"Aesthetic Education Book": Confessions dedicated to beauty

Author: Ding Ning

Schiller was a famous German playwright, poet, historian, philosopher and translator. This talented writer was famous even in France at the time for his play The Bandit (1871). At the same time, at the age of 33, he was awarded a professorship in history at the University of Jena at the recommendation of Goethe. It was also during this teaching tenure that he wrote successive letters to Friedrich Christian, Duke of Augustenburg, Denmark, who had favored him, reporting and expounding a series of his insights on human aesthetic education, and taking the lead in completing the most in-depth discussion of this topic in Western history, the Book of Aesthetic Education (1794). Schiller called it "the most satisfying thing I've ever done in my life." The book also made Schiller one of the earliest modern intellectuals in Europe.

"Aesthetic Education Book" [de] Friedrich Schillevon to Fan Dacan Translated Century Wenjing Shanghai People's Publishing House

Schiller's writing is related to the inspiration of the French Revolution, so he is realistic and has never been sensitive. His incomparable praise for aesthetic education is not only the first to be done, but also has profound enlightenment significance. But it should be noted that Schiller, as an idealist, is passionate and fanciful. His high affirmation of beauty and freedom is, in a way, a disturbing compromise: man's salvation does not depend on religion or science, but is achieved through art. Naturally, one conclusion that can be extended is to stay away from the social revolution first. Undoubtedly, when Schiller was poetically educated, that is, when he "diagnosed" and "corrected" reality (including the French Revolution), he was more or less drifting away from the earth and flying out of the blue.

Of course, Schiller is unique, and the charm of his writing and thinking stems from the unique temperament of his poet-philosopher, and at the same time, researchers have also found that his abundant philosophical power also stems from the accumulation of long-term knowledge. He received a classical education, and through literary reading and creation, his mind and feelings had a romantic tendency. In addition to Kant and Goethe, he favored the Platonic school and Aristotle, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Moses Mendelssohn, Baumgartone, Edmund Burke, Hume, and Lessing. His unsparing praise for ancient Greece, and even his general reference to the classical sculptures "Apollo in the Belvedere" and the Hellenistic period "Laocoön" as examples of the same style, are related to the subjective view of Greek culture (that is, "noble simplicity and quiet greatness") in Winkelmann's famous book "History of Ancient Art" (1764), but unfortunately even Winkelmann himself has never been to Greece, and the objects of discussion are almost all Roman reproductions. In other words, Schiller followed Winkelmann and unknowingly idealized ancient Greece.

Of course, Schiller's views do not follow the views of others entirely, and his distinctiveness remains evident, as Hegel enthusiastically pointed out in his Introduction to Aesthetics that Schiller was "a man of deep spirituality and at the same time a lover of philosophical thinking, who had long ago walked before philosophy in the narrow sense, and with his artistic sense demanded and elucidated the principles of wholeness and reconciliation, and used it against the never-ending abstract thinking, against the call for duty, against the combination of nature and reality, Feelings and emotions are seen as merely an abstract understanding of limitations and hostile factors. Schiller's great merit lies in overcoming the subjectivity and abstraction of the ideas that Kant understood, daring to find ways to transcend these limitations, understanding unity and reconciliation as truth in thought, and achieving this unity and reconciliation in art... What Schiller is preoccupied with is the depths of the human psyche."

Undoubtedly, the "Book of Aesthetic Education" is the best proof of Hegel's evaluation. Schiller's question is worth pondering: How can art contribute to the realization of human freedom? This can raise more questions, such as how does the aesthetic field relate to the ethical field? What is the significance of art as an act of man? In fact, what Schiller repeatedly expounds in it is not the cultivation of the so-called "whole man". He was opposed to the decomposition of man, especially his view of ethics as the practice of man as a whole, rather than as a secret link in a particular part of man. More importantly, he believed that it was possible to achieve the educational purpose of ethics through the promotion of aesthetic sensibility, that is, the perceptual person must first become an aesthetic person before becoming an ethical person. Therefore, everyone has the prospect of realizing the ideal humanity. As the forerunner of culture, art liberates people from desire and thus leads people to perfection. The artist is a person who truly realizes the unity of the senses and the spirit. The highest model is the Greeks, schiller emotionally writes: "They have both rich forms and rich contents, are good at philosophical thinking and good at image creation, gentle and resolute, they combine imaginary youth and rational adulthood in a perfect human nature... I would like to ask, what individual modern man would dare to come out and compete with a single Athenian for the value of man on a one-to-one basis? In Schiller's view, human beings can only faithfully serve freedom if they first learn to serve beauty. It is necessary to first cultivate a sense of beauty, to prepare for the true conception of freedom. It is no wonder that some scholars have summarized Schiller's holistic idea of human-centered aesthetic education as "humanistic aesthetic education" or "aesthetic anthropology".

In a sense, "Aesthetic Education Book" is such a confession of beauty, full of poetry and thought, and it is also schiller's most influential aesthetic text outside Germany.

In China, Schiller's idea of aesthetic education was introduced to China by Wang Guowei in 1904. In 1917, Cai Yuanpei, who had studied in Germany, was deeply influenced by German aesthetics, especially Schiller's thought, and put forward the "religion theory of aesthetic education" that was deafening, because in his view, China at that time obviously could neither seek feudal Confucianism nor rely on Buddhism, and the most effective influence on the shaping of national nature was the kind of art and beauty that could reach the depths of the heart, so aesthetic education became the first choice, an important foundation for the construction of Chinese modernity... How it sounds like Schiller's voice: "It is through beauty that men can lead to freedom" (second letter); "There is no other way to make the sensible man a rational man than to make him an aesthetic man in the first place" (letter twenty-third)...

For people today, schiller not only cannot go around the past, but also has the value of further thinking, because Schiller, unlike Kant, always has to go beyond the boundaries of man-made and see the possibility of equilibrium and unity in all aspects of opposites and their extraordinary significance.

Just as Schiller's lyrics for the choral part of The Fourth Movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Ode to Joy, still resonate strongly with audiences all over the world, his "Aesthetic Education Book" will certainly invite readers again and again in the process of moving into the future to understand the mysteries of beauty and art between the lines. (Ding Ning)

Source: Qilu Evening News