Schiller, Friedrich 1845. The Æsthetic Letters, Essays, and The Philosophical Letters of Schiller. Translated, with an Introduction, by John Weiss. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown. [Internet Archive]
The translator has since found this idea of the genuine relation of Goethe and Schiller to each other and to us, well stated by Gervinus in his admirable history of German Literature. It occurs after a parallel, or rather statement of a coalition, which [|] exhausts the genius of both, and for insight and completeness is the best extant. "And thus the lines of the double nature in both intersect so manifoldly, that they exhibit to us a common whole only in the shape of a coalescence, which should delight us, and give us the foundation for a self-construction, as it lay in the purpose of the men themselves. Who would choose between them: who would blindly lose sight of that fundamental doctrine of both, which we find so repeatedly, so expressly, in their writings, the doctrine of the united totality of human nature? Who would esteem either as the One, per excellentiam, when they themselves refer us to a Third, which is greater than both? There is only one point of view from which a preference for either is admissible: in the recognition we make of that in our own nature which is narrow and incomplete, and which leads every one, after the very example of our two poets, to that one of both who is foreign to him, that merged in the excellence of an antagonistic nature, he may repair his deficiency, and learn, from the counterfoil of his being, to make the acknowledgment which Goethe made with respect to Schiller - he is what we ought to be! For not unless we recognize wherein our own existence is deficient, and also strives to be that which we are not, need we [|] hope in some measure to become, what we really ought to be." (Weiss 1845: ix-x)
The quote originates from Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Handbuch der Geschichte der poetischer National-Literatur der Deutschen (1844: 522). The ending is eerily reminiscent to a quote attributed to Søren Kierkegaard: "If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either."
To prove this, he considers in one view the nature of Man and of the State, and finds that if man would exchange the state of nature or need for the moral state, he must possess that totality of the ancients, in whom there was a distinct harmony of thought, perception and action, both in Art and Polity; while our bodies politics display rudeness in the lower, and relaxation in the higher classes. (Weiss 1845: xiv)
State of nature vs the moral state sounds like Berkeley. And, of course, the damned triad.
We cannot suppose that the State, which has induced this evil, can of itself obviate it: where the upper classes do not use their freedom, they need not be deprived of it, and it need not be given to the great mass who blindly abuse it. All political improvement can result only from ennoblement of the character; but how can that take place under a barbarous polity? For this design we must seek an instrument which is independent of the State, and lay open sources which preserve themselves pure through every political depravation. This instrument is the Fine Arts. The Artist may secede from his age and elevate himself above it. (Weiss 1845: xiv)
A dubious premise - how would "ennoblement of the character" aid food-deserts or pollution? Too much premium on individual responsibility, here. As to the Artist seceding from his age, I'm reminded of the Nazi "inner emigre", the person who, in hindsight, considered himself already gone while actually staying put.
Those parts which are purely metaphysical will not be repulsive, and the iron consistency of the whole preclude their being slighted. Schiller emerges from all of them with grace and ease, and requites us for our labor by the captivating and inspiring [|] statements of his conclusions. The dizzy and perilous trains of thought all lead to high, sunny table-lands, and into green resting places: they are like the bridge, fine as a hair and keen as a razor, which the Faithful must pass to reach Paradise. (Weiss 1845: xvii-xviii)
Haven't met this eschatological figure in a long while. See As-Sirāt in Islam or the Chinvat Bridge in Zoroastrianism.
Schiller was never strictly a disciple of Kant, but only coincided with him in one or two mental tendencies which they held in common. The pure subjective method of Kant was modified by him, so as to include the objective also. In one respect he was nearer Fichte than Kant, because the former distinguished Object [|] from Subject, while the latter only made it dependent upon Subject. (Weiss 1845: xviii-xix)
Don't make me read Kant and Fichte, please.
That chance word of Kant's, "that Art compared with Labor may be considered as a Play," is the origin of Schiller's Play-impulse, a term nowhere used by Kant. But his "Critique of the Judgment" furnishes us with remarks like the following: "Every form of objects of sense 9both of the external and, mediately, of the internal) is either Shape or Play: in the latter case, either play of shapes (in Space, posture and dance) or play of perceptions (in Time)." "To make a distinction between Art and Labor, the one may be called free, the other paid. We regard the first as subserving a design only as play, that is, as an occupation in itself agreeable: but the second, as a task imposed, that is, as [|] an occupation in itself disagreeable, and only attractive through its result (that is, the pay)." (Weiss 1845: xxiv-xxv)
"Still if it is the essential nature of Mind, and the most general fact that we can assert about it, that it tends always to organise its process, then, wherever we examine mental process, we should find some organic law, whether the force present be that of the play-impulse, or one of the serious sentiments of our life, as that for our family or profession." (Shand 1914: 24) - See also "The point of this distinction between play and work" (Dewey 1910: 164). There truly is nothing new under the sun.
Our life is hard, austere, thoroughly empirical; the oscillation to the subjective extreme has just commenced. We are not self-poised, our centre of gravity is not removed far enough from the surface: we are not yet Persons, but we only represent conditions. The common national life does not depend upon anything, it is like a superficies from which the interior has fallen quite away, leaving it thin and hazardous. (Weiss 1845: xxvi)
Define:superficies - a surface (archaic), "the superficies of a sphere"; an outward part or appearance (literary), "the superficies of life".
My ideas, drawn rather from an uniform converse with myself, than from a rich experience, or from reading, will not deny their origin; they will sooner be guilty of any error than of sectarism, and will rather fall from their own weakness, than maintain themselves by authority and foreign strength. (Schiller 1845: 2)
Self-communication ("converse with myself") and authenticity (one's thoughts should stand by themselves rather than on external authority). The latter being more well known as the fallacy of the appeal to authority.
But this very technical form, which makes the truth plain to the understanding, conceals it from the feeling: for alas, the understanding can only appropriate the object of the [|] inner sense, by first destroying it. The philosopher, like the chemist, finds union only by means of dissolution, and the work of spontaneous nature only through the torture of art. In order to detain the fleeting phenomenon, he must bind it in the fetters of rule, present its fair body in dismembered conceptions, and preserve its living spirit in a meagre skeleton of words. (Schiller 1845: 2-3)
Putting things into words destroys them. Poetic in itself. Personally I feel this way about my various bygone research objects: studying nonverbal communication research destroyed my interest in it; having arrived at a satisfactory account of how "phatic communion" was formed, it, too, lost its appeal.
