzen nie ineinanderfliefien. Egoismus errichtet seinen Mittelpunkt in sich selber; Liebe pflanzt ihn auBerhalb ihrer in die Achse des ewigen Ganzen. 46. "I desire the happiness of all spirits because I love myself. I desire the happiness of others because I desire my own. Desire for the happiness of others we call benevolence, or love." 47. "Egoism is the highest impoverishment of a created being." 48. "I avow it openly: I believe in the reality of an unselfish love." 49. "A spirit that loves but itself is an atom floating in an immeasurable empty space."

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Liebe zielt nach Einheit, Egoismus ist Einsamkeit. Liebe 1st die mitherrschende Burgerin eines bliihenden Freistaats, Egoismus ein Despot in einer verwiisteten Schopfung" (351).5° In view of the fundamentally egoistic definition of love, however, the real distinction is again a subjective one between delusion and insight, the respective products of a "warm" and a "cold" frame of mind. The tactic here is similar to that employed earlier with respect to the many and the few; in both cases, Julius wards off the unwelcome insight, that enthusiasm is the result of physiological causes and hence that love is egoism, by erecting an unsustainable antithesis and positing a protected area within which enthusiasm can be a true guide to experience. I referred in the previous section to the idea that love represents an exchange of personalities, and I must return to this idea now. In the section "Liebe," Julius relates human love to cosmic love: "Liebe ist nur der Widerschein dieser einzigen Urkraft, eine Anziehung des Vortrefflichen, gegrundet auf einen augenblicklichen Tausch der Personlichkeit, eine Verwechslung der Wesen" (348).51 Similar formulations appear in Schiller's letter of 14 April 1783 to Reinwald—"Aber was ist Freundschaft oder platonische Liebe denn anders als eine wollustige Verwechslung der Wesen?" (NA 23:79)52—and also in his letter to Korner, his first, of 10/22 February 1785: "Innige Freundschaft, Zusammenschmelzung aller Gefuhle, gegenseitige Verehrung und Liebe, Verwechslung und ganzlicher Umtausch des personlichen Interesse sollen unser Beieinandersein zu einem Eingriff in Elysium machen" (NA 23:i78). 53 From the original statement of the theory of perception, "Welchen Zustand wir wahrnehmen, in diesen treten wir selbst" (We enter into the state that we perceive), it might appear that some kind of genuine exchange of personalities is taking place. (That exchange is certainly described by Ficino in the passage I quoted in the last section from his De amore.) Schiller's term "Verwechselung," however, raises the question whether it is not merely an illusory exchange. 50. "But egoism and love divide humanity into two quite dissimilar races whose boundaries are never blurred. Egoism erects its midpoint in itself; love plants it outside itself in the axis of the eternal totality. Love aims at unity, egoism at solitude. Love is the citizen and joint ruler of a flourishing free state, egoism a despot in a ruined cosmos." 51. "Love is but the reflection of this single primeval force, an attraction of the excellent, based on an instantaneous switch of personality, an exchange of beings." 52. "But what else is friendship or Platonic love than a blissful exchange of beings?" 53. "Intimate friendship, fusion of all feelings, mutual respect and love, exchange and complete switch of personal interest are to make our association an incursion into Elysium."

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A glance at Grimm's Deutsches Worterbuch is enough to show that in the late eighteenth century, the term "Verwechselung" could still mean "exchange" in a genuine sense, but that it could also have the meaning it generally has in twentieth-century German, a confusion of one thing with another.54 While in the quoted passages the juxtaposition with the terms "Tausch" and "Umtausch" implies that Schiller wishes "Verwechselung" to be understood as "exchange", the context, both in the "Theosophie" and even more in the letter to Reinwald (that is, as early as 1783), places it beyond a doubt that the latter sense is present also. To Reinwald he writes: "Liebe, mein Freund, das groBe unfehlbare Band der empfindenden Schopfung, ist zuletzt nur ein glucklicher Betrug.—Erschrecken, entgliihen, zerschmelzen wir fur dasfremde, uns ewig nie eigen werdende Geschopf? GewiB nicht. Wir leiden jenes alles nur fur uns, fur das Ich, dessen Spiegel jenes Geschopf ist" (NA 23:7g).55 Schiller's theory of love, while restating the Neoplatonic tenet of copula mundi, thus includes an additional moment of self-deception, and, in presenting the theory in such terms, Schiller is laying claim to precisely that superior insight that, in other places, he tries to keep at bay. This insight, however, unmasks love as egoism, for what, in the warm state of enthusiasm, appears to be a genuine exchange of personalities, is revealed to the cold eye of scepticism as a delusion. Apart from showing the inner fault-lines in the theory of love, this analysis shows that Schiller exploits the ambiguity of the term "Verwechselung" to embrace both the warm and the cold points of view. His strategy here, whether conscious or not, thus prefigures his use of the functionally ambiguous phrase "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" in the Kallias-Briefe and of the term "aufheben" in the eighteenth Asthetischer Brief. I began this chapter with an account of Schiller's crisis of belief in his theory of love, which was triggered by his visit to Bauerbach in December 1787 and was expressed in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" in early 1788.1 have now traced this sceptical awareness back as far as 1783: the crisis had clearly been latent in the terms of that theory for a long time. I should consider finally the seventh stanza of "Die Freundschaft," which was published in the Anthologie in 1782 and was probably written before Schiller had left school. Julius here broadens the focus from his 54. Vol. 25, cols. 2143-52. 55. "Love, my friend, the great infallible tie of the sentient creation, is ultimately but a fortunate; delusion. Do we fear, burn, melt for the alien creature that will never become our own? Certainly not. We suffer all of that only for ourselves, for the self whose mirror that creature is."

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friendship with Raphael to his feeling of enthusiastic sympathy with the whole of nature: Stiind im All der Schopfung ich alleine, Seelen traumt ich in die Felsensteine und umarmend kiiBt ich sie. Meine Klagen stohnt ich in die Liifte, freute mich, antworteten die Klufte, Tor genug, der siiBen Sympathie. (S7-42)56

We should not be deceived by the subjunctive here. The implication of what Julius is saying, though he seems not to realize it (hence the subjunctive), is that there is no certainty that this scepticism is unfounded, no proof, that is, that one is not the only living being in the universe; the sense of universal sympathy, in other words, may well be based on a delusion, a "Verwechselung" of oneself with nature. When, in his letter of 8 December 1787, Schiller wrote, "Alles hat seine Sprache an mich verloren" (Nothing speaks to me anymore), he was merely expressing an insight that had been available to him as early as 1782 and probably well before. We must realize, then, that, despite Schiller's lament in 1788 for the lost gift of enthusiasm, a close reading of the texts reveals that this gift had existed from a very early stage in a state of tension with a more sceptical awareness. The struggle to find a balance between warm and cold states and the contrary philosophies into which they are projected is thus an essential aspect of Schiller's creative mind and the precondition for the strange profile of his mature philosophy, in which beauty and sublimity succeed the early idealism and materialism as the respective vehicles for the warm and cold states. In the letter to Reinwald, Schiller refers to the self as the mirror of the other, and we should now consider the sceptical implications of this metaphor.57 In the final stanza of "Die Freundschaft," quoted in 56. "If I stood alone in the whole creation, I would dream souls into the rocks and would embrace and kiss them. I would moan my complaints into the air and, if the caverns responded, would (foolishly enough) delight in the sweet sympathy." 57. Schiller's association of the mirror with the danger of "Verwechselung" of course harks back to the Plotinian interpretation of Narcissus, who mistook his reflection in the water for reality (ENN i .6.8; see chapter 3, above). In the 17805, Schiller's approach is still predominantly psychological, but the idea that God mirrors himself in the creation looks forward to his more metaphysical treatment of the problem in the treatises of the 17905. On Ficino's use of the mirror metaphor, see Kristeller, Die Philosophic des Marsilio Ficino, p. 250.

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chapter i above, God is said to have created spirits out of a sense of his own deficiency as "selge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit" (blessed mirrors of his blessedness) (57). In this context, there are no sceptical undertones to threaten the ecstatic vision of cosmic love and unity.58 As we have just seen, however, the seventh stanza of the same poem unmasks the mood of universal sympathy as a delusion. True, the metaphor there was different, that of the echo, but the mechanism is the same: the subject projects himself into nature and then interprets the answering signal, which is actually a reflection of his own, as evidence of cognate and sympathetic life outside himself. The metaphor of the mirror is in fact used of friendship in the fifth stanza: "MuB ich nicht aus Deinen Flammenaugen / meiner Wollust Widerstrahlen saugen?/Nur in Dir bestaun ich mich."59 The identity of love and egoism could hardly be more plainly stated. The rest of the stanza then extends this mirroring of the self in the friend to include the whole of nature, so that love is said also to heighten the self's experience of its surroundings: "Schoner malt sich mir die schone Erde,/heller spiegelt in des Freunds Gebarde, / reizender der Himmel sich" (25-30).6o The accumulation of intensificatory comparatives here of course looks forward to "Die Gotter Griechenlandes," where this figure is used extensively (for example, 57-72). The mirror is thus an instrument of intensification and unification, but also one of delusion, and it can be applied to the subject's relations, first, to a friend or lover, second, to nature, and third, to God. As with the term "Verwechselung," the sceptical undertones take time to emerge in their full force, but they are present from the outset and affect all three relationships. In the case of the friend, the sceptical view is that love is merely egoism, arid in relation to nature, that the apparently populated and ensouled rocks ("Felsensteine") are nothing but dead matter. So much is 58. See also "Die Tugend in ihren Folgen betrachtet," swvol. 5, p. 283: "So kann sich Seele in Seele spiegeln. So der Schopfer selbst sein groBes Bild in menschlichen Seelen zuriickwerfen." (Thus can a soul mirror itself in a soul. Thus can the creator himself throw back his great image in human souls.) The last stanza of "Die Freundschaft" is cited by Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (p. 301), as expressing the vision of a productive as opposed to a self-sufficient God in Plato's Timaeus. 59. "Must I not absorb the reflecting rays of my delight from your burning eyes? Only in you do I admire myself." 60. "The beautiful earth paints itself as more beautiful, the sky is reflected as brighter and more charming in the gesture of my friend."

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clear, but what are the implications for God? One slightly disturbing thought can be found in the letter to Reinwald, where the closing vision of "Die Freundschaft" is presented in a somewhat less ecstatic tone: "Gott, wie ich mir denke, liebt den Seraph sowenig als den Wurm, der ihn unwissend lobt. Er erblickt sich, sein groBes, unendliches Setost, in der unendlichen Natur umhergestreut" (NA 23:7g).61 Here the notion of love as egoism has been projected onto God, who is placed in a distinctly unlovable light. In the "Theosophie," Schiller had inveighed against the materialistic philosophy of selfishness, not least for its blasphemous implications: "Aus einem diirftigen Egoismus haben sie ihre trostlose Lehre gesponnen und ihre eigene Beschrankung zum Mafistab des Schopfers gemacht" (350).6a But in the letter to Reinwald, Schiller seems to be appropriating this same view. The thought is again taken up in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes," where, now commenting negatively on the vision of "Die Freundschaft," Schiller writes of God: Selig, eh sich Wesen um ihn freuten, Selig im entvolkerten Gefild, Sieht er in dem langen Strom der Zeiten Ewig nur—sein eignes Bild. (i8i-84) 6 3

We have seen how, in the "Theosophie," one effect of enthusiasm is to "populate" nature: "Jetzt, Raphael, 1st alles bevolkert um mich herum" (345).64 The lines from "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" now show that "population" and "depopulation" are effects of the states of enthusiasm and scepticism,65 while the varying evaluations of the "selfish God" show clearly that, despite Schiller's efforts to foist this notion onto some 61 . "God, I imagine, loves the seraph as little as he loves the worm that praises him unknowingly. He perceives himself, his great infinite ^//"scattered around in endless nature." 62. "They have spun their gloomy theory from their sorry egoism, making their own limitations the standard for the creator." 63. "Blest, ere beings delighted round about him, blest in the depopulated domain, he sees eternally but his own image in the long river of the ages." 64. "Now, Raphael, everything is populated around me." 65. The idea of an empty and depopulated cosmos is developed in an Anthologie poem "Die GroBe der Welt." See, for example, lines 1 1-12: "Irrend suchte mein Blick umher,/ Sah die Raume schon—sternenleer." (Wandering, my gaze searched and found the spaces already empty of stars.) The lines support the view that Schiller's crisis of belief in his theory of love had been latent for several years.

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unnamed thinking minds ("denkende Kopfe"), the enemy he is resisting is in fact a part of his own mind. But how seriously can we take this God of egoism? Materialism is the philosophical voice of the cold state, and the consistent materialist believes in no God at all. In the first section of the "Theosophie," we recall, Schiller had posited a commonality between God and the human subject on the grounds that both were thinking beings. If a "warm" subject projects his love onto the cosmos, he can imagine a loving God. Similarly, a thinking subject can, it seems, create an egoistic or a thinking God for himself. But such a construct is a hybrid, for the truly "cold" subject must realize that this egoistic God is only a construct, that is, that it is the thinking subject's own coldness projected into the void. This recognition is reached in the final stanza of "Die Gotter Griechenlandes," where God is called "Werk und Schopfer des Verstandes" (194) (work and creator of the understanding), the closest that Schiller ever comes to a declaration of atheism. We see here how in that poem the sceptical aspects that had been implicit in the theory of love from the very start seem finally to strike home with full force, demolishing the self-delusions of the state of enthusiasm and leaving the subject isolated in a godless and mechanical universe. We can only speculate why the crisis should have occurred precisely at that time; the visit to Bauerbach, the place where Schiller had written the letter to Reinwald to which we have referred so often, obviously precipitated it, but is hardly sufficient to explain it. We have argued that the philosophy of love was above all a theory of artistic inspiration, and we should recall that that letter to Reinwald was written during a pause from the work on Don Carlos. In those early stages, Schiller had every reason to feel that the enthusiastic and spontaneous method of composition he favoured at that time would enable him to bring the drama to a successful conclusion. In the event, of course, it turned out very differently, and it took Schiller four years of taxing and frustrating labour to complete the play. Even then he was not content with the result.66 We are certainly justified in seeing here a contributing factor in the crisis of late 1787. But we should not overlook the purely personal dimension. From the correspondence of this period, it appears that Schiller's close proximity 66. The mental distance between the beginning and end of the composition of Don Carlos can be measured if one compares the letter to Reinwald with the dispassionate tones of the Briefe uberDon Carlos.

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with his friends Korner and Huber, who were respectively married and engaged, had a troubling effect on him. This would seem the obvious cause of his dissatisfaction with his bachelor life.67 There was no future in his relationship with Frau von Kalb, and Schiller may well have felt that he would benefit from some of the love and domesticity that his friends were enjoying. This explanation is of course slightly banal, but not the least remarkable thing about Schiller is his ability to turn such commonplace experiences into great literature. That, as we shall see in the next section, is precisely what he accomplished in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes." Since I have argued that Schiller's doctrine of love should be seen in the context of the Platonic tradition, it is reasonable to ask how it deals with the central dilemma of that tradition. While the psychological problem, that of the reliability and duration of enthusiasm, is more important at this period, the logical and metaphysical dilemma is also reflected in the contrasting ways of viewing God and nature. In the first section, precedence is given to thought: "Das Universum ist ein Gedanke Gottes. ... Also gibt es fur mich nur eine einzige Erscheinung in der Natur, das denkende Wesen" (344).68 In "Die Freundschaft," God's creation of minds ("Geister") is celebrated, while his creation of bodies is passed over in silence. Such formulations are to be classified, in the terminology of chapter 3, as choristic, but we also find statements with a different emphasis. The notion of the symbolic relation between God and nature leads, as we have seen, to the feeling that nature is populated by spirits akin to the perceiving subject, and from here we move to an affirmative view of nature, summarized in the apophthegm: "die Natur ist ein unendlich geteilter Gott" (352). (Nature is 67. See his letter of 20 January 1788 to Huber (NA vol. 25, p. 7): "Du glaubst nicht, wie sehr ich seit 4 oder 5 Jahren aus dem naturlichen Gleise menschlicher Empfindungen gewichen bin; diese Verrenkung meines Wesens macht mein Ungliick, weil Unnatur nie glucklich machen kann; aber ich kann sie auf keinem Wege verbessern; auf keinem der mir bekannt ist, durchaus auf keinem vielleicht; aber Einen habe ich noch nicht versucht und ehe ich die Hoffhung ganz sinken lasse, muB ich noch dieseErfahrung machen. Dies ist eine Heirat." (You cannot believe how far I have wandered from the natural path of human emotions in the past four or five years. This dislocation of my being is the cause of my unhappiness, for unnaturalness can never be the cause of happiness, but there is no way for me to correct it; no way that is known to me, perhaps none at all. But there is one that I have not tried and that I must experience before I give up hope altogether. That is marriage.) 68. "The universe is a thought of God's. ... For me there is thus only one phenomenon in nature: the thinking being."

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an infinitely divided god.) This then forms the basis for the hymn "Der Triumph der Liebe," which not only celebrates the beauty of nature in a less symbolic spirit, but also praises precisely the mutual rapprochement of men and gods rather than the ascent of men to the supreme "thinking being." While in "Die Freundschaft" the movement is solely in an upward direction—"Arm in Arme, hoher stets und hoher/vom Mongolen bis zurn griechschen Seher" (49-50)69—"Der Triumph der Liebe" praises the descent of Zeus to earth during his erotic escapades: "Gottern laBt er seine Throne,/Niedert sich zum Erdensohne" (77-78).7° This same concern reappears in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes": "Zu Deukalions Geschlechte stiegen / Damals noch die Himmlischen herab" (33-34).71 Consistently, then, both poems reject the dominance of pure mind; as we saw in chapter 2, the plea in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" for the removal of the "ernste, strenge Gottin" (197), whom I identified as Venus Urania, is prefigured in "Der Triumph der Liebe" by the lines begging the goddess of wisdom to yield to love (162-64). How this resistance is to be reconciled with the celebration of "das denkende Wesen" is a problem that Schiller has yet to resolve. "DIE GOTTER G R I E C H E N L A N D E S " It cannot be my purpose here to give a full analysis of the splendid poem "Die Gotter Griechenlandes."72 That has been well done by several scholars.73 Much attention has focused on the controversy provoked by the hostile remarks on Christianity in the poem.74 While this dispute was indeed an important event in German intellectual life in the period immediately prior to the French Revolution, it is not the aspect of the text that concerns me here. Schiller's slightly puzzled comments to Korner (25 December 1788) tell us that his perspective on the poem was quite different from that of the disputants and that Friedrich von 69. "Arm in arm, higher and yet higher, from the Mongol to the Greek seer." In the "Theosophie," "Mongolen" is replaced by "Barbaren." 70. "Leaving his thrones to the gods, he descends to the son of earth." 71. "At that time, the heavenly ones still descended to Deucalion's race." 72. The discussion in this chapter will be confined to the first version of the poem, published in the Teutscher Merkur in 1788. The second version, to which Schiller refers in his letter of 5 May 1793 to Korner (NA vol. 26, pp. 239-40) but which was not published until 1800, will be discussed at the end of chapter 8. 73. Gerhard Friedl's reflections on the poem in the first two sections of his study Verhiillte Wahrheit are particularly commendable. 74. Fruhwald, "Die Auseinandersetzung um Schillers Gedicht."

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Stolberg's religious indignation was, from Schiller's point of view, based on a misunderstanding.75 Similarly with the attack on materialism, which has been cited as an early sign of the Romantics' onslaught on the natural sciences.76 Taken in the context of the history of ideas, this approach is perfectly justified. In a biographical context, however, one must note that Schiller never returned to the attack against science or Christianity with anything approaching the virulence of "Die Gotter Griechenlandes." When he wrote it, we must infer, the two subjects were more of private than of public significance for him; he was using them, at least in his own mind, to say something quite different from what his readers thought. How convincing is the argument of the poem? In his letter of 25 December 1788, Schiller emphasized its aesthetic qualities rather than its dialectical substance, and it would therefore be unrealistic to expect a high degree of intellectual cogency of it. Indeed, the image of Christianity as a cold and impersonal religion depends, as Schiller himself admits, on an arbitrary selection of evidence to suit his poetic aim. Nothing is said, for example, about the "warmer" aspects of Christianity, such as the incarnation, or about the doctrine of grace. To a cool-headed Christian (a class in which one would hesitate to include Friedrich von Stolberg), the poem should present no threat at all. Similarly, the fact that Schiller glorifies the Greek ideal while, as we shall see, simultaneously denying its truth reveals a degree of inner complexity that is incompatible with a simple polemical stance. Nonetheless, the poem can tell us something about Schiller's intellectual biography; understanding which problems the poem solves and which it does not will help us to understand his treatises of the next decade. The poem was written shortly before Schiller abandoned poetry for an academic career. The fact that it consigns beauty to an illusory past must surely, we feel, be connected with this crisis of creativity. His 75. "Der Gott, den ich in den Gottern Griechenlands in Schatten stelle, ist nicht der Gott der Philosophen, oder auch nur das wohltatige Traumbild des groGen Haufens, sondern es ist eine aus vielen gebrechlichen schiefen Vorstellungsarten zusammengeflossene MiBgeburt.—Die Gotter der Griechen, die ich ins Licht stelle, sind nur die lieblichen Eigenschaften der griechischen Mythologie in eine Vorstellungsart zusammengefaBt" (NA vol. 25, p. 167). (The god that I put in the shadow in 'Die Gotter Griechenlandes' is not the god of the philosophers nor the beneficent dream of the masses, but rather a monster composed of many flawed and distorted conceptions all mixed together. The gods of the Greeks, who I put in the light, are merely the lovely qualities of Greek mythology compounded into one conception.) 76. Eichner, "The Rise of Science."

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redrafting of the poem in 1793 was one of the few poetic projects he undertook during his seven-year fallow period. The treatises of 1793-95 then herald his return to poetic and dramatic composition, a return inaugurated by "Das Reich der Schatten." Whatever we make of those treatises as public documents, therefore, chronology suggests that as private documents, they enabled Schiller to solve the problem expressed in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" and hence to overcome the creative blockage that that poem had signalled. In late 1787, as we saw, Schiller became convinced that it was impossible for him to continue with the method and philosophy of composition that he had favoured hitherto. "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" is an incomparably vivid expression of this critical moment and ushers in a new period in its author's life. The poem is of course not written on a tabula rasa, arid I have noted a number of motifs from earlier texts that return in it. But perhaps the biggest difference between it and the texts in question is indicated by the tense of the first verb: "Da ihr noch die schone Welt regiertet" (line i) ,77 The beautiful world, that is, the world as perceived by a subject in the state of enthusiasm and seen to be informed by the spirit of love, belongs to the past. "Schone Welt, wo bist du?" Schiller asks. As I have argued, the theory of love had functioned as intellectual guarantee of his poetic genius. His future as a poet thus hung on his ability to answer this question. Although he treats his theme in a cultural rather than an individual or psychological framework, the text addresses a subject of considerable personal urgency: as we shall see repeatedly in the rest of this study, Schiller tends to explore personal themes by projecting them into the spheres of history and politics, turning the subjective sphere into a hermeneutic device for analysing the universal and the universal into a sounding-board for his own private concerns. In "Der Triumph der Liebe," Schiller had taken his cue from the myth of the birth of Venus, evoking the reign of love in the context of Ancient Greece. The past tense was reserved there for the uncivilized period before the goddess's arrival ("Ach! noch wanden keine Kranze/ Lieberide sich urn!," etc., lines 21-22),78 and the unifying force of love was expressed in the present ("Liebe macht den Himmel / Himmlischer," etc. [Love makes heaven more heavenly]). The temporal structure in the later poem is different, however: the past tense is applied to 77. "When you still governed the beautiful world." 78. "Alas, lovers then did not yet adorn each other with garlands."

