Aesthetical and philosophical essays : $b introducing the dissertation on the "connection between the animal and spiritual man"Schiller, Friedrich
Philosophy
Aesthetical and philosophical essays : $b introducing the dissertation on the "connection between the animal and spiritual man"
Schiller, Friedrich
Aesthetics; Philosophy
We are now in a position to point out in what way the super-sensuous
element, the moral and independent force of man, his Ego in short, can
be represented in the phenomena of the affections. I understand that
this is possible if the parts which only obey physical nature, those
where will either disposes nothing at all, or only under certain
circumstances, betray the presence of suffering; and if those, on the
contrary, that escape the blind sway of instinct, that only obey
physical nature, show no trace, or only a very feeble trace, of
suffering, and consequently appear to have a certain degree of freedom.
Now this want of harmony between the features imprinted on animal nature
in virtue of the laws of physical necessity, and those determined with
the spiritual and independent faculty of man, is precisely the point by
which that super-sensuous principle is discovered in man capable of
placing limits to the effects produced by physical nature, and therefore
distinct from the latter. The purely animal part of man obeys the
physical law, and consequently may show itself oppressed by the
affection. It is, therefore, in this part that all the strength of
passion shows itself, and it answers in some degree as a measure to
estimate the resistance—that is to say, of the energy of the moral
faculty in man—which can only be judged according to the force of the
attack. Thus in proportion as the affection manifests itself with
decision and violence in the field of _animal nature_, without being
able to exercise the same power in the field of _human nature_, so in
proportion the latter makes itself manifestly known—in the same
proportion the moral independence of man shows itself gloriously: the
portraiture becomes pathetic and the pathetic sublime.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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