Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
Can make a Heaven of Hell. . . .
Here at least
We shall be free," etc.
The reply of Medea in the tragedy belongs also to this order of the
sublime.
The sublime of disposition makes itself seen, it is visible to the
spectator, because it rests upon co-existence, the simultaneous; the
sublime action, on the contrary, is conceived only by the thought,
because the impression and the act are successive, and the intervention
of the mind is necessary to infer from a free determination the idea of
previous suffering.
It follows that the first alone can be expressed by the plastic arts,
because these arts give but that which is simultaneous; but the poet can
extend his domain over one and the other. Even more; when the plastic
art has to represent a sublime action, it must necessarily bring it back
to sublimity.
In order that the sublimity of action should take place, not only must
the suffering of man have no influence upon the moral constitution, but
rather the opposite must be the case. The affection is the work of his
moral character. This can happen in two ways: either mediately, or
according to the law of liberty, when out of respect for such and such a
duty it decides from free choice to suffer--in this case, the idea of
duty determines as a motive, and its suffering is a voluntary act--or
immediately, and according to the necessity of nature, when he expiates
by a moral suffering the violation of duty; in this second case, the idea
of duty determines him as a force, and his suffering is no longer an
effect. Regulus offers us an example of the first kind, when, to keep
his word, he gives himself up to the vengeance of the Carthaginians; and
he would serve as an example of the second class, if, having betrayed his
trust, the consciousness of this crime would have made him miserable. In
both cases suffering has a moral course, but with this difference, that
on the one part Regulus shows us its moral character, and that, on the
other, he only shows us that he was made to have such a character. In
the first case he is in our eyes a morally great person; in the second he
is only aesthetically great.
This last distinction is important for the tragic art; it consequently
deserves to be examined more closely.
Man is already a sublime object, but only in the aesthetic sense, when
the state in which he is gives us an idea of his human destination, even
though we might not find this destination realized in his person. He
only becomes sublime to us in a moral point of view, when he acts,
moreover, as a person, in a manner conformable with this destination; if
our respect bears not only on his moral faculty, but on the use he makes
of this faculty; if dignity, in his case, is due, not only to his moral
aptitude; but to the real morality of his conduct. It is quite a
different thing to direct our judgment and attention to the moral faculty
generally, and to the possibility of a will absolutely free, and to be
directing it to the use of this faculty, and to the reality of this
absolute freedom of willing.
It is, I repeat, quite a different thing; and this difference is
connected not only with the objects to which we may have to direct our
judgment, but to the very criterion of our judgment. The same object can
displease us if we appreciate it in a moral point of view, and be very
attractive to us in the aesthetical point of view. But even if the moral
judgment and the aesthetical judgment were both satisfied, this object
would produce this effect on one and the other in quite a different way.
It is not morally satisfactory because it has an aesthetical value, nor
has it an aesthetical value because it satisfies us morally. Let us
take, as example, Leonidas and his devotion at Thermopylae. Judged from
the moral point of view, this action represents to me the moral law
carried out notwithstanding all the repugnance of instinct. Judged from
the aesthetic point of view, it gives me the idea of the moral faculty,
independent of every constraint of instinct. The act of Leonidas
satisfies the moral sense, the reason; it enraptures the aesthetical
sense, the imagination.
Whence comes this difference in the feelings in connection with the same
object? I account for it thus:--
In the same way that our being consists of two principles and natures, so
also and consequently our feelings are divided into two kinds, entirely
different. As reasonable beings we experience a feeling of approbation
or of disapprobation; as sensuous creatures we experience pleasure or
displeasure. The two feelings, approbation and pleasure, repose on
satisfaction: one on a satisfaction given to a requirement of reason--
reason has only requirements, and not wants. The other depends on a
satisfaction given to a sensuous want--sense only knows of wants, and
cannot prescribe anything. These two terms--requirements of reason,
wants of the senses--are mutually related, as absolute necessity and the
necessity of nature. Accordingly, both are included in the idea of
necessity, but with this difference, that the necessity of reason is
unconditional, and the necessity of sense only takes place under
conditions. But, for both, satisfaction is a purely contingent thing.
Accordingly every feeling, whether of pleasure or approbation, rests
definitively on an agreement between the contingent and the necessary.
If the necessary has thus an imperative character, the feeling
experienced will be that of approbation. If necessity has the character
of a want, the feeling experienced will be that of pleasure, and both
will be strong in proportion as the satisfaction will be contingent.
