Wen | Ding Ning (Professor, School of Arts, Peking University, Doctoral Supervisor)
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) 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 offered 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 I,Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg(1721-1794), the Duke of Augustenburg, Denmark, who had favored him, and took 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.
Portrait of Schiller
Schiller chose to communicate with the Duke of Augustenburg in the form of a letter, on the one hand, because the Duke's vision and generosity made his inscription unforgettable, and the letter to the other party was undoubtedly to express an incomparable respect. In the summer of 1791, the poet Jens Baggesen (1764-1826) held a memorial service after receiving the first error message of Schiller's unfortunate death. Later, realizing his mistake and Schiller's financial predicament at the time, he appealed to the Duke of Augustenburg and the Count of Schimmelmann (1747-1831). The Duke of Augustenburg intervened in time at the time of Schiller's first onset of a fatal illness, generously inviting writers to the court, and perhaps Noshiller, after recovering, granted him public office. Although Schiller was later unable to perform his duties, the Duke still paid him a thousand silver coins a year for 3 years! Although this gift is not a large amount, it never has any strings attached, but requires the recipient to pay attention to the body and make every effort to obtain recovery. The book "Aesthetic Education Book" is just the first major achievement after Schiller's recovery!
On the other hand, the subject of the letters is the question that Schiller himself has been pondering for a long time, and he is happy to share it with the Duke. In 1790, Kant's famous book "Critique of Judgment" was published, schiller studied it with great interest, and it was precisely the aesthetic lectures offered by the University of Jena that they also had to deal with related content, so it was only natural for the Duke of Copenhagen to speak out about the desirable prospects of aesthetic education.
It is worth pointing out that when Schiller began to write, it was at the time of the so-called "Reign of Terror" in France, and not only the intellectuals in Paris were thinking about "freedom" and "ideal people", but also the whole of Europe. The Duke and his confidants around him were no exception, enthusiastically embracing the humanitarian ideals espoused by the French Revolution. Thus, Schiller was talking to his true confidants about what he was thinking. In fact, the Duke was still unsatisfied after reading the letter, and then shared it with other friends.
Later, of course, Schiller should have realized the importance of these letters, and almost rewrote them for publication, thus almost doubling the length. Unfortunately, some of the passionate words have also been polished. However, "Aesthetic Education Book" was immediately praised, especially in the readership of Schiller's edited journal "Goddess of the Seasons".
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 do so, but also has profound enlightenment significance. However, it should be noted that Schiller, as an idealist, is full of passion and fantasy. His high affirmation of beauty and freedom is, in a way, a disturbing compromise: man's salvation depends neither on religion nor on science, but on 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 comes from the unique temperament of his poet-philosopher, and at the same time, researchers have 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 sculpture "Apollo in the Belvedere" and the Hellenistic period "Laocoön" as examples of the same style, are related to the timely View of Greek culture (i.e., "noble simplicity and quiet greatness") subjectively summarized in Winkelmann's famous book "History of Ancient Art" (1764), but 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 is still evident, as Hegel enthusiastically pointed out in his Introduction to Aesthetics, schiller is:
A man of deep spirituality and at the same time a lover of philosophical thinking has long ago preceded philosophy in the narrow sense of art, demanding and articulating the principles of wholeness and reconciliation, using it against the never-ending abstract thinking, against the call for duty for duty, against the abstract understanding of nature and reality, sensation and emotion as merely a limit and a hostile factor. 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 was preoccupied with was 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 make its rightful contribution 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, whom Schiller wrote emotionally: "They are both rich in form and rich in content, good at philosophical thinking and good at image creation, gentle and resolute, and they combine imaginary youth with 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.
Because it is in the form of letters, the "Aesthetic Education Book" is indeed more obviously readable than those aesthetic monographs that blindly focus on rational speculation. Moreover, it can also allow readers to open the book to be beneficial, browse at will, and get continuous enlightenment between the lines of the aphorisms. At the same time, however, its inconsistencies are inevitable, with the potential for ambiguity. For example, what Schiller calls "divinity" may refer to different things in different contexts: God, spirit, eternity, absolute, infinite, or substance, and so on. The reader will also be less able to distinguish whether the "aesthetic game" is ethical beauty, the human ideal, or simply a means of reaching the ideal. Similarly, sometimes aesthetic culture is seen as the highest level that human beings can attain, and sometimes as an intermediary before ethical culture is reached.
It has been more than two hundred years since the publication of the Book of Aesthetic Education. However, its meaning still has vitality. Jacques Rancière (1940- - ) in France and Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) in the United States have been inspired and inspired by others.
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 "theory of replacing religion with aesthetic education", 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 only 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 aesthetic in the first place" (twenty-third letter)...
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.
"Aesthetic Education Book"
By Friedrich Schiller
Translated by Feng Zhi Fan Dacan
Century Wenjing | Shanghai People's Publishing House
The Book of Aesthetic Education is a collection of 27 letters from Schiller to the Duke of Augustenburg, Denmark, between 1793 and 1794. In the context of the French Revolution, Schiller based on Kant's principles, deeply analyzed the relationship between human sensibility and reason and aesthetics and art, believing that the path of human development is from a natural person dominated by sensibility to a rational person whose spirit can control matter, only when two impulses develop at the same time, people have freedom, and beauty can connect and unify the two. Based on aesthetics, Schiller pondered the ways of human perfection and social improvement, and reflected his deep concern for the fate of mankind.