Abstract
In his essay On the necessary limits in the use of beautiful forms Schiller delineates to what degree beautiful packaging of philosophical thoughts is beneficial, as opposed to cases where it merely masks an inconsistent position—defending his philosophical style in contrast to Fichte’s, therewith taking another step in the Horenstreit. This paper shows how Schiller justifies the seeming paradox why his Aesthetic Education is not as nicely written as one might expect from a poet, and why his insistence on a full development of our sensible and imaginative capacities is not tantamount to a call for replacing textbooks with novels. Our capacity to coordinate reason and sensibility finds its limits in women, who are deemed unable to reason sufficiently and are forced to resort to beautiful form alone. Schiller relegates learned women to the sidelines of literary discussion, setting the tone for German academia.
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Notes
- 1.
The final, combined version first appeared in Schiller’s Kleineren prosaischen Schriften in 1800.
- 2.
This piece is closest to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s critique of a Kantian rigorism that he published in Schiller’s Neue Thalia in 1792.
- 3.
As Schiller did in Letter 10, AE 597.
- 4.
An excellent discussion on the desire for wholeness is by Gardner 2018.
- 5.
See here Chap. 2.7
- 6.
Shape 1995, 161–162 offers a wonderful definition of form: “By form Schiller means the artistic sha** of the material such that it is the vehicle for a response to the world, a sense of how the world is experienced, in a way that allows the observer the opportunity to perceive and contemplate that response. The subject matter is consumed (or abolished, to translate more literally) but the art object has sensuous reality and through its form conveys to us a particular sense of life.”
- 7.
Schiller uses the terms Schönheit, reizende Einkleidung der Wirklichkeit, Erscheinung, and, with the most negative connotation, Politur (AE 598–99), but not the later Schein in letter 10. For a comprehensive overview, see WW 328–30.
- 8.
Letter 15 freieste und erhabenste Schein (AE 618).
- 9.
For a similar argument albeit concerning a different set of texts see Deligiorgi 2013, in particular p. 75.
- 10.
For the time being, the choice of the male pronoun is deliberate. Schiller allows the female writer on certain occasions, but, as I will argue in part 5, these are rather limited.
- 11.
Or at least seemingly freely—as Iris Murdoch stressed in an interview with Bryan Magee in 1978, philosophy clarifies, literature mystifies.
- 12.
See on this, Chap. 5.3 with further references.
- 13.
Beiser 2005, 144–47, in contradistinction to Hans-Georg Pott: Die schöne Freiheit. München: Fink 1980.
- 14.
- 15.
Fichte writes in a letter from June 27, 1795: “You chain the power of imagination—which can only be free—and want to force it to think—which it cannot do.” FW I,2, p. 399, see Martinson 1996, 206 and Allen Wood: Fichte’s Ethical Thought, Oxford 2016, 1–28.
- 16.
We have to say that in particular for this last one, nowadays the moral dilemma strikes us rather the other way: current generations cannot stop indulging themselves since they just cannot feel the need to spare anything for future generations. But this is another issue that Schiller could not quite have anticipated.
- 17.
My translation of the famous portion of the prologue in Wallensteins Lager (1798), NA 8, 6.
- 18.
Here, Schiller is not far from Fichte’s stance, who sharpens the distinction by allowing woman only one sort of popular writing, and that is in the area of women’s literature. To be more concrete, woman authors should limit themselves to the field of the “vocation of woman,” see Becker-Cantarino 2000, 53–54 with reference to the last chapter of Fichte’s Grundriss des Familienrechts (Addendum to Grundriss des Naturrechts, 1796).
- 19.
Who is the first woman in Germany to receive a doctorate (in medicine), and who published her Thorough Examination of the Reasons that keep the Female Sex from Studying (1742). We should note here that such books had a rather short life, as their reception was absolutely lacking. Only a few decades later, a grandson would not even remember that the book was written in German, not Latin (see Corey Dyck, “On Prejudice and the Limits of Learnedness: Dorothea Christiane Erxleben and the Querelle des Femmes”, in: Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth Century Germany. Ed. C.D. Oxford 2021, 51–71, 52).
- 20.
Note that “Weib” can be understood derogatively. However, the reference to “Weib” instead of “Frau” is part of the tradition of discussing the role of the woman as partner and mother, both of which can also be included in the connotation of “Weib.” This makes it not a simple, or straightforward derogatory misogynistic term, but it still is not neutral: it was meant to put woman in ‘her place’. Another indicator of Schiller’s stance are his poems, for instance “The Power of Woman” (Macht des Weibes), “The Dignity of Women” (Die Würde der Frauen), “The Famous Woman” (Die berühmte Frau), and “The Virtue of Woman” (Die Würde des Weibes); but here is not the place to discuss them all.
- 21.
The claim for wholeness, or harmony, is decisive here: “Nature’s striving aims at something boundless. (etwas Unbeschränktes)” which can only come about by a cooperation of forces (not by them canceling each other out). Humboldt also calls this mode of cooperation Wechselwirkung. I cite from the electronic version of Die Horen by the Schiller Archiv: https://www.friedrich-schiller-archiv.de/die-horen
References
Anne Pollok, “Die schöne Seele. Ansätze zu einer ganzheitlichen Anthropologie bei Mendelssohn, Garve und Schiller”, Christian Garve (1742–1798). Philosoph und Philologe der Aufklärung. Ed. Udo Roth, Gideon Stiening (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020), 267–285.
Anne Pollok, Facetten des Menschen: Zur Anthropologie Moses Mendelssohns. Hamburg: Meiner 2010.
Barbara Becker-Cantarino: Schriftstellerinnen der Romantik. Epoche – Werk – Wirkung. Munich: Beck 2000.
Frederick Beiser, Schiller als Philosopher: A Re-Examination. Oxford 2005.
Katerina Deligiorgi, “Schiller’s Philosophical Letters: Naturalising Spirit to Moralise Nature”, in: Philosophical Readings 5 (2013), 63–78.
Leslie Shape, Schiller’s Aesthetic Essays: Two Centuries of Criticism. Columbia 1995.
Sebastian Gardner, “The Desire of the Whole in Classical German Philosophy”, in: Begehren/Desire, ed. by Dina Emunds and Sally Sedgwick. New York: De Gruyter, 2018, 233–256.
Steven D. Martinson, Harmonious Tensions: The Writings of Friedrich Schiller. Newark/London 1996.
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Pollok, A. (2023). Concerning the Necessary Limits in the Use of Beautiful Forms (1795). In: Falduto, A., Mehigan, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Friedrich Schiller. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16798-0_14
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