N OF SCHILLER TO POST-KANTIAN ...Schiller's reflective thought, as it is rePalosophical essays and the epistolary literature, tealism is, in its broad features, not especially diffi, although, as will be shown, Hegel himself misfed this relation in one of its most fundamental aspects. pinion which Schiller entertained of Fichte as "the speculative genius of the present century, after Kant,1" great expectations aroused in him by Fichte's Ueber den er Wissenschaftslehre and the Grundlage der gesammscnschaftslehre with which Schiller became acquainted ately after their publication, do not appear to have ustitied, in Schiller's mind, by the subsequent develcat of his philosophical thought. The secret of Schiller's alty is clearly indicated by Fichte himself in a letter to oldt in which he expresses his great confidence in Schiller's Cosophical future, but suggests a fundamental defect in er's system: its lack of unity, a unity which could, of course, cording to Fichte's view, only be attained by the abandonment the Kantian dualism to which Schiller had unequivocally comted himself. To this dualism, however, Schiller continued to ece, and this separated Schiller once and for all from the cat movement of philosophical criticism and construction own as post-Kantian Idealism. If Fichte's testimony as to ller's philosophical position were not decisive, Schiller's own cecance on the matter in a well known letter to Goethe, written ter the publication of the first series of the Aesthetic Letters should establish his attitude beyond question. After referring to the Kantian spirit pervading the Letters, he expresses his conviction that the fundamental principles of the Kantian philosophy, tacitly recognized since the very beginning of human thought, Letter to Hoven, Nov. 1794. must ever remain unassailable, which is more, he adds, than can be said of the Fichtean system, according to which the Ego is creative, and includes all reality within itself. The motive of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre from its first inception was the refutation of "dogmatism," but Schiller, both in his earlier philosophical period, and at the height of his speculative activity, never abandoned the presupposition of an extra-mental object, the material of sense experience, and the condition of thought and will. As the special æsthetic theories of Fichte and Schiller are intimately bound up with their metaphysical views, we are from the first prepared for a certain amount of divergence in their aesthetic opinions. A point of fundamental difference arises in connection with the analysis of human nature with a view to assigning the place of the aesthetic impulse among the various powers of the soul, an analysis which yields, in Fichte, a primary impulse of self-activity (Grundtrieb der Selbstthaetigkeit) of which the three impulses, the noetic, which seeks to discover the truth of presentations, the practical, which seeks to realize presentations, and the aesthetic, which finds an interest in presentations for their own sake, are only special and concrete manifestations.2 Now the material for this general impulse of selfactivity, Fichte contends, is not a given, extra-mental object, the condition of presentations, as some philosophers erroneously maintain, but is immanent in the impulse itself. It is, in fact, determined by nothing except itself. Schiller's psychological analysis yields, as is well known, two irreducible impulses, the material and the formal, both, however, implying the existence of an extra-mental object which acts as the condition for their activity. To the material impulse, Schiller complains particularly, Fichte accords no recognition. The fundamental disagreement between the two men noticed above presents itself here in another connection. Fichte conceives of matter as self-limitation, a limitation immanent in the impulse of selfactivity itself; Schiller, in thoroughly Kantian style, conceives 2 Werke, VIII, 278. it as an external limit in relation to which alone the self can find the condition for its activity. Fichte's discussion of the third of his special impulses, the aesthetic, its independence of noetic and practical interests and motives, and its freedom from desire, presents a striking resemblance to the conception of Kant and Schiller, as does also the doctrine developed in Fichte's Sittenlehre concerning aesthetic education, according to which art does not appeal to the understanding merely, nor to the heart, but to the entire man. These special aesthetic doctrines, interesting as they are, do not, however, here concern us further, since they do not throw much additional light on the metaphysical relations of Schiller to post-Kantianism which we are here seeking to determine. The view of the philosophical relations of Schiller to PostKantianism developed here, is apparently contradicted by a remarkable passage in Hegel, to which