Therefore may I crave your indulgence, if the following investigations should remove their object out of the sphere of sense, while seeking to approximate it to the understanding. What there obtains with respect to moral phenomena, must obtain, in a still higher degree, with respect to the manifestation of beauty. (Schiller 1845: 3)
The triad in paraphrase: (1) the sphere of sense; (2) moral phenomena; and (3) the understanding.
But now necessity rules, and depresses fallen humanity beneath its tyrannical yoke. Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers stoop and all talents do homage. The spiritual merit of art has no weight in its clumsy balance, and, robbed of every incitement, flees from the century's noisy mart. (Schiller 1845: 5)
Define:mart - a trade centre or market. Finally, Kwik-E-Mart makes sense.
So nearly does this great action, on account of its tenor and result, approach every one who calls himself a man, so must it especially interest the self-thinker, on account of his profession. (Schiller 1845: 5)
The what now? This must be Selbstdenker, evidently one of Kant's terms, "To be free from institutional attachment". Also, "Husserl uses the term 'self-thinker' for the autonomous, self-critical philosopher who had inquired radically into all his or her beliefs in the spirit of Descartes' meditator (Crisis § 17)" (The Husserl Dictionary).
Nature commences with man no better than with her other works; she acts for him where he cannot yet act as a free intelligence. But this fact creates him a man, that he does not rest satisfied with the results of mere nature, but possesses the capacity to retrace with his reason the steps taken with nature in anticipation, to transform the work of need into the work of his own free choice, and to elevate physical into moral necessity. (Schiller 1845: 7)
From spontaneity to rationality; or spontaneous redintegration to deliberate redintegration.
Therefore, in that right by which he is a man, he forsakes the dominion of a blind necessity, since in so many other points he is estranged from it by his freedom; since, only to give one example, he effaces by morality, and ennobles by beauty, the low character which the need of sexual love impressed. (Schiller 1845: 7)
Here, "the dominion of a blind necessity" can be read as blind impulse (instinct).
If the artist has a clock to mend, he suffers the wheels to run down; but the living clock-work of the state must be repaired while it is in motion - the wheel must be changed during its revolution. (Schiller 1845: 9)
A figure reminiscent of Lotman's metaphor that semiotics is like a gun that constructs itself in the process of shooting.
This support is not to be found in the natural character of man, selfish and violence, rather bent upon the destruction than the conservation of society: as little is it to be found in his moral character, which, according to the supposition, is yet to be fashioned, and upon which, while it is free and never apparent, the legislator [|] can neither have influence, nor depend with safety. (Schiller 1845: 9-10)
The natural character of man is "red in tooth and claw"?
Then the task that devolves is this, - to separate caprice from the physical, and freedom from the moral character; to harmonize the former with laws, and make the latter dependent upon impressions; to remove the former somewhat farther from the outward, and bring the latter nearer to it, in order to create a third character, which, related to both of them, may construct a passage from the dominion of mere force to the dominion of law, and without retarding the development of the moral character, may serve as a sensible pledge of it, still formless and unseen. (Schiller 1845: 10)
Very obviously the habituation from Secondness to Thirdness.
If the inner man is at one with himself, he will preserve his distinctive character in the widest universality of its expression, and the state will only be the interpreter of his fine instinct, the more intelligible formula of his internal legislation. (Schiller 1845: 14)
What a phrase - habituation, the forming of mental laws, is indeed a form of intrapersonal legislation, if lawfulness be the figure of Totality.
Man can be self-opposed in a twofold manner; either as savage, if his feelings rule his principles, or as barbarian, if his principles destroy his feelings. The savage despises art, and recognizes nature as his absolute [|] monarch: the barbarian mocks and dishonors nature, but, with a meanness unknown to the savage, he not unfrequently continues to be the slave of his slave. The civilized man makes a friend of nature, and respects her freedom, while he curbs only her caprice. (Schiller 1845: 14-15)
Civilized man has not made a friend of nature. This description would better suit various indigenous peoples of the world (e.g. the civilized man turning rainforest into monocrop farmlands, and the natives living in those forests).
Then if reason introduces its moral unity into physical society, it need not injure the manifoldness of nature. If nature strives to assert her manifoldness in the moral structure of society, she needs bring no detriment thereby to moral unity; the golden product, the final expression rests equidistant from uniformity and confusion. Then totality of character must be found in a people, who would be capable and worthy of exchanging the state of necessity for the state of freedom. (Schiller 1845: 15)
A play on unity, plurality and totality - one of many I expect to meet in this book and elsewhere in my future readings.
Crude and lawless instincts exhibit themselves in the lower and more numerous classes, freeing themselves with the dissolved restraint of civil order, and hastening with ungovernable madness to a state of brutal satisfaction. (Schiller 1845: 17)
Take care not to trample on the "uneducated classes" on your high horse.
On the other side the enlightened classes present the opposite aspect of laxness and a depravation of character, which is so much the more revolting, since culture itself is the source. I forget, what ancient or modern philosopher remarks, that the noblest is the vilest in its downfall; it is true also in a moral sense. A son of nature becomes, in his decline, quite frantic; a disciple of art contemptible. The intellectual illumination, which forms the boast, not wholly groundless, of the polished classes, evinces on the whole an influence on the disposition so little ennobling, that it rather lends maxims to strengthen the depravity. (Schiller 1845: 17)
The civilized man is the true savage, etc.
Selfishness has founded its system in the lap of the most refined sociality, and we experience all the contagions and calamities of society, without extracting therefrom truly kind affections. (Schiller 1845: 18)
More-or-less the core of phatic communion - cf. PC 5.4 on selfishness and 2.3 on the spuriousness of kind affections.
Civilization, far from placing us in freedom, only unfolds a new want with every power that it educates within us; the bonds of the physical pinch more and more painfully, so that the fear of losing smothers even the earnest desire for improvement, and the maxim of passive obedience passes for the highest wisdom of life. (Schiller 1845: 18)
"Granted the truth of the theory now believed to be true, that the very essence of all civilisation is to train out of man, the beast of prey, a tame and civilised animal, a domesticated animal, it follows indubitably that we must regard as the real tools of civilisation all those instincts of reaction and resentment, by the help of which the aristocratic races, together with their ideals, were finally degraded and overpowered; though that has not yet come to be synonymous with saying that the bearers of those tools also represented the civilisation. (Nietzsche 1921: 24)
The state and church, laws and customs, are now rent asunder; enjoyment is separated from labor, the means from the end, exertion from recompense. (Schiller 1845: 22)
Hard toil used to be enjoyable, etc.
