Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
translation, p. 256): "It is from the understanding alone that pure and
transcendental conceptions take their origin; the reason does not
properly give birth to any conception, but only frees the conception of
the understanding from the unavoidable limitation of possible experience.
A conception formed from notions which transcend the possibility of
experience is an idea or a conception of reason."
Intuition (Anschauung) as used by Kant, is external or internal.
External, sensuous intuition is identical with perception; internal
intuition gives birth to ideas.
Matter and Form. "These two conceptions are at the foundation of all
other reflection, being inseparably connected with every mode of
exercising the understanding. By the former is implied that which can be
determined in general; the second implies its determination, both in a
transcendental sense, abstraction being made of any difference in that
which is given, and of the mode in which it is determined. That which in
the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term its matter; but that
which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under
certain relations, I call its form."--Kant, "Critique," op. cit.
Objective. What is inherent or relative to an object, or not Myself,
except in the case when I reflect on myself, in which case my states of
mind are objective to my thoughts. In a popular sense objective means
external, as contrasted with the subjective or internal.
Perception, if it relates only to the subject as a modification of its
state, is a sensation. An objective perception is a cognition
(Erkenntniss).
Phenomena (Erscheinnngen). The undetermined object of an empirical
intuition is called phenomenon.
Reason (pure; Germanice, "Vernunft"). The source of ideas of moral
feelings and of conceptions free from all elements taken up from
experience.
Representation (Vorstellung). All the products of the mind are styled
representations (except emotions and mere sensations) and the term is
applied to the whole genus.
Representation with consciousness is perceptio.
Sensation. The capacity of receiving representations through the mode in
which we are affected by objects is called sensibility. By means of
sensibility objects are given to us, and it alone furnishes with
intentions meaning sensuous intuitions. By the understanding they are
thought, and from it arise conceptions.
Subjective. What has its source in and relation to the personality, to
Myself, I, or the Ego; opposed to the objective, or what is inherent in
and relative to the object. Not myself, except in the case when my
states of mind are the object of my own reflection.
Supersensuous. Contrasted with and opposed to the sensuous. What is
exclusively related to sense or imparted through the sensuous ideas is
supersensuous. See Transcendental.
Transcendental. What exceeds the limits of sense and empirical
observation. "I apply the term transcendental to all knowledge which is
not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of
these objects, so far as this mode of cognition is possible a priori."
Kant's "Critique," op. cit. p. 16.
Understanding (Verstand). The thought of faculty, the source of
conceptions and notions (Begriffe) of the laws of logic, the categories,
and judgment.
LETTERS ON THE AESTHETICAL EDUCATION OF MAN.
LETTER I.
By your permission I lay before you, in a series of letters, the results
of my researches upon beauty and art. I am keenly sensible of the
importance as well as of the charm and dignity of this undertaking. I
shall treat a subject which is closely connected with the better portion
of our happiness and not far removed from the moral nobility of human
nature. I shall plead this cause of the beautiful before a heart by
which her whole power is felt and exercised, and which will take upon
itself the most difficult part of my task in an investigation where one
is compelled to appeal as frequently to feelings as to principles.
That which I would beg of you as a favor, you generously impose upon me
as a duty; and, when I solely consult my inclination, you impute to me a
service. The liberty of action you prescribe is rather a necessity for
me than a constraint. Little exercised in formal rules, I shall scarcely
incur the risk of sinning against good taste by any undue use of them; my
ideas, drawn rather from within than from reading or from an intimate
experience with the world, will not disown their origin; they would
rather incur any reproach than that of a sectarian bias, and would prefer
to succumb by their innate feebleness than sustain themselves by borrowed
authority and foreign support.
In truth, I will not keep back from you that the assertions which follow
rest chiefly upon Kantian principles; but if in the course of these
researches you should be reminded of any special school of philosophy,
ascribe it to my incapacity, not to those principles. No; your liberty
of mind shall be sacred to me; and the facts upon which I build will be
furnished by your own sentiments; your own unfettered thought will
dictate the laws according to which we have to proceed.