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the reign of Venus Amathusia, to which the effect of love is confined— "Da die Cotter menschlicher noch waren,/Waren Menschen gottlicher" (igi-gg) 79 —while the present tense is used for the modern age since her departure. And while Venus Urania exists in the earlier poem merely on the fringes as a threat to be kept at bay, in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" she emerges (rather confusingly, as I said in chapter 2) alongside the monotheistic God of egoism as presiding deity of the modern world. Where "Der Triumph der Venus" celebrates the coming of the goddess, "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" thus laments her departure. We can see, then, two features of Schiller's mature dialectic taking shape: first, the conversion of his private dilemma of enthusiasm and scepticism to an instrument of cultural analysis, and second, the use of Venus Cypria and Venus Urania to symbolize those two mental states and the historical eras in which they are mirrored. The most obvious feature of this reformulation of his early philosophy is that ancient Greece is portrayed as a world of methexis, modernity as one of chorismos.8° For the Greeks, the material participates in the divine ("Diese Hohen fullten Oreaden," etc. [Oreads filled these mountains]); for the moderns, nature is dead and the divine is transcendent. While in "Die Freundschaft" the term "Geist" (mind / spirit) had positive connotations, in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" it is associated with the despotic and disembodied god of the modern world (for example, line 113). It appears then that the choristic and methectic motifs, which intertwined in the earlier texts, are here becoming more distinct. As I argued in chapter 5, in the 17905 Schiller usually associates methexis with illusion, and he does so in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" also. Although the first stanza contains five verbs in the past indicative ("regiertet" [governed], "fuhrtet" [led], "glanzte" [shone], "war" [was], "bekranzte" [crowned]), the next stanza undermines the apparently straightforward affirmations. The poem's fourth line located the fair beings ("schone Wesen") in the land of fable ("Fabelland"), the term "Fabel" carrying a heavy connotation of untruth, and the second stanza poses the epistemological question even more urgently: "Da der Dichtkunst malerische Hulle/Sich noch lieblich um die Wahrheit wand!"81 Are the affirmations of the first stanza to be interpreted as truth veiled 79. "When the gods were more human, human beings were more divine." 80. Compare Kondylis, Entstehung der Dialektik, p. 40: "The chief contrast [in the poem] is unification versus separation" (Der Hauptgegensatz [im Gedicht] lautet: Vereinigung vs Trennung). 81. "When the picturesque veil of poetry still wound itself gracefully around truth."

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by poetry, and if so in what sense? The next pair of lines tells us that, in any case, the statements are not literally true: "Durch die Schopfung floB da Lebensfulle, / Und, was nie empfmden wird, empfand."82 If nature does not feel now, then presumably it did not in Homeric and Hesiodic times either. The past tenses are therefore complex, and it seems that we should understand them more in the spirit of "erlebte Rede" than as simple declarations of fact: nature did not feel but was believed to feel. Schiller, we see, is working towards the technique of an aesthetic modality that I oudined above, that is, towards a way of making assertions that he knows to be literally untrue, while yet rescuing and preserving a truth of some nonliteral and nonempirical kind. Greece, both here and in his later treatises, becomes the fictive locale for such assertions. The content of those assertions, we can now say in a very broad sense, is optimistic and methectic: for example, the belief in the harmony of matter and spirit, the presence of the divine in the material world, the divinity of human nature. Already in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes," such beliefs are grouped together, associated with the property of beauty ("die schone Welt"), and situated in an Ancient Greece that hovers ambiguously between history and myth. At the same time, it is made clear that, as in the problematic seventh stanza of "Die Freundschaft" ("Stund im All der Schopfung ich alleine " [If I stood alone in the creation]), the experience of being part of an ensouled nature is susceptible to critical analysis: "An der Liebe Busen sie zu driicken,/Gab man hohern Adel der Natur."83 This is the familiar narcissistic process by which the subject in the state of enthusiasm projects himself into nature and then, by the act of "Verwechselung," fancies that he sees something other than himself. Even as he exalts the realm of love, therefore, Schiller is inviting us to see through its illusoriness. The imagery of child- and adulthood, both in the first stanza and towards the end of the poem ("An der Freude leichtem Gangelband [on the light leading-strings of joy]," 2; "entwachsen ihrem Gangelbande [having outgrown her leading-strings]," 175), reinforces this higher insight that the poet may regret but cannot suppress. The reality apprehended by this higher insight is choristic. On the one hand, God and nature are divorced from each other. On the other, the religious and natural realms are themselves marked by an inner chorismos, for the antithesis of "Geist" and "Gerippe" (spirit and skeleton 82. "Living profusion flowed then through the creation, and what will never feel felt." 83. "One gave higher nobility to nature in order to press it to one's breast in love."

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occurs in each sphere. In the religious argument, the skeleton is used to evoke the medieval Christian image of death: "Damals trat kein graBliches Gerippe/Vor das Bett des Sterbenden" (iO5~6).84 In the next stanza, the term "Geist" is used to express the alienness and inhumanity of the conception of the Last Judgment: Nach der Geister schrecklichen Gesetzen Richtete kein heiliger Barbar, Dessen Augen Tranen nie benetzen Zarte Wesen, die ein Weib gebar. (H 3 -16) 8 5

As the last two lines of this quotation show, the counterpart to the imagery of dissociation is the warm, living human being, the focus of corporeal, sensory, and emotional (as opposed to abstract and mental) experience. This conception of "sanfte Menschlichkeit" (112) as embodied life is central to all aspects of Greece evoked in the poem. As for the scientific argument, a similar antithesis is used to set off the contrast between nature now and nature then: "Ach! von jenem lebenwarmen Bilde/Blieb nur das Gerippe mir zuriick" (151-5a).86 Deprived of its indwelling deities, nature too has become a skeleton, and, like the human soul, it is forced to conform to abstract laws: "Dient sie knechtisch dem Gesetz der Schwere,/Die entgotterte Natur!" (16768).8pulace, with the consequence that a character dominated by those appetities was equivalent to an ochlocracy. From the point of view of a rigorous chorismos, all the methectic constructs can be said to be suspected not merely of allowing too much influence to this hungry and lustful mob but also of lending that mob a respectability that it does not deserve. If the political analogy is taken literally, the aesthetic adornment of nature can hence give rise to political claims that disastrously endanger the rule of reason: "Die veredelte Neigung, welche sich Achtung zu erschleichen gewuBt hat, will also der Vernunft nicht mehr untergeordnet, sie will ihr beigeordnet sein. Sie will fur keinen treubruchigen Uritertan gelten, der sich gegen seinen Oberherrn auflehnt; sie will als eine Majestat angesehen sein und mit der Vernunft als sittliche Gesetzgeberin, wie Gleich mit Gleichem, handeln" (690).143 Schiller here adopts the language of feudalism ("Untertan," "Oberherr") as commensurate to the relationship between nature and reason. His warning is once again of the danger of "Veredelung," and, if we take this term as also containing a subliminal social metaphor ("edel" as a property of "der Adel" [the nobility]), its rejection implies also a social impermeability, preventing commoners from acquiring higher status and claiming equality with the old nobility. Given the centrality of the concept of "Veredelung" in Schiller's thought at this time, the passage calls into question the entire project of aesthetic education itself. For if "Veredelung," like moral beauty and the "Spieltrieb," is to be understood as an ideal and not as a means to bringing about a concrete state of affairs, then aesthetic education itself becomes an ideal that is ex hypothesi debarred from having any influence on the course of history. As we saw in an earlier section of this chapter, Schiller's rigorously choristic argument in Uber das Erhabene leads him to 142. 'True, taste brings it about that the desires are ennobled and agree more with the demands of reason, but even from this there may ensue a great danger for morality." 143. "Ennobled inclination, which has deviously procured some respect, no longer wants to be subordinate to reason, it wants equal status. It does not want to be taken for a disloyal subject rebelling against his overlord; it wants to be seen as a sovereign authority, and to act as a moral legislator on equal terms with reason."

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demolish all optimistic philosophies of history. But, to the extent that such philosophies of history embody the hope of progress towards a more liberal political order, then that hope itself falls victim to the choristic point of view. This explains the highly conservative, even reactionary, tone of the extraordinary sentences quoted in the last paragraph. Metaphysical narcissism ensues when ideals are not sufficiently distinguished from realities. The chief practical consequence of such narcissism is for Schiller a confusion of the moral consciousness, and he warns us particularly against preferring lesser over greater virtues, or of setting those virtues that have an aesthetic dimension over those that have none: "Wie viele Menschen erlauben sich nicht, ungerecht zu sein, um groBmutig sein zu konnen!" (691).144 But he sees this type of moral confusion particularly at work in his own time, and, in a passage he italicized himself, he shows that his metaphysical system can illuminate the greatest political catastrophe of the day: "Wie viele gibt es nicht, die selbst vor einem Verbrechen nicht erschrecken, wenn ein loblicher Zweck dadurch zu erreichen steht, die ein Ideal politischer Gluckseligkeit durch atte Oreuel der Anarchie verfolgen, Gesetze in den Staub treten, um fur bessere Platz zu machen, und kein Bedenken tragen, die gegenwdrtige Generation dem Elende preiszugeben, um das Gliick der ndchstfolgenden dadurch zu befestigen" (692). 145 Schiller thus took the Jacobin Terror as confirmation of his metaphysically grounded view that the material and intelligible worlds are incompatible. This meant not merely that political reform, insofar as it entails the realization of ideas, must necessarily be arduous and perhaps even impossible but also that aesthetic cultivation, besides offering hopes of improvement, also harbours tremendous, and in Schiller's view proven, risks of moral and social dislocation. The connection of the terms "Ideal" and "Gluckseligkeit" (happiness) in the quotation reminds us of Schiller's suspicion of the latter, for this too is a methectic concept that implies the immanence of the intelligible in the material (see especially 804-5), hence giving rise to the danger of narcissism. Just as chorismos entails a rejection of historical optimism, the concept of happiness, which is another component of the enlightened consensus of the mid-eighteenth century, falls victim to 144. "How many people there are who permit themselves to be unjust in order to be generous!" 145. "How many people there are who do not shrink from a crime if a praiseworthy goal can be achieved by it, who pursue an ideal of political happiness through all the horrors of anarchy, who trample laws in the dust in order to make room for better ones, who have no qualms about abandoning the present generation to misery in order the secure the happiness of the next."

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Schiller's new metaphysics. Once again this underlines the distance between Schiller and the Enlightenment, at least as it had been understood by the two or three previous generations. The criticism of happiness features prominently in Letter 23, a fascinating analysis of Schiller's time that is less well known but just as important as the one earlier in the treatise. While the earlier argument is based on the opposition of a unifying nature and a divisive understanding (or "Kunst"), which leads first to the division of mankind into "Wilde" and "Barbaren" in Letter 4 and then to the universal fragmentation of Letter 6, the analysis of Letter 23 is based on the concept of narcissism. Schiller catalogues the harmful consequences of a failure to distinguish properly between ideas and material, between ideals and reality: "Die Vernunft ... gibt sich in dem Menschen durch die Foderung des Absoluten ... zu erkennen, welche, da ihr in keinem einzelnen Zustand seines physischen Lebens Geniige geleistet werden kann, ihn das Physische ganz und gar zu verlassen und von einer beschrankten Wirklichkeit zu Ideen aufzusteigen notigt."146 Already here we notice a metaphysical heightening of the concept of reason that has the consequence of rendering its practical use—perhaps to make reality less "limited"—problematic and questionable. The passage continues, "Aber obgleich der wahre Sinnjener Foderung ist, ihn den Schranken der Zeit zu entreiflen und von der sinnlichen Welt zu einer Idealwelt emporzufuhren, so kann sie doch durch eine (in dieser Epoche der herrschenden Sinnlichkeit kaum zu vermeidende) MiBdeutung auf das physische Leben sich richten und den Menschen, anstatt ihn unabhangig zu machen, in die furchtbarste Knechtschaft stiirzen" (647-48).147 The concept on which everything hinges is the misinterpretation ("MiBdeutung") against which both Plato and Plotinus had warned and which, in Schiller's intellectual biography, develops out of the analysis of Julius's "Verwechselung" of his own image with the material world into which he projects it. 146. "Reason ... makes itself known in man through its demand for the absolute. Since th is demand can never be wholly satisfied in any single condition of his physical life, it forces him to leave the physical altogether and to ascend out of a restricted reality to ideas." 147. "But although the true sense of that demand is to pull him free from the constraints of time, and lead him upwards from the sensible world to an ideal world, it can, through a misinterpretation that is hardly avoidable in this early epoch of dominant sensuality, direct itself towards physical life, and instead of making man independent thrust him into the most terrible servitude."

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In three long paragraphs, Schiller then outlines the harmful consequences of the narcissistic misinterpretation, and, insofar as these represent a typology of the aberrations that can occur as humanity embarks on the transition from nature to reason, we can connect the passage to Schiller's early aspiration, expressed in the foreword to the Philosophische Briefe, to catalogue the "Verirrungen" (aberrations) to which man was subject in an age of enlightenment.148 The first aberration dealt with in Letter 24 is that a nascent reason is prone to misdirect itself and to project its moral imperative into the material world: "Der namliche Trieb, der [den Menschen], auf sein Denken und Tun angewendet, zur Wahrheit und Moralitat fiihren sollte, bringtjetzt, auf sein Leiden und Empfinden bezogen, nichts als ein unbegrenztes Verlangen, als ein absolutes Bedurfnis hervor" (648).149 The resulting synthesis of intelligible and material is then linked to the terms "Gliickseligkeit" and "Ideal," but to variants of the former that are disparaged for failing to observe the distinction between ideal and reality. Though an ideal, this is only an "Ideal der Begierde" (ideal belonging to appetite). Schiller's comments on "Gliickseligkeit" here, though unfortunately rather brief and imprecise, are of particular interest: "Friichte dieses Baumes sind alle unbedingte Gliickseligkeitssysteme, sie mogen den heutigen Tag oder das ganze Leben oder, was sie um nichts ehrwiirdiger macht, die ganze Ewigkeit zu ihrem Gegenstand haben".1^0 Three varieties of misuse are thus envisaged. Applied to the present day, we assume, the ideal of happiness leads to simple hedonism. Applied to the whole of life, it leads to a moral optimism, perhaps to a belief in moral beauty as in Uber Anmut und Wurde, perhaps to the belief that rewards will be commensurate with merits, or perhaps simply, as the next sentence suggests, to the hope for a lifetime of material well-being. A political philosophy that aims at moral and material improvement might be the "Ideal politischer Gliickseligkeit" that he criticizes in Uber 148. pp. 336-37. See also the opening sentence of Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre (p. 13): "In der ganzen Geschichte des Menschen ist kein Kapitel unterrichtender fur Herz und Geist als die Annalen seiner Verirrungen." (No chapter in the whole history of mankind is more instructive for the heart and mind than the annals of his aberrations.) 149. "The identical drive which, applied to man's thought and action, was meant to lead him to truth and morality, produces nothing but an unlimited longing and an absolute need when it is brought to bear on his passivity and feeling." 150. "Fruits of this tree are all unconditional philosophical systems of happiness, whether they have as their object the present day, or the whole of life, or—and this makes them not a bit more admirable—the whole of eternity."

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die notwendigen Grenzen, which would thus fall under the same heading. The third and final category, that is, the "Gluckseligkeitssystem" extending to the whole of eternity, is clearly an attack on religion, perhaps on the Leibnizian theologians, and the vision of "[e]ine grenzenlose Dauer des Daseins und Wohlseins, bloB um des Daseins und Wohlseins willen"151 in the next sentence aims to discredit naive conceptions of the afterlife.152 Schiller's targets in the next paragraph are a little harder to discern. He argues first that reason teaches man to look for something that is absolutely autonomous and self-sufficient, something that is its own ground ("sein eigener Grund"). Though the material world contains nothing corresponding to that description, man allows his understanding to delude him that it does, and hence material, which is merely groundless ("grundlos"), presents itself to man under the guise of an unconditioned ground ("ein unbedingter Grund"): "Weil die Sinnlichkeit keinen andern Zweck kennt als ihren Vorteil und sich durch keine andre Ursache als den blinden Zufall getrieben fuhlt, so macht [der Mensch] jenen zum Bestimmer seiner Handlungen und diesen zum Beherrscher der Welt" (649) ,153 The person who would be guilty of this in the ethical sphere might be a Wallenstein, who treats reality as his only god. In philosophical terms, the result might be either the materialism of Helvetius and La Mettrie or the neo-Stoicism associated with the revival of Spinoza. The last of the aberrations listed is of less interest for our purposes and involves man's inability to recognize the demands of his nascent reason as the demands of his true self and his consequent projection of those demands onto an omnipotent and tyrannical god. This is again an attack on Christianity, though less the optimistic kind of Christianity that can be portrayed as a "Gluckseligkeitssystem," and more the conventional kind that relies on threats of damnation rather than promises 151. "an unlimited duration of being and well-being merely for the sake of being and well-being." 152. At first sight, the criticism would appear to discredit also the afterlife of Hercules, as it is suggested in the last stanza of "Das Ideal und das Leben" and as it was to be depicted in the unwritten idyll mentioned by Schiller in his letter of 30 November 1795. In reply to a charge of inconsistency, Schiller would presumably have claimed that this vision of endless "Gluckseligkeit" never purported to be more than "Schein" and hence escaped the charge of metaphysical narcissism. 153. "Because sensibility knows no purpose other than its own advantage, and feels driven by no cause other than blind chance, [man] gives the former [advantage] the determining power over his actions and makes the latter [chance] the ruler of the world."

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of rewards. The reference to a positive origin here certainly suggests a reference to the "positive" religion that relies on the documents of a particular historical revelation instead of the timeless demands of practical reason. What is striking about these theological points is how ingeniously Schiller has used his premise, the hazardous transition from a state of nature to a state of reason, to explain a variety of different phenomena in the moral and religious spheres. The passage shows that the desired "Ubergang" can go awry in more than one way and that numerous observable ills of society can be attributed to these aberrations. In this analysis we can see the choristic strategy at work, not perhaps decrying methexis in principle, but nonetheless listing with malicious pleasure the manifold abuses to which it gives rise. Does Schiller show us the true path through the maze? It is this letter that ends with the oxymoronic injunction: "Beide Gesetzgebungen [nature and reason] sollen vollkommen unabhangig voneinander bestehen und dennoch vollkommen einig sein" (651; translation, chap. 2, n. 43, above). If this is the solution to the problem, it must be said that it is a singularly unhelpful one. How, then, is it possible for us to accomplish the transition from nature to reason while avoiding the various hazards against which Schiller warns us? To understand his answer, we must return to the diagrammatic presentation of Schiller's two hierarchical antitheses in the previous section. The initial program, the ascent from nature to reason, can be understood entirely in terms of the first antithesis. The path to reason, the "Ubergang" envisaged at the beginning of the treatise, entails methexis as the means. Methexis in the social sphere must be understood as a happy ("gluckselig") community of free and equal moral agents whose relations are governed by the principle "Freiheit zu geben durch Freiheit" (667) (to bestow freedom by means of freedom). Each agent, we must assume, has achieved the inner harmony defined as moral beauty, and Schiller's initial hope is that aesthetic education, by the process he calls "Veredelung," can bring this moral beauty about. However, the criticism of the choristic voice forces the shift from the first to the second antithesis. In view of the transcendence of the idea and the recalcitrance of human nature, even these methectic constructs are unattainable. The concepts introduced as means, "Veredelung" and the "Spieltrieb," have thus to be redefined as ideals, with the result that the original goal of reason is metaphysically heightened and slips beyond our reach. Reality, according to the second antithesis, is choristic, methexis permissible only as "Schein." Instead of an aesthetic (in the

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sense of harmonious) psychological condition as a step on the path to a rational state, the end of the treatise therefore offers us an aesthetic (in the sense of unreal) substitute for the rational state, that is, a state in which the actual relationships and institutions of feudalism are preserved but in which the ruler and subjects act out, by means of a culture of courtesy and ornament, the values that exist in the ideal state of happiness: "Hier also, in dem Reiche des asthetischen Scheins, wird das Ideal der Gleichheit erfullt, welches der Schwarmer so gern auch dem Wesen nach realisiert sehen mochte" (669; translation, chap. 5, n. 58, above). The "Schwarmer" is of course another guise of the metaphysical narcissist who disastrously fails to distinguish between idea and reality. I should conclude with some further comments on the aesthetic state. First, Schiller's concern to avoid the aberrations attendant on the transition from reason to nature causes him to define the aesthetic state in a way that excludes in principle any deliberate influence on the actual course of life, for such an ulterior purpose would immediately introduce a fatal impurity into the "Schein" in which that state consists. This does riot rule out the possibility of an unintended beneficial influence being exerted by such an aesthetic culture, but, as argued above, this possibility is so tenuous a basis for hope for a better future that it is really no basis at all. Even were we to leave out of account Schiller's attack on "Schein" in Uber das Erhabene and were we to allow the theory of the aesthetic state to stand as Schiller's political testament, it would be impossible to find much support there for the belief that Schiller was a forefather of modern liberalism. Second, the portrayal of the aesthetic state develops out of a number of earlier texts that we have examined, the first of which is "Der Triumph der Liebe." This genealogy is confirmed particularly by the concern with the evolution of love out of lust.154 The aesthetic state, we can say, is a further attempt by Schiller to convey his vision of earthly life as the realm of Venus Cypria. As such, it is a backward-looking notion in two quite different senses: first, it derives from an idea that had occupied Schiller since his early maturity and hence has little to do with the political events of the 17905; and second, it has more to do with historical memories than it does with the future. Significantly, the examples 154. "Die Begierde erweitert und erhebt sich zur Liebe ..., und der niedrige Vorteil uber den Sinn wird verschmaht, um uber den Willen einen edelern Sieg zu erkampfen" (p. 666; translation, n.ioi, above). Compare "Der Triumph der Liebe," lines 16-20, 5154; "Die Cotter Griechenlandes," especially lines 33-40; "Die Kunstler," lines 197-209.

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and echoes that are heard in Letter 27 derive not merely from Greek antiquity but also, in the praise of chivalry (666), from medieval times.155 It is hard to see how this aesthetic state, even if it were not confined to "Schein," could have much to offer to humanity on the brink of the nineteenth century, much less to humanity on the brink of the twenty-first. Finally, we must recall once more the application of the dual form argument in Letter 4, according to which the fine artist must impose the second form on matter by concealment, the political artist by real fusion. We have seen that the theories of "Veredelung" and the "Spieltrieb" were Schiller's attempts to establish the possibility of a real fusion of reason and nature and hence to make a substantive distinction between the fine artist and the political artist, but that these attempts were undermined by the decision to understand the two concepts as ideals. The possibility of a balanced interplay of form and matter in the "Spieltrieb" is destroyed in Letter 22 (639), where Schiller restates the true relationship between the form and matter in art as one of "Vertilgung" (annihilation), and this position is applied to the moral sphere at the 155. The reader of Johan Huizinga's classic The Waning of the Middle Ages often senses that Schiller's ideal of an aesthetic state embodies cultural memories of the aristocratic society of the later medieval period. Huizinga understands chivalry (p. 69) as "an aesthetic ideal assuming the appearance of an ethical ideal," a view paralleled by Schiller's statement (p. 666) "das Unrecht der Natur wird durch die GroBmut ritterlicher Sitten verbessert" (The injustice of nature is corrected by the magnanimity of chivalric manners). See also p. 80: "The life of aristocracies when they are still strong, though of small utility, tends to become an all-round game. In order to forget the painful imperfection of reality, the nobles turn to the continual illusion of a high and heroic life." Compare Schiller's praise (p. 660) of "[der] wohltatig[er] Schein, der die Leerheit ausfullt und die Armseligkeit zudeckt ... [und] eine gemeine Wirklichkeit veredelt" (the beneficent semblance that fills up emptiness and covers up wretchedness, ... and ennobles a base reality). Huizinga's comment (p. 40), "The aspiration to realize a dream of beauty in the forms of social life bears as a vitium originis the stamp of aristocratic exclusiveness," thus corresponds to Schiller's abrupt redefinition of the aesthetic state in the final paragraph of Letter 27 (p. 669) from a vehicle for universal improvement into an ideal of conduct pursued "in einigen wenigen auserlesenen Zirkeln" (in some few chosen circles). That this model is based on courtly etiquette is confirmed by the statement on the same page "dafi der schone Ton in der Nahe des Thrones am fruhesten und am vollkommensten reift" (that beautiful manners mature most quickly and most perfectly near to the throne). (See also NSD, p. 766.) This genealogy of the aesthetic state is admitted somewhat ruefully, despite a Blochian starting point, by Berghahn ("Asthetische Reflexion," p. 166): "In fact numerous formulations can be found in Schiller's aesthetics that cannot conceal their origins in courtly etiquette, as indeed the ideal of the harmoniously educated person is not a genuine invention of the bourgeoisie but rather derives from the tradition of the European aristocracy."

