"Man should not think of revealing the great truth, or the truth will push him into mediocrity; he should act with passion and love, for only then will truth become rich and beautiful."
This is friedrich Schiller's aesthetic religion. The Birth of German Idealism: Schiller's Biography
When it comes to the spirit of German culture in the eighteenth century, there is a man who is always mentioned repeatedly, whose death year is named after him, and even though he has been dead for more than two hundred years, his exposition of aesthetics, ideals, freedom, and morality is still talked about. He was one of the outstanding representatives of German classical aesthetics and one of the main figures of the "Wild Race" - Friedrich Schiller.
Heine once said: "Schiller wrote for great revolutionary ideas, he destroyed the spiritual Bastille and built the temple of freedom." ”
Schiller's life was destined to be full of ups and downs, and he was often studied and discussed with Kant and Goethe, but it is clear that Schiller's short life was far less than that of the other two, either peaceful or indifferent. In that turbulent era full of great changes in thought and brewing revolutionary storms, Schiller's thoughts and knowledge, blood and temperament made him have a deeper and more original view of freedom and aesthetics. He believes that freedom is not the free exercise and enjoyment of political and economic rights, but the spiritual liberation and the formation of a perfect personality, and aesthetic education is the key to political and economic reform, in order to find the road to freedom, Schiller in the idealistic vortex to complete the struggle and struggle of a lifetime.
In the well-known German scholar and cultural figure Lüdiger Safransky once established the German thought of the stars, like a comet flash schiller, but left an eternal brilliance, Safransky with this book that tells Schiller's extraordinary life "The Birth of German Idealism: Schiller Biography", leading readers into this golden age of the German spirit is unforgettable.
Compared with many works depicting Schiller, Safransky's "The Birth of German Idealism: Schiller's Biography" uses more detailed records and more little-known historical materials to comprehensively, three-dimensionally and objectively depict Schiller's short and great life from various aspects such as life, works, and ideas.
Because of his father's influence, Schiller kept the patriarchal world order in mind from an early age, which was also the initial "acceleration force" that prompted him to finally embark on the path of freedom.
From his youth, schiller's pulse of free consciousness had been beating powerfully in him, and the rigid rules and regulations of the academy, the arbitrary arbitrariness of Carl Eugen, duke of Württemberg, and the oppressive and suffocating atmosphere of the Karl school, all of which made him feel deeply tired, even disgusted.
The strict militarization of Carl Eugen's school allowed the taste of "unfreedom" to ferment further in Schiller's heart, and the backwardness of the nation and politics made Schiller feel deeply worried, "a strong interest in thinking replaced poetic intoxication."
Perhaps, as Written in The Birth of German Idealism: Schiller's Biography: "This empiricism, whether sensory, rationalist, or materialist, necessarily developed a distinctive anthropological and moral philosophy." ”
Coupled with the fact that Germany at that time was also in a turbulent era, outside the "fence", the huge wave of "wild rush" made people scream and make people fascinated, and the epistolary novel "The Trouble of Young Werther" published anonymously by young Goethe not only touched the hearts of countless German youth, but also made young Schiller feel excited, his debut work "The Robber" came into being, when "The Bandit" starred in the Mannheim Theater, the sentence "Hit the Tyrant" made the whole theater crowd excited. Through the mouth of Karl, the protagonist of the story who is the enemy of the entire old order, Schiller sends out a cry that represents the voice of a generation, and also expresses his dissatisfaction with the hierarchy and feudal etiquette.
The freedom of the individual, the freedom of the nation, the freedom of the state... That's right, freedom! What he seeks, what he believes in, and what he is willing to go to the soup for is the power of freedom!
Since then, Schiller's literary creation has hardly left the theme of "freedom", and these two words have also run through his short but turbulent life, and are deeply imprinted in people's hearts like a brand, as he wrote in "Aphorisms of Faith", "Man is born free, so man is free, even if he is born with shackles, he is still free."
At the same time, literary creation is like an opportunity to build a bridge between Schiller and Goethe, and two literary and intellectual giants with completely different backgrounds and experiences have become confidants because of their common hobbies and ideals. In fact, for a long time to come, Schiller and Goethe's lives had a variety of intersections, the book called Goethe "Schiller's biggest rival and best friend", and his friendship and cooperation with Goethe is also called "the highlight and great luck of German cultural history".