Eternally fettered only to a single little fragment of the whole, man fashions himself only as a fragment; ever hearing only the monotonous whirl of the wheel which he turns, he never displays the full harmony of his being, and, instead of coining the humanity that lies in his nature, he is content with a mere impression of his occupation, his science. (Schiller 1845: 22)
Something along the lines of "The Consequences of Literacy" (Goody & Watt 1963), but based on something other than the increase in information (it is impossible for moderns to grasp the "whole" of culture, having to settle with but a random slice of it).
But the detriment of this mental tendency is not confined to knowledge and production, it extends no less to perception and action. (Schiller 1845: 25)
Just collecting variations of this triad. Jurgen Ruesch (1972) frequently employed this one.
Reason has performed all it can perform, when it discovers and exhibits the law; the courageous will and lively feeling must execute it. If truth would conquer in the warfare with force, itself must first become a force, and furnish an impulse to its counsel in the realm of phenomena; since impulses are the only inciting powers in the world of sensation. (Schiller 1845: 32)
Feeling, Will, and Reason. Once again, tending towards lawfulness.
Thus there must be something existing in the disposition of men, since it lies not in things, which impedes the reception of truth, though ever so forcibly convincing or luminous. An ancient sage has detected it, and it lies concealed in the significant expression, sapere aude. (Schiller 1845: 33)
"Dare to know" (here, "Dare to be wise"), associated with enlightenment by Kant. What it conceals is that people don't dare to know? "The more numerous part of mankind are too much harassed and exhausted by the contest with need, ever to gird themselves for a new and sterner contest with error" (ibid, 33-34). Thus, vita activa vs. vita contemplativa.
We rely upon daily experience, which almost universally shows clearness of intellect, quickness of perception, liberality and even dignity of conduct, united with a cultivated taste, and commonly the very opposite, with a taste that is uncultivated. (Schiller 1845: 41)
Adding adjectives to the triad.
The man without perception of form despises all grace in eloquence as corruption, all elegance in conversation as hypocrisy, all delicacy and loftiness of demeanor as exaggeration and affectation. (Schiller 1845: 42)
Very nearly the case of someone who considers expressions of sympathy spurious.
For the reason that taste respects not the substance but only the form, it gives the mind at last a dangerous tendency to neglect, for the most part, all reality, and to sacrifice truth and morality for an attractive exterior. It confounds all actual distinctions of things, and attaches merit only to appearance. (Schiller 1845: 43)
Another take on the triad, the case of Beauty being dominant over Goodness and Truth.
Therefore we must elevate ourselves to a pure conception of humanity, and since experience only discloses single conditions of single men, but never humanity, we must seek to discover from these its individual and changeable modes, the absolute and permanent, and to apprehend the necessary conditions of its being, by a rejection of all accidental limits. (Schiller 1845: 46)
"And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families." (Margaret Thatcher)
Person and condition - self and its definitions - which we consider as one and the same in the absolute being, and ever two in the finite. The condition varies amid all the stability of the person, the person is unmoved through all the variations of condition. (Schiller 1845: 48)
Or, "Character and Circumstances" (Bosanquet et al. 1895-1896).
We pass from rest to activity, from passion to indifference, from harmony to contradiction, but we are still the same, and whatever immediately results from us, remains. (Schiller 1845: 48)
Useful oppositions to clarify the choice of "Motility" for the earlier "Passion".
We are, not because we think, will, feel; we think, will, feel, not because we are. We are, because we are; we feel, think and will, because there is something else besides ourselves. (Schiller 1845: 49)
And yet another variation of the triad.
Although an infinite being, a divinity, cannot become, yet that tendency must be called divine, which has for its infinite task, to develop the special tokens of divinity, absolute promulgation of capacity, (reality of all that is possible) and absolute unity of manifestation, (necessity of all that is real). Man indisputably bears a potential divinity in his personality; the path to [|] divinity, if one can call that a path, which never finds its goal, is opened to him in the senses. (Schiller 1845: 50-51)
An admirable play with Possibility, Reality and Necessity.
His sensuous impressibility, considered for itself alone and distinct from the self-activity of the spirit, prevails no farther than to place him, who without it is only form, in communication with matter, but by no means uniting him to matter. So long as he only feels, only desires and acts from mere desire, he is nothing more than world, if we include under this name only the formless contents of time. (Schiller 1845: 51)
Sensuous impressibility = Motility. The self-activity of the spirit could be either Rationality (3) or self-consciousness (2). As to being "nothing more than world", this can be read as being causally driven, i.e. lacking free will.xi
We are incited to the performance of this twofold task of bringing into reality the necessary in ourselves, and of subjecting the actual out of ourselves to the law of necessity, by two opposing powers, which we call very properly, impulses, since they impel us to realize their object. The first of these impulses, which I will call the sensuous, results from man's physical being or from his sensuous nature, and is occupied in establishing him within the bounds of time and introducing him to matter; not giving him matter, since for that a free activity of person is appointed, which matter acknowledges and distinguishes from the permanent itself. (Schiller 1845: 53)
"Hence, in the first intuition, or the first stage of sensuous consciousness, we can pronounce nothing else about the object than simply this, that it is." (Chalybäus 1854: 352)
Since everything which exists in time is successive, it follows that something is, all else excluded. When we catch the tone of an instrument, only that single one of all the tones it can possibly give, is actual; so when man perceives the present, the whole infinite [|] extent of his possibility is restricted to that single mode of being. Then wherever this impulse works in exclusive directions, there the highest limitation necessarily exists; man in this condition is nothing but a simple quantity, an occupied moment of time - or rather he is not, since so long as perception rules him and time carries him along, his personality is removed. (Schiller 1845: 53-54)
"All the notes of a bar of a sing seem to the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place of a meteor seem to the beholder to be contained in the present. At the instant of the termination of such series no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past. Time, then, considered relatively to human apprehension, consists of four parts, viz. the obvious past, the specious present, the real present, and the future." (Clay 1882: 168)
For this condition of self-absence under the dominion of perception, language has the very striking expression - to be beside one's self, that is, to be out of his Me. Notwithstanding this form of speech can only be used where perception amounts to actual engrossment, and this condition is more perceptible from its duration, yet every one is beside himself, so long as he only perceives. To return from this condition to presence of mind, is properly called, to come to himself, that is to return to his Me, to reëstablish his person. We do not say of one who lies in a swoon, he is beside himself, but he is out of himself, that is, he is deprived of his Me, the former not being in the latter. Hence one who recovers from a swoon is only with himself, which may still consist with his being beside himself. (Schiller 1845: 54)
Eesti keeles ei ole sellist eristust: inimene on endast väljas, aga mitte endast välja läinud.