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close of Letter 23, where Schiller speaks of a war against matter ("Krieg gegen die Materie," 645). In chapter 5 I argued that the Schillerian ideal typically represents an apparent harmony of matter and form resting on an actual subjection of matter to form. This kind of ideal, we can now see, arises out of the dual form argument, the second form being interpreted as concealment. An application of these metaphysical structures to the political sphere yields the unappealing picture of an illusory harmony between an unbendingly rational leadership and an irremediably sensualistic populace, a harmony resting on an actual substrate of subordination of the latter by the former. Underlying the cultivated manners of the aesthetic state is a reality of permanent oppression, and an oppression that will be brutally enforced, as at the end of Letter 4, the moment the populace oversteps its bounds. In the section of the Kallias-Brief of 23 February 1793 prefiguring the theory of the aesthetic state, Schiller sets out the terms of the contract between master and servant as follows: "In dieser asthetischen Welt, die eine ganz andere ist als die vollkommenste platonische Republik, fodert auch der Rock, den ich auf dem Leibe trage, Respekt von mir fur seine Freiheit, und er verlangt von mir, gleich einem verschamten Bedienten, daB ich niemanden merken lasse, daB er mir dient. Dafur aber verspricht er mir auch reciproce, seine Freiheit so bescheiden zu gebrauchen, daB die meinige nichts dabei leidet; und wenn beide Wort halten, so wird die ganze Welt sagen, daB ich schon angezogen sei" (421). 156 The passage illustrates exceptionally well how illiberal must be a political model based on Schiller's dual form theory, but the negative reference to Plato here leads us to ask, finally, in what respects Schiller's aesthetic state differs from the Platonic Republic and what these differences can tell us about Schiller's relation to Plato.

("Tatsachlich finden sich in Schillers Asthetik zahlreiche Formulierungen, die ihre Herkunft aus der hofischen Etikette kaum verleugnen konnen, wie ja auch das Ideal des harmonisch gebildeten Menschen keine genuine Erfindung des Burgertums ist, sondern aus der europaischen Adelstradition stammt.") See also in this connection Burger, "Europaisches Adelsideal" and Bowling's recent Vulgarization of Art, which discovers an unconscious aristocratic undertone in the aesthetic tradition initiated by Shaftesbury. 156. "In this aesthetic world, which is a quite different one from the most perfect Platonic Republic, even the coat that I wear demands from me respect for its freedom; like a bashful servant, it demands that I let nobody notice that it is serving me. In return, it promises to make such a modest use of its freedom that my own does not suffer. If both partners keep their word, the whole world will say that I am beautifully dressed."

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Essential to Schiller's conception of the aesthetic state are its joyful character and its relation to the values of freedom and equality. What he probably knew of Plato's Republic was irreconcilable with this on both counts. In Plutarch's Life ofPhocion (section 2), a text certainly known to Schiller, we read that Cato, the Roman statesman selected by Plutarch as Phocion's parallel, had manners that were not "pleasing to the populace" and that he was not "eminent in his public career for popularity." This leads to the comment, "Cicero says it was because he [Cato] acted as if he lived in Plato's commonwealth, and not among the dregs of Romulus, that he was defeated when he stood for the consulship." Underlying these words is the assumption that Plato's Republic was grimly authoritarian, an assumption that suffices to explain Schiller's claim that his aesthetic state was incompatible with it. I might add that in Uber dasErhabene (803-4) Cato and Phocion are cited as representatives of a sublime statesmanship, whereas the aesthetic state is clearly an expression of beauty and methexis. If Schiller recalled the Plutarchian passage, therefore, he may well have felt that the Platonic social model had completely the wrong connotations for what he was trying to accomplish. But beneath this obvious difference lurks a deeper agreement, for the mode of existence of the aesthetic state is methectic "Schein" resting on a choristic, that is, an authoritarian, foundation. If the liberal and joyful culture of the aesthetic state excludes the Platonic spirit, the real relations underlying its aesthetic dimension are by no means incompatible with it. Two further points of contrast between Schiller's aesthetic state and Plato's Republic, both of them brought about by the nature of Schiller's meta-Platonic dualism, should be noted. The first is that while Plato envisages a reconstruction of the entire life of society according to philosophically determined principles, Schiller's aesthetic state seems to leave actual social relations very much as they are, as the references to wage labour, serfdom, and the throne make clear (669). The references to the Trojan war and to the age of chivalry (666), moreover, suggest that this state's function is as much to preserve historical memories as to break free from historical decline. Schiller's reform, finally, would be confined to the level of appearance, to such elements as etiquette and ceremony, and would explicitly renounce reform to the real infrastructure. This is a concept that would in all likelihood have struck Plato as pointless. The second point of difference is the function of the proposed social model in relation to reality. Kant praised Plato's Republic as a

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demonstration of the inherent value of ideal standards even when they can never be fully realized, and he characteristically denounced as plebeian ("pobelhaft") the view that such standards were refuted by contradictory experience. Implicit in Kant's treatment is the assumption that the idea serves as a model that reality must strive to attain, and in this he follows the logic of Plato's own Republic, where, as we saw in chapter 5, Socrates defends his design as a paradeigma for real states. Even if reality must always fall short, the existence of the ideal standard enables reality, in Kant's view, to become better than it could otherwise be: "Denn welches der hochste Grad sein mag, bei welchem die Menschheit stehen bleiben musse, und wie groB also die Kluft, die zwischen der Idee und ihrer Ausfiihrung notwendig iibrig bleibt, sein moge, das kann und soil niemand bestimmen, eben darum, weil es Freiheit ist, welche jede angegebene Grenze iibersteigen kann" (B 374/A 3iy). 1 5 7 How, if we never try to match up to an ideal standard, will we ever know how closely we can approach it? With Schiller the emphasis is quite different. As a result of his second sea voyage, his aesthetic state is constituted not as idea but as ideal, and its mode of existence is "aufrichtiger Schein" (honest semblance). Instead of entering into a struggle with matter to elevate it as far as it can towards an ideal standard, the aesthetic state is to exist alongside reality as a permanent illusion, a kind of never-ending dramatic performance in which individuals participate willingly and knowingly. While the Platonic paradeigma exists for the sake of reality and hence can serve an educational function, the aesthetic state seems to be an end in itself, and Schiller even implies that oppressive social conditions should be tolerated if they can bring it about: "wenn es wahr ist, daB der schone Ton in der Nahe des Thrones am friihesten und am vollkommensten reift, so muBte man auch hier die giitige Schickung erkennen, die den Menschen oft nur deswegen in der Wirklichkeit einzuschranken scheint, um ihn in eine idealische Welt zu treiben" (669; translation, chap. 5, n. 59, above). The essential condition of this state is that people neither take it for reality nor think of remoulding reality in its image. The latter course would be to abuse "Schein" by instrumentalizing it, hence turning it into the delusive "logischer Schein," a problem that, I have argued, is 157. "For what the highest degree may be at which mankind may have to come to a stand, and how great a gulf may still have to be left between the idea and its realisation, are questions which no one can, or ought to, answer. For the issue depends on freedom; and it is in the power of freedom to pass beyond any and every specified limit."

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derived from the traditional danger of narcissism. If this danger is to be avoided, it is incumbent on all participants to know that the reality of their lives is different from the semblance. In terms of the twenty-fourth Letter, their culture permits them a vision of happiness so long as they do not forget their dignity in their daily lives; in the more extreme expression of the Kallias-Briefe, they may see freedom but they must never cease to think coercion. It is hard to see how, given this radical new metaphysical stance, the educational claims implied by the title of Schiller's treatise can have any real substance. What has happened to the liberal sentiments with which the treatise had opened? Although my reading of Uber das Erhabene can illuminate some of the philosophical pressures that bring about this volte-face, Schiller's transition within the space of a single work from a progressive optimism to a resigned and apparently repressive pessimism remains a phenomenon that will always pose a challenge to the reader's intellect, imagination, and sympathy. There would be little sense in pretending that the present interpretation, perhaps even any interpretation, could eliminate all the difficulties in an inherently difficult text. To help us to gain some perspective on them, one can cite various circumstantial considerations, for example, Schiller's idiosyncratically distrustful attitude to the external world, a trait of his personality memorably analysed by Emil Staiger under the heading "Fremde des Lebens" (the alienness of life) .15§ This personal stance could only have been reinforced by the collapse of Schiller's health in 1791, and the news from Paris in 1793 and 1794 would have done nothing to persuade him that the historically evolving world could ever provide a secure haven for intelligible ideas. A supra-individual factor must be the unpolitical quality of the life available to the German middle classes. In the light of Reinhart Koselleck's classic demonstration of this point in his Kritik und Krise, we can well understand how a discussion of political themes by a writer who is debarred by his social position from acquiring any relevant experience could be diverted into metaphysical territory, with the result that the political sphere, interpreted largely by means of classical topoi, is treated chiefly as a source of analogies for metaphysical relationships. Ultimately, the dignity of the intelligible world and its derivative, the world of "Schein," is placed above the need for political and social reform, with Schiller concluding that it is better to adhere to liberal principles in principle than to risk putting them into practice. 158. Staiger, Friedrich Schiller, pp. 11-45.

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But one should also not forget the realm of religious experience. The historical involvement of the Platonic philosophy in the development of Christian doctrine in the thought of Augustine and others should make us consider also the extent to which Schiller's recourse to a reformulated Platonism served to fill the gap left by the loss of his Leibnizian faith in the previous decade. The association in his mind, even at that early stage, of religion with his concerns about his poetic creativity (noted in chapter 4 above) underlines the importance of this dimension. A turn from an optimistic Leibnizianism, a way of thought that was in historical decline, to a more pessimistic Platonism would help to explain why, despite the vividness of Schiller's political analogies, his concern with practical politics takes second place to his devotion to the intelligible. Despite such attempts at explanation, the discrepancy between the beginning and the end of the Asthetische Briefe must ultimately remain an enigma, whether in social, psychological, or philosophical terms, but it is at least important for us to remain clear that it is a enigma, that we resist the temptation to represent Schiller's aesthetic state as less problematic and closer to us than it really is. The canonical character of the treatise can seduce the scholar into a false sense of familiarity with it, especially when the resulting image of the author accords so happily with a modern liberal and social-democratic viewpoint. The temptation to take Schiller's liberal rhetoric literally, to overlook its analogical character and its dependence on "Schein," has led to much oversimplification in the scholarship of the past generation. With the present interpretation I would hope, if not to solve all the problems, at least to persuade the reader that such problems exist and that they must be honestly confronted if we are ever to reach an interpretation of Schiller that does justice to his extraordinarily rigorous, complex, and elusive intellectual life.

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Poetry and the Ideal: Uber Naive und Sentimentalische Dichtung INTRODUCTION

In his treatise "On the Intellectual Beauty" (ENN 5.8.1), Plotinus, who is here defending the arts from Plato's strictures in book 10 of the Republic, gives a famous statement of the idealistic theory of art: Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitation of natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects are themselves imitations; then, we must recognize that they give no bare reproduction of the thing seen but go back to the Reason-Principles from which Nature itself derives, and, furthermore, that much of their work is all their own; they are holders of beauty and add where nature is lacking. Thus Pheidias wrought the Zeus upon no model among things of sense but by apprehending what form Zeus must take if he chose to become manifest to sight.

As I have observed (chapter 3), this argument uses the Platonic theory of ideas to refute Plato's own view of art. The resulting aesthetic theory has exercised such a powerful effect over the centuries that it prompted Ernst Cassirer to make the startling claim that all philosophical aesthetic theories were ultimately derived from Platonism.1 Though Plotinus claims that his argument applies to all artists, it is easy to deduce from it a distinction between those artists to whom it i. "Eidos und Eidolon," p. 3: "It is not claiming too much to say that all systematic aesthetics that has appeared up to now in the history of philosophy has, fundamentally and inescapably, been Platonism." ("Es ist nicht zuviel behauptet, wenn man sagt, daB im Grunde alle systematische Asthetik, die bisher in der Geschichte der Philosophic aufgetreten ist, Platonismus gewesen und Platonismus geblieben ist.")

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applies and those to whom it does not, that is, between artists whose representations of the objects of experience are modified in the direction of the idea and those who represent those objects as they present themselves to the senses. This distinction is termed by Panofsky, who attributes it to Plato himself, as one between a heuretic and a mimetic art.2 Here is where we should seek the historical origin of Schiller's distinction between naive and sentimental poetry. While Schiller uses a number of different strategies, for example, historical and psychological ones, to explain his meaning, the statement (717) that naive poetry is "die rnoglichst vollstandige Nachahmung des Wirklichen" (the most complete possible imitation of the real) and sentimental poetry "die Darstellung des Ideals' (representation of the ideal) is plainly of central importance. A consequence of this is that, whereas the Platonic and Plotinian distinction is clearly biased in favour of heuretic art and whereas Schiller in both earlier and later texts sought to establish his "Kunst des Ideals" as the sole valid art in the modern age, his argument in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung aims, or purports to aim, at an evenhanded treatment of the two types.3 The critical reception of Schiller's last great aesthetic treatise has been dominated by a comment of Goethe's. Summarizing his conversations with Schiller in the mid-i7gos as a friendly conflict between Schiller's adherence to the idea of freedom as against his own loyalty to

2. Panofsky, Idea, pp. 29-32, 189-91 (n. 47). Rein, Winckelmanns Begriff der Schonheit (p. 39), refers to a passage from the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums where Winckelmann interprets a statement from Sophist 236a, in a similar sense: "Plato thus says that divine images are not given actual proportions but proportions that seemed most beautiful to the imagination" ("daher saget Plato, daB gottlichen Bildern nicht die wirklichen Verhaltnisse, sondern welche der Einbildung die schonsten schienen, gegeben worden"). As Rein points out, the original context does not support Winckelmann's use of the quotation, for Plato is here identifying the non-mimetic method used by artists with the distortions of the sophist. However, this would not have prevented Schiller, who would hardly have known the original, from being impressed by the antithesis and using it for his own purposes. 3. The final section of the treatise dealing with the realist and the idealist will not be discussed here, but it is worth observing that Schiller's probable source for it was the Dialectic of Kant's first Critique, and especially the final section of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method (B 882 /A 854) where past philosophers are categorized as empiricists and "noologists," with Aristotle and Plato as their respective exemplars. There is, however, a Platonic precedent for the distinction in the gigantomachia in Sophist 24.63. ff. between those who attribute reality only to bodies and those who restrict it to disembodied ideas. Schiller's discussion thus represents a characteristic effort to derive a viable psychology from the metaphysical tradition. For the history of the distinction, see Ralfs, "Platon und Aristoteles."

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nature, Goethe turns to the application of these principles to literary style: Weil ich aber, von meiner Seite hartnackig und eigensinnig, die Vorzuge der griechischen Dichtungsart, der darauf gegriindeten und von dort herkommlichen Poesie nicht allein hervorhob, sondern sogar ausschliefilich diese Weise fur die einzig rechte und wiinschenswerte gelten lieB; so ward er zu scharferem Nachdenken genotigt, und eben diesem Konflikt verdanken wir die Aufsatze Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Beide Dichtungsweisen sollten sich bequemen einander gegeniiberstehend sich wechselweise gleichen Rang zu vergonnen.4

While it would be foolish to deny that these biographical circumstances played a role in the conception of the treatise, the critical reception of the treatise has tended to overaccentuate the influence of Goethe on the development of Schiller's thought. As with the alleged influence of Wieland on "Die Kiinstler" (see chapter 7 above), this biographical emphasis has in turn led to a rather one-sided reading of the text in which Schiller is allegedly at pains to justify his own type of poetry in the face of the frighteningly successful example of the different type represented by Goethe. As we saw in chapter 7, however, Schiller was preoccupied with the distinction between mimetic and nonmimetic art as early as 1789 in "Die Kiinstler," a text that cannot be plausibly connected to an anxiety caused by the proximity of the older poet, and the difference between antiquity and modernity was thematized the year before in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes." The concerns underlying the new treatise therefore antedate Schiller's momentous encounter with Goethe in 1794. As we shall see below, important elements of the argument are anticipated in the Kallias-Briefe of 1793, and the new antithetical pair is derived from the antithesis of the beautiful and the sublime. The Kantian influence, moreover, is just as strong here as in the two previous treatises. A reading of Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung that leans too far towards 4. "But because I was stubborn and obstinate on my side, not merely stressing the advantages of the Greek type of poetry and of the poetry based on and derived from it, but even recognizing only this mode as the exclusively correct and desirable one, he was compelled to think harder about it. To this conflict we owe the essays On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. Both poetic modes were supposed to force themselves to concede equal rank to their respective counterparts." From "Einwirkung der neuen Philosophic" (1817). Quoted from Oellers, ed., Schiller: Zeitgenosse allerEpochen, vol. i, pp. 326-27.

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the biographical sphere thus tends to underestimate the immanent and autonomous logic of Schiller's philosophical development and to overestimate the extent to which he was influenced by external events. I should refer here to an observation by Wilhelm von Humboldt, which is perhaps the most perceptive single comment ever made on Schiller's personality: "The distinctive characteristic of Schiller that necessarily left the deepest impression on every observer was that, in a higher and a fuller sense than perhaps with anyone else at any time, thought was the element he lived in."5 It is worth recalling also Schiller's frequent expressions of disdain for everyday reality, for the uneducated masses, and for the time in which he lived. Such statements are typical of a mentality that endows ideas with greater reality than material objects, and this mentality led in Schiller's case to a certain disregard for the realm of personal experience, resulting for example in his tendency to write poems about ideas rather than about things that had happened to him. In his philosophical frame of reference, personal experience belonged under the heading of matter, and matter had to be violently transmuted by form before it was fit to be presented for aesthetic enjoyment. For this reason, we ought to be sceptical about interpretations of Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung that dwell too much on the alleged biographical determinants of its composition. This is not to deny that the encounter with Goethe in 1794 played a role in Schiller's decision to write the treatise but rather to stress that his understanding of Goethe's personality and works was accommodated to a preexisting system of ideas and preoccupations. In this one could compare the encounter to the visit of winter 1787 to Bauerbach, another momentous experience, which, as I have argued, prompted Schiller to compose "Die Gotter Griechenlandes." In the process, that experience too was reinterpreted and accommodated to a preexisting system of ideas and symbols, to such an extent, indeed, that the poem's biographical origin is hard to discern. In 1794, however, Schiller was a man in his mid-thirties and his course was more firmly set than it had been in 1787• The study of Kant lay behind him, and the collapse of his health meant that he faced every day the imminent prospect of death. To that extent we should infer that the Schiller of 1794 would have been a man less 5. "Was jedem Beobachter an Schiller am meisten, als charakteristisch bezeichnend, auffallen muBte, war, daB in einem hoheren und pragnanteren Sinn, als vielleicht je bei einem andern, der Gedanke das Element seines Lebens war." From "Uber Schiller und den Gang seiner Geistesentwicklung" (1830). Quoted from Oellers, ed., Schiller: Zeitgenosse aller Epochen, vol. i, p. 289.

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open to the influence of events and persons and that the visit to Bauerbach would probably have had a more significant impact on his development than did the encounter with Goethe. If we read the treatise with an open mind, we shall see that it is in fact concerned more with sentimental than with naive poetry, that it says more about Klopstock than about Goethe, and that what it does have to say about Goethe is somewhat enigmatic, in that it is based on a distinction between the poet's personality and subject matter that Schiller employs nowhere else in the treatise. Schiller's resort to this device suggests that Goethe, far from providing the impulse for the concept of the naive, actually represented a problematic case that eluded easy categorization.6 Moreover, Schiller's 1789 review of Goethe's Iphigenie aufTauris contains a remarkable anticipation of his later theory of the sentimental idyll.7 A further peculiarity of the treatise is that, despite Schiller's evident desire to treat the two kinds of poetry even-handedly, the justification of the naive causes him considerable embarrassment. The antithesis of heuretic 6. Szondi rightly denies that Schiller's statement (p. 715) that naive poets "run wild" in their age can apply to Goethe, for Goethe of course did no such thing. A later passage (p. 754) tells us that, in order to remain a poet, the naive genius living in modern times must become sentimental. As Szondi argues, this corresponds more closely with Schiller's assessment of Goethe, for a statement in Schiller's famous birthday letter of 23 August 1794 (NA vol. 27, p. 26) suggests that he viewed the conflict between Goethe's disposition and environment in a similar way: "Nun, da Sie ein Deutscher geboren sind, da Ihr griechischer Geist in diese nordische Schopfung geworfen wurde, so blieb Ihnen keine andere Wahl als entweder selbst zum nordischen Kunstler zu werden, oder Ihrer Imagination das, was ihr die Wirklichkeit vorenthielt, durch Nachhulfe der Denkkraft zu ersetzen, und so gleichsam von innen heraus und auf einem rationalen Wege ein Griechenland zu gebaren." (Now since you were born a German and since your Greek spirit was flung into this northern creation, you had no other choice than either to become a northern artist yourself or to supply by the help of your intellect that which reality withheld from your imagination, hence, so to speak, giving birth to a Greece from within and by a rational path.) The passage does not correspond exactly, however, to the alternatives envisaged in the treatise, where the modern naive genius must either become sentimental or cease to be a poet. In the letter, Goethe is said to face the choice between two kinds of modern poetry, a northern and a "rational Greek" kind. We can perhaps interpret these as two varieties of sentimental poetry, the first tending towards excessive abstraction and "Uberspannung" and the other remaining closer to nature. The case is typical of the experimental fluidity of Schiller's arguments. The arguments advanced in the letter and the treatise clearly derive from similar preoccupations, but it is impossible to reduce them to the same set of concepts or distinctions. 7. "Hier hat das Genie eines Dichters, der die Vergleichung mit keinem alten Tragiker furchten darf, durch den Fortschritt der sitdichen Kultur und den mildern Geist unsrer Zeiten unterstiitzt, die feinste edelste Bliite moralischer Verfeinerung mit der schonsten Blute der Dichtkunst zu vereinigen gewuBt. ... Es ist ein Elysiumsstuck im eigentlichen wie

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or ideal art and mimetic art is, as I have noted, biased in favour of the former, and this idealistic bias is reflected, for example, in Schiller's polemic against Burger. Is it possible for him to identify and define a naive, that is, a mimetic and naturalistic alternative to his "Kunst des Ideals" that is immune to that polemic? This question, together with the significance of the change of terminology from beautiful / sublime to naive / sentimental, will occupy us in the following discussion. LOGICAL STRUCTURE

The first instalment of the treatise appeared under the heading "liber das Naive" in the Horenin November 1795. Only towards the end of this part does the term sentimental appear in systematic contrast to the term naive. It would be easy to infer from this that the greater part of the first article dealt exclusively with the phenomenon of the naive, but this is not so. The distinction between the naive and the sentimental temperament is in fact introduced, albeit in a somewhat veiled fashion, well before Schiller begins to use the latter term in his characteristic sense. The treatise opens with an account of what it means to perceive natural objects as naive. Two criteria named in the opening paragraph are that the object either is or is believed to be natural and that it stands in contrast with modern artificiality ("die Kunst"), putting the latter to shame. Glossing the first criterion, however, Schiller introduces an important distinction, which is that the object should be viewed, not for what it is, but for what it signifies. He is thus not advocating a simple love of nature, but rather of nature when viewed in a very particular way: "Natur in dieser Betrachtungsart ist uns nichts anders als das freiwillige Dasein, das Bestehen der Dinge durch sich selbst, die Existenz nach eignen und unabanderlichen Gesetzen" (694, translation, chap. 3, n. 20, above). Brushing aside the notion that natural objects—"em bemooster Stein, das Gezwitscher der Vogel, das Summen der Biene usw."8 —could have a legitimate claim on our love or attention, he repeats his

im uneigentlichen Verstande" (p. 965). (The genius of a poet who needs fear comparison with no ancient tragedian has here succeeded, aided by the progress of moral culture and the milder spirit of our times, in uniting the finest and most noble bloom of moral refinement with the fairest bloom of poetry. ... It is an Elysian drama, both literally and figuratively speaking.) 8. " a mossy stone, the twitter of birds, the buzzing of bees, etc."

