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
This prop is not found in the natural character of man, who, being
selfish and violent, directs his energies rather to the destruction than
to the preservation of society. Nor is it found in his moral character,
which has to be formed, which can never be worked upon or calculated on
by the lawgiver, because it is free and _never appears_. It would seem,
therefore, that another measure must be adopted. It would seem that the
physical character of the arbitrary must be separated from moral
freedom; that it is incumbent to make the former harmonize with the laws
and the latter dependent on impressions; it would be expedient to remove
the former still farther from matter and to bring the latter somewhat
more near to it; in short, to produce a third character related to both
the others—the physical and the moral—paving the way to a transition
from the sway of mere force to that of law, without preventing the
proper development of the moral character, but serving rather as a
pledge in the sensuous sphere of a morality in the unseen.
LETTER IV.
Thus much is certain. It is only when a third character, as previously
suggested, has preponderance that a revolution in a state according to
moral principles can be free from injurious consequences; nor can
anything else secure its endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral
state, the moral law is relied upon as a real power, and free will is
drawn into the realm of causes, where all hangs together mutually with
stringent necessity and rigidity. But we know that the condition of the
human will always remains contingent, and that only in the Absolute
Being physical coexists with moral necessity. Accordingly, if it is
wished to depend on the moral conduct of man as on _natural_ results,
this conduct must _become_ nature, and he must be led by natural impulse
to such a course of action as can only and invariably have moral
results. But the will of man is perfectly free between inclination and
duty, and no physical necessity ought to enter as a sharer in this
magisterial personality. If, therefore, he is to retain this power of
solution, and yet become a reliable link in the causal concatenation of
forces, this can only be effected when the operations of both these
impulses are presented quite equally in the world of appearances. It is
only possible when, with every difference of form, the matter of man’s
volition remains the same, when all his impulses agreeing with his
reason are sufficient to have the value of a universal legislation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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