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
From the antagonism of the two impulsions, and from the association of
two opposite principles, we have seen beauty to result, of which the
highest ideal must therefore be sought in the most perfect union and
equilibrium possible of the reality and of the form. But this
equilibrium remains always an idea that reality can never completely
reach. In reality, there will always remain a preponderance of one of
these elements over the other, and the highest point to which experience
can reach will consist in an oscillation between two principles, when
sometimes reality and at others form will have the advantage. Ideal
beauty is therefore eternally one and indivisible, because there can
only be one single equilibrium; on the contrary, experimental beauty
will be eternally double, because in the oscillation the equilibrium may
be destroyed in two ways—this side and that.
I have called attention in the foregoing letters to a fact that can also
be rigorously deduced, from the considerations that have engaged our
attention to the present point; this fact is that an exciting and also a
moderating action may be expected from the beautiful. The _tempering_
action is directed to keep within proper limits the sensuous and the
formal impulsions; the _exciting_, to maintain both of them in their
full force. But these two modes of action of beauty ought to be
completely identified in the idea. The beautiful ought to temper while
uniformly exciting the two natures, and it ought also to excite while
uniformly moderating them. This result flows at once from the idea of a
correlation, in virtue of which the two terms mutually imply each other,
and are the reciprocal condition one of the other, a correlation of
which the purest product is beauty. But experience does not offer an
example of so perfect a correlation. In the field of experience it will
always happen more or less that excess on the one side will give rise to
deficiency on the other, and deficiency will give birth to excess. It
results from this that what in the beau-ideal is only distinct in the
idea is different in reality in empirical beauty. The beau-ideal, though
simple and indivisible, discloses, when viewed in two different aspects,
on the one hand, a property of gentleness and grace, and on the other,
an energetic property; in experience there is a gentle and graceful
beauty and there is an energetic beauty. It is so, and it will be always
so, so long as the absolute is enclosed in the limits of time, and the
ideas of reason have to be realized in humanity. For example, the
intellectual man has the ideal of virtue, of truth, and of happiness;
but the active man will only practise _virtues_, will only grasp
_truths_, and enjoy _happy days_. The business of physical and moral
education is to bring back this multiplicity to unity, to put morality
in the place of manners, science in the place of knowledge; the business
of æsthetic education is to make out of beauties the beautiful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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