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insistence on a symbolic way of viewing them: "Es sind nicht diese Gegenstande, es ist eine durch sie dargestellte Idee, was wir in ihnen lieben. Wir lieben in ihnen das stille schaffende Leben, das ruhige Wirken aus sich selbst, das Dasein nach eignen Gesetzen, die innere Notwendigkeit, die ewige Einheit mit sich selbst" (695) .9 Such formulations make it clear that Schiller has not abandoned his theory of beauty as "Freiheit in der Erscheinung," for all these attempts to formulate what it is that natural objects symbolize are glosses on the Kantian concept of the autonomous moral will. Indeed, the special "Betrachtungsart" (mode of contemplation) to which these objects present themselves in this symbolic manner was outlined in the Kallias-Brief of 18 February 1793: "Es gibt also eine solche Ansicht der Natur oder der Erscheinungen, wo wir von ihnen nichts weiter als Freiheit verlangen, wo wir bloB darauf sehen, ob sie das, was sie sind, durch sich selbst sind" (400, translation, chap. 9, n. 122, above). This passage, and not merely the brief discussion of the question "Warum ist das Naive schon?" (Why is the naive beautiful?) in the letter of 23 February 1793 (423) underlines the extent to which the great treatises merely explore the insights that came to him originally during the composition of those letters. Schiller starts, then, by discussing the capacity of civilized man to view nature as naive, that is, as symbol of an idea. This way of seeing he calls moral ("moralisch"), distinguishing it from a merely aesthetic view, the former being quite rare and the latter common. In these opening pages, the term sentimental occurs in a negative sense to refer to a fashionable affectation of the day, which is firmly contrasted with the true capacity to respond to nature as naive: "die Allgemeinheit dieses sentimentalischen Geschmacks zu unsern Zeiten, welche sich, besonders seit der Erscheinung gewisser Schriften [the reference is to Sterne's Sentimental Journey} , in empfindsamen Reisen, dergleichen Garten, Spaziergangen und andern Liebhabereien dieser Art auBert, ist noch ganz und gar kein Beweis fur die Allgemeinheit dieser Empfindungsweise" (696).10 A person would show sentimentality in this bad sense if he took a merely aesthetic pleasure in the mossy stone, without any regard to the object's moral 9. "It is not these objects, it is an idea that they represent that we love in them. In them we love life, creating in silence, working peacefully from itself; we love existence according to one's own laws, eternal unity with oneself." 10. "The universality of this sentimental taste in our times, manifesting itself—especially since the appearance of certain writings—in sentimental journeys, similar gardens, promenades and other such dilettantisms, by no means proves the universality of this way of feeling."

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referent. 11 We find a further definition of this deficiency in the propensity to take delight in the happiness ("Gliickseligkeit") as opposed to the perfection ("Vollkommenheit") of the natural object (708). If in his opening pages Schiller dwells on the capacity to perceive nature asi naive, his focus soon shifts. After a short transition dealing with the marginal phenomenon "das Naive der Uberraschung" (surprise naivety), he turns to naivety of character or temperament (variously referred to as "das Naive der Gesinnung," "das Naive der Denkart," "die naive Gesinnung," and so on), a type that is then identified with the poetic genius. Naivety of character is a notion of a quite different order from the capacity to perceive nature as naive. True, Schiller seems at pains to subsume this new entity under die concept as he has developed it hitherto, hence his reference to the second of his initial criteria in the contrast between the naive character and the "gekunstelt[e] Verhaltniss[e] der groBen Welt" (702) (artificial conditions of society). But naivety of character is ultimately not a matter of perspective or contrast. The mossy stone, we recall, was not naive in itself; it aroused the feeling of the naive in civilized observers when they viewed it symbolically. But no such qualification is attached to the person of naive temperament. What matters is not how he seems and in whose opinion but what he is in himself. From the original rubric of the naive, therefore, two quite different phenomena have emerged, first, the capacity of artificial or civilized man to view natural objects as symbols of moral ideas, and second, the character in whom reason and nature act as one.12 Though this treatise deals with aesthetic and not ethical subject matter, it is clear that the naive temperament is a construct parallel to the beautiful soul of Uber Anmut und 11. The term is used in the same disparaging sense to contrast the moderns from the Greeks: "so muB die Bemerkung befremden, daB man so wenige Spuren von dem sentimentalischen Interesse, mit welchem wir Neuere an Naturszenen und an Naturcharaktere hangen konnen, bei demselben [Volk] antrifft" (p. 709). (One must be astonished to remark how few signs one encounters among this [people] of the sentimental interest with which we moderns can become attached to natural scenes and characters.) The equivalent German term is also used for this fashionable sensibility in the apostrophe to the "sentimental friend of nature" (p. 708). When Schiller blames his reading of the sentimental French and German poets (p. 713) for his initial difficulties in appreciating Shakespeare, the term seems to mean no more than "unnatural." Thanks to this reading, he says, "Ich war noch nicht fahig, die Natur aus der ersten Hand zu verstehen." (I was not yet capable of understanding nature at first hand.) The sentimental poet's orientation towards natureas-idea does not figure in this argument. 12. Sayce's analysis of Schiller's use of the term "naiv" into two senses, one conventional and the other personal, is thus inadequate ("Das Problem der Vieldeutigkeit," pp. 166-77).

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Wurde, achieving poetic excellence with the same effortless grace with which the beautiful soul achieved virtue: "Aus der naiven Denkart flieBt notwendigerweise auch ein naiver Ausdruck sowohl in Worten als Bewegungen, und es ist das wichtigste Bestandstiick der Grazie" (706).13 The naive temperament thus represents a real methexis of the material in the intelligible. Like all such methectic constructs, it is seen as growing from nature rather than the idea. Schiller thus writes that the genius is "bloB von der Natur oder dem Instinkt ... geleitet" (704) (guided merely by nature or instinct). Like architectonic beauty and beauty of soul in Uber Anmut und Wurde, naivety of temperament comes about by the favour ("Gunst") of nature (753). Like the beautiful soul, it is distanced both historically and logically, on the one hand being associated with Greek antiquity (708-11), on the other by being redefined as an idea: "endlich ist jene schone Zusammenstimmung zwischen Empfinden und Denken, welche den Charakter desselben ausmacht, doch nur eine Idee, die in der Wirklichkeit nie ganz erreicht wird" (755-56).14 But, again like the earlier methectic constructs, the naive temperament is subjected to the criticism that it is too close to nature and too reliant on external support: "Das naive Genie steht ... in einer Abhangigkeit von der Erfahrung, welche das sentimentalische nicht kennet" (754).15 Actual manifestations of the naive temperament are thus treated with suspicion; as both architectonic and moral beauty tended to degenerate into mere "Naturprodukte," the naive temperament comes dangerously close to vulgar ("gemein") nature and the naive poet's work runs the risk of banality ("Plattheit," 757ff.)If the naive temperament is thus an outgrowth of Schiller's methectic strategy, the capacity to view nature as naive, that is, as symbol of a moral idea, is choristic. The latter capacity can be found only among people existing in the state of culture, that is, in people deprived of the harmony of thought and feeling that defines the naive temperament. It should by now be clear, first, that the ability to grasp nature symbolically is the hallmark of the sentimental poet and, second, that the term sentimental, which was introduced initially to denote a regressive mentality in cultured man, is now redefined by Schiller to signify the mentality of the 13. "From the naive way of thinking there necessarily flows a naive expression also, both in words and in movements, and it is the most important component of grace." 14. "But ultimately the beautiful harmony of feeling and thinking that forms the character of this type is merely an idea that can never be wholly achieved in reality." 15. "The naive genius is ... dependent on experience in a way that is unknown to the sentimental."

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poet who seeks a way out of the state of culture, not backwards to natureas-happiness, but forwards to nature-as-perfection. Schiller opens his treatise, in other words, in a highly confusing manner, in that the capacity that he first associates with the term naive, the capacity of the cultured person to perceive nature as symbol of a moral idea, is later redefined as belonging to the sentimental poet. To make matters worse, the first sense in which the term sentimental is used, that of a regressive tendency in cultured man to yearn for a lost state of nature, is implicidy attributed in at least one passage to the naive poet. This reversal of terminology contributes to the confusions and inconsistencies in the treatise of which many critics have complained. The association of the sentimental poet with chorismos raises two questions. Why has Schiller not retained the concept of sublimity as counterpart to beauty? And what is the relation between his new concept of sentimentality and the old one of sublimity? Taking the second question first, we can say that Schiller has based the definition of sentimentality as a mixed emotion on the established view of the sublime: "Eben aus diesem Widerspruch zwischen dem Urteile der Vernunft und des Verstandes geht die ganz eigene Erscheinung des gemischten Gefuhls hervor, welches das Naive der Denkart in uns erreget" (697).l6 (Though the term sentimental is not used here, Schiller is clearly dealing not with the naive temperament in itself but rather with its effect, qua natural object, upon the sentimental observer.) Not merely Kant's account of naivety, upon which Schiller comments critically in a footnote, is important here. The Kantian analysis of the sublime is certainly the model for Schiller's claim that the sentimental observer's response to a child's behaviour is characterized by a conflict between the understanding and reason. True, the understanding is not overwhelmed by a child as it is by an avalanche, but is rather made to feel superior to the child's simplicity. But this is only the first moment, which is overtaken as our reason reminds us of the superiority of the child's uncorrupted moral character. The primary term "Einfalt" is thus broken down into the childish "Einfaltigkeit" that 16. "It is this very contradiction between the judgments of reason and the understanding that causes that unique phenomenon, the mixed emotion that is aroused in us by the naive temperament." See also pp. 720-1: "Der sentimentalische Dichter hat es ... immer mit zwei streitenden Vorstellungen und Empfindungen, mit der Wirklichkeit als Grenze und mit seiner Idee als dem Unendlichen zu tun, und das gemischte Gefuhl, das er erregt, wird imrner von dieser doppelten Quelle zeugen." (The sentimental poet is ... always dealing with two conflicting representations and feelings, with reality as limit and with the idea as the infinite; the mixed feeling that it arouses will always attest to this dual origin.)

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we smile at and the child like "Einfachheit" that commands our respect and admiration. As in the sublime, the understanding is overridden by reason, and the ensuing complex experience alerts us to the fragility of our everyday existence in a world dominated by the understanding when set against our moral and metaphysical identity. A second point of contact between the sentimental and the sublime concerns the concept of the limit. In section 23 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, Kant introduces the concept of limitedness and its opposite to distinguish the beautiful from the sublime: "Das Schone der Natur betrifft die Form des Gegenstandes, die in der Begrenzung besteht; das Erhabene ist dagegen auch an einem formlosen Gegenstande zu finden, sofern Unbegrenzheit an ihm, oder durch dessen Veranlassung, vorgestellt und doch Totalitat derselben hinzugedacht wird" (8:329).17 This distinction is taken up by Schiller when he expresses the difference between ancient and modern poetry as follows: "Jener [der alte Dichter], mochte ich es ausdriicken, ist machtig durch die Kunst der Begrenzung; dieser [der moderne Dichter] ist es durch die Kunst des Unendlichen" (7ig). lS In his application of the distinction, however, Schiller departs from the Kantian model, attaching the concept of limitedness to the visual arts, in which the ancients excelled, and that of unlimitedness to literature: "Ein Werk fur das Auge findet nur in der Begrenzung seine Vollkommenheit; ein Werk fur die Einbildungskraft kann sie auch durch das Unbegrenzte erreichen" (719-20).1Q Poetry, described here also as the art pertaining to the reflective mind, is said to have possibilities 17. "The beautiful in nature is connected with the form of the object, which consists in having boundaries. The sublime, on the other hand, is to be found in a formless object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is represented, and yet its totality is also present to thought" (pp. 101-2). 18. "[The ancient poet], as I would express it, is great by the art of limitation, [the modern poet] by the art of the infinite." 19. "A work for the eye achieves perfection only in limitation; a work for the imagination can also achieve it through the boundless." In section 53 of KDU (vol. 8, p. 429), however, Kant characterizes poetry itself in terms reminiscent of the sublime and corresponding closely to Schiller's notion of sentimental poetry: "Sie starkt das Gemiit, indem sie es sein freies, selbsttatiges und von der Naturbestimmung unabhangiges Vermogen fuhlen laBt, die Natur, als Erscheinung, nach Ansichten zu betrachten und zu beurteilen, die sie nicht von selbst, weder fur den Sinn noch den Verstand in der Erfahrung darbietet, und sie also zum Behuf und gleichsam zum Schema des Ubersinnlichen zu gebrauchen." (It strengthens the mind by making it feel its faculty—free, spontaneous, and independent of natural determination— of considering and judging nature as a phenomenon in accordance with aspects which it does not present in experience either for sense or understanding, and therefore of using it on behalf of, and as a sort of schema for, the supersensible, p. 215.)

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that transcend those of the visual arts, hence offering modern poets a clear opportunity of surpassing their ancient models. If the sentimental resembles the sublime, first, in being a mixed emotion based upon conflicting responses of reason and the understanding, and second, in its relation to the concept of unlimitedness, it differs from it in retaining a relation to nature. While the experience of the sublime reminds us of our identity as pure intelligences, as beings existing outside the natural realm, the terms "Intelligenz" and "Damon" (daemon) do not occur in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Instead, and this is its hallmark, the sentimental consciousness is constantly in search of nature, not of the nature it has lost, but rather of the moral perfection that that nature is now understood to symbolize. It is thus possible for Schiller to subsume both naive and sentimental poets under the heading of preservers of nature ("die Bewahrer der Natur," 712), a designation that could not aptly be attached to the.poet of the pathetic and the sublime. Parallel to this sense of nature, a broad concept of humanity replaces the earlier antithesis of "Mensch" and "Intelligenz." As Schiller says, the two kinds of poetry are "auBerst voneinander verschieden, aber es gibt einen hohern Begriff, der sie beide unter sich fafit, und es darf gar nicht befremden, wenn dieser Begriff mit der Idee der Menschheit in eins zusammentrifft" (7i7). 20 These synthetic concepts of nature and humanity are the most characteristic feature of Schiller's last great treatise, marking the final move in the direction of methexis. On the other hand, Schiller is also at pains to distinguish the nature with which the naive poet is identical from the nature that the sentimental poet seeks. Hence we also come across a statement like the following: "Jene [die alten Dichter] ruhren uns durch Natur, durch sinnliche Wahrheit, durch lebendige Gegenwart; diese [die modernen Dichter] ruhren uns durch Ideen" (7i7). 2 1 The assimilation of the sentimental poet's ideal nature to the idea that it symbolizes accentuates once again the similarity between the sentimental and the sublime. Why has Schiller replaced the sentimental with the sublime in this account of the relation between the two? In a passage of the "EinschluB" to the Augustenburger Brief of 11 November 1793, we recall, Schiller had 20. " extremely different from each other, but there is a higher concept that subsumes both under itself, and it must not astonish us if this concept coincides with the idea of humanity." 2 1 . " [The ancient poets] move us with nature, with sensuous truth, with living presence; [the moderns] move us with ideas."

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argued that, in mankind's aesthetic education, the task of beauty was largely complete and that modern art must be based on the sublime: "Fur den Menschen aus der Hand der Kunst ist ... das Erhabene Bedurfnis, denn nur allzugerne verscherzt er im Stand der Verfeinerung eine Kraft, die er aus dem Stand der Wildheit heriiber brachte" (NA 26:305, translation, chap. 9, n. 29, above). Schiller had returned to this view in Uber das Erhabene, where, after his attack on the over-refinement of modern taste, he called for a renaissance of sublime art, that is, of tragedy: "Zu dieser Bekanntschaft [mit den uns umlagernden Gefahren] ... verhelfen uns die pathetischen Gemalde der mit dem Schicksal [ringenden] Menschheit, der unaufhaltsamen Flucht des Gliicks, der betrogenen Sicherheit, der triumphierenden Ungerechtigkeit und der unterliegenden Unschuld, welche die Geschichte in reichem MaB aufstellt und die tragische Kunst nachahmend vor unsre Augen bringt" (806).22 Even though this view might seem to have offered Schiller an excellent theoretical foundation for his own subsequent tragic compositions, he was evidently dissatisfied with it as too narrow a definition of modern poetry. The heights reached by Greek tragedy also stood in the way of the assertion that tragedy was the characteristic art of the moderns. The Asthetische Briefs thus take up the argument, advanced earlier in the review Uber Burgers Gedichte, assigning to modern poetry the less confining task of pursuing ideal beauty, which, as we have seen, is a synthesis of beauty and sublimity (or of melting and energizing beauty). When in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung Schiller systematically defines sentimental poetry as representation of the ideal ("Darstellung des Ideals," 717), he is building on the position previously worked out in the review Uber Burgers Gedichte and in the Asthetische Briefe. With his theories of satirical and elegiac literature, he is attempting to explore, systematically and in detail, what alternatives are open to the poet who commits himself to the program of idealization outlined in the earlier texts. Significantly, the sublime is mentioned only once in the new treatise and in relation to only one of the four sentimental genres explored there;23 it is the highest point reached by the punitive ("strafend") or pathetic satire 22. "To achieve this familiarity with the perils surrounding us... we are assisted by pitiable spectacles of humanity [wrestling] with fate, of the irresistible flight of happiness, of confidence deceived, injustice triumphant, innocence brought low; such spectacles are supplied in rich measure by history and are imitated and set before our eyes by tragic art." 23. Other occurrences of the term lack emphasis and philosophical precision, e.g., of Haller (p. 733): "Er ist groB, kiihn, feurig, erhaben." (He is great, bold, fiery, sublime.)

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(722), and is irrelevant to humorous satire and also to the two forms of the elegy. The sentimental, we can therefore see, is a broader and more flexible concept than the sublime, and, insofar as it is based on a survey of actual literature, it has an empirical element. A more metaphysical aspect of the shift from the sublime to the sentimental is that the latter concept is more in line with Schiller's triadic teleological framework: "Die Natur macht [den Menschen] mit sich eins, die Kunst trennt ihn und entzweiet ihn, durch das Ideal kehrt er zur Einheit zuriick" (718; translation, chap. 3, n. 55, above). As I have noted (chapter 3), Schiller refers in a footnote (752) to Kant's doctrine of the categories, where the triad consists of unity, multiplicity, and totality, as his source for this historical scheme. However, the scheme was also implicit in some passages of the Asthetische Briefe, particularly the last paragraph of Letter 4. The concept of totality represents for Schiller a return of natural unity, the first term of the progression, at a higher level and incorporating the intermediate stage of multiplicity. The theory of the sublime, we can now see, fitted badly into this teleological scheme, since it pointed away from nature without any countervailing dialectical step of a return to nature at a higher level. This incompatibility will have contributed to the logical difficulties Schiller experienced in composing the Asthetische Briefe, as well as to his decision to exclude the pages published later as Uber das Erhabene. It is thus in line with that decision to edit the sublime out of the Asthetische Briefe that Schiller now builds the dialectical component more firmly into his next treatise, resulting in a theory of sentimental poetry that is derived from the sublime yet is less uncompromisingly choristic. A final consequence of the shift I am discussing is reflected in the title of a celebrated article by Peter Szondi, "Das Naive ist das Sentimentalische."24 While at times the two terms are distinct from each other in the 24. I must however contradict Szondi's assertion (p. 96) that, up to the footnote citing Kant's theory of the categories (p. 752), the sentimental had represented the opposite of the naive, and that only at this one point does it come to represent the reconciliation of the naive with its opposite, i.e., the third and not the second term of the dialectical sequence. Even in the first section of the treatise the naive and the sentimental poets are both said to derive their legitimacy from nature: " [Die Dichter] werden entweder Natur sein, oder sie werden die verlorene suchen" (p. 712). (Poets will either be nature or will seek lost nature.) This is a more complicated relation than simple opposition and already suggests the dialectical synthesis. The Kantian triad also underlies die statement in die second section "Die Natur macht [den Menschen] mit sich eins, die Kunst entzweiet ihn, durch das Ideal kehrt er zur Einheit zuriick" (p. 718) (Nature makes man one widi himself, culture divides him, through the ideal he returns to unity), where the sentimental poet is clearly to be aligned

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sense of being oriented respectively towards the material and intelligible worlds and towards the aesthetics of mimesis and idealization, at other times they approach each other on the basis of their shared orientation to the methectic concept of ideal nature. As I noted, the naive character is identified, not with the slothful and regressive "Glikkseligkeit" of nature but with a purified concept, "die reine" and not "die rohe Natur" (707) (pure, and not crude nature). The naive character has thus already gone beyond the material world towards the idea. Similarly, the sentimental poet is warned against pursuing his idealizing energies too far in the direction of abstraction and the intelligible, and Schiller here states that even the process of "Veredelung" can be pursued too far: "Ein solches Ideal der Veredlung, welches die Vernunft in ihrer reinen Gesetzgebung vorzeichnet, darf sich also der Dichter ebensowenig als jenes niedrige Ideal der Erholung, welches die Sinnlichkeit aufstellt, zum Zwecke setzen, da er die Menschheit zwar von alien zufalligen Schranken befreien soil, aber ohne ihren Begriff aufzuheben und ihre notwendigen Grenzen zu verriicken" (767).25 Even the sentimental poet must know where to limit his quest for the unlimited. The effect of

with the third and not the second term. The quotation shows that multiplicity, the second term of Kant's triad, is in fact the philosophical principle of the state of culture ("Kunst"), and for Schiller the type of literature characteristic of that state is neither naive nor sentimental but is rather the literature of wit emanating from France which in his view is not poetry at all: "Jede andere Art zu wirken ist dem poetischen Geiste fremd; daher ... [heiBen] alle sogenannten Werke des Witzes ganz mit Unrecht poetisch" (p. 716). (Every other method is alien to the poetic spirit; it is thus ... quite wrong to term all so-called works of wit as poetic.) Sentimental literature, but now in the negative sense in which the term sometimes occurs in the first section, is also characteristic of the state of "Kunst," e.g., in Schiller's explanation of his slowness to appreciate Shakespeare (p. 713): "Ich war noch nicht fahig, die Natur aus der ersten Hand zu verstehen. Nur ihr durch den Verstand reflektiertes und durch die Regel zurechtgelegtes Bild konnte ich ertragen, und dazu waren die sentimentalischen Dichter der Franzosen und auch der Deutschen, von den Jahren 1750 bis etwa 1780, gerade die rechten Subjekte." (I was not yet capable of understanding nature at first hand. I could bear its image only when reflected through the understanding and adapted by the rules, and for this the sentimental poets of the French and also the Germans from 1750 to around 1780 were exactly the right customers.) In this passage, to be sure, sentimental and naive are opposites, but the term sentimental has not here the redeeming relation to nature and the ideal that it has on the previous page. 25. "The poet must set as his goal neither this kind of ideal of ennoblement, prescribed by reason in its pure legislation, nor a low ideal of recuperation; for he is to liberate humanity from all contingent limitations, but to do so without eliminating its concept and without shifting its necessary boundaries."

