Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich SchillerSchiller, Friedrich
Philosophy
Aesthetical Essays of Friedrich Schiller
Schiller, Friedrich
Aesthetics
But what is meant by a mere play, when we know that in all conditions of
humanity that very thing is play, and only that is play which makes man
complete and develops simultaneously his twofold nature? What you style
limitation, according to your representation of the matter, according to
my views, which I have justified by proofs, I name enlargement.
Consequently I should have said exactly the reverse: man is serious only
with the agreeable, with the good, and with the perfect, but he plays
with beauty. In saying this we must not indeed think of the plays that
are in vogue in real life, and which commonly refer only to his material
state. But in real life we should also seek in vain for the beauty of
which we are here speaking. The actually present beauty is worthy of the
really, of the actually present play-impulse; but by the ideal of beauty,
which is set up by the reason, an ideal of the play-instinct is also
presented, which man ought to have before his eyes in all his plays.
Therefore, no error will ever be incurred if we seek the ideal of beauty
on the same road on which we satisfy our play-impulse. We can
immediately understand why the ideal form of a Venus, of a Juno, and of
an Apollo, is to be sought not at Rome, but in Greece, if we contrast the
Greek population, delighting in the bloodless athletic contests of
boxing, racing, and intellectual rivalry at Olympia, with the Roman
people gloating over the agony of a gladiator. Now the reason pronounces
that the beautiful must not only be life and form, but a living form,
that is, beauty, inasmuch as it dictates to man the twofold law of
absolute formality and absolute reality. Reason also utters the decision
that man shall only play with beauty, and he shall only play with beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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