The second of these impulses, which can be called the form-impulse, results from the absolute being of man or from his rational nature, and is engaged in placing him in freedom, introducing harmony in the diversity of his manifestation, and maintaining his person in every variation of condition. Now since the last as an absolute and indivisible unity cann ever be in contradiction with itself, since through all eternity we are ourselves, then this impulse, which insists upon maintaining the personality, can never demand any other thing, than it must demand through all eternity; then it decides forever, as it decides for the present, and enjoins for the present, what it enjoins forever. (Schiller 1845: 55)
We wake up every day as ourselves because of this form-impulse?
As the first impulse only creates cases, the other gives laws; laws for every judgment concerning cognitions, laws for every will concerning actions. Suppose that we recognize an object, that we attribute an objective validity to a subjective condition, or that we act from cognitions, that we make the objective the determining ground of our condition - in either case we remove this condition from the jurisdiction of time, and concede [|] to it a reality for all men and all time, that is, universality and necessity. Feeling can only say - that is true for this subject and at this moment, and another moment, another subject can come to disprove the assertion of the present perception. But when thought once declared - that is, it decides forever and aye, and the validity of its declaration is warranted by the personality which defies all change. Inclination can only say - that is well for your individuality and your present need, but your individuality and present need is hurried along with the progress of change, which will make what you earnestly covet to-day, the object of your future aversion. But when the moral feeling says, that shall be, it decides forever and aye; when you recognize truth, because it is truth, and practise justice because it is justice, you have converted a single case into a precedent for all cases, and have lived out one moment as eternity. (Schiller 1845: 55-56)
These, then, are Secondness and Thirdness, respectively. The analogy: cases - sinsigns; laws - legisigns.
However emphatically and variously nature may affect our organs, all her manifoldness is lost upon us, because we seek nothing in her, but what we have placed in her, because we do not permit her to affect us inwardly from without, but rather strive towards her from within, with an impatient and froward reason. And should any one appear, who approaches her with calm, pure and open senses, and for that reason meets with a multitude of phenomena, which, in our system of anticipation we have overlooked, we are highly astonished that so many eyes should have noticed nothing in such a clear daylight. (Schiller 1845: 60)
I'm seeing the triad everywhere: calm senses (affective), pure heart (conative) and open mind (cognitive).
If the Greeks were amused by the bloodless strife of strength, fleetness, agility, and the nobler contest of talent, at the Olympic games, and if the Romans enjoyed the death-struggle of a conquered gladiator or of his Lybian rival, we can comprehend, from this single trait, why we must seek the ideal shapes of a Venus, a Juno, an Apollo, not in Rome, but in Greece. (Schiller 1845: 72)
Define:fleetness - rapidness of movement or activity: celerity, dispatch, expedition, expeditiousness, haste, hurry, hustle, quickness, rapidity, rapidness, speed, speediness, swiftness.
Then to sum up all briefly, man only plays, when, in the full signification of the world, he is a man, and he is only entirely a man when he plays. This principle, which at this moment perhaps appears paradoxical, will contain a great and deep meaning, when we have advanced so far as to apply it to the twofold seriousness of duty and destiny; it will uphold, I assure you, the whole fabric of æsthetic art, and of the yet difficult art of life. (Schiller 1845: 73)
Mängimine teeb inimesest inimese.
Thus the reflecting man imagines virtue, truth, felicity; but the acting man will practice only virtues, comprehend only truths, enjoy only happy days. (Schiller 1845: 76)
Another extension of the triad: enjoying felicity (feeling), practicing virtues (action), comprehending truths (thought).
The man who is unduly ruled by feelings, or the sensuously intended man, is then relaxed, and placed in freedom by form; he who is unduly ruled by laws, or the spiritually intended man, is relaxed and placed in freedom by matter. (Schiller 1845: 81)
Reminiscent of Peirce's "Men of Feeling, Action, Thought".
Those philosophers who blindly trust the guidance of their feeling in a consideration of this subject, can attain to no conception of Beauty, since they distinguish no single whole in the sum total of sensible impressions. The others who follow intellect exclusively, can never attain a conception of Beauty, since they perceive in the same total nothing but parts, and spirit and matter in their most perfect unity remain to them forever distinct. The first fear to abolish dynamical Beauty, [|] that is, as an active power, if they should separate, what is associate in feeling; the others fear to abolish logical Beauty, that is, as a conception, if they should combine what is distinct in intellect. The former will imagine Beauty as it acts; the latter will leave it to act, as it is imagined. Then both must miss the truth - the former, since they imitate infinite nature with their circumscribed reflective faculty; the latter, since they would restrict infinite nature according to their laws of thought. (Schiller 1845: 84-85)
Dynamic interpretant and logical interpretant, check. But where is the immediate interpretant?
Now suppose his sense is affected, and a single actuality obtains out of the infinite crowd of possible determinations. Something manifests itself. What was nothing but a mere possibility in the previous condition of simple determinableness, has now become an active ower - acquires a content; but at the same time, it maintains, as active power, a limit, as when mere possibility, it was unlimited. Then Reality is there, but infinity is lost. In order to delineate a shape in space, we must confine endless space; in [|] order to exhibit a special phase in time, we must divide the entirety of time. Then we attain to a reality only by limits, to position or actual establishment only by negation or exclusion, to determinateness only by the abolition of our free determinableness. (Schiller 1845: 87-88)
"Motivity, although it refers to objects exterior to ourselves, cannot immediately give us those objects. It relates only to phenomena, and to the influence of those phenomena on our own minds." (Chase 1863: 547) Secondness (Spontaneity), on the other hand, brings forth "a consciousness of Reality" (ibid, 548).
When then it is asserted concerning the Beautiful, that it affords man a passage from perception to reflection, it is by no means to be understood, as if the Beautiful could fill up the gulf which separates perception from reflection, passion from action; this gulf is infinite, and nothing universal can result from the single in eternity, nothing necessary from the fortuitous, without the mediation of a new and independent faculty. (Schiller 1845: 88)
A very general description of the process of consciousness, or, semiosis.
There is in man no other force than his Will, and that only which abolishes man, namely, death and each deprivation of consciousness, can take away his inmost freedom. (Schiller 1845: 91)
There is no unconscious mental event in man?
Unavoidably, unvitiably, inconceivably do the ideas of truth and right appear already in the period of sensuousness, and we perceive the eternal in time, and the necessary in the series of chance, without being able to say whence and how it arose. Thus feeling and consciousness appear, entirely without the assistance of the subject, and the origin of both lies as much beyond our will, as it lies beyond the sphere of our knowledge. (Schiller 1845: 92)
Define:unvitiably - null. Define:vitiate - spoil or impair the quality or efficiency of. So, "unspoilably" (rikkumatult). Substantially, he appears to be recognizing the Spontaneous Will.