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this warning is to recall the sentimental poet to the realm of purified nature where the naive poet is also at home. While this means that Schiller's concluding unification of the two characters into "das Ideal schoner Menschlichkeit" is less perplexing than his synthesis of the beautiful and sublime characters, it also means that the two concepts are less clearly differentiated than was the case with the older antithesis. Like the shifting definitions of the central terms noted above, their relation to each other, which incorporates elements of opposition and identity, contributes to the obscurity of the treatise's argument. THE PROBLEM

OF THE NAIVE

The theory of sentimental poetry, I have argued, purports to explore the possibilities of the idealizing poetry that Schiller had postulated in earlier texts. In the ninth Asthetischer Brief and elsewhere, he had criticized poetry that did not conform to this new program. In the new treatise, however, he repeatedly adopts an even-handed strategy, arguing that naive and sentimental poetry, though heterogeneous, have equal validity and merit and that neither should be judged by criteria abstracted from the other: "Die Verschiedenheit des Weges wollte ich zeigen, auf welchem alte und moderne, naive und sentimentalische Dichter zu dem namlichen Ziele gehen—daB, wenn uns jene durch Natur, Individualitat und lebendige Sinnlichkeitruhren, diese durch Ideen und hohe Geisti^ieit eine ebenso groBe, wenngleich keine so ausgebreitete Macht iiber unser Gemut beweisen" (737-38).2G It is clear that in view of the metaphysical superiority of "Geistigkeit" (spirituality) to "Sinnlichkeit" (sensuousness) , the problem that confronts Schiller in the new treatise is the vindication not of the sentimental but of the naive poet. In the opening pages, as we have already seen, he has distinguished between two ways of seeing natural objects, one moral and the other aesthetic, and the former focuses on the idea of autonomy that the object symbolizes. The aesthetic way of seeing, which focuses on the thing itself, is clearly a derivative of what we have earlier called tactile perception, that is, a perception that fails to keep the material world at a distance and hence fails to break the dominion of appetite in the soul. 26. "I wanted to show the difference between the paths by which ancient and modern, naive and sentimental poets reach the same goal; to show that, while the former move us by nature, individuality, and vivid sensuous-ness, the latter, by means of ideas and high spirituality, demonstrate a power over our minds that, though not so widespread, is no less great."

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If, as we have argued, the moral way of seeing is the way of the sentimental poet, what is to prevent us from inferring that the aesthetic, or tactile, way of seeing is the way of the naive poet, especially since, as Schiller tells us twice (712, 716), the latter is nature? If so, it is hard to resist the further inference that the naive poet is inherently blameworthy, not least since Schiller had criticized the unfortunate Burger precisely for his failure to idealize. We recall here the critical tradition that had defended art from Plato's criticisms, conceding, on the one hand, that a slavish mimesis was reprehensible but arguing, on the other, that a "heuretic," that is, a nonmimetic art was also possible. An important passage in this context is Schiller's apostrophe to the Rousseauian sentimentalist, who is commanded to make the choice between nature in itself or nature as symbol of moral ideas. Distinguishing first between nature as "Gluckseligkeit" (happiness) and as "Vollkommenheit" (perfection), Schiller continues as follows: "Frage dich also wohl, empfindsamer Freund der Natuf, ob deine Tragheit nach ihrer Ruhe, ob deine beleidigte Sittlichkeit nach ihrer Ubereinstimmung schmachtet?" (708).27 The passage depends on the earlier distinction between moral and aesthetic ways of seeing nature, and if the moral is the sentimental way (the term sentimental taken now in the distinctively Schillerian sense), then surely the naive is the aesthetic way. Since humanity is currently in the middle stage of history, that is, in the cultured state corresponding to multiplicity in the triadic scheme, then the naive consciousness must look back to nature as unity while the sentimental consciousness looks forward to nature as totality. Schiller's praise for the naivety of genius early in the treatise is so eloquent that it is easy to miss the logical problems that it raises. We have seen that his theory of the naive temperament draws upon the same notion of methexis as his earlier theory of moral beauty, and it is therefore not surprising to find that the naive temperament is subjected to the same test of the touchstone ("Probierstein") that we observed in Uber Anmut und Wurdeand Uber das Erhabene. An argument of this type occurs in the last part of the treatise where Schiller specifies that, unlike the sentimental poet, the naive poet requires the support of a beautiful external environment, "eine formreiche Natur, eine dichterische Welt, eine naive Menschheit."28 Where this is lacking, Schiller continues, 27. "Ask yourself, then, you fine-feeling friend of nature, whether it is your sloth that yearns for nature's peace or your outraged morality that yearns for her harmony." 28. "a nature full of forms, a poetic world, a naive humanity."

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there must be one of two outcomes: "Fehlt [dem naiven Dichtergenie] nun dieser Beistand von auBen, sieht es sich von einem geistlosen Stoff umgeben, so kann nur zweierlei geschehen. Es tritt entweder, wenn die Gattung bei ihm (iberwiegend 1st, aus seiner Art und wird sentimentalisch, um nur dichterisch zu sein, oder, wenn der Artcharakter die Obermacht behalt, es tritt aus seiner Gattung und wird gemeine Natur, um nur Natur zu bleiben" (754). 2Q Just as the beautiful soul faced with the test of strong emotion revealed itself as either sublime or as mere nature (474-75), the touchstone of modernity forces the naive poet to make a similar choice. The middle ground of methexis is thus cut away as the choristic point of view asserts itself.30 If this passage is taken as definitive, then naive poetry is plainly not legitimate in the present age. As Schiller says of the second option, the degeneration to mere nature, "Vor dem zweiten mochte sich schwerlich ein Dichter vollkommen schiitzen konnen, der in einer gemeinen Welt die Natur nicht verlassen kann" (754-55).31 He is clearly thinking of Burger and his kind here. Schiller's strictures elsewhere against vulgar satire (722-23) and against banality ("die Plattheit") in comic writing (757-59) should be seen together with his declaration of war against naturalism in the prologue to Die Braut von Messina and merely underline the dangers facing naive poetry in modern times. What is unclear is whether the naive poet can avoid those dangers while retaining his naive character. The only historical environment ever to have provided the naive poet with the support he required was, so far as Schiller tells us, Ancient Greece. His remarks on this subject are brief and general (709-11), and 29. "If [the naive poet] lacks this support from without and sees himself surrounded by a matter devoid of spirit, two things can happen. Either he departs from his species and becomes sentimental, in order to remain poetic; or, if the specific character retains the upper hand, he departs from his genus and becomes common nature, in order merely to remain nature." 30. The touchstone strategy is employed in a further passage relating to the poet who is successful in comedy. To determine whether this poet possesses a genuine "Leichtigkeit des Ideals" or merely a "Leichtigkeit des Naturells" (ideal or natural lightness), he must submit to the test of writing on a more demanding subject ("sich an einem schwierigen und groBen Objekte versuchen"). Schiller consciously echoes the earlier passage from A w when he continues (p. 726), "In einem solchen Fall geht das niedliche Genie unfehlbar in das Platte, so wie die Temperamentstugend in das Materielle, die wahrhaft schone Seele hingegen geht ebenso gewiB in die erhabene iiber." (In such a case the dainty talent infallibly falls into banality, just as habitual virtue falls into the material, while the truly beautiful soul turns with equal certainty into a sublime one.) 31. "A poet who cannot leave nature in a vulgar world will have difficulty in protecting himself completely from the second alternative."

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the only poet referred to specifically as an example of Greek naivety is Homer (713-16). Since Euripides is cited (712) as an early example of the sentimental attitude to nature, the inception of the fall from nature into culture would seem to have occurred during his lifetime, rendering problematic all subsequent occurrences of naive poetry. True, it is not Schiller's intention to disqualify all naive poetry since Euripides, for, next to Homer, his second great example is Shakespeare, while in his own time he sees the naive spirit alive in Voss's Luise (750-51, n. i) as well as in Bodmer and Gellert (757). In a footnote (717), he has explained that his distinction aims not just at an "Unterschied der Zeit" but also at an "Unterschied der Manier" (a difference of manner as well as of time), and hence: "Wir haben auch in neuern,ja sogar in neuesten Zeiten naive Dichtungen in alien Klassen, wenngleich nicht mehr ganz reiner Art."32 It is also not his intention to dismiss naive poetry as inherently inferior, in that it fails to idealize, for he repeatedly asserts that, though different from the sentimental, it has equal rights. Despite Schiller's obvious intention of treating the naive poet generously, we must ask whether there is room within his conceptual system for a convincing justification of modern naive poetry and whether Schiller in fact is able to give a coherent account of what it is and why it is good. Schiller states that the naive, or mimetic, poet relies on experience in a way that the sentimental poet does not (754). In his earlier account of the naive temperament, however, he argued precisely that, by innate gifts, the genius is able to overcome the influence of an unnatural environment. Such people, he writes, "handeln und denken oft mitten unter den gekunstelten Verhaltnissen der groBen Welt naiv; sie vergessen aus eigener schoner Menschlichkeit, daB sie es mit einer verderbten Welt zu tun haben" (702). 33 A natural environment is thus not a necessary precondition of the naive genius, for in this passage the element of contrast between nature and culture, introduced initially as a contrast between cultured subject and natural object, is transferred into the personality of the subject, allowing the subject's character to transcend his experience. In another passage, Schiller alludes to the fortunate circumstances ("em gimstiges Geschick," 715) that can occasionally protect the modern poet from the harmful influence of his environment. 32. "In more recent, even in modern times we have naive works of poetry in all classes, although no longer of a completely pure kind." 33. " act and think naively even amidst the artificial conditions of society; by their beautiful humanity they forget that they have to do with a corrupted world."

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A naive temperament is thus after all possible in a cultured age. But if, as Schiller also says (754), the naive poet must transform himself into a sentimental one, we wonder how Schiller can still contend that naive poetry retains its legitimacy in the modern age, for it is unclear how it can avoid the pitfalls of vulgarity and banality while retaining its naive character. If the modern naive poet must indeed become sentimental in order to remain productive, perhaps we are entitled to extend the definition of naive genius to the sentimental poet also, inferring that the sentimental poet is born with a naive temperament in a cultured age and succeeds in transforming himself. But if so, then there seems to be no room left for a modern naive poet who does not transform himself, and this Schiller will not concede. While this question draws attention to a point of logical strain in Schiller's argument, it is nonetheless of interest to see what he actually says about naive poetry to mitigate the problem. The definition of naive poetry as the most complete possible imitation of reality ("die moglichst vollstaridige Nachahmung der Natur," 717) is not particularly helpful in this context, for, if that is what naive poetry is, then it will require precisely the external assistance that is denied by the modern world. Schiller sheds no light on this problem in his short discussion of Shakespeare, where he stresses the objectivity and impersonality that permit the famous comic episodes in the tragedies, but says nothing about the cultural environment of the Elizabethan age that a mimetic dramatist must have used as his model. The underlying definition here is that the naive poet leaves his own thoughts and feelings out of account and retreats behind the figures and events presented: "Wie die Gottheit hinter dem Weltgebaude, so steht er hinter seinem Werk; er ist das Werk, und das Werk ist er" (7is). 34 As a critical response to Shakespeare, this remark commands considerable respect, but it is still hard to see how this poetic impersonality could compensate adequately for the idealization that Schiller misses. The same problem arises from Schiller's judgment on Voss's Luise, which is praised for its "individual truth and honest nature" ("individuelle Wahrheit und gediegene Natur," 750, n. i). While there is no reason to quarrel with Schiller's appreciation of the work, what is lacking is a theoretical framework to explain why these qualities deserve praise.

34. "Like the deity behind the cosmos, he too stands behind his work; he is the work and the work is he."

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As we have seen, Schiller uses the terms "limited" and "the unlimited" (719) to characterize his poetic antithesis, and these again set the naive poet at an inevitable disadvantage. It is interesting, therefore, to find him revising that evaluation in the section on the idyll, where he is trying to be more evenhanded. While he had earlier united the two types of poetry under the common rubric of nature and humanity (for example, 712), to which the two have a different relationship, he here forces the concept of the unlimited to play the role of conciliator: "Jede Poesie ... muB einen unendlichen Gehalt haben, dadurch allein ist sie Poesie; aber sie kann diese Forderung auf zwei verschiedene Arten erfullen" (748).35 It is easier to see how this new definition applies to sentimental poetry. According to Schiller, sentimental poetry represents an unlimited matter, for the process of idealization has removed the object's limits: "[die Poesie] kann ein Unendliches sein, der Materie nach, wenn sie von ihrem Gegenstand alle Grenzen entfemt, wenn sie ihn idealisiert."36 The application to naive poetry is more questionable, however, for here the retention of the object's limits is said to lead, by a mysterious dialectical paradox, to an unlimitedness of a different kind, one of form rather than of matter: "[Die Poesie] kann ein Unendliches sein, der Form nach, wenn sie ihren Gegenstand mit alien seinen Grenzen darstellt, wenn sie ihn individualisiert."37 Whereas sentimental poetry offers "Darstellung eines Absoluten" (representation of an absolute), naive poetry thus consists of "absolute Darstellung" (absolute representation). It is exceedingly hard to find any substance in this definition of the naive or to see how it could shed light on Homer or Shakespeare, and matters do not improve when Schiller states that the naive poet "kann also seinen Gehalt nicht verfehlen, sobald er sich nur treu an die Natur halt, welche immer durchgangig begrenzt, d.h. der Form nach unendlich ist."38 Why a mimetic representation of a limited object should be equivalent to unlimitedness of form is obscure. In the next sentence Schiller disqualifies for the sentimental poet the objects that are permissible for the naive poet, asserting that such objects 35. "All poetry ... must have an infinite content, for by that alone it is poetry; but it can fulfil this condition in two different ways." 36. "[Poetry] can be infinite in respect of its matter when it removes all limits from its object, or idealizes it." 37. " [Poetry] can be infinite in respect of its form when it represents its object with all its limitations, or when it individualizes it." 38. " can thus not falsify his content so long as he just keeps to nature which is always generally limited, that is, is infinite in form."

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are "vollig gleichgultig ... und [werden] nur durch die Behandlung poetisch."39 He seems here to be overshooting his target, however, criticizing the naive poet's subject matter so harshly that the justification of the naive poet is itself called into question. In an earlier passage, Schiller has stated that with his uncomplicated relation to nature, the naive poet has only one way of treating his subject: "es gibt, in dieser Riicksicht, fur ihn keine Wahl der Behandlung" (720) .4° If this is so, then the naive author of idylls has an "indifferent" subject matter that he can treat only from a single point of view. How he can avoid banality is unclear. Similarly, when Schiller attacks Gessner's hybrid idylls a few pages later, he goes so far as to pillory all composers of idylls that do not conform to his new sentimental ideal. To be sure, the verb "verschlechtern" (debase) in the first sentence of the attack seems to imply an adulteration of a pure idyll, and hence to be focusing on the hybrid: "Er verschmahe den unwiirdigen Ausweg, den Gehalt des Ideals zu verschlechtern, um es der menschlichen Bedurftigkeit anzupassen, und den Geist auszuschlieBen, um mit dem Herzen ein leichteres Spiel zu haben" (750) .41 But in the next sentence Schiller reverts to the governing metaphor for modern man's situation, the forced choice between the path back to nature-in-itself and forward to nature-as-idea. These historical vanishing points are now named respectively Arcadia and Elysium, and it is clear that the naive poet leads us back to the former and the sentimental poet forwards to the latter: "Er fuhre uns nicht ruckwarts in unsre Kindheit, um uns mit den kostbarsten Erwerbungen des Verstandes eine Ruhe erkaufen zu lassen, die nicht langer dauern kann als der Schlaf unsrer Geisteskrafte; sondern fuhre uns vorwarts zu unsrer Miindigkeit" (750).42 Schiller adopts such a resolute partisanship for the poet of the progressive ideal here that not merely the hybrid but also the naive idyll stands defenceless before his attack. The cause of the difficulty in such passages is that Schiller's commitment to his theoretical structure obliges him either to favour the sentimental poet, denying him the means to defend the naive poet, or else to 39. " completely indifferent and [become] poetic only through their treatment." 40. "In this respect he has no choice of treatment." 41. "Let him spurn the unworthy course of debasing the content of the ideal in order to adapt it to human inadequacy, of excluding the spirit in order to have easier work with the heart." 42. "Let him not lead us back to our childhood, in order to have us purchase, at the cost of the intellect's most precious possessions, a peace that can last no longer than the sleep of our mental powers; let him rather lead us forwards to our maturity."

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exalt the naive poet by gushes of enthusiasm. Such defences of the naive remain incomprehensible in terms of the overall structure, however, while the passages praising the sentimental poet sound suspiciously like attacks on the naive one. As I argued above, Schiller has deliberately departed from the dualistic model of the beautiful and the sublime and, for his new treatise, has chosen a pair of concepts which, overtly at least, do not stand in such radical opposition to each other. However, the metaphysical basis of the structure remains constant, namely, a cosmos radically divided between a world of matter and a world of ideas, and for this reason the trend towards methexis remains as questionable as it always is. Schiller's two attempts to reunite the naive and the sentimental under a single concept are thus unpersuasive. In the first, nature or humanity is the chosen unifier. These are concepts that would seem to favour the naive and mimetic poet, and it is only by the argument that the moral idea is also nature that the sentimental poet can be brought under the theoretical umbrella. In the second reunion, the conciliating role is played by the unlimited, a concept that now favours the idealizing sentimental poet. Again, only the sophistic argument that discovers infinity in the naive poet's mimesis of a limited natural object can complete the dialectical trick. What is of most importance here, however, is that the two reconciling terms, nature and the unlimited, themselves point in opposite directions, that is, to the unreconciled chorismos underlying and undermining Schiller's final attempt at a methectic reconciliation. Where does this leave the vindication of the naive poet? The attempt to justify his mimetic approach in terms of unlimitedness and as "absolute representation," I have said, is unpersuasive. But, on the other hand, Schiller is so insistent on the inferiority of nature itself to the moral idea it symbolizes that the criterion of nature also fails to provide a convincing justification. Despite his admiration for Homer, Shakespeare, and the rest and despite his enthusiastic praise for the naive temperament, we must conclude that Schiller is unable to analyse or justify naive poetry in a way that is consistent with his theoretical premises. I should mention, finally, a structural shift in the last section of the treatise, where Schiller falls back on an Aristotelian model for which the best poetry represents a mean between extremes. Arguing now more technically than metaphysically, he suggests that the choice between na ive and sentimental poetry is not one between matter and ideal, but

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rather between an excess of materiality and an excess of abstraction. Corresponding to the naive poet's characteristic deformation of banality, Schiller thus posits a parallel danger, indicated by the terms extravagance ("Uberspannung"), enthusiasm ("Schwarmerei"), and the fantastic ("Phantasterei"), into which the sentimental poet can either himself fall or induce others to fall (759-63). Earlier, he had merely stated that sentimental poetry could appear "iiberspannt" (extravagant) to an ill-qualified reader: "Wessen Gemut nicht schon zubereitet ist, iiber die Wirklichkeit hinaus ins Ideenreich zu gehen, fur den wird der reichste Gehalt leerer Schein und der hochste Dichterschwung Uberspannung sein" (719).43 The appearance of the doctrine of mesotes thus represents a considerable shift of ground. As with other such triadic structures in Schiller's writings, this one implicitly treats ideas and matter as equals, with departure from the mean in either direction representing a culpable loss of balance. In so doing, it departs from the original orientation of sentimental poetry towards nature as ideal. In the climax of the passage, the ideal of humanity is said to be a synthesis of the two types: "Denn endlich mussen wir es doch gestehen, daB weder der naive noch der sentimentalische Charakter, fur sich allein betrachtet, das Ideal schoner Menschlichkeit ganz erschopfen, das nur aus der innigen Verbindung beider hervorgehen kann" (768—69).44 The statement underlines the synthetic structure underlying all the mature treatises, and it is perhaps more comprehensible here than elsewhere in view of the common orientation of the two types towards nature as idea. The synthesis leaves us wondering, however, how we are to reconcile it with Schiller's earlier insistence that the poet make a firm choice between naive and sentimental styles, for the attempt to unite them is "der sicherste Weg, beide zugleich zu verfehlen" (750) (the surest way to miss both). True, Schiller also implies in that passage that the union will indeed be possible for a poet standing at the acme of perfection ("am Ziel der Vollkommenheit"). But since each of them in its pure form also represents an unattainable ideal, the ideal of their unification is placed so far from any possible practice that it becomes more unimaginable than unattainable. This conforms with Schiller's tendency, noted in 43. "To a person whose mind is not prepared to go beyond reality into the realm of ideas, the richest content will be empty semblance, the highest poetic flight will be exaggeration." 44. "For ultimately we must concede that neither the naive nor the sentimental character, taken by itself, exhausts the ideal of beautiful humanity, which can only proceed from the intimate combination of the two."

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chapter 9 in connection with the "Spieltrieb," to place his objectives beyond reach.45 PURE NATURE

As we have seen, the terms "Intelligenz" and "Damon" do not occur in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Man is thus not divided, as in the Asthetische Briefe and Uber das Erhabene, between two conflicting identities, or at least not overtly. Instead, the concept of man ("Mensch") is paramount, representing, besides nature and the unlimited, a third unifying term under which both kinds of poetry can be subsumed. Schiller defines the task of poetry as "der Menschheit ihren moglichst vollstandigen Ausdruck zu geben."46 The two types of poetry, he then continues, are "auBerst voneinander verschieden, aber es gibt einen hohern Begriff, der sie beide unter sich faBt, und es darf gar nicht befremden, wenn dieser Begriff mit der Idee der Menschheit in eins zusammentrifft" (717; translation, n. 20, above). Instead of a duality of "Mensch" and "Damon" resulting in beautiful and sublime art, Schiller thus offers a concept of "Mensch" in which the old duality is encompassed, but still with a latent dualism (corresponding to the descriptive and prescriptive meanings in the term) yielding two kinds of poetry. We have seen that sentimental poetry differs from the sublime in pointing back towards nature, and the sentimental consciousness accordingly represents an ideal unity between thinking and feeling whereas the sublime disposition experiences a constant conflict between them. All of these steps are indicative of the strong move towards methexis in Schiller's last major treatise, and they are reflected in a tendency for the two kinds of poetry to merge into each other in the way that the beautiful and the sublime do not. A consequence of this strategy is Schiller's adoption, most firmly in the final section of the treatise, of the antithesis of two kinds of nature, a lower one described as vulgar ("gemein"), raw ("roh"), or actual ("wirklich"), and a higher one, portrayed in naive poetry, described as pure ("rein") or true ("wahr"). This antithesis parallels the expansion 45. It is also notable that, despite his desire for symmetry, Schiller shows more tolerance towards the aberrations of the sentimental poet than towards the naive poet's banality, for which his contempt is complete. The stance of even-handedness is thus, as always, belied b his actual preference for the ideal over the material and hence for the sentimental over the naive. 46. " to give humanity the most complete expression possible."

