Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian — Kant — John Shaqi
Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian
Kant · en
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.