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Arts & Communication Sublime and education in Schiller

to the realm of imagination. In Schiller’s perspective, Education. The space of “aesthetic determinability” in
indeed, the core of the sublime experience does not lie in which the subject idealizes the beautiful object is the same
what happens but only in what could happen: imaginative dimension in which the spectator of tragedy
The esthetic power with which the sublimeness estheticizes suffering, overcoming the tragic collision
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of character and action takes hold of us rests in between freedom and destiny. In Schiller, as it will be
no way on reason’s interest in things being done in Hegel, the whole meaning of esthetic experience and
rightly, but rather on imagination’s interest in it artistic production relies on the imagination’s faculty to
being possible that things are done rightly. That is provide a human form to the world of nature, in both
to say, it is in the interest of the imagination that no beauty and the sublime. 39,40 Since On the Pathetic, unlike
feeling, however powerful, be capable of subduing in Kant, the Schillerian imagination takes on the role of a
the freedom of the mind. 35 free faculty between the sensible and the rational spheres,
acting as a bridge connecting these two worlds: In beauty,
The suffering, estheticized and transfigured in its ideal imagination brings the idea to the subject, embodying
meaning by imagination, thus reverses into its opposite, the intelligible into the natural form; in the sublime, it
becoming a sensible manifestation of freedom. The proud draws the subject toward the idea, sublimating fear and
silence of Prometheus or the sublime plaint of Iphigenia, estheticizing the contradictions of experience.
while “confessing with moving candor the pain of taking
leave forever of the light of the day,” convert into symbols 4. Concerning the Sublime and the new
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of human freedom even in front of suffering and finitude. esthetic education
In this regard, it is the imagination, as synthetic faculty,
that composes the “chiasmus” described by De Man The role Schiller assigns to the imagination in On
between nature and reason, allowing rationality to endure the Pathetic thus redefines the conflicting dimension
and overcome the natural terror: “if Reason can take on that apparently characterized the sublime in the first
the attribute of Terror, then Nature will be able to take on section of On the Sublime, laying the groundwork for
the attribute of tranquillity, and you will be able to enjoy reconsidering its relationship with beauty. Nevertheless,
with a certain tranquillity the sublime violence of Nature.” this reorientation remains a mere hermeneutic possibility
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By idealizing the hero’s suffering, imagination reflects its until Concerning the Sublime (Über das Erhabene). This
synthetic activity within the spectator, sublimating his writing was published in 1801 in a collection of Schiller’s
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sensible affection into tragic compassion, a sensible feeling works along with the essays from 1792 to 1793. Although
with spiritual content: the pure pathos for freedom. This some critics attribute its drafting to the years of the other
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way, the subject transcends the affection of the senses and writings on the sublime, belonging to Schiller’s Kantian
regains the freedom of the mind within the imaginative period (1791 – 1793), 42,43 other authors lean toward a later
dimension: A third space where the conflict between dating, 44,45 submitting the hypothesis that this essay might
senses and reason evolves into an esthetic and balanced be considered the continuation of the incomplete Letters
tension, from which the subject derives not a weakening on the Aesthetic Education of Man. 46,47
but an enhancement of both faculties. Different from the earlier essays on the sublime,
In On the Pathetic, imagination thus appears as the Concerning the Sublime explicitly addresses the relationship
driving force behind the process of idealizing reality, which between beauty and the sublime, which thus proves to
lies at the core of Schiller’s theory of beauty in the Aesthetic have been a systematic concern for Schiller. Furthermore,
this essay presupposes the theorization of a project for
4 This close relationship between imagination and the esthetic education of humanity, eventually completed
sympathy—which Schiller mainly explores in its dramatic here with the sublime. For the first time, Schiller explicitly
context, as tragic compassion—lies also at the core of
Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, whose writings assigns a teleological and pedagogical function to the
influenced Schiller since his years at the Karlsschule. esthetic experience of the sublime, in continuity with the
Overall, the importance Schiller acknowledges to the faculty ideal of beauty in the Aesthetic Education. The education
of sentiment in each of his philosophical works reflects of man to the sublime is described as the perfecting of
his youthful debt to British sentimentalists, especially esthetic education, extending the capacity of the human
Shaftesbury, Smith, and Ferguson; see F. Beiser (2005), heart to feel beyond the sensible world, in coherence with
Schiller as Philosopher. A Re-Examination. New York: Oxford the “entire scope of our calling”. Beauty and the sublime
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University Press, p.16–23. From this root, moreover, stems eventually appear here as two guides of life, leading
the gap between Schiller’s and Kant’s anthropology, which humanity toward the same destination.
is far more grounded in reason and cognition than in virtue
and emotion. Nature gives us two genii [Genien] to accompany us

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2024) 4 doi: 10.36922/ac.2942