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of the concept of "Mensch" to include both "Mensch" and "Intelligenz," and represents a similar absorption of the idea into reality as opposed to a stress on the necessity of their conflict. In the later Asthetische Briefe, as we recall, the price of this closing of the gulf between idea and nature was the opening up of a new one between "Schein" and reality, reality being recognized as recalcitrant and "Schein" providing a view of the moral and political ideas that reality necessarily excludes. The theory of "Schein" does not feature in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, however, and the conflict between reality and idea is again, in accordance with the methectic strategy of the treatise, subsumed into the concept of nature: "Wirkliche menschliche Natur ist jede moralische Niedertrachtigkeit, aber wahre menschliche Natur ist sie hoffentlich nicht; denn diese kann nie anders als edel sein" (755).47 (The negative view of "real" human nature here echoes the judgment of the third Asthetischer Brief that human nature is selfish and violent.) What is this "true" human nature, we need to know, and what is the nature of its truth if it conflicts so sharply with reality? The derivation of the concept from Kant's moral philosophy is hinted at when Schiller writes that " [die wahre menschliche Natur] erfordert einen Anteil des selbstandigen Vermogens an jeder AuBerung, dessen Ausdruck jedesmal Wiirde ist" (755).4§ Dignity, we recall, was defined in Uber Anmut und Wiirde as the demeanour of the morally sublime person, and so it would seem that "true" human nature here is derived from the moral ideal of the earlier treatise, the ideal of a personality simultaneously beautiful and sublime. However, as I have argued, that ideal seemed in UberAnmut und Wiirde to be confined to the work of art and in the Asthetische Briefe to the aesthetic state. Does Schiller now believe that the ideal, which he proclaims here under the name of "true" human nature, is viable in reality? If so, how does he propose that we deal with the reality that so signally fails to reflect it? If not, and if "true" human nature remains an essentially aesthetic ideal belonging in the realm of "Schein," how is it that Schiller feels entitled to call it true? The antithesis of the two natures represents a culmination of Schiller's argument, and it will be helpful to retrace some of its earlier steps. He writes, for example, "Wirkliche Natur existiert iiberall, aber 47. "Every moral baseness is actual human nature, but it is to be hoped that it is not true human nature, for the latter can never be anything but noble." 48. " [True human nature] requires a participation of the autonomous capacity in each manifestation, and dignity is always the expression of this."

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wahre Natur ist desto seltener, denn dazu gehort eine innere Notwendigkeit des Daseins" (755).49 This inner necessity had also been attributed, in the opening pages of the treatise (695), to natural objects when viewed as naive, not, that is, in the sense of an inherent property but rather as a symbolic content analogous to moral autonomy that is projected onto the object by the sentimental observer. The opening passage, in fact, is based on an antithesis of real nature and the ideas that nature symbolizes to the sentimental consciousness. It is this same antithesis that is taken up in the later passage, except that it is applied to human nature rather than to the lower organisms discussed before. When Schiller says that this "true" human nature is the subject of naive poetry, he seems to imply that a sentimental observer or reader is similarly required to perform the symbolic mental operation. But the designation of the ideal human nature as "true" militates against this interpretation, for it implies that the symbolic referent of moral autonomy is in some sense a real attribute of human nature. In his dismissal of "actual" human nature, Schiller alludes to his earlier proviso that natural objects in themselves are uninteresting. But by implying that the moral idea is inherent in human nature and not merely projected into it, he seems to take the decisive step of amalgamating ideal and reality. The conflict of ideal and reality is built into Schiller's definition of the sentimental literary modes. The poet writes satire in Schiller's sense "wenn er die Entfernung von der Natur und den Widerspruch der Wirklichkeit mit dem Ideale ... zu seinem Gegenstande macht" (72i). 5 ° He writes elegy "in the narrower sense" when he emphasizes the loss of nature and the absence of the ideal. Common to both of these modes, then, is the element of contrast, for the ideal is evoked only against the backdrop of a bad reality, whether that reality is actually portrayed, as in satire, or is merely felt, as in elegy, as a source of dissatisfaction. With this stress on contrast, Schiller is paying heed to the danger that I have referred to as metaphysical narcissism: the error of mistaking the reflection of an idea in reality for the idea itself. The negative foil for the ideal reminds the reader or observer that the sense of that ideal is to point out that our reality fails to conform to the idea, whereas the "narcissist" jumps to the opposite conclusion. 49. "Real nature exists everywhere but true nature is all the rarer, for it entails an inner necessity of existence." 50. " when he makes distance from nature and the contradiction of reality with the ideal into his subject."

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When, as in satire and elegy, the contrast is built into the work itself, the danger of the narcissistic illusion is slight. When it is absent, however, as in the idyll, then the danger is acute. We should recall here the sculpting stanzas of "Das Ideal und das Leben," where equal space is devoted to the description of the making of the sculpture and to the finished work. Without the first stanza, which reminds us how laborious it is to subject material reality to the forming power of reason, we might be deluded into thinking that matter willingly accepted those forms. Especially when the external traces of the struggle are absent, it is vital for the observer to retain a mental awareness of that struggle if he is to appreciate the work properly. Similarly with the theory of "Schein," it is essential for both artist and spectator to distinguish "Schein" from reality if they are to avoid the gross deception that Schiller terms "logischer Schein." In the discussion of "Schein" in chapter 9, we saw that in Schiller's argument the Platonic antithesis of intelligible and material worlds was overlaid by a second antithesis consisting of a world of "Schein," where the intelligible harmonized with the material to produce the ideal, and the world of reality, where the two remained divorced. The chorismos of matter and idea was thus replaced by one of methectic ideal and choristic reality. Satire and elegy (in the narrower sense), we can now see, each embody a combination of real chorismos and ideal methexis. Whereas tragedy as described in Uber das Erhabene (806) concerns itself entirely with the portrayal of reality as choristic, leaving it to the spectator to supply the countervailing idea from his rational faculty, the idyll goes to the opposite extreme, portraying nature and ideal as "ein Gegenstand der Freude, indem sie als wirklich vorgestellt werden" (728),51 and leaving it to the reader to supply from his experience a countervailing awareness of the choristic reality that falls short of the ideal. Tragedy and idyll thus emerge as the two extremes on a Schillerian spectrum of modern poetic genres. It is significant, however, that Schiller takes the unusual step of classifying the idyll as a type of elegy. The elegy retains, in its characteristic awareness of loss, the sense of conflict between ideal and reality. Schiller's sentimental idyll, which is also an elegy, thus receives the typically oxymoronic profile of a Schillerian synthesis, in that it has to present the ideal as real and yet, in order to keep the danger of narcissism at bay, also leave room for the awareness that the real and the ideal 51. "an object of joy in that they are imagined as real."

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are quite different. The writer is thus given the famous and perplexing recipe of an "Idylle, welchejene Hirtenunschuld auch in Subjekten der Kultur und unter alien Bedingungen des rustigsten feurigsten Lebens, des ausgebreitetsten Denkens, der raffmiertesten Kunst, der hochsten gesellschaftlichen Verfeinerung ausfuhrt" (750).52 Schiller's proposed idyll thus signifies a kind of avatar of nature in the state of culture without suspending culture. Other definitions are given a moment later, when Schiller states that rest ("Ruhe") is the desired state of mind in the reader, but a rest that is consistent with energy. An idyll, presumably, that was too successful in applying the ideal to reality would bring about the paresse traditionally associated with the genre and called by Schiller "Ruhe der Tragheit."53 This sloth is thus the version of the narcissistic threat posed by the idyllic genre. Its antidote must be a mental activity stimulated by the awareness, incorporated somehow into the sentimental idyll, that reality is not ideal, and that the shepherds and sheperdesses are in fact men and women enjoying the blessings and suffering the curses of civilization. That these paradoxical syntheses are related to the Kantian scheme of the categories is made clear when Schiller concludes, "Die hochste Einheit mufi sein, aber sie darf der Mannigfaltigkeit nichts nehmen; das Gemiit muB befriedigt werden, aber ohne dafi das Streben darum aufhore" (751).54 The first part of this sentence refers to the progression of unity through multiplicity to totality. The second applies this logical and metaphysical scheme to the psychology of poetic reception, while the synthesis of nature and culture proposed in the previous quotation applies it to cultural history. In each case, the third term 52. "An idyll that depicts that pastoral innocence even in civilized subjects and under all the conditions of the most robust and fiery life, of the most widespread intellectuality, of the most refined art, of the highest social refinement." 53. See Fontenelle's Discours sur la nature de I'eglogue, reprinted in German translation in Schneider, Deutsche Idyllenthearien, pp. 75-93 (quoted p. 79). Interestingly, Fontenelle sees love as an occupation that contrasts with but can also be reconciled with the idleness of the pastoral state, and his formulations therefore form a precedent for Schiller's more extreme paradoxes: "Therewith one has a content heart and not a restless one; one has cares but not distress; one is in movement but not in torment; and this sweet movement is of such a kind as can be borne by a love of rest and by a natural indolence." ("Alsdann hat man ein zufriedenes, kein unruhiges Herz; man hat Sorgen, aber keine Bekummernisse; man ist in Bewegung, aber nicht in Qual: und diese suBe Bewegung ist eigentlich so beschaffen, als die Liebe zur Ruhe und die naturliche Tragheit sie erdulden kann.") 54. "There must be the highest unity, but it must not detract from multiplicity; the mind must be pacified but without thereby ceasing to strive."

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represents a dialectical resolution of the opposition between the first two. While they are logically exciting, it has to be said that it is extremely difficult to imagine what type of experience, whether a poem, a political-cultural state, or a state of mind, might possibly correspond to them. Returning now to the question of "true" human nature, it must be said that the dialectical paradoxes in which Schiller loves to argue do not permit any very clear answers to our questions. The distinction between truth and reality is particularly unhelpful in this regard, since truth would seem to be emptied of all content if deprived of any connection with reality. To be sure, Schiller's theory of history as an advance from present multiplicity to an ultimate totality would presumably include the transformation of "real" to "true" human nature at some future date, and his definition of the idyll as "das Ideal der Schonheit, auf das wirkliche Leben angewendet" (751) (the ideal of beauty applied to real life) seems to override the earlier distinction between "Schein" and reality. But, on the other hand, his anxious concern to shield the ideal from the contamination of reality is as strong as ever: " [Der moderne Dichter] verschmahe den unwiirdigen Ausweg, den Gehalt des Ideals zu verschlechtern, um es der menschlichen Bedurftigkeit anzupassen, und den Geist auszuschlieBen, um mit dem Herzen ein leichteres Spiel zu haben" (750; translation, n. 41, above).55 While the Asthetische Briefe failed to provide an adequate account of the education that it purported to propose, the new treatise does not even use the term "Erziehung," leaving it unclear how the chains of paradoxical syntheses could either effect or reflect change in the world. In sum, we must conclude that the concept of "true" human nature represents Schiller's last attempt to reconcile methexis and chorismos. First, this nature embodies the moral harmony of the beautiful soul. Second, it is stated to be not merely the product of a certain type of seeing but to 55. The antithesis of "Herz" and "Geist" (heart and mind) in this passage echoes Schiller's description of the necessary limitations of the naive idyll a few pages earlier (p. 747): "Weil sie nur durch Aufhebung aller Kunst und nur durch Vereinfachung der menschlichen Natur ihren Zweck ausfuhren, so haben sie, bei dem hochsten Gehalt fur das Hen., allzuwenig fur den Geist, und ihr einformiger Kreis ist zu schnell geendigt." (Since they pursue their goal merely by suspending all art and by simplifying human nature, they have, despite their high degree of material for the heart, all too little for the mind, and they rapidly come to the end of their monotonous circuit.) The echo shows that the later denunciation (p. 750) is not directed merely at hybrids but also at naive idylls. This shows how Schiller's premises necessarily favour the sentimental mode, and that it costs him an effort, as well as his consistency, to be generous to the naive poet.

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exist in fact (in other words, to correspond to the third interpretation of the dual-form theory, that is, real fusion). But last, the second step is undermined as Schiller distinguishes "true" from "actual" human nature and states that the former is the subject matter of naive poetry, suggesting once again that it is to be confined to the aesthetic realm. Schiller, the creator of Julius, thus makes a final attempt to project his ideals into the real world—"Seelen traumt ich in die Felsensteine" (I would dream souls into the rocks)—and to believe simultaneously that those ideals are and are not a part of reality. That they are is affirmed by the adjective "true," that they are not is entailed by the differentiation of truth from reality. Schiller thus contrives at once to succumb to and to avoid the danger of "Verwechselung," or metaphysical narcissism. In the terms of the Kallias-Briefe, "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" can now be simultaneously interpreted as "freedom in the phenomenal world" and as "the illusory appearance of freedom." By transcending the antithesis of "Schein" and reality, the sentimental idyll would accomplish a revolution in the world by its mere existence. In view of the logical, metaphysical, and even political burdens that he thus placed on his theory of the idyll, it is hardly surprising that he failed ever to produce an actual example to fulfil the program. It is also not surprising that in the plan outlined in the famous letter to Humboldt, Schiller stipulated that the idyll should take place on Olympus, a place both inside and outside the world where the dead Hercules, although stripped of earthly raiment ("des Irdischen entkleidet"), should be offered the carnal pleasures, in the form of marriage to the goddess of youth, that he denied himself during his mortal life. Only such a conception as this could do justice to the vertiginous dialectical paradoxes of the arguments that it was intended to summarize. PASTORAL In a pivotal passage from section 42 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft (discussed in chapter 4, above) Kant argues that reason has an interest in beauty: "Da es ... die Vernunft auch interessiert, daB die Ideen (fur die sie im moralischen Gefuhle ein unmittelbares Interesse bewirkt) auch objektive Realitat haben, d.i. daB die Natur wenigstens eine Spur zeige, oder einen Wink gebe, sie enthalte in sich irgend einen Grund, eine gesetzmaBige Ubereinstimmung ihrer Produkte zu unserm von allem Interesse unabhangigen Wohlgefallen ... anzunehmen: so muB die Vernunft an jeder AuBerung der Natur von einer dieser ahnlichen

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Ubereinstimmung ein Interesse nehmen" (8:397-98; translation, chap. 4, n. 9, above). Schiller, who refers at the opening of Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung to the section of Kant's treatise from which the quotation is taken, draws on this particular argument in the course of expounding his theory of the idyll. The task of this genre, he writes, is, "den Menschen im Stand der Unschuld, d.h. in einem Zustand der Harmonic und des Friedens mit sich selbst und von auBen darzustelleri."56 The sentence in which he echoes Kant most closely reads as follows: "Dem Menschen, der in der Kultur begriffen ist, liegt also unendlich viel daran, von der Ausfuhrbarkeit jener Idee in der Sinnenwelt, von der moglichen Realitat jenes Zustandes eine sinnliche Bekraftigung zu erhalten, und da die wirkliche Erfahrung, weit entfernt, diesen Glauben zu nahren, ihn vielmehr bestandig widerlegt, so kommt auch hier, wie in so vielen andern Fallen, das Dichtungsvermogen der Vernunft zu Hiilfe, um jene Idee zur Anschauung zu bringen und in einem einzelnen Fall zu verwirklichen" (745-46) .57 In line with his general procedure of seeking concrete applications for Kant's epistemological arguments, Schiller narrows the scope of the argument here from an interest of reason, as such, in the beautiful to an interest felt exclusively by cultured man. The qualification allows Schiller to orient this interest, not towards the realizability of morality in general, but rather within a historical framework, more specifically towards the existence of a beautiful community that he claims to have existed in antiquity and to be realizable at a higher level in the future.

56. " to portray man in the state of innocence, i.e., in a condition of peace and harmony with himself and externally." 57. "Man in the state of culture thus has an enormously strong interest in receiving a sensible confirmation of the feasibility of that idea in the sensible world, of the possible reality of that condition; and since real experience, far from nourishing that belief, constantly refutes it, the poetic faculty comes—as in so many other cases too—to reason's aid, bringing that idea before his eyes and realizing it in a single instance." See also p. 747: "Denn fur deri Menschen, der von der Einfalt der Natur einmal abgewichen und der gefahrlichen Fuhrung seiner Vernunft iiberliefert worden ist, ist es von unendlicher Wichtigkeit, die Gesetzgebung der Natur in einem reinen Exemplar wieder anzuschauen und sich von den Verderbnissen der Kunst in diesem treuen Spiegel wieder reinigen zu konnen." (For, to man who has once diverged from the simplicity of nature and is entrusted to the dangerous guidance of reason, it is of endless importance to see the legislation of nature once more in a pure exemplar and to be able to cleanse himself of the corruptions of culture once more in this true mirror.) One thinks here of the noblemen of Shakespeare's As You Like It finding a moral rebirth in the Forest of Arden.

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Kant's argument is based, abstractly as always, on the notion of natural beauty as symbol of morality. But the argument causes Schiller, the man of letters, to think not of natural beauty but, again more specifically, of the literary genre that traditionally harboured this subject matter. The idyll is therefore the genre that accords most exactly with his conception of sentimental poetry, for already in the first part of the treatise, in his address to the sentimentalist, he has written: "[Die Natur] umgebe dich wie eine liebliche Idylle, in der du dich selbst immer wiederfmdest aus den Verirrungen der Kunst, bei der du Mut und neues Vertrauen sammelst zum Laufe und die Flamme des Ideals, die in den Stiirmen des Lebens so leicht erlischt, in deinem Herzen von neuem entziindest" (yog).58 The idyll, we can infer, presents cultured man with a vision of a nature that puts "Kunst" to shame, a nature that he can interpret as a symbol of moral freedom. This nature is of course identical to the "true" human nature that I have discussed, whereas the "actual" human nature is disfigured by "Kunst." To this extent the idyll is the artistic equivalent of the experience of nature as naive that is described in the opening pages of the treatise. If Kant's theory of beauty, albeit at a high level of philosophical abstraction, is based on the idea of a harmony between man and nature, and if it is legitimate to seek precedents for that theory in the history of art and literature as well as in philosophy, it might be claimed that it evolves from a conception of the relation between man and nature that has traditionally been the province of the pastoral tradition. There would thus be an affinity that was not merely coincidental between Kant's assumption (also in section 42) of an "Analogic zwischen dem reinen Geschmacksurteile ... mit dem moralischen Urteile"59 and the pastoral reconciliation of man and nature. As Klaus Garber has written, "Bucolic poetry lives from the harmony between man and nature. The idea of the reconciliation of man and nature is at home in it, as in no other genre, up until the eighteenth century."60 In the light of this definition, Schiller's pastoral interpretation of Kant's argument here deserves to be set alongside his Platonic interpretation of other parts of 58. "Let nature surround you as a lovely idyll in which you return to yourself from the aberrations of culture, where you gather courage and new confidence for the race, where you rekindle the flame of the ideal which is so easily extinguished in the storms of life." 59. " analogy between the pure judgment of taste and the moral judgment." 60. "Die Bukolik lebt vom Einklang zwischen Mensch und Natur. In ihr ist wie in keiner anderen Gattung bis ins 18. Jahrhundert die Idee der Versohnung von Mensch und Natur zu Hause." Garber, "Arkadien und Gesellschaft," p. 41.

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Kant's thought (see chapter 4). Both are examples of a curious intuition on Schiller's part, in that, desiring to turn Kant's aesthetic theory to his own practical advantage, he not only interpreted that theory in a strikingly original way but also brought to light its hidden affinities and analogies with seemingly unrelated elements of the cultural tradition. While it would require a separate study to pursue all the ways in which Schiller's aesthetics are related to the rich heritage of European pastoral, I can draw attention to his use of just one traditional motif.61 In "Die Cotter Griechenlandes" (179-80), Schiller had alluded to the myth of a Saturnian Golden Age to illuminate the relationship between antiquity and modernity: "Herrscht ein andrer in des Athers Reichen / Auf Saturnus' umgesturztem Thron."62 In the myth, of course, Saturn was dethroned by Zeus, but in Schiller's adaptation the god of Christianity takes on the usurper's role. Whereas for Homer and the classical age of Greece Zeus was the reigning deity of the present, in Schiller's perspective Saturn becomes the god of the ancient world, and antiquity as a whole is identified as a Golden Age, a role it fulfils in all three of the major treatises of the 17905. At the same time, however, Schiller gives a consistent series of warnings that the Golden Age and its cognates are not to be taken literally. In "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" it is thus referred to as a land of fable ("Fabelland," line 4), and the gods are said to have returned at its end to the land of the poets ("zu dem Dichterlande," line 173). In the historical 61. In his excellent introduction to Deutsche Idyllentheorien, Helmut Schneider discusses, among other themes, how Virgil turned the bucolic mode into a means of reflecting on poetry itself, e.g., p. 21: "Here then was nostalgia, not as a longing for conditions of a primitive origin but rather for the simple order of the world of art, for the realm of beauty and poetry." ("Hier also gab es Nostalgic, aber nicht als die Sehnsucht nach primitiven Ursprungsverhaltnissen, sondern nach der einfachen Ordnung der Welt der Kunst, nach dem Reich der Schonheit und der Dichtung.") If accepted, this view would lend support to the view that philosophical aesthetics has sources in the pastoral tradition. Schneider is drawing here on Ernst A. Schmidt's article "Arkadien: Abendland und Antike." Schmidt's interpretation of Virgil's eclogues as "Dichtung der Dichtung" is set out in his study Poetische Reflexion. It is worth observing also that Schiller's discussion of decency ("Anstand," pp. 740-44) is reminiscent of the famous debate between Tasso and Guarini (alluded to also in the second Act of Goethe's Torquato Tasso) concerning the principles "Erlaubt ist, was gefallt" (What pleases is permitted) and "Erlaubt ist, was sich ziemt" (What is proper is permitted). Schiller mediates deftly between the two positions when he states (p. 741) that the laws of decency, the equivalent of Tasso's onore, "gelten in einer kunstlichen Welt mit demselben Rechte, als die Gesetze der Natur in der Unschuldwelt regieren" (are valid in a cultured world with the same right as the laws of nature prevail in the world of innocence). 62. "Another rules in the ethereal realms on Saturn's upturned throne."

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discussion of the third Asthetischer Brief, similarly, Schiller makes the difficult distinction between the actual state of nature, which is the product of "die physische Notwendigkeit" and "die bloBe Natur," and the fictional state of nature that cultured man constructs for himself: "So holt er, auf eine kunstliche Weise, in seiner Volljahrigkeit seine Kindheit nach, bildet sich einen Naturstand'vn. der Idee, der ihm zwar durch keine Erfahrung gegeben, aber durch seine Vernunftbestimmung notwendig gesetzt ist" (574).6a This imagined state of nature is referred to again in connection with the idyll, where Schiller maintains with characteristic ambivalence that the latter, though a beautiful and elevating fiction ("eine schone, eine erhebende Fiktion"), is also not without some basis in experience: "Alle Volker, die eine Geschichte haben, haben ein Paradies, einen Stand der Unschuld, ein goldnes Alter; ja, jeder einzelne Mensch hat sein Paradies, sein goldnes Alter, dessen er sich, je nachdem er mehr oder weniger Poetisches in seiner Natur hat, mit mehr oder weniger Begeisterung erinnert" (747).64 Though Schiller continues with the statement, "Die Erfahrung selbst bietet also Ziige genug zu dem Gemalde dar, welches die Hirtenidylle behandelt,"65 the stress in the preceding sentence on the individual's poetic faculty and on the role of memory leaves us uncertain as to what kind of experience he means, the experience of an actual state of innocence or the experience that poetically minded individuals generally enjoy reminiscing about an imaginary one. In his discussions of Greek culture, however, both here and in the other treatises, Schiller implies that his portrayal of that culture has historical substance. Schiller's philosophy of history, then, depends on the problematic notion of a past state of nature hovering uncertainly between empirical reality and poetic truth. To that extent it positively demands an overt reference to the pastoral tradition, a genre notorious for its cast of shepherds unlike any shepherds who have ever existed in the real world. Though, as Ernst A. Schmidt tells us, the identification of the myth of the Golden Age with pastoral poetry was an idea of the Renaissance and not 63. "He thus, and in his maturity, retrieves his childhood by artificial means; he conceives an ideal state of nature that has not been given to him by any experience, but is necessarily postulated by his rational destiny." 64. "All peoples with a history have a paradise, a state of innocence, a Golden Age; yes, each individual has his paradise, his Golden Age that he recalls with more or less ecstasy depending on whether he has a more or less poetic nature." 65. "Experience itself thus offers enough features for the painting of which the pastoral idyll treats."