In Schiller's ideological changes and creative career, in addition to freedom, aesthetics is another theme, and Schiller perfectly combines the two, and through the philosophical masterpiece "Aesthetic Education Book" published in 1795, expresses the classic view of "aesthetic freedom", in Schiller's concept of aesthetic education, it has always been to let beauty precede freedom, he rooted beauty in the depths of human practical rationality and human nature, and studied human beings themselves from an aesthetic point of view, which also made Schiller a pioneer in Western aesthetic anthropology.
He combined the beauty of fortitude and the beauty of softness, whether sublime or beautiful, they should be the manifestation of freedom, and Schiller repeatedly used literary works to illustrate the relationship between beauty and freedom, as well as the analysis on the moral level. However, although he repeatedly emphasized that the sense of freedom caused by the sublime was spiritual and moral, rather than physical and technical, reality often backfired, and after his works caused widespread repercussions and sensations, the development of events was contrary to the beginning of his expectations, and freedom gradually became a kind of wanton act of catharsis, and the beauty he envisioned became a "tyrannical fig leaf".
All this made him more firm in the importance of aesthetic education, coercion and violence can not make society truly civilized and progressive, and aesthetics is the only way for people to go to freedom.
Schiller elevated aesthetic education to an important position directly related to human happiness and moral highness, from the French Revolution to the moral free kingdom, and then to the criticism of modern culture, Schiller responded to the essence of the pursuit of true freedom with the discussion of aesthetic education, between aesthetics and freedom, human nature is the only bridge, because only aesthetic education can achieve the harmonious unity of human nature, and only by restoring the harmonious unity of human nature can we pursue true freedom, and in this process, "beauty must show that it is a necessary condition for man." 。
At the age of 14, Schiller entered the "Karl School" of the Military Academy of the Principality of Württemberg to study law and medicine, and the influence of the dual values of integrity and indomitable treatment and saving people made Schiller determined to become a doctor who could solve social diseases through literary and ideological channels, and the dual roles of revolutionary and romantic.
As the book states: "Schiller proved himself to be the 'doctor of culture' a century before Nietzsche. ”
He used his literature and plays to make a loud struggle, for example, the performance of "The Robber" was a kind of "righteous speech" that brought the tragic reality of Germany to the stage, although Schiller had changed from science to literature and art, but in his heart, or in his consciousness, he was still a judge, a doctor, but what he judged was not simple and direct right and wrong, and what he diagnosed and treated was not physical pain, but pursued in action with an "absolute spirit of never-ending speculation". Absolute moral seriousness", becoming the idealist who represents an era, a "doctor of culture" who heals social problems and judges the current state of society.
Schiller experienced many unbearable sufferings for ordinary people, and even "felt hollowed out", in a letter to Korner he wrote: "I really pay less and less attention to myself, and I don't even recognize myself." He was constantly searching for new ways, accepting new ideas, agonizing over economic reasons and doing his best for literary ideals, so that his body, along with his ideas, was "hollowed out."
In the preface to The Birth of German Idealism: Schiller's Biography, this record is written:
"After his death, the body was dissected only to find that his lungs had 'died and festered, become a paste, a complete mess', his heart 'had no muscular matter', his gallbladder and spleen had swollen to the point of unnatural size, and his kidneys 'had, by their very nature, completely disintegrated, completely deformed'."
It is hard to imagine what kind of physical suffering he has experienced, and what kind of tenacious will he has accomplished many great works and immortal achievements under such sickness and torment, and his "shaping the body for himself with the spirit" seems to be a proverb, and he longs to heal the spirit and healing of a society, but he cannot save his broken flesh.
Probably only Schiller could make the Marquis of Bossa say in front of the tyrant Philip II, "I can't be a slave to the king", "Please give you freedom of thought", and he deserved to be the star at the core of the German spiritual life, perhaps to this day, the three words "Schillerian" still have a lot of controversy, but it is his "Schillerian" hero who makes poetry and romance more of a great practical significance, he is a poet, a writer, a judge and a doctor, and a warrior. And an idealist who loves humanity.
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