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Arts & Communication Sublime and education in Schiller

seem relatively isolated from the inner core of Schillerian and systematic understanding of Schiller’s theoretical
philosophy. The ideal of humanity Schiller describes in development.
the Aesthetic Education rests on the continuity between
nature and reason that his earlier essays on beauty and 2. Sublime and affection between Schiller
grace develop by two different yet complementary paths: and Kant
Bringing nature closer to man and man closer to nature, The first question to delve into this critical inquiry involves
2,3
respectively. In Kallias-Letters, as Welsch points out, the the theme of affects in On the Sublime (Vom Erhabenen),
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concept of “freedom in the phenomenon” (Freiheit in der introducing the role of sensibility in Schiller’s esthetics
Erscheinung) surpasses the anthropic limits of the Kantian alongside the comparison with the Kantian sublime. In
notion, turning into a shared property of both the human this 1793 essay, Schiller incorporates into Kant’s theory
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and the natural worlds, which will eventually converge in of the sublime a pathological and affective dimension, in
the Aesthetic Education into a single intersubjective space, contrast with the principles of Kantian transcendental
the “aesthetic world” (ästhetische Welt). In On Grace esthetics. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, indeed,
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and Dignity, correspondingly, this unity between man affects (Affekte) are excluded from the sublime experience
and nature reflects itself within the subject through the as hindrances to the freedom of the soul and, consequently,
concept of the “beautiful soul” (schöne Seele), the ideal to the moral reaction. Overall, an excessive involvement
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man whose moral principles have become second nature, of sensibility within the esthetic experience proves
thus anticipating the role of beauty in reconciling the split problematic for the Kantian perspective, as it removes
between senses and reason in the Aesthetic Education. 7 the distance between the subject and the object of its
Within this framework, the sublime initially appears representation. Accordingly, Kant prefers the mathematical
out of place. In Schiller’s essays on the sublime from form of the sublime, concerning the theoretical limit of
1792 to 1793, belonging to his Kantian period, a different human knowledge, over its dynamical form, which directly
relationship between nature and reason emerges, involves the practical limit of human acting in the sensible
reflecting the conflicting dimension inherent in Kant’s dimension. On the contrary, in Schiller’s sublime, sensible
esthetic phenomenon. The “negative pleasure” of the affection becomes a constitutive part of the esthetic
Kantian sublime is based on man’s disharmony with experience, insofar as the entire Schillerian hierarchy of
nature, which overwhelms him in extension and power. sublime forms is based on the greater or lesser ability to
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Therefore, this type of esthetic experience hardly fits with compel the subject’s sensibility to participate in the content
Schiller’s program of reconciliation with the sensible of representation.
world proposed in the Aesthetic Education. The Kantian The sympathy or the empathizing (shared) emotion
sublime aligns with a different idea of freedom, narrowed is no free expression of our mind that we would first
to its intelligible meaning as freedom from nature rather have to produce spontaneously in ourselves. Rather
than in nature. Schiller even refers to it as “demonic it is an involuntary affection [Affektion] on the
freedom” (dämonische Freiheit): The freedom to “do part of our capacity to have feelings, determined
without the sensible world”, which man develops by by natural law. It does not at all depend on our
dealing with the most incomprehensible and destructive will whether we want to share in the suffering of
sides of nature. 9 some creature. The moment we have an image of

This issue spreads throughout the interpretation of it, we must feel it. Nature, not our freedom acts,
Schiller’s entire philosophical work, prompting critics to and the movement of the mind hurries ahead of the
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question the prevalence of either the reconciling model decision.
between nature and reason or the model of conflict and This explains the primacy of the pathetic over
opposition. This hermeneutic distinction, also delineating the contemplative sublime, aligning with Schiller’s
the difference between Hegelian interpretations of structural preference for the practical over the theoretical
Schiller 10,11 and those more strictly Kantian, 12,13 essentially sublimity. In the “contemplatively sublime of power”
splits Schiller’s philosophical corpus into two theoretical (Kontemplativerhabene der Macht), mirroring the Kantian
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dimensions: The former attributes greater significance concept of dynamically sublime, the spectacle of natural
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to the harmonic models of beauty, grace, and naivety, forces produces the representation of merely potential
while the latter emphasizes the oppositional matrix of the suffering in the observer, so that for Schiller this sublime
sublime, dignity, and sentimentality. This essay proposes form may fail to arouse the affection of fear. Differently,
a synthetic and dialectical perspective on the relationship in the “pathetically sublime” (Pathetischerhabene), the
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between beauty and the sublime, contributing to a unified focus of the esthetic experience shifts from observing a

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2024) 2 doi: 10.36922/ac.2942