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of antiquity, there is an ancient precedent in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue for Schiller's use of the Golden Age, not merely as a better past state but also as a token of the return of a better one. Among the prophecies with which that poem opens, Virgil writes, "iam redit et virgo, redeunt saturnia regna,"66 the virgin being the mythical Astraea, whose return presages the return of the Golden Age. Schiller would certainly have studied this canonical poem at school, an assumption that may lend plausibility to the conjecture that in concluding "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" with the call for the return of the gentler sister, Schiller may well have been thinking not merely of Venus Cypria but also of this other goddess, associated traditionally with the inception of a new age of innocence. In adapting Kant's doctrine of the categories to form his later historical schema, in which past unity looks forward to future totality across a present marked by multiplicity, Schiller produced a structure not only reminiscent of the Neoplatonic dialectic but also associated with the most famous example of the pastoral genre. His reference to the saturnia regna and the Golden Age in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" and in his discussion of the idyll in his last great treatise are evidence that he was aware of this reminiscence. The theory of the idyll in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, the climax of Schiller's theoretical efforts, thus represents an act of reflection on literary tradition as well as a design for a new kind of poetry. PROGRESS AND

REACTION

Schiller adheres in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung to the triadic historical scheme he first employed in the Asthetische Briefe and retains the hope that the historical progress of humanity will lead it to an ideal condition. But while the earlier work alludes (in its title if not elsewhere) to the great Enlightenment project of education and mentions (though only in one letter) the statesman whose task it would be to supervise the project, the last treatise is even more elusive as to the question of means. Natural objects are "was wir werden sollen" (what we are to become); the task of making us like them is attributed to culture in general: "unsere Kultur soil uris, auf dem Wege der Vernunft und der Freiheit, zur Natur zuriickfuhreri" (695).67 This is essentially the same kind of dialectical definition of culture that we have noted in the twenty-fourth Asthetischer Brief (647 66. "Now the virgin returns too, the rule of Saturn returns." 67. "Our culture is to lead us back to nature on the path of reason and freedom."

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quoted on p. 64, above), based on the fusion of unity and multiplicity to yield totality, but Schiller has even less to say here about the agencies and institutions that might bring this goal about, leaving the modal "soil" to answer all the questions raised by his vision. As we noted, the argument of the Asthetische Briefe can bridge the gulf between idea and matter only by opening up a new gulf between "Schein" and reality in which the first gulf respectively is and is not bridged. The progress towards the rational state is thus derailed and the treatise ends with the evocation of an aesthetic state in which the idea of freedom is realized solely as "Schein," with conflict between idea and matter being recognized—despite the integration of "Schein" into the society's manners and customs—as an ineluctable condition of reality. As we have seen, Schiller attempts in his last major treatise to come closer to a resolution of this problem by designating as "true nature" the ideal of a nature in harmony with moral ideas. Similarly, he defines (751) the sentimental idyll as "das Ideal der Schonheit, auf das wirkliche Leben angewendet" (the ideal of beauty applied to real life) as if the latter stipulation could overcome the gulf separating "Schein" from reality and turn the idyll into something more than a work of art. But the adherence to a negative image of "actual nature" shows the persistence of Schiller's conviction that human nature is selfish and violent ("selbstsuchtig und gewalttatig") and hence necessitates, as in the aesthetic state, a choristic politics. Similarly, the description of the ideal of humanity as "der Begriff eines vollig aufgelosten Kampfes sowohl in dem einzelnen Menschen als in der Gesellschaft, einer freien Vereinigung der Neigungen mit dem Gesetze, einer zur hochsten sittlichen Wiirde hinaufgelauterten Natur" (75i) 68 remains a design for a work of literature. To be sure, the reader of sentimental poetry is said to draw from the work a motivation towards a certain praxis, for he feels "einen lebendigen Trieb, die Harmonic in sich zu erzeugen, welche er [beim GenuB naiver Dichtungen] wirklich empfand, ein Ganzes aus sich zu machen, die Menschheit in sich zu einem vollendeten Ausdruck zu bringen" (752).6Q But this impulse, as formulated here, falls a long way short of any possible political activity, not only in that it is restricted to 68. "The concept of a completely resolved conflict in both the individual and society, of a free unification of the inclinations with the law, of a nature purified to the level of the highest moral dignity." 69. " a lively impulse to produce in himself the harmony that he actually felt [while enjoying naive poetry], to make a totality of himself, to bring the humanity in himself to perfect expression."

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the life of the individual but also because with the term "Ausdruck" (expression) it points as much towards demeanour as towards the moral character that underlies it. Here again, we see that the gulf between "Schein" and reality has not been closed and that, as in the Asthetische Briefe, Schiller's pessimistic metaphysical premises cause him to choose an aesthetic ideal in preference to a political one. In the last section of the treatise, organized, as we have seen, around the principle of mesotes, Schiller posits a social class subsisting between the physical and the mental workers. Both of the latter classes are too far from the golden mean to be capable of aesthetic enjoyment, whereas Schiller's "middle class" will be capable of idealization without "Schwarmerei" (enthusiasm) and cognizant of reality without being overwhelmed by it. The argument is clearly modelled on the twentyseventh Asthetischer Brief, which located the aesthetic state between the ethical and dynamic states, and as he argued there that the aesthetic existence flourished near the throne, Schiller's argument here again looks tentatively in the direction of the court as the paradoxical locus of his "true nature." This is surely the meaning of his coy references to "eine Klasse von Menschen" (768) (a class of persons). He is of course aware of how untimely it must appear to praise an aristocratic ethos in the middle of a revolutionary decade, and he hastens to qualify his position by appending the parenthesis: "[eine] Volksklasse (die ich aber hier bloB als Idee aufstelle und keineswegs als ein Faktum bezeichnet haben will)."'70 He is not thinking of the aristocracy as they are, rather of an ideal, based in part on historical memories, of what the aristocratic life should be like. Despite Schiller's orientation towards a future realization of that ideal, to be brought about by a dialectically conceived culture and not restricted to the nobly born, the historical and aristocratic nature of that ideal combines with his Platonic metaphysics and his devotion to pastoral to suggest that his aesthetic system represents rather a 70. " a class that I am merely proposing as an idea and by no means intend to refer to as a fact." The editors of sw claim (vol. 5, p. 1184) that Schiller here means artists and not the aristocracy. This seems an unlikely conjecture on at least four grounds: (i) it would imply an unusual use of the term "Volksklasse"; (2) Schiller's coyness about naming which class he means would be less understandable; (3) in the context, Schiller is thinking of the reception, not the creation of literary works; (4) he has shortly before praised the aesthetic judgment of the court at the expense of educated bourgeois: "Nichts ist gewohnlicher, als daB sich die Gelehrten, den gebildeten Weltleuten gegenuber, in Urteilen iiber die Schonheit die lacherlichsten BloBen geben" (p. 766). (Nothing is more common than that scholars, relative to educated people of the world, commit the most ridiculous errors in their judgments about beauty.)

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distillation of past cultural traditions than a draft for a future society. The same relation to the past can be observed in Schiller's contribution to the theory of the literary genres, which consists largely in replacing the didactic and practical approach characteristic of neoclassicism with a new metaphysical method that redefines the traditional genres by their differing relation to the ideal. It is no small testimony to Schiller's genius that despite this metaphysical agenda and the conceptual confusions to which it gave rise, he should nonetheless have been able to include so many exemplary and persuasive critical judgments in his extraordinary treatise.

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Conclusion

In chapter i I divided the topic of this book into four general areas of concern: (i) the intrinsic character of Schiller's aesthetic treatises as philosophical texts; (2) Schiller's poetic and philosophical development that led to the creation of these texts; (3) the relation of the treatises to the Platonic tradition; and (4) the meaning of the texts in relation to the intellectual environment of Schiller's own day. I should conclude now with some final reflections on each of these four headings. (i) The analysis of the texts has revealed a fairly high degree of logical confusion and inconsistency. In Uber Anmut und Wurde I noted the incoherence of architectonic beauty and the shift towards moral sublimity that was extreme enough to undermine the foregoing celebration of moral beauty. The Asthetische Briefe, I found, were marked by a change in political orientation, from a hoped-for advance towards a rational state to an acceptance of an authoritarian state with a compensating aesthetic dimension, while the parallel text Uber das Erhabene put in question many of the positions maintained in the Briefe. In Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, finally, I found that Schiller was at odds with himself, trying to rescue a non-idealizing poetry under the concept of the naive while being unable to give a clear account of what naive poetry was. All of this would, it seems, provide ample fuel for an attack on Schiller's philosophical credentials. If he was such a bungler, the sceptic might ask, why does he merit such detailed attention? The easiest answer to the question would be to state that these writings have a historical importance, in that they exerted a strong influence on the poets and philosophers of the next generation, hence contributing significantly to the development of philosophical

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aesthetics. While this answer is true, it is also insufficient, for it halfimplies that the texts possess no intrinsic philosophical interest of their own, and that seems false. A better approach is to think of the texts, hastily written and roughcast as they are, as reflecting a process of thought rather than a fully matured system, as a "work in progress" as Peter Szondi calls it. In favour of this approach one can say that it recognizes the integrity of philosophical thought as an activity even where, as in Schiller's treatises, the results of that activity are not arranged into a finished form that can match the great masterpieces of the European philosophical tradition, Spinoza's Ethics, say, or Hegel's Phdnomenologie des Geistes. Schiller's achievement, according to this view, would reside in the insight he brought to some traditional metaphysical issues, the energy with which he argued through them, and, not least, the honesty with which he criticized his own proposed solutions. The result is the succession of contradictory syntheses that we have seen, reflecting in one sense a failure to solve the problems he addresses, but on the other perhaps showing up in incomparable manner the inherent insolubility of those problems. While this view has merit, it is still insufficient, and for the reason that, despite the contradictions and loose ends, Schiller's thought does not ultimately lose itself in a never-ending process of argument and counterargument. It possesses a distinct profile in its definition of the ideal as the synthesis of the beautiful and the sublime subsisting in a realm of "Schein" and requiring as its counterpart a notion of their disjunction. With that definition, Schiller makes an original contribution to the tradition of Platonic thought and simultaneously lays the foundation for a modern concept of the aesthetic. For Baumgarten, aesthetica represented a new class of philosophy to set alongside the traditional metaphysica, and for Kant, "aesthetic" is understood adjectivally as a type of judgment or "judgment-power" ("Urteilskraft"). It is only Schiller who, by what I have called his second sea voyage, turns these precedents into a conception of the aesthetic as a distinct realm of human experience, a realm that emerges from his struggle to resolve the traditional dilemma of methexis and chorismos and that must be simultaneously distinct from and coextensive with the sphere of ordinary reality. It would be as wrong to overlook Schiller's contradictions as it would be to miss the idiosyncratically coherent solution that he imposed on them. Simi larly, it would be as wrong to overlook the roots of his theories in the Platonic tradition as it would be to deny the originality of his theories within the context of that tradition.

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(2) We have seen how Schiller's uncertain adherence to an emotionalized Leibnizianism in the 17805 gave rise to a distinct pattern of belief and disbelief, of warm and cold philosophies, and we have seen that in "Die Gotter Griechenlandes" Schiller succeeded in transforming this personal vacillation into a poetic masterpiece, at once an elegy for a past civilization and a biting attack on the alienation of the modern mind. A more extended and less polemical exploration of similar themes in "Die Kunstler" leads then to the emergence of three central antitheses pertaining to history, to aesthetics and to ethics, and to a method of reconciling these antitheses by subsuming each under a single metaphor. This method reappears in the texts of the 17905 in the use of the metaphors of the veil, the net, and the border, and it reflects Schiller's tendency in discursive writing to employ terms in a functionally ambiguous sense, "Verwechselung" (exchange / error) in the early texts, "Freiheit in der Erscheinung" (freedom in the appearance / the appearance of freedom), "Schein" (semblance), and "aufheben" (annul/preserve/elevate) in the later ones. Even in the 17808 in his theory of cosmic love Schiller shows a tendency to approach his problems of poetic creativity from a metaphysical angle. His encounter with Kant showed him how his problem of "Verwechselung" could be resolved by metaphysical means, with the experience of beauty denoting a fusion of subject and nature ("Verwechselung" as exchange), that of the sublime confirming the subject's suprasensible character ("Verwechselung" as error). In the same way that the term "Verwechselung" carried the two meanings, Schiller's ideal synthesis of the beautiful and the sublime contains in itself the same coincidentia oppositorum, though now at a wholly metaphysical level. The attempt to sustain this harmony, which Schiller knows is morally and logically unsustainable, then leads him to posit a realm of experience in which this philosophical monstrosity may nonetheless be accommodated, in which, like "Verwechselung," the term "Schein" will simultaneously denote what is and what is not, where an idealized nature, though not actual ("wirklich"), will still be true ("wahr"). Some readers will no doubt find it hard to accept the claim that Schiller, by a process of reflection on his own problems of poetic creativity, could have thought his way into crucial issues of Platonic metaphysics, and could even have proposed a new aesthetic interpretation of Platonism without realizing that was what he was doing. The presence of Platonic elements in the culture in which he grew up and the possibility of a Platonic reading of Kant can provide some degree of circumstantial

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support for the argument. In psychological terms too, it is not difficult to imagine that a man with Schiller's distrust of the external world would have been attracted by the doctrine of the intelligible, a world of pure unchanging certainties that could provide him with a secure base for his struggles with a recalcitrant reality. He would thus have easily performed the shift from a Kantian understanding of the intelligible to a metaphysical one, especially since Kant himself often resorts to a Platonic pathos in his attacks on the philosophy of empirical experience. From here we can imagine how, with his antithetical and dialectical cast of mind, Schiller would have entangled himself in the aporia of chorismos and methexis. Despite such considerations, however, it remains a surprising story, and ultimately the texts themselves must supply the evidence for the view argued here. If it has proven illuminating to interpret the positions and arguments they contain within the framework of Platonic metaphysics, then we must assume that, however unlikely it seems, Schiller indeed did what I have said he did. The philosophical content of the texts, in other words, must provide the basis for judging the biographical claims and not vice versa. It is evident from what has been said, for example, that Schiller was fascinated by the allegory of the two Venuses and its philosophical implications, and this remains true even if he was unaware of its ultimate source. It would be a regrettable misunderstanding were the reader to feel that the interpretations presented here were in some way discredited by an absence of evidence that Schiller had studied the works of Plato and his successors. (3) If in his central concept of contemplation as well as in the model of the sensible and intelligible worlds Schiller was using materials deriving from Platonism, are we therefore to infer that his aesthetic thought represents merely a throwback to earlier times? Certainly, I have dwelt more on the respects in which Schiller's thought seems to emerge from past traditions than on those in which he looks forward, and I have done this in conscious contrast to those modern interpretations that seek to forge a connection between his thought and the cause of the progressive bourgeoisie. His aim to mediate between body and spirit has thus been linked here to the doctrine of Platonic love rather than to the sociopolitical circumstances of the 17905, and the idiosyncratic dual aesthetic of the beautiful and the sublime has been interpreted by reference to the problems generated by Plato's theory of ideas rather than to any political ambivalences felt by Schiller himself. Instead of seeking ways in which his

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thought might be consistent with political action in the direction of modem liberalism, I have correspondingly stressed its aristocratic tone and its affinities to the tradition of the vita contemplativa. It would be an error to suppose, however, that what is rooted in tradition cannot be relevant to its own age or even point in new directions. I have therefore emphasized also Schiller's transformation of his Platonic materials into an entirely new construct, the realm of aesthetic experience, subsisting in a relationship of opposition to our normal everyday experience and giving rise to a type of poetry inconceivable hitherto. I can thus assent to Edgar Lohner's identification of Schiller as a vital precursor of literary modernity, with his doctrine of the ideal expressed through aesthetic "Schein" being taken up and radicalized especially by Charles Baudelaire and Friedrich Nietzsche.1 Here, rather than in the patriotic enthusiasm of the centenary celebrations in 1859, is where we should find Schiller's lasting bequest to the future. To attribute a subliminal role to the Platonic tradition in this new understanding of literature is in no way to diminish Schiller's originality. (4) As for the significance of Schiller's aesthetics in their contemporary sociopolitical environment, my argument has tended to underline the conservative aspects, the critique of Enlightenment, the identification of the aesthetic with the "auserlesene Kreise" (select circles) of an aristocratic society similar to that of Renaissance Urbino, whose discourses on the qualities of the perfect courtier were recorded by Castiglione.21 have further stressed how Schiller's insistence on the gulf separating "Schein" from reality rules out not merely all politically committed art but even any programmatic attempt to use a politically neutral art to bring about an advance in the moral or political consciousness of a society. In view of the recalcitrantly unideal nature of reality, narcissism is a threat that must be constantly heeded. Though it is not impossible that some moral improvement may result from a strong aesthetic component in social 1. Lohner, Schiller und die moderne Lyrik. See also Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, on the aesthetic state: "Schiller's text has arrived at the very threshold of Nietzsche's celebration of the aesthetic as life-enhancing illusion in The Birth of Tragedy, and a similar pessimism about material life underlies both affirmations" (p. 117). For an interesting study of the literary tradition inaugurated by "Der Spaziergang," see Ziolkowski, The Classical German Elegy. 2. For a strong statement of Schiller's abhorrence of the German public and his consciously oppositional stance, see for example his draft letter of 4 August 1795 to Fichte (NA vol. 28, pp. 20-22).

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life, such improvement can come about only as an unintended side effect, for a deliberate attempt to bring it about must necessarily be a selfdefeating instrumentalization of the aesthetic sphere. Does this mean that since Platonism represents a counterreformation in ancient Athens, we must place Schiller on the side of the counterrevolutionaries in the political landscape of the 17gos? While it is hard to see the "Ankiindigung zu den Horen" as anything but a conservative document, I should for the sake of fairness make clear that, despite an attack on abstractness that sometimes reminds us of Edmund Burke, Schiller nowhere wastes a single word in defence of the status quo.3 In the early parts of the Asthetische Briefe he speaks of the status quo as an arbitrary "Naturstaat" held in place solely by force and prejudice: "das Werk blinder Krafte besitzt keine Autoritat, vor welcher die Freiheit sich zu beugen brauchte" (574) .4 Such legitimacy as the "Naturstaat" possesses resides solely in its ability to keep the anarchic forces of human nature in check, and the desirability of transforming such a state into a moral and rational one is never in doubt. Schiller is thus deaf to the voices of those who emphasized the legitimacy that the centuries conferred on institutions, and despite his awareness of the need for an emotional tie between the citizen and the state (585), he apparently feels bound by no such tie to the existing order. Schiller evaluates institutions

3. The famous passage of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution inFrance, pp. lyoff. on the young Marie Antoinette ("I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult") is followed by some eloquent pages praising the chivalric code and deploring the manner in which modern philosophy is destroying its beneficial and civilizing illusions. See, for example, the following: "This mixed system of opinion and sentiment had its origin in the antient [sic] chivalry. ... It was this, which, without confounding ranks, had produced a noble equality, and handed it down through all the gradations of social life. It was this opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force, or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a domination vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners." It is surely not fanciful to conjecture that Burke's defence of "the sentiments which beautify and soften private society" against "this new and conquering empire of light and reason" may well have contributed to Schiller's concept of the aesthetic state. The passage is not cited in Dieter Borchmeyer's article "Rhetorische und asthetische Revolutionskritik," in which the relation between Burke and Schiller is approached from the slightly unhelpful direction of the rhetorical tradition. Borchmeyer's view that Schiller read Friedrich von Gentz's 1793 translation of the Reflections is probably correct. 4. "The work of blind forces possesses no authority before which freedom need bow."

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on the basis of reason, not of piety, tradition, or deference, and there is no question but that this mentality is a product of the Enlightenment. The wider implications of my analysis for Schiller's relation to the Enlightenment can perhaps be illuminated if we take a brief glance at Kondylis' remarkable book on the period. Portraying the main thrust of enlightened thought as anti-Cartesian, Kondylis discovers as a uniting theme the century's Fixation with nature, conceived as an entity both empirical and metaphysical, both descriptive and normative, that could serve to reunite what Descartes had split asunder as the twin substances res cogitans and res extensa. The project entails the systematic "rehabilitation" of nature, which thus becomes the bearer of moral values and the source of ideological purposes as well as the object of scientific investigation, The establishment of aesthetics, understood as a mode of relating to the world uniting the intellect and the senses, becomes a prime objective of the period, whether in the work of Baumgarten or in the concern of other authors with genius and taste, faculties in which the rational and the irrational work hand in hand.5 In "Die Gotter Griechenlandes," Schiller inveighs against dualism like a loyal heir of this tradition: nature is unified, organic, joyful, humane, while modern science and religion divide the natural continuum into alienated fragments. But, even in the first version of the poem, the unity of nature is associated with a lost past, while the validity of dualism is tacitly acknowledged for present empirical reality. By the clarification of the second version, Greek unity is said to lead an afterlife on the peak of Olympus, Schiller's metaphor for the aesthetic. The "Bliitenalter der Natur" (nature's blossom-time) is thus a realm to which, for both metaphysical and historical reasons, we have no access other than contemplation. A consequence of this reformulation is that Schiller's concept of nature cannot perform the function for which, according to Kondylis, it was designed. Though it retains the aspiration to reunite matter and spirit, or (at the human level) sensibility and reason, nature falls victim to a new chorismos, being divided into the "real" nature of our daily experience and 5. For the enlightened concept of nature, see especially Kondylis, Die Aujkldrung, pp. 248-57. On aesthetics, see pp. 312-25, especially p. 314: "The suitability [of the concept of taste] to refer to the mental as well as to the sensory suggests not only the cooperation of the two but can just as well be understood as evidence for an interweaving or a transition between them." ("Seine [des Geschmacksbegriffs] Eignung, sich sowohl auf Sinnliches als auch auf Geistiges zu beziehen, suggeriert nicht nur eine Zusammenarbeit der beiden, sondern laBt sich ebensogut als Indiz einer Verflechtung bzw. eines Ubergangs verstehen.")

Conclusion

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the "true" nature that we encounter in art. The full "anthropological mode of appraisal" ("anthropologische Schatzung"), proclaimed confidently in the fourth Asthetischer Brief (577), turns out to apply only in the realm of "Schein." From there, as we saw, it is incapable of exerting its ed ucative influence in a way that could make much difference to the material life of society. Schiller's second sea voyage, the discovery of the aesthetic as a separate realm of experience, thus seems to signal the failure of the Enlightenment project as Kondylis understands it. Perhaps it is fairer to say that it signals Schiller's recognition of its historical failure and his desire to preserve at least some trace of it for a later time. Descartes' choristic view of the world is the correct one, he seems to tell us, but perhaps we can devise a different order of experience in which Leibnizian methexis can be stored against a time which may be less inhospitable to it.6 What of Schiller's attitude to the French Revolution? He certainly regarded the violent excesses of the Revolution with abomination, and there seems no reason to apologize on his behalf on that score. While we may think that his horror caused him to adopt an exaggerated distrust towards the whole sphere of political action, and while we cannot adopt his metaphysical interpretation of freedom, his warning against aesthetically motivated interventions in politics is an understandable response in a turbulent time and has a validity that has not dated. Simon Schama has drawn attention to the artistic and literary influences on the French revolutionaries in his recent book Citizens, and Thomas Mann's essay "Bruder Hitler" shows that the phenomenon of the artist-turnedpolitician is still with us in our century. The cry "L'imagination au pouvoir!" heard in Paris in 1968 would certainly have provoked from Schiller the critique I have linked to the concept of narcissism; for him, the realm of the imagination was necessarily insubstantial ("in dem wesenlosen Reich der Einbildungskraft," 658) and could only exert a beneficial influence when it was recognized as such. While Schiller may not have shared some of the wilder hopes of a free, equal, and fraternal society, and while the transformation of the German "Burgertum" into a capitalistic class was still so distant that he could not even imagine it, his political thought, as rudimentary and as unspecific as it is, can still perhaps impress us by its soberness and caution, its resistance 6. In his essay "Der angeklagte und der entlastete Mensch," Odo Marquard associates the rise of aesthetics in the later eighteenth century with the collapse of the theodicy, though on rather different grounds from those offered here.