Thus the mind passes from perception to reflection by an intermediate inclination (Stimmung), in which sensuousness and reason are active at the same time, but for this reason mutually destroy their determining power, and effect a negation through an opposition. This intermediate inclination, in which the mind is neither physically nor morally constrained, and yet is active in both ways, preëminently deserves to be called a free inclination; and if we call the condition of sensuous determination the physical, but that of reflective determination the logical and moral condition, we must call this condition of real and active determinableness, the æsthetic condition. (Schiller 1845: 96)
Have we found Spontaneity in the same interplay as the play-impulse?
The following may serve as explanation for the reader, who imperfectly comprehends the pure signification of this word, so much abused through ignorance. All things which can ever be objects of perception, may be considered under four different relations. A fact can relate directly to our sensuous condition, (our existence and well-being), that is its physical quality. Or it can relate to the understanding, and furnish us with a cognition; that is its logical quality. Or it can relate to our will, and be considered as an object of choice for a rational being; that it is its moral quality. Or finally, it can relate to the entirety of our different powers, without being a definite object for any single one of them; that is its æsthetic quality. (Schiller 1845: 96; ff)
I would not be surprised if this is exactly where Jan Mukařovský drew his theory from. I'd further emphasize "the entirety of our different powers", which once again points to Jakobson's poetic function, modelled after Mukařovský's aesthetic, being a meta-function. Just to reiterate: (1) physical; (2) moral; (3) logical; (4) aesthetic. (Only a few steps are missing from reaching Jakobson: (5) metalingual; (6) phatic.)
So there is a culture for health, a culture for understanding, a culture for morality, a culture for taste and for beauty. The latter has for its design, to bring out the totality of our sensuous and spiritual powers in the greatest possible harmony. (Schiller 1845: 97; ff)
Very suggestive. Continuing the above-mentioned series, we'd also have a culture for linguistics (Chase, with his compulsive work with dictionaries, would be a good example), and a culture for purely social interaction (i.e. phatic media culture).
There is, as I remarked in the beginning of the previous letter, a twofold condition of determinableness and a twofold condition of determinateness. I can now substantiate this principle. The mind is determinable only so far as generally it is not determined; but it is also determinable so far as it is not exclusively determined, that is, not limited by its determination. The former is mere indeterminateness, (it is without limits, because it is without reality); the latter is the æsthetic determinableness, (it has no limits since it combines all reality). (Schiller 1845: 98)
Somewhat reminiscent of Jakobson's take on Peircean categories (icon, index, symbol), adding a fourth (artifice).
But as the man, of whom we speak here, is not yet capable of such an abstraction, whatever he does not find in his sensuous cognitive sphere, or does not yet seek above that int he sphere of pure reason, he will seek and to all appearance find beneath that, within his sphere of feeling. Sensuousness indeed shows him nothing, which might be its own cause, or give law to itself, but it shows him something, which knows of no cause and respects no law. As then he can bring the interrogating intellect to repose through no final and interior cause, he brings it at least to silence through the idea of causelessness; and he remains stationary within the blind necessitation of matter, as he cannot yet comprehend the elevated necessity of reason. Since sensuousness knows no other aim than its own interest, and feels impelled to it by no other cause than blind chance, it makes the former the determinator of its actions, and the latter the ruler of the world. (Schiller 1845: 120)
Another way of putting it: "All the impressions of mere Motivity are single and momentary. Merely as receptive beings, we neither distinguish parts of objects nor unite different impressions together. If we feel, our sensation is a unit, - merely a feeling, and nothing more; if we see, we see an object as a unit, and so with every impression on the senses." (Chase 1863: 548)
So long as man in his first physical condition, is only passively receptive of the world of sense, only perceives, he is still completely one with it; and there is no world for him, because he himself is only world. If, in his æsthetical state, he places or contemplates it beyond himself, his personality is for the first time distinct, and there appears to him a world, because he has ceased to identify himself with it. (Schiller 1845: 123)
Possibly an explanation for the Unity in Motivity, and Plurality in Spontaneity: Self-consciousness is a Secondness in Chase's system. That is, perhaps unity, plurality and totality can be read as (1) being one with the world; (2) being distinct from the world; and then (3) becoming a... well, here I can't refer to an instance (which I sadly didn't quote) where Schiller says something to the effect that the sensuous condition world determines man but in the aesthetic condition man determines the world.
The tender bud will lovingly expand, not where man the troglodyte immures himself in caverns, forever single, and never finding humanity beyond himself, nor where man the nomad roves in caravans, forever plural, and never finding humanity within himself - but there only, where he communes with himself in his own dwelling, and when he issues from it, speaks in sympathy with the whole race. (Schiller 1845: 129)
A magnificent variation on Unity, Plurality and Totality.
The reality of things is the work of things; the show of things is the work of man; and a mind that is entertained with show, is no longer pleased by that which it receives, but by that which it does. (Schiller 1845: 131)
I vaguely recall one of Lotman's attempts at a definition of art, involving placing a stone upon a treestump. Both the stone and the treestump are "the work of things", placing one on top of the other is "the work of man".
To the question then, "how far may show exist in the moral world," the answer is both brief and conclusive, in so far as it is æsthetic show, that is, show which will neither spurn reality nor needs to be spurned by it. Then æsthetic show can never become dangerous to the truth of morality; and where we find it otherwise, it can be shown without difficulty, that the show was not æsthetical. For example, none but a stranger to polite intercourse, would regard the assurances of civility, which is an universal form, as tokens of personal regard, and when deceived, find fault with the deception. But only a bungler in polite intercourse would call falsehood to his aid, in order to be polite, and flatter, in order to be agreeable. A sense for independent show is wanting in the first, hence he can only give significance to it by supposing it reality; and reality is wanting to the second, and he would readily compensate it by show. (Schiller 1845: 135)
Touching upon the spuriousness of expressions of sympathy in phatic communion: only someone not familiar with politeness would confuse a casual conversation with a show of friendship. To take one of the most popular illustrations: someone who answers a "Hi! How are you?" with a run-down of their mental state and bodily ails didn't really catch the meaning (or rather meaninglessness) of the question.