With regard to the ideas which predominate in the practical part of
Kant's system, philosophers only disagree, whilst mankind, I am confident
of proving, have never done so. If stripped of their technical shape,
they will appear as the verdict of reason pronounced from time immemorial
by common consent, and as facts of the moral instinct which nature, in
her wisdom, has given to man in order to serve as guide and teacher until
his enlightened intelligence gives him maturity. But this very technical
shape which renders truth visible to the understanding conceals it from
the feelings; for, unhappily, understanding begins by destroying the
object of the inner sense before it can appropriate the object. Like the
chemist, the philosopher finds synthesis only by analysis, or the
spontaneous work of nature only through the torture of art. Thus, in
order to detain the fleeting apparition, he must enchain it in the
fetters of rule, dissect its fair proportions into abstract notions, and
preserve its living spirit in a fleshless skeleton of words. Is it
surprising that natural feeling should not recognize itself in such a
copy, and if in the report of the analyst the truth appears as paradox?
Permit me therefore to crave your indulgence if the following researches
should remove their object from the sphere of sense while endeavoring to
draw it towards the understanding. That which I before said of moral
experience can be applied with greater truth to the manifestation of "the
beautiful." It is the mystery which enchants, and its being is
extinguished with the extinction of the necessary combination of its
elements.
LETTER II.
But I might perhaps make a better use of the opening you afford me if I
were to direct your mind to a loftier theme than that of art. It would
appear to be unseasonable to go in search of a code for the aesthetic
world, when the moral world offers matter of so much higher interest, and
when the spirit of philosophical inquiry is so stringently challenged by
the circumstances of our times to occupy itself with the most perfect of
all works of art--the establishment and structure of a true political
freedom.
It is unsatisfactory to live out of your own age and to work for other
times. It is equally incumbent on us to be good members of our own age
as of our own state or country. If it is conceived to be unseemly and
even unlawful for a man to segregate himself from the customs and manners
of the circle in which he lives, it would be inconsistent not to see that
it is equally his duty to grant a proper share of influence to the voice
of his own epoch, to its taste and its requirements, in the operations in
which he engages.
But the voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all
events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course
of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens
to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to
leave reality, it has to raise itself boldly above necessity and
neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its
prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and
not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that
prevails, and lends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is
the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all
subjects are subservient. In this great balance on utility, the
spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all
encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The
very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one
promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed in
proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.
The eyes of the philosopher as well as of the man of the world are
anxiously turned to the theatre of political events, where it is presumed
the great destiny of man is to be played out. It would almost seem to
betray a culpable indifference to the welfare of society if we did not
share this general interest. For this great commerce in social and moral
principles is of necessity a matter of the greatest concern to every
human being, on the ground both of its subject and of its results. It
must accordingly be of deepest moment to every man to think for himself.
It would seem that now at length a question that formerly was only
settled by the law of the stronger is to be determined by the calm
judgment of the reason, and every man who is capable of placing himself
in a central position, and raising his individuality into that of his
species, can look upon himself as in possession of this judicial faculty
of reason; being moreover, as man and member of the human family, a party
in the case under trial and involved more or less in its decisions. It
would thus appear that this great political process is not only engaged
with his individual case, it has also to pronounce enactments, which he
as a rational spirit is capable of enunciating and entitled to pronounce.
It is evident that it would have been most attractive to me to inquire
into an object such as this, to decide such a question in conjunction
with a thinker of powerful mind, a man of liberal sympathies, and a heart
imbued with a noble enthusiasm for the weal of humanity. Though so
widely separated by worldly position, it would have been a delightful
surprise to have found your unprejudiced mind arriving at the same result
as my own in the field of ideas. Nevertheless, I think I can not only
excuse, but even justify by solid grounds, my step in resisting this
attractive purpose and in preferring beauty to freedom. I hope that I
shall succeed in convincing you that this matter of art is less foreign
to the needs than to the tastes of our age; nay, that, to arrive at a
solution even in the political problem, the road of aesthetics must be
pursued, because it is through beauty that we arrive at freedom. But I
cannot carry out this proof without my bringing to your remembrance the
principles by which the reason is guided in political legislation.
LETTER III.
Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other
works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent
intelligence she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a
man is that he does not remain stationary, where nature has placed him,
that he can pass with his reason, retracing the steps nature had made him
anticipate, that he can convert the work of necessity into one of free
solution, and elevate physical necessity into a moral law.