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
The good, on the contrary, is good in itself, before being represented
to us, and before being felt. The property by which it pleases exists
fully in itself without being in want of our subject, although the
pleasure which we take in it rests on an aptitude for feeling that which
is in us. Thus we can say that the agreeable exists only because it is
experienced, and that the good, on the contrary, is experienced because
it exists.
The distinction between the beautiful and the agreeable, great as it is,
moreover, strikes the eye less. The beautiful approaches the agreeable
in this—that it must always be proposed to the senses, inasmuch as it
pleases only as a phenomenon. It comes near to it again in as far as it
neither procures nor supposes any notion of its object. But, on the
other hand, it is widely separated from the agreeable, because it
pleases by the form under which it is produced, and not by the fact of
the material sensation. No doubt it only pleases the reasonable subject
in so far as it is also a sensuous subject; but also it pleases the
sensuous subject only inasmuch as it is at the same time a reasonable
subject. The beautiful is not only pleasing to the individual but to the
whole species; and although it draws its existence but from its relation
with creatures at the same time reasonable and sensuous, it is not less
independent of all empirical limitations of sensuousness, and it remains
identical even when the particular constitution of the individual is
modified. The beautiful has exactly in common with the good that by
which it differs from the agreeable, and it differs from the good
exactly in that in which it approximates to the agreeable.
By the good we must understand that in which reason recognizes a
conformity with her theoretical and practical laws. But the same object
can be perfectly conformable to the theoretical reason, and not be the
less in contradiction in the highest degree with the practical reason.
We can disapprove of the end of an enterprise, and yet admire the skill
of the means and their relation with the end in view. We can despise the
pleasures which the voluptuous man makes the end of his life, and
nevertheless praise the skill which he exhibits in the choice of his
means, and the logical result with which he carries out his principles.
That which pleases us only by its form is good, absolutely good, and
without any conditions, when its form is at the same time its matter.
The good is also an object of sensuousness, but not of an immediate
sensuousness, as the agreeable, nor moreover of a mixed sensuousness, as
the beautiful. It does not excite desire as the first, nor inclination
as the second. The simple idea of the good inspires only esteem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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