Now, underlying every moral judgment there is a requirement of reason
which requires us to act conformably with the moral law, and it is an
absolute necessity that we should wish what is good. But as the will is
free, it is physically an accidental thing that we should do in fact what
is good. If we actually do it, this agreement between the contingent in
the use of free will and the imperative demand of reason gives rise to
our assent or approbation, which will be greater in proportion as the
resistance of the inclinations made this use that we make of our free
will more accidental and more doubtful. Every aesthetic judgment, on the
contrary, refers the object to the necessity which cannot help willing
imperatively, but only desires that there should be an agreement between
the accidental and its own interest. Now what is the interest of
imagination? It is to emancipate itself from all laws, and to play its
part freely. The obligation imposed on the will by the moral law, which
prescribes its object in the strictest manner, is by no means favorable
to this need of independence. And as the moral obligation of the will is
the object of the moral judgment, it is clear that in this mode of
judging, the imagination could not find its interest. But a moral
obligation imposed on the will cannot be conceived, except by supposing
this same will absolutely independent of the moral instincts and from
their constraint. Accordingly the possibility of the moral act requires
liberty, and therefore agrees here in the most perfect manner with the
interest of imagination. But as imagination, through the medium of its
wants, cannot give orders to the will of the individual, as reason does
by its imperative character, it follows that the faculty of freedom, in
relation to imagination, is something accidental, and consequently that
the agreement between the accidental and the necessary (conditionally
necessary) must excite pleasure. Therefore, if we bring to bear a moral
judgment on this act of Leonidas, we shall consider it from a point of
view where its accidental character strikes the eye less than its
necessary side. If, on the other hand, we apply the aesthetical judgment
to it, this is another point of view, where its character of necessity
strikes us less forcibly than its accidental character. It is a duty for
every will to act thus, directly it is a free will; but the fact that
there is a free will that makes this act possible is a favor of nature in
regard to this faculty, to which freedom is a necessity. Thus an act of
virtue judged by the moral sense--by reason--will give us as its only
satisfaction the feeling of approbation, because reason can never find
more, and seldom finds as much as it requires. This same act, judged, on
the contrary, by the aesthetic sense--by imagination--will give us a
positive pleasure, because the imagination, never requiring the end to
agree with the demand, must be surprised, enraptured, at the real
satisfaction of this demand as at a happy chance. Our reason will merely
approve, and only approve, of Leonidas actually taking this heroic
resolution; but that he could take this resolution is what delights and
enraptures us.
This distinction between the two sorts of judgments becomes more evident
still, if we take an example where the moral sense and the aesthetic
sense pronounce a different verdict. Suppose we take the act of
Perigrinus Proteus burning himself at Olympia. Judging this act morally,
I cannot give it my approbation, inasmuch as I see it determined by
impure motives, to which Proteus sacrifices the duty of respecting his
own existence. But in the aesthetic judgment this same act delights
me; it delights me precisely because it testifies to a power of will
capable of resisting even the most potent of instincts, that of
self-preservation. Was it a moral feeling, or only a more powerful
sensuous attraction, that silenced the instinct of self-preservation in
this enthusiast. It matters little, when I appreciate the act from an
aesthetic point of view. I then drop the individual, I take away the
relation of his will to the law that ought to govern him; I think of
human will in general, considered as a common faculty of the race, and I
regard it in connection with all the forces of nature. We have seen that
in a moral point of view, the preservation of our being seemed to us a
duty, and therefore we were offended at seeing Proteus violate this duty.
In an aesthetic point of view the self-preservation only appears as an
interest, and therefore the sacrifice of this interest pleases us. Thus
the operation that we perform in the judgments of the second kind is
precisely the inverse of that which we perform in those of the first. In
the former we oppose the individual, a sensuous and limited being, and
his personal will, which can be effected pathologically, to the absolute
law of the will in general, and of unconditional duty which binds every
spiritual being; in the second case, on the contrary, we oppose the
faculty of willing, absolute volition, and the spiritual force as an
infinite thing, to the solicitations of nature and the impediments of
sense. This is the reason why the aesthetical judgment leaves us free,
and delights and enraptures us. It is because the mere conception of
this faculty of willing in an absolute manner, the mere idea of this
moral aptitude, gives us in itself a consciousness of a manifest
advantage over the sensuous. It is because the mere possibility of
emancipating ourselves from the impediments of nature is in itself a
satisfaction that flatters our thirst for freedom. This is the reason
why moral judgment, on the contrary, makes us experience a feeling of
constraint that humbles us. It is because in connection with each
voluntary act we appreciate in this manner, we feel, as regards the
absolute law that ought to rule the will in general, in a position of
inferiority more or less decided, and because the constraint of the will
thus limited to a single determination, which duty requires of it at all
costs, contradicts the instinct of freedom which is the property of