They not only inveigh against the deceitful coloring, which conceals the truth and pretends to spurn reality: they also wax violent against the beneficent show, which fills vacuity and covers wretchedness, and against that ideal, which ennobles a common reality. (Schiller 1845: 136)
Define:inveigh - speak or write about (something) with great hostility; fulminate, declaim, protest, rail, rage, remonstrate, storm. Merriam-Webster: ""Invehere" literally means "to carry in," and when "inveigh" first appeared in English, it was also used to mean "to carry in" or "to introduce." Extended meanings of "invehere," however, are "to force one's way into," "attack," and "to assail with words," and that's where the current sense of "inveigh" comes from. A closely related word is "invective," which means "insulting or abusive language." This word, too, ultimately comes from "invehere.""
A false morality justly offends their austere sense of truth; only it is a pity, that they should esteem courtesy a part of this falseness. (Schiller 1845: 136)
Very well put - condolences are forgeries, "avowedly spurious", only if you have an over-bloated sense of truthfulness.
More power of abstraction, more freedom of heart, more energy of will is demanded in striving for independent show, than man requires in restricting himself to reality; and the latter must already lie behind him, if he would press forward to the former. (Schiller 1845: 138)
Yet another variation: (1) freedom of heart; (2) energy of will; (3) power of abstraction.
When only collecting material for a future use and anticipating this in imagination, he transgresses indeed the present moment, but without transgressing time; he enjoys more, but still no differently than before. But while he draws shape into his enjoyment, and at the same time regards the form of objects which satisfy his desire, he has not only enhanced his enjoyment in extent and degree, but also ennobled it in kind. (Schiller 1845: 139)
Now I feel personally attacked, and anticipate using this quote for meta-blogging.
If no hunger gnaws the lion, and no beast of prey provokes to battle, his slumbering energy creates for itself an object; he fills the echoing waste with vehement roaring, and his exuberant power [|] satiates itself in an aimless effusion. The insect revels joyously in the sunshine, and certainly it is not the note of desire only which we hear in the bird's melodious warbling. In these emotions there is undeniable freedom, but not generally freedom from need, only from a definite, external need. The beast labors, when a want is the incitement to its activity, and it plays, when profusion of vigor is this incitement, when superfluous life is its own stimulus to activity. (Schiller 1845: 139-140)
"Free and aimless" roaring. Superfluous life is its own stimulus to activity = autotelic. "The instinct of self-display is manifested by many of the higher social or gregarious animals, especially, perhaps, though not only, at the time of mating. Perhaps among mammals the horse displays it most clearly. The muscles of all parts are strongly innervated, the creature holds himself erect, his neck is arched, his tail lifted, his motions become superfluously vigorous and extensive, he lifts his hoofs high in air, as he parades before the eyes of his fellows." (McDougall 1916: 62)
Yet so far as this play of fancy includes nothing of form, and its whole attraction consists in an unconstrained flow of images, it pertains, although peculiar to man alone, merely to his animal life, and only demonstrates his immunity from every external sensuous constrained, without yet developing an indepnedent creative power. (Schiller 1845: 141)
See "that loose flux of casual and disconnected material that floats through our minds in relaxed moments" (Dewey 1910: 2).
Now a fairer necessity knits the sexes together, and sympathy of heart assists in preserving the alliance, which was only begun by the capricious and fickle moods of desire. Shape, released from its gloomy fetters, is recognized by the tranquil eye, soul looks into soul, and the generous interchange of inclination supplants a selfish traffic in pleasure. Desire enlarges and elevates itself to love, as humanity beams from its object; and a sordid advantage over sense is despised for a nobler triumph over will. The need of pleasing subjects the man of force to the mild jurisdiction of taste; he can make booty of pleasure, but love must be a gift. (Schiller 1845: 144)
Evidently addressing the well-known transition from sexual desire (and conquest) to friend- or companionship (coupling).
Hatred itself regards the gentle appeal of honor, the sword of the conqueror spares a disarmed foe, and a hospitable hearth smokes for the stranger, on the dreaded shore where death was once his only welcome. (Schiller 1845: 145)
A beautiful nautical image.
If need already impels man to society, and reason plants social principles within him, yet Beauty alone can impart to him a social character. (Schiller 1845: 145)
"It is probably not necessary now to labour the proof of the fact that man is a gregarious animal in literal fact, that he is as essentially gregarious as the bee and the ant, the sheep, the ox, and the horse." (Trotter 1921: 112) - a strong emphasis on "now", as this must not have seemed self-evident to Schiller and his contemporaries.
Taste alone introduces harmony into society, since it establishes harmony in the individual. All other representative forms mutilate [|] man, since they are founded either exclusively upon the sensuous, or upon the spiritual part of his being; only the expression of Beauty makes a whole out of him, since hereto, both his natures must harmonize. All other forms of communication mutilate society, since they relate either exclusively to the private susceptibility, or to the dexterity of single members - consequently, to that which is distinctive between man and man; only the communication of Beauty can combine society, since it relates to that which is common to all. (Schiller 1845: 145-146)
Not sure if over-indulging on his admiration of beauty or simply being edgy.
When we cognize, we are in a state of activity, and our attention is directed to an object, to a relation between separate modes. When we perceive, we are in a state of passivity, and our attention (so to call that, which is not a conscious operation of the spirit) is only directed to our condition, so far as that is affected by being receptive of an impression. (Schiller 1845: 152)
Object-subject = passive; Subject-object = active.
There is a scientific cognition, which rests upon positive ideas and recognized principles, and a popular cognition, which only depends upon feelings more or [|] less developed. What is often very conductive to the latter, may be diametrically opposed to the former. (Schiller 1845: 153-154)
Science and popular science. Teadus ja aime.
Popular instruction is compatible with this freedom. As the demagogue or popular author (an appelation, under which I comprehend each one, who does not address exclusively the learned) speaks to a public not previously prepared, and does not select his reader like the other, but must take him as he finds him, he can only presuppose in him the universal conditions of thought, only the universal incentives to attention, but no peculiar aptness in reasoning, no acquaintance yet with definite conceptions, no interest in definite objects. (Schiller 1845: 156)
The differentia of science and popular science lies in the intended audience.
The statement is free, when the intellect defines indeed with precision the consecution of ideas, but according to laws so hidden, that the imagination appears to act in a manner entirely capricious, and to follow only the serial chance of time. (Schiller 1845: 157)
Define:consecution - a sequence or succession of events or things; a logical sequence of deductions; inference. The noun form of Dewey's adjective, consecutiveness.
On the other hand, in order to satisfy the intellect and educe cognition, the discourse must have a spiritual part, significance, and this it acquires through the conceptions, by whose means those intuitions are related to each other and united in a whole. (Schiller 1845: 159)
Reminiscent of that dictum that the "self" is the proper object of theology.
