Philosophical papers
Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics. He synthesized the thought of Immanuel Kant with the thought of Karl Leonhard Reinhold. He elaborated Christoph Martin Wieland's concept of the
Schöne Seele (beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that
Pflicht und Neigung (duty and inclination) are no longer in conflict with one another; thus beauty, for Schiller, is not merely an aesthetic experience, but a moral one as well: the Good is the Beautiful. His philosophical work was also particularly concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as the Thirty Years War and
The Revolt of the Netherlands, and then found its way as well into his dramas (the "Wallenstein" trilogy concerns the Thirty Years War, while "Don Carlos" addresses the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain.) Schiller wrote two important essays on the question of the sublime (
das Erhabene), entitled "Vom Erhabenen" and "Über das Erhabene"; these essays address one aspect of human freedom...the ability to defy one's animal instincts, such as the drive for self-preservation, when, for example, someone willingly sacrifices themselves for conceptual ideals.
The dramas
Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright. Critics like F.J. Lamport and Eric Auerbach have noted his innovative use of dramatic structure and his creation of new forms, such as the melodrama and the bourgeois tragedy. What follows is a brief, chronological description of the plays.
- The Robbers (Die Räuber): The language of The Robbers is highly emotional, and the depiction of physical violence in the play marks it as a quintessential work of Germany's Romantic 'Storm and Stress' movement. The Robbers is considered by critics like Peter Brooks to be the first European melodrama. The play pits two brothers against each other in alternating scenes, as one quests for money and power, while the other attempts to create revolutionary anarchy in the Bohemian Forest. The play strongly criticises the hypocrisies of class and religion, and the economic inequities of German society; it also conducts a complicated inquiry into the nature of evil.
- Fiesco (Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua):
- Intrigue and Love (Kabale und Liebe): The aristocratic Ferdinand von Walter wishes to marry Luise Miller, the bourgeois daughter of the city's music instructor. Court politics involving the duke's beautiful but conniving mistress Lady Milford and Ferdinand's ruthless father create a disastrous situation reminiscent of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Schiller develops his criticisms of absolutism and bourgeois hypocrisy in this bourgeois tragedy. Act 2, Scene 2 is an anti-British parody that depicts a firing-squad massacre. Young Germans who refused to join the Hessian and British to quash the American Revolutionary War are fired upon. Giuseppe Verdi's opera Luisa Miller is based on this play.
- Don Carlos: This play marks Schiller's entrée into historical drama. Very loosely based on the events surrounding the real Don Carlos of Spain, Schiller's Don Carlos is another republican figure...he attempts to free Flanders from the despotic grip of his father, King Phillip. The Marquis Posa's famous speech to the king proclaims Schiller's belief in personal freedom and democracy.
- The Wallenstein Trilogy: These plays follow the fortunes of the treacherous commander Albrecht von Wallenstein during the Thirty Years' War.
- Mary Stuart (Maria Stuart): This "revisionist" history of the Scottish queen, who was Elizabeth I's rival, portrays Mary Stuart as a tragic heroine, misunderstood and used by ruthless politicians, including and especially, Elizabeth.
- The Maid of Orleans (Die Jungfrau von Orleans), about Joan of Arc:
- The Bride of Messina (Die Braut von Messina):
- William Tell (Wilhelm Tell):
- Demetrius (unfinished):
The Aesthetic Letters
A pivotal work by Schiller was
On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (
Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen), first published 1794, which was inspired by the great disenchantment Schiller felt about the French Revolution, its degeneration into violence and the failure of successive governments to put its ideals into practice. Schiller wrote that "a great moment has found a little people"; he wrote the
Letters as a philosophical inquiry into what had gone wrong, and how to prevent such tragedies in the future. In the
Letters he asserts that it is possible to elevate the moral character of a people, by first touching their souls with beauty, an idea that is also found in his poem
Die Künstler (
The Artists): "Only through Beauty's morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge."
On the philosophical side,
Letters put forth the notion of
der sinnliche Trieb / Sinnestrieb ("the sensuous drive") and
Formtrieb ("the formal drive"). In a comment to Immanuel Kant's philosophy, Schiller transcends the dualism between
Form and
Sinn with the notion of
Spieltrieb ("the play drive"), derived from, as are a number of other terms, Kant's
Critique of the Faculty of Judgment. The conflict between man's material, sensuous nature and his capacity for reason (
Formtrieb being the drive to impose conceptual and moral order on the world), Schiller resolves with the happy union of
Form and
Sinn, the "play drive," which for him is synonymous with artistic beauty, or "living form." On the basis of
Spieltrieb, Schiller sketches in
Letters a future
ideal state (a eutopia), where everyone will be content, and everything will be beautiful, thanks to the free play of
Spieltrieb. Schiller's focus on the dialectical interplay between
Form and
Sinn has inspired a wide range of succeeding aesthetic philosophical theory, including notably Jacques Rancière's conception of the "aesthetic regime of art," as well as social philosophy in Herbert Marcuse, in the second part of his important work
Eros and Civilization, where he finds Schiller's notion of
Spieltrieb useful in thinking a social situation without the condition of modern social alienation. He writes, "Schiller's
Letters ... aim at remaking of civilization by virtue of the liberating force of the aesthetic function: it is envisaged as containing the possibility of a new reality principle."