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to millennial promises, its adherence to moral principle, and its simultaneous consciousness of the difficulty of such adherence. If scholars who came of age in the Utopian decade of the i g6os found it hard to understand Schiller's suspicious attitude to Utopias, it may be that the troubled conditions of the 19903 and the uncertain prospects beyond will prove more conducive to a sympathy with his view of our world as a dark and treacherous place and human history as chaotic and cruel. The threatened political consensus of our time can give us an inkling of the sense of insecurity aroused, not merely by the tumultuous events of the 17905 but also by the collapse of the Leibnizian faith of the Enlightenment. This study leaves many questions unanswered, and with an author of Schiller's labyrinthine complexity it could hardly be otherwise. It is to be hoped that if the overall thesis finds favour among scholars, others will find some of these questions deserving of their attention. In a philosophical context, the role and the varieties of eighteenth-century Platonism need investigation, and further research into the problems debated within that tradition can perhaps, like the notion of metaphysical narcissism, help to illuminate more of Schiller's concerns. In terms of literary history, the argument raises questions as to the persistence in Schiller's work of traditions going back beyond the eighteenth century, a line of inquiry that would have the effect of broadening the perspective in which Weimar Classicism is viewed. The literary life of the sixteenth century, with its courtly character and its worship of classical antiquity, is an area that might well yield further interesting parallels. Schiller's treatises themselves are of such complexity that they will constantly provoke scholars to probe their secrets, and the contention that they enact a dialogue between methectic and choristic points of view can perhaps yield further insights as to their immanent dynamics. In a broader context, finally, the discovery of such strong evidence of a continuing Platonic tradition in one of the founding fathers of modern aesthetics can perhaps encourage the philosophically inclined to ponder Cassirer's memorable conjecture "that all systematic aesthetics that has appeared up to now in the history of philosophy has, fundamentally and inescapably, been Platonism."7

7. See chap. 10, n. i.

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Index

Abbt, T., 32, 178 Abel,J.E, 12-13, 26n, 28811 Abrams, M.H., 37, 6511 Addison, J., 4811, 328 Adelung.J.C., 13411 Aeschylus, 314, 335 aesthetic autonomy, 27-28, 93, 134, 290-91 aesthetic state ("asthetischer Staat"), 51-52, 13111, 155, 160-61, 180, 183, 304, 340, 346, 349, 352, 360-66, 41 in Alberti, L.B., 27n, 145, 147 Altestes Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus, 93n, i42~43n Anthropology, xi, 51, 85-87, 113-14, 125, 173-74.413 apophasis / cataphasis, 126-28, 161-63, 166-67, 283-84, 332-33 aristocracy, 34, 354 ("Veredelung"), 361— 62n, 410, 414-15 Aristotle, 8, i2n, 23, 7in, 85, 87, 96, no, 111, 112, 130, I37n, 164, 167, 199, 242, 368n; Metaphysics, 67-68, 72n, 155-56, 2g2n; Poetics, 145. See also mesotes Armstrong, A.H., 2g2n Augustenburg, Duke of, 18, 274n

Bacon, E,12-13, 104 Barnouw.J., 1511, 30711 Batteux, C., 34, 232 Baudelaire, C., 410 Baumecker, G., loin, 24311

Baumgarten, A.G., 151, 212, 2i3n, 227, 407,412 beauty, xii, xiii, 8, i3n, 17, 24-27, 63, 92-93, 128 (and methexis); architectonic beauty, 97, 252-60; beauty of movement (grace), 255, 265-70; energizing and melting beauty, 25, 306; ideal beauty, 132, 282-85; intelligible beauty, 56, 57, 82, 117, 161, 166, 249, 313, 334; Kant's theory, 114-17, 119-20, 125; moral beauty ("schone Seele"), 24, 52-53, 87, 96, 156-59, 224-25, 227, 269-82, 308, 319. 339. 374-75; organic beauty, 8485, 96-97, 162-66, 263-64; Platonic theory, 70-85. See also dual form theory, "Freiheit in der Erscheinung," ideal Beierwaltes, W., 13-14, 37n, 7on, 99-100, logn, 3osn Bellori, G.P., 30, 137-39, H1. H7 Berghahn, K., i3n, 352~53n, 36i-62n Bevan, E., i26n Blumenberg, H., 181 Bodmer.JJ., 385 Boethius, 23, 322 Boigeol, G.F., 171 Boileau, N., 26 Boll, E, 23n Bolten,J., i4n Borchmeyer, D., 41 in Bruno, G., 29 Burger, G.A., 48n, 138, 144, 145, 289, 384. See also Schiller, Uber Burgers Gedichte Burger, H.O., 3&2n

428

Index

Burke, E., 34; Philosophical Enquiry, 5711; Reflections on the Revolution in France, 411 Buschendorf, B., 37 Calypso, 54-63, 69, 81, 89, 314 Cambridge Platonists, 12, iogn Caravaggio, 138 Cartesianism. See Descartes Cassirer, E., 1211, 32, 37, 6gn, 7511, 136, 21311,21411,367,414 Castiglione, B., 29-30, 249, 410 cataphasis. See apophasis Cato, 13,2740,310,363 chorismos / methexis (choristic / methectic), 67-70 (definition), 76-79, 81, 85-93, 104-5, H3> 124. 127-28, 133, 135, 141-67, 193-201, 219, 227-28, 236-37, 239-43. 246-48, 254, 259, 260, 264-72,

276,280-86,291,303,315-17, 319-31.

335-38, 341-43- 347-50, 352, 355, 359-60, 363, 375-76, 381-96, 403, 407-13 Christianity. See religion Clytaemnestra, 314, 335 conquest, imagery of. See victory contemplation ("Betrachtung," theoria, vita contemplativa), 6-10, 15,16, 34, 39, 56, 74, 90-92, 107, 115-16, 129-30, 137' 151-52' 161-63. 237. 261-63, 295-96> 333-34, 343-46, 372-73. 41° Conti, L. (Pope Innocent III), 229 copula mundi, 47-48^ 95n, 230, 244-46, 254, 256, 296 Coulter, J.H., 7on Crowther, P., 27 Crusius, C.A., 109 culture, Schiller's theory of, 64-65, 70, 100, 163, 229, 280, 303-4, 319-21, 343, 349, 402-3 Curtius, E.R., 2030 Cusa, Nicholas of, 32, iogn, i73n, 234 daemon ("Damon"), xii, 82-83, 144-45, 2920, 306, 378, 391 Demetrius, 138 Descartes, R. (Cartesianism), 104, 199, 200-2, 412 Dodds, E.R., 29, 32-33, 83n, 86n, gin

Bowling, L., 3620 dual form, 150-61, 165-67, 173, 260-64, 265-70,281-84, 298-304, 318-19, 325, 344-46, 362 Diising, W., 26-28, 88n, loin, 11311, ngn Eagleton, T., i2on, 15411, 4ion Ebreo, L., i75n Eichner, H., iqtjn Ellis, J.M., 76n, loin Empedocles, I75n Enlightenment ("Aufklarung"), ion, 18, 24, 2gn, 32, 34-36, 99, 108, 133, 17511, 178, 181, 206, 299, 319, 356, 357, 402 enthusiasm ("Begeisterung"), 21, 172-73, 176, 185-98, 221, 227, 239, 248, 251, 332, 39°. 401 Euripides, 385 Facio, B., 230 Fenelon, E, 55n, 57-58, 59 Ferguson, A., 173-76, 178, 180-81 Ficino, M., xii, 13, 30-35, 46-50, 62n, 66, 7in, i73n, 182, i8gn, 229, 255, 264;De amore, 29, son, 43-45, 54n, 71, 91, 94, I42n, 147, 181-82, 187, 230, 249, 253, 254n, 2gon; Theologia Platonica, 30, 32, 47~48n, 86n, 230-34 Fichte, J.G., xii, i4n, i8n, 96, 324n, 338, 340, 4ion Fontenelle, B. de, 395n form ("Gestalt"), xii, 81, 87-92, 116-17, 128-30, 292-93, 370. See also dual form, victory Frank, M., xiii, iO2~3n Frederick the Great, 32 "Freiheit in der Erscheinung," 76-77, 79, 84, 106-7, 15°> 162-63, 188, 250, 282, 2g8n, 332-33, 344-46' 397. 4°8 French Revolution, 32-34, 142, 160, 238, 298. 355.4*3 Friedl, G., gn, ig4n Fruhwald, W., ig4n Fuhrmann, M., 33n, 7in, 75, 95 Gadamer, H.-G., 4in, 34711 Gaier, U., 3711, agon Garber, K., 399

Index Garve, C., 174, 178 Gellert, C.F., 385 genii, allegory of the, 53-54, 63, 135, 31211, 321,337,340 Gessner, S., 388 Goethe, J.W. von, 19, 20, 21, 36, 4in, 66, 146, 169, 229, 236, 295, 400; and Uber naive und sentimentalischeDichtung, 368-72 Gombrich, E.H., 126-27, 141 Grimm, J. and Grimm, W., 188 Guarini, B., 4oon Gumbel, H., 16 Habel, R., 5 Haller, A. von, 31, 184, 37gn Hamburger, K., 15, 242-43, 244n, 24gn, 277n Hawking, S., 177 Hegel, G.F.W., 13, 20, 65n, loon, loin, io2n, 296, 407 Heimsoeth, H., iogn Helvetius, C.A., 358 Henrich, D., 27, loin, 102-3, non Hercules, 5, 9-10, 39, 4on, 43, 49, 53-56, 69, 286, 358n, 397 Herder, J.G., 15,41 Heuer, R, loin, 243n, 24gn Hinske, N., 35n history, theory of, 214-21, 226-28, 296, 322-34, 380, 395-96, 400-2 Hoffmann, E., iogn Homer, 56, 385, 387, 398, 400 Huber, L.F., 172, i76n, 183, i85n, 193 Huizinga.J., 36 in humanism, humanitas, 141, 208, 229-30, 236-37 Humboldt, W. von, 4, i in, 22, 286, 370, 397 Hume, D., 109, 142 ideal (idealization), 7, 133-50, 281-85, 298, 300-1, 340, 353-72, 379, 382, 390-403 idyll, pastoral, 4, 5, 387-88, 394-402, 403 imagery: border, 340-43; chains, 224-26; flight, 97, 165, 173, 332; ladder, 129, 216; maturity, 220-21; mirror, 30-31, 189-92, 200-1, 247-48, 333; net, 313-

429

15; shadows, 221-24; sun, 212, 283; veil, 313-15. See also victory, sexual imagery "Intelligenz" (intelligence, intelligible being), 87, 95, 97, 112, 115, 121-24, 145, 211, 237, 240, 277, 292, 309, 311, 3202 1 , 330, 378, 392. See also daemon Jacobi, F.H., 23711 Jantz, H., 37 Jayne, S., 46 Julius Caesar, 27411 Juno, 63, 81, 12511, 283, 296 Justi, Q, 23-24 Kaiser, G., 39 Kalb, Frau C. von, 193 Kant, I.: relation to Plato, 108-17, 139-42; Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist

Au/kldrungf, 59; GrundlegungzurMeta-

physik der Sitten, i ogn; Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher Absicht, 98, iO5n; Kritik derreinen Vernunft, i2n, ggn, 109-12, 123, 131, i39~4°> 363~64> 368n, 380; Kritik der Urteilskraft, gin, iO2n, 103, 104, 106, 107, 113-26, i37n, i3gn, 140-42, 151-52, 164, 203, 229, 23on, 247n, 25on, 254n, 272n, 284^ 28gn, 337, 376-77, 397-400; Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blcfien Vernunft, 24n. See also beauty, sublime Kapp, V., 5&n Keats, J., 77 Kerry, S.S., 6gn, 243~44n, 25on, 276n Kiesel, H., 3O2n Kleist, E. von, 31 Klopstock, EG., 35, 171, 371 Knowles, D., nn Koch, E, 15 Kondylis, P., 2gn, 40, io5n, i73n, ig7n, 412-13 Koopmann, H., loin Korner, C.G., 7, ion, 24n, 34, 42, 168, 170, 172, i82n, i85n, 193, 194, 202, 2o6n, 209-14, 312n, 344. Koselleck, R., 365 Kristeller, P.O., 14, 37, 47n, i73n, 2o8n, 229-30, 232n Kuhn, T., 64

43°

Index

La Mettrie, J.O. de, 178, 358 Laokoon, 283 Latzel, S., 7611, iign Leibniz, G.W. (Leibnizianism), 12, 31, 32, 104, 178, 181, 182, 199, 329-32, 35152,358,366,413-14 Lessing, G.E., 35, 30011, 302 Locke, J., i2n Lohner, £.,410 Lohr, C.H., 31-32 love (eras), 8, 28-29, 43-48, 68, 167, 230, 246-48, 266, 336; Schiller's early philosophy of love, 21, 22, 27, 28, 102, 16994, 217-18, 250-52, 261, 276. See also Venus, Schiller ("Der Triumph der Liebe") Lovejoy, A.O., 37, 86n, igon, 2g2n Lucretius, 182-83 Lyotard, J.-E, 26n Macrobius, 3on Mahon, D., i38n Manetti, G., 230 Mann, T., 413 Marquard, O., logn, 4i3n Marx, K., i54n Medici, L. de', 92-93 Mendelssohn, M., 34, 173, 227; Phaedon, 12, 32:n, 178-79 mesotes, doctrine of the mean, 51-52, 56, 94-95. 96' !32> I4f7~48> !53. ^1-72, 296-97' 326, 338-39. 34°. 389-90. 404 methexis. See chorismos mimesis, 147, 222-23, 226, 368-69, 372, 381-89 Minerva, 48n, 55-59, 62, 66, 69, 296, 321, 335 Monk, S., 25n Morgan, M.L., I34n Miiller, H.F., 14-15, 243n Narcissus, narcissism, 91, 115, 140-41, 160, 161, i8gn, 198, 248, 284, 332, 348, 352-60, 365, 393-97, 410 Nelson, J.C., 3t»n Nietzsche, E, 27, 410 Novotny, E, 6n, i in

Obereit,J.H., 173, 181 Oetinger, EC., 173, 181 Orestes, 298, 335 Panofsky, E., gn, 30, 37, 4011, 7911, 88n, 136, 13711, 1380, 13911, 143-48, 368 pastoral. See idyll Peirce, C.S., 150 Perls, H., iogn Petrarch, E, 208, 230 Phocion, 27411, 363 Pico della Mirandola, G., 46, 50, 51, 66, 86, 94, 115, 229-30; Comento, 46-48, 9511, 2i6n; Oration, 233-36 Plato (Platonism, Neoplatonism): and aesthetics, 70-93, 367-68; Apology, 75; as conservative force, 31—33; condemnation of poets, 70, 128, 287-89; in the eighteenth century, 11-13; Ion, 75; Laws, 54n, 73; Parable of the Cave, 13, 42, 74n, 85, 117, 131, 201, 222-23, 298; Parmenides, 68; Phaedo, 4, 92, 109, 123, i34n, 347; Phaedrus, 4, 72-78, 92, 97, 124, 161, 288, 313, 3i5n, 321-22, 334; Philebus, g2n, i i7n; as philosophia perennis, 14; Protagoras, 234-35; Republic, 4, 8, 42, 54n, 73, 74, 92, iogn, i ion, 124, i34n, 136-37, i56n, 201, 287-89, 362-64, 367; Sophist, ion, 68, 368n; Statesman, 28in; Symposium, 29, 42, 43, 54n, 55, 58, 70, 74, 83, 92, I75n, 230, 244, 288, 334; Timaeus, 44, 85-87, 117, igon play. See "Spiel" Plotinus, xii, 4-5, 7-8, 14-15, 23, 34, 46, 56-57, 62n, 70-71, 77-79, 82, 85-88, 90-1,93,94,95-96, 107,115, 117, 128, i34n, 136, 143, 153, 156, 159, i8gn, 252, 260, 320, 352, 356, 367-68 Plutarch, 32, 274n, 363 politics, political metaphors, 154-61, 18687, 199-200, 241-42, 259, 270-75, 297, 354-55. 360-66, 403-5, 410-14 Pomezny, E, 248n Pott, H.-G., i4n Proclus, 44n, 86n, 99-100, 303 Pseudo-Dionysius, 44n, 126, i42n Pseudo-Longinus, 26

Index purity, imagery of, i, 8, ion, 41, 92, 11617, 13411, 144-45, 2g2n Querelle des anciens et des modernes, 203 Ralfs, G., 368n Raphael, 4011 Reale, G., 34711 Reemtsma.J.P, I2n Rehm,W., 36, i38n Rein, U., i2n, 368n Reinwald, W.F.H., 172, 179-80, 18211, 187, 189,191, 192 religion, Christianity, 10, 179—80, 191—99, 333-34. 348. 358. 366 Riedel, W., i2n, 32n, 173-74, 1?8, 181 Ritter,J., ion Roberts,J., 103, iogn Rorty, R., 74n Rousseau,J.-J., i in, 79, 287, 299, 302, 383 Sartre, J.-R, 15 Sayce, O., 374n Schama, S., 413 Schaper, E., io8n, H3n, 244n "Schein" (semblance), 6-7, 10, 56, 76, 9092. 330, 343-52 Schelling, F.W.J., 13, loin, io2n Schiller, E; personality, 10-11, 18-24, 80, 365, 370; at Bauerbach, 168-71, 192; and Kant, 21-24, 53, 54, 81, 101-8; Works: "Asthetische Vorlesungen," 72, Son, 84, 164; "An die Freude," 172; "Ankundigung zu den Horen," 34, 59, 203, 236-38, 411; Don Carlos, 192; "Die Freundschaft," 31, 171,175-76,188-94, 197-98, 247-48, 331; "Die Fuhrer des Lebens," 63, 135, 3i6n; "Das Geheimnis der Reminiszenz," 13; "Die Gro|3e der Welt," igm; "Die Herrlichkeit der Schopfung," 3in; "Das Ideal und das Leben" ("Das Reich der Schatten"), 3-10, 20, 39-42, 49, 55, 56, 80, 88n, 90, 1 33' 153~54> 161-62, 166, 196, 223, 237n, 262-63, 286,334,348, 35811, 394; Kabale undLiebe, 2i8n, 302; "Phantasie an Laura," 171, 175; Philosophie derPhysiologie, 2gn, 39, 171, 177; Philosophische

431 Briefe (including "Theosophie des Julius"), 17, 171-94, 199-201, 206, 218, 239-40' 250-51, 276, 297, 356-57; "Poesie des Lebens," 286; DieRduber, 2i8n, 288n;"DerSpaziergang," I3n, 21, 206, 41 on; "Die Teilung der Erde," 23536; "Der Triumph der Liebe," 48-49, 50, 57n, 60-61, 171-72, 17911, 194, 196-97, 205, 283, 296, 321, 335-36. 344. 36°; "Die Tugend in ihren Folgen betrachtet," 171, 182, igon; UberBurgers Gedichte, 72, 133-35, 207. 298, 300, 371, 383; Uber das Erhabene, 305-34, 350-54 (see also Calypso, genii); Uber den Gebrauch des Chars in der Tragodie (prologue to Die Braut von Messina), 17, 146-50, 337. 3^4; Uber den Grand des Vergnugens an tragischen Gegenstdnden, 24; Uber die Iphigenie aufTauris, 371; Uber die notwendigen Grenzen beim Gebrauch schoner Formen, 73n, 2gsn, 294, 3i2n, 3i6n, 3i7n, 320, 324-25, 353-55, 357-58; Uber die tragische Kunst, 24; "Der Venuswagen," gn; Der Verbrecher aus verlorenerEhre, 35711; Versuch uber den Zusammenhang der tierischen Natur des Menschen mil seiner geistigen, 206; Vom Erhabenen/Uber das Pathetische, 24, 80, 82, I27n, 284; Wallenstein, 145-46, 358; Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubiihne eigentlich wirken ?, 2O7n, 297, 302; Wilhelm Tell, 33in Schings, H.-J., 37, 181 Schlozer, A.L. von, 2o6n Schmeer, H., 243n Schmidt, E.A., 4oon, 401—2 Schneider, H., 4oon science, 42, 109-10, 177, 195, igg-2OO, 207, 2og-i2, 217, 2ig-22, 224 second sea voyage, 347~4g, 364, 413 Seidlin, O., 33in Seneca, 143 Sengle, E, 36 sexual imagery, 6-7, 80-81, 124, 145, 315, 324. 335. 336, 354 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 12, 31, 240-41^ 3620 Shakespeare, W., 374n, 38in, 385, 386, 389, 3g8n Sharpe, L., xi

432

Index

Sheppard, A.D.R., 7on Snell, B., 74n Socrates, 67, 123, 322 Sommer, R., 15 Spalding.JJ., 32n, 173, 178 "Spiel," "Spieltrieb" (play, play-impulse), 96, 114,336-42 Spinoza, B., 358, 407 Spranger, E., 23n, 6gn Staiger, E., 36, 2130,365 Stolberg, F. von, 194-95 Stoicism, 33n, 58, 358, 301-2 Strube, W., 76n sublime ("das Erhabene"), xii-xiii, 16-17, 24-28, 53, 57, 70, 128, 157-58, 163, 203, 245, 247, 276-82, 304-17, 376-82; Kant's theory, 117-28, 251 Suvern,J.W., 3O7n Szondi, P., 37in, 380, 407 Tasso, T., 4Oon Taylor, A.E., no Telemachus, 55n, 57, 58n, 124 teleology, 96-99, 104-8, 217, 221, 224, 226, 253, 256-59, 302-3, 322-23, 32728, 344-45 Tennemann, W.G., lo-nn Terence, 2i3n Thomasius, C., 32 touchstone ("Probierstein"), 279-80, 3091 1. 339. 350-51. 383-84 Uhland, R., 12 Uz,J.R, 31 Venus (Urania and Cypria), 42-55, 57-66, 69, 81, 118, 135, 167, 196-97, 200-1, 205, 207, 210, 216, 218-22, 227-28, 239, 246-56, 283, 285, 296, 318, 321, 327. 333. 335-36. 344. 36°. 4°s

"Veredelung" (ennoblement), ion, 133, i34n, 184, 300-1, 341-42, 349, 353-54, 359 "Verwechselung" (exchange/error), 18792, 198, 200, 205, 219-27, 251, 256-67, 297. 331- 346> 356.4o8 victory (conquest), imagery of, 62, 89, 119, 146, 148, 154, 250, 293, 361-62 Vierhaus, R., 273-74n Victor, K., 26n Virgil, 4oon, 402 Voltaire, F.M.A. de, 178 Vorlander, K., loin VossJ.H., 385, 386 Walzel, O., 240-4in, 278n Weiser, C.F., 12n Wieland, C.M., 12, 35, 82n, 169, i82n, 2O2n; and "Die Kunstler," 209-14 Wiese, B. von, 24in, 277n, 27gn Wilkinson, E.M., and L.A. Willoughby, 8gn, loin, 287, 291-95 Willoughby, L.A. See Wilkinson, E.M. Winckelmann.J.J., 5, 12, 30, 34, 138-39, 141, i82n, 281, 286, 311, 368n Wind, E., 58 Windelband, W., 19-21, 24 Wittkowski, W, 27n, 37-38 Wolfel, K., 27n Wolff, C. (Wolffianism) 12, 32, 212, 214n Wolzogen, Frau H. von, 168 Wundt, M., 11, iogn, 2i4n "Xenien-Streit," 36 Xenophon, gn Zelle, C., 26 Zeuxis, 138, 144 Zimmermann, R.C., 35, 37 Ziolkowski, T, 4 ion