On the aesthetic education of the human being

�On the aesthetic education of the human being� is probably the most famous work of Friedrich Schiller. In this masterpiece, he presents in a series of 27 letters the many points that people should know about in order to complete his or her aesthetic educ

On the aesthetic education of the human being


Letter #1
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Please allow me to present to you in a series of letters the results of my researches on beautifulness and Art. I strongly feel not only the importance but also the appeal and the dignity of this endeavour. I will discuss about a subject which has an immediate relationship with the best part of our felicity and also a not so distant relationship with the moral nobility of the human nature. I will present the subject of Beauty before a heart which feels and exerts fully its power and will perform the most difficult part of my duty through a research in which one is just often constrained to focus on sentiments as much as on principles.

What I ask you as a favour, you act upon me generously as a duty and grant to me in the appearance of a merit what I only indulge in as a fondness. The freedom of proceeding which you prescribed is not a constraint but much more a need for me. Not very used to employ academic formats, I will hardly run the danger of committing an offence on good taste through their abuse.

My ideas which are born more from my own monotonous company than from a rich experience of the world or from readings, will not deny their origins; they will rather be guilty of committing any possible mistakes than of sectarianism and would rather fall from their own weakness than keep upright through authority and external influences.

Furthermore, I will not hide from you that the subsequent affirmations rely mostly on Kantian principles; however, later on in the course of this presentation, if they should remind you of some other specific philosophical school, please do not attribute the blame to these principles but rather to my incapacity. For, indeed, expressing your spiritual freedom should not do me any harm. Your own sentiment will provide me with the very facts with which I carry on; your own ability to think freely will dictate the laws after which I should be proceeding.

About these ideas which are prevailing in the practical part of the Kantian system, are the philosophers only divided; however, the people, whom I trust to prove them to me, have always been unanimous. Should one only free these ideas from their technical forms and they will appear like the old claims of common reason, and like facts of moral instinct which the wise Nature has assigned as guardian to the human being until a clearer insight emancipates him.

However, it is precisely this technical form which truth makes visible to intelligence that it hides again to the feeling; for, unfortunately, intelligence must first destroy the object of its inner sense, if it wants to make this object its own.

Hence, the same way as the chemist, the philosopher finds the link to the free-willed Nature only through dissolution and the work of the same only through analysis of the method.

In order to seize its fugitive appearance, he must confine it in the observance of rules, tear its beautiful body into concepts and contain its lively spirit within a reduced framework of words. Is it then a wonder that the natural feeling is not any more found in such a replicate and truth seems only to be a paradox in the reports of the analyst?

Please, allow me also to bring some clarifications into the matter when the following inquiries should be shifting the focus of their subject, in the sense that while these inquiries seek to approach the subject for the purpose of understanding it, they should also be depriving it from a meaning.

What is valid, there, for moral experiences must in still higher degrees be valid for the appearance of Beauty. Its whole magic lies in its mystery, and with the necessary union of its elements, is its existence also put to an end.

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