Mr. Bosanquet has called particular attention in his History of Aesthetics. "It is Schiller then," says Hegel, "to whom we must give credit for the great service of having broken through the Kantian subjectivity and abstraction of thought, and of having ventured to go quite beyond it, by intellectually apprehending the unity and reconciliation. as the truth, and by making them real through the power of art. Now this unity of the universal and particular, of freedom and necessity, of the spiritual and the natural, which Schiller scientifically conceived as the principle and essence of art, and unweariedly strove to call to life by art and aesthetic culture, was afterwards, under the name of the 'Idea,' made the principle of knowledge and existence, and pronounced the sole truth and reality. It was by this conception that science attained in Schelling its absolute standpoint." Credit is due to Tomaschek,' however, for having shown that Hegel's interpretation of certain passages in Schiller was based upon an imperfect acquaintance with Schiller's thought, an interpretation based upon a superficial reading of the Aesthetic Letters, mainly the fourth. Tomaschek further showed that Hegel claimed Schiller as a representa 3 Schiller in seinem Verhaeltnisse zur Wissenschaft, p. 438. tive of the philosophy of identity, because he was biased in favor of this system of philosophy. It is presumably unnecessary to treat exhaustively what was probably a mere misconception on Hegel's part, and it will perhaps suffice to state that Hegel's error consists in interpretating as a metaphysical theory of reality Schiller's notion of the unity of the spiritual and the natural, the universal and particular, which was intended by Schiller to be merely an ethical precept or ideal. The organization in man of the rational and the sensuous, which forms such a striking part of Schiller's ethical thought is falsely taken by Hegel to be the identity of the ideal and the real. These two elements, however, are held in strict separation by Schiller, and Hegel's criticism of Kant, that the latter had not transcended the opposition of subjective thought and objective reality, applies to Schiller as fully as it does to Kant. That the notion of unity and reconciliation was to Schiller merely one of psychological significance, that it was merely an Idee der Menschheit, is further shown by the fact that it is conceived by Schiller not as an actual condition, but rather as an ideal to be striven for, an ideal which art might be instrumental in aiding to realize more and more completely. The ideal of a completed! humanity is, indeed, forever beyond the reach of human fulfilment. "It is indeed demanded of man," he says at the beginning of the second part of Anmut und Wuerde, "to bring about a complete union of his two natures, and to form a harmonious whole, so as to act with his entire humanity. But this beauty of character, the last fruit of his humanity, is but an idea, for the realization of which he may strive with constant vigilance, but which with all his efforts he can never completely attain." And again, in the Aesthetic Letters: "This reciprocal relation between the two impulses (the material and the formal) is indeed only a task of reason which man is able to accomplish only in the perfection of his being. It is in the strictest signification of the term the idea of his humanity, an infinite goal to which he may approach nearer and nearer in the progress of time, but without ever reaching it." 4 Werke, Vol. 10, 320. Cf. also pp. 328-9 and 413. It is worthy of notice, too, that Hegel's view of art as "the absolute in sensuous existence" or "in limited manifestation," and as merely preparatory, therefore, to philosophy, does not find its counterpart in Schiller, who elevated art to an independent position. The point of radical divergence between Hegel and Schiller is clearly indicated by Vischer, according to whom Schiller, dominated, as he was, by the presuppositions of Kantian dualism, failed to arrive at a truly objective determination of the beautiful, because he failed to recognize the identity of concept and reality, of thought and being. That the above is probably the correct view of the real relation of Schiller to post-Kantian idealism may be seen from the following passage of one of his letters to Humboldt, written in 1805, in which he expresses his fidelity to the Kantian philosophy and his lack of sympathy with its subsequent developments. "Speculative philosophy," he says, "if it ever attracted me, has disgusted me with its empty forms; I found no living springs and nothing to nourish me on its barren plain; but the deep fundamental ideas of the idealistic philosophy are an abiding treasure, and, if only on their account, we must count ourselves happy to have lived in this age." Washburn College. EMIL C. WILM. 5 Aesthetik, Vol. 1, p. 129; cf. Tomaschek, op. cit., 443. |