Thus does the gifted author create the lordliest order out of anarchy itself, and erects a solid fabric upon an even vacillating foundation - on the ever flowing stream of imagination. (Schiller 1845: 160)
Nearly approximating the subject of vague uncharted nebulae.
The æsthetic author presents us the data from which he proceeds, rather as possible and desirable, than convincing us of their reality or even necessity; for his thought announces itself only as an arbitrary creation of the imagination, which, for itself alone, is never in a condition to warrant the reality of rperesentations. The popular author awakes in us the belief that a thing is really so, but he succeeds no further; for he makes the truth of that statement sensible to us, but not absolutely certain. Feeling indeed can teach what is, but never what must be. The philosophical author elevates that belief to conviction, for he proves upon indubitable grounds, that a thing is necessarily so. (Schiller 1845: 161)
Connecting Possibility, Reality and Necessity with a series of authors: the artist, the writer, and the philosopher.
Each kind can command admiration in its own definite circle - nay, as to their internal capacity, both may be on a perfect equality; but it would smack of impossibility, if we desire that a work which tasked the thinker, should at the same time grace the leisure hour of the mere bel-esprit. (Schiller 1845: 163)
Define:bel esprit - a witty person (archaic); a person with a fine and gifted mind; a clever, cultured person.
The teacher, strictly so called, must accommodate himself to the present exigency; he goes upon the supposition of incapacity; as, on the contrary, the author demands from his reader or hearer a certain integrity and cultivation. Hence he does not confine his action to the mere communication of lifeless conceptions; he embraces the animate with lively energy and takes possession of the whole man, his intellect, his feeling and his will. (Schiller 1845: 167)
Ψυχή = θυμός, φρήν, νόος. Psukhḗ = thūmós, phrḗn, nóos.
Whoever imparts to me his knowledge in a scientific form, convinces me indeed, that he properly comprehends, and knows how to maintain it; but he who is prepared at the same time to communicate it in an æsthetic form, not only proves that he is competent to dispense it, but also that he has taken it up into his own nature, and is capable of representing it in his actions. There is no other path for the results of thought to the will and into the life, but through the self-active formative power. Nothing but what is already a living fact within us, can become so without us, and it is with creations of the spirit as with organic formations - the blossom always precedes the fruit. (Schiller 1845: 168)
Something to live by. I don't know about aesthetic form but for me the best sign of full comprehension is the ability to explain it my research object to anyone with as few words as is necessary to make it clear.
But woman does not resign the most neglected form for the richest subject; and the whole interior structure of her being justifies the severe demand. This sex, which, even if it did not govern by Beauty, must at any rate be called the fair sex, because Beauty governs it, carries everything that presents itself, before the tribunal of perception, and totally rejects whatever does not commend itself to that, or offends it. (Schiller 1845: 169)
Women be perceivin'.
Substance without form is indeed only a half possession, for the noblest sciences lie buried, like dead treasures, in a head which is unable to give them any shape. On the contrary, form without substance is only the shadow of a possession, and all possible dexterity in expression can avail him nothing, who has nothing to express. (Schiller 1845: 172)
The docent filled to the brim with knowledge but who doesn't publish anything vs. the professor with an extensive bibliography but if you've read one piece you've read them all.
But the judgment of the connoisseur will not allow this testimony of ardent self-love. With obdurate criticism he destroys the legerdemain of the heated imagination, and sheds a light down the deep shaft of science and experience, where, concealed from the unconsecrated, bubbles up the fountain of all true Beauty. (Schiller 1845: 174)
Define:legerdemain - skilful use of one's hands when performing conjuring tricks; deception; trickery.
From the uprightness with which the taste has exercised its control over the Will, one could not fail to concede a certain respect for its claims, and it is this very respect of which inclination now takes advantage, with captious logic, at the expense of conscientious duty. (Schiller 1845: 178)
Define:captious - tending to find fault or raise petty objections; "a captious teacher"; critical, fault-finding, quibbling, niggling, cavilling, carping.
If, then, we survey the different forms in which morality may be expressed, we can refer them all to these two. Either sensuousness makes the move in the mind, that something should or should not take place, and the will takes action thereupon, according to the law of reason - or the reason makes the move, and the Will obeys it, without making inquiry of the senses. (Schiller 1845: 193)
Two directions of determination. In other systems these kinds of leaps are not considered. Hodgson captures it better: the first is spontaneous redintegration and the second deliberate redintegration.
Representation of Sorrow - merely as Sorrow - is never the design of art, but it is extremely important as an instrument for that design. The representation of the supersensuous is the final design of art, and the tragic art in particular effects this, by making objective to us moral independence of nature's laws in the condition of emotion. (Schiller 1845: 201)
It kinda looks like the translator gave up half-way through the book. Ah, yes, the condition of emotion.
We can hardly believe it in a French tragic hero, that he suffers, for he delivers himself concerning his state of mind, like the calmest of men; and his incessant regard to the impression which he makes upon others, never allows him to leave to his own nature its freedom. The kings, princesses and heroes of a Corneille and Voltaire, never forget their rank in the most vehement passion, and they put off their humanity far sooner than their dignity. They are like the kings and emperors in the old picture-books, who go to bed with their crowns on. (Schiller 1845: 203)
Something I took issue in Herbert's Dune series - everyone's perfectly cognizant of everything and everyone around them, including the latter's state of mind.
In the Homeric poetry and in the tragedians, a suffering nature speaks in true, sincere and impressive accents, to our hearts; all the passions have a free play, and no feeling is restrained by the rule of propriety. The heroes are as susceptible as other men to all the sorrows of humanity; and this is the very thing that makes them heroes, that they feel suffering strongly and deeply, and yet are not vanquished by it. They love life as ardently as the rest of us, but this sentiment does not govern them so much that they cannot resign it, if the duties of honor or of manhood demand such a surrender. (Schiller 1845: 204)
High praise, but not very reliable - Schiller's admiration of everything Grecian knows no bounds.
It is nature which eternally makes the first demand upon man, and which never need be refused: for the man - before he is anything else - is a susceptible being. (Schiller 1845: 205)
A brief statement of Motivity: perception, being receptive to nature (world).
Reason makes the second demand upon him, for he is a rational-susceptive being, a moral person; and it is the duty of the reason to govern, not to be governed by, nature. (Schiller 1845: 205)
"Govern" referring to man's "internal legislation" (above, 14).
Then afterwards, if the right of nature has been first admitted, and if, secondly, the reason has maintained its own, it is allowable for propriety to make the third demand upon man, and to enjoin upon him regard for society, in the expression of his feelings as well as his intentions, that he may appear as a civilized being. (Schiller 1845: 205)
Define:propriety - conformity to conventionally accepted standards of behaviour or morals. It's in line with the dimension of "action" but with a curious social orientation, somewhat reminiscent of Peirce's Thirdness which, too, had a social component (e.g. the society at large deciding the final interpretant). Note, too, that this triad (nature, Reason, propriety) repeats the distinctions between savage, barbarian and civilized man (above, 14-15).
Many of our romances and tragedies, especially of the so-called Dramas (intermediates between comedy and tragedy), and the popular domestic pictures, belong to this class. They only produce exhaustion of the lachrymal sack, and a delightful alleviation of the vessels: but the spirit goes away empty, and the nobler power of man thereby not in the least strengthened. (Schiller 1845: 206)
Define:lachrymal - connected with weeping or tears; concerned with the secretion of tears. The poet-philosopher practicing physiological defamiliarization.
(Tr.) - As illustrating what may be called dynamical preaching, and the spurious devotion, which, like the cannon-fever, only seizes raw recruits - the whole of Kant's passage is worth quoting. With respect to spiritual edification, he says: - "When a fit signification is sought for this term, scarce any other can be assigned than this: Edification is the ethical effect wrought upon our inner man by Devotion. This effect cannot be the mental movement or emotion, (for this is already involved in the conception of devotion), although the majority of the soi-disant devout (called upon this very account Devotees), place all edification just in this sentimental movement. (Weiss 1845: 206; ff)
Significant for being the very few wild tokens of "spurious" I've come across, and making an analogous argument as Malinowski does with regard to mourning (expressions of sympathy).
A suffering man, represented as weeping and lamenting, will but feebly move us, because sighs and tears already reduce the pain in the province of animality. A mute and stifled pain seizes us much more powerfully, where we find no help in nature, but are obliged to take refuge in something which lies out beyond nature: and in this very reference to the supersensuous lies Pathos and the power of tragedy. (Schiller 1845: 214)
"The longer it is since the last time you cried, or the more generally you think about your crying experiences as a whole, the more likely you are to consider crying as helpful. But if the crying event is fairly recent, people are less likely to report feeling better afterwards; they often report feeling much worse than before they cried." (theconversation.com) - Not exactly an effective analgesic.
Wishing, however, to do one more thing for the sake of glory, and to quit time and space with eclat, he [Peregrine Proteus] gave out that he would burn himself at Olympia: which he did, A. D. 168. (Schiller 1845: 227; ff)
Define:éclat - brilliant display or effect. "The "burst" sense is reflected in the earliest English sense of the word, meaning "ostentatious display or publicity." This sense found its own idiomatic usage in the phrase "to make an éclat," which at one time meant "to create a sensation." (Merriam-Webster)
But this possibility lies in every strong expression of freedom and volitive power; and wherever a poet meets with such, he has found an appropriate object for his representation. (Schiller 1845: 235)
Define:volitive - denoting a verb or mood that expresses a desire. Or: of or relating to the will; expressing a wish or permission. An alternative spelling of "volitional".
"No man must must," said the Jew Nathan to the Dervis, and the expression is true far more extensively, than one might at first allow. The Will is the distinctive feature of man, and reason itself is only its eternal rule. All nature acts rationally; man's prerogative is only, that he acts rationally with consciousness and will. All other things must; man is the being who wills. (Schiller 1845: 241)
Odd, this. Does nature act rationally? Does only man have Will?
For this reason nothing is so unworthy of a man, as to suffer violence, for violence disannuls him. Whoever inflicts it upon us, calls into question nothing less than humanity; whoever cowardly submits to it, forfeits his humanity. (Schiller 1845: 241)
Reminiscent of the Islamic precept that violence against one muslim is one done against all: "Hadith 37, The Muslims are like one man, if his eyes complains then the whole of him complains, and if his head complains then the whole of him complains (Muslim); Hadith 38, The example of the believer is like the body, if part of it hurts the rest of it is summoned (Ahmed)" (Hadith Commentary) - something alike pertains to human rights.
[...] if it has succeeded, arrayed in the seductive disguise of spiritual Beauty, in forcing itself into the very penetralia of moral legislation, and there poisoning sacred principles at their sources [...] (Schiller 1845: 251)
Define:penetralia - the innermost parts of a building; a secret or hidden place.
"Now how does the Infinite become related precisely to a sensuous object, if the latter, as I have shown, is less than the capacity of sense and imagination? The enormous leap from the sensuous as symbol into the supersensuous as the symbolized - which Pathognomy and Physiognomy must make every moment - is made possible only by Nature, and by no mediate idea; for example, between the mimic expression of hatred and hatred itself - nay, between word and idea, there is no equal. (Paul; in Weiss 1845: 263; ff)
Signifier and signified. In a footnote, the translator added this quote from Jean Paul's Vorschule der Ästhetik (1804).
The Low stands yet one degree below the Common, and is distinguished from it by the fact, that it indicates not only something negative, not only a want of the spiritual and noble, but something positive, namely rudeness of feeling, bad manners and degraded sentiments. (Schiller 1845: 268)
After a while, a triad: rude feelings, bad manners (conduct), and degraded sentiments (ideas, higher feelings).
Still we must accurately distinguish the low in disposition from the low in action. The first is beneath æsthetic dignity, the last may often very well agree with it. Slavery is low, but a slavish disposition in freedom is contemptible; on the contrary, a slavish occupation without such a disposition is not so; rather may lowness of condition, united with grandeur of disposition, pass into Sublimity. The master of Epictetus, who chastised him, acted in a low way, and the beaten slave evinced an elevated soul. True greatness beams from a lowly lot all the more nobly, and the artist need not fear to represent his hero with a mean outside, if he is only assured, that the expression of internal worth is at his bidding. (Schiller 1845: 274)
Greatness in the lowly is all the more admirable.
Thus the impression of a painting is not only more lively than that of a poem, but the painter also cannot make the internal so apparent by his natural signs, as the poet can by his arbitrary signs, and yet the internal alone can reconcile us with its external development. (Schiller 1845: 275)
Augustine's signa data (arbitrary) and signa naturalia (natural).
All qualities of things, which make them æsthetic, are comprehended under four classes, which, according to their objective difference, as well as according to their different subjective relations, produce for our passivity or activity, a satisfaction different not only in strength, but also in value, and are also unequally adapted for the purpose of the fine arts. These classes are, the Agreeable, the Good, the Sublime and the Beautiful. (Schiller 1845: 279)
Too bad these aren't with correlation with his earlier system of physical, logical, moral and aesthetic qualities (above, 97; ff). Or if they are, their identity or approximations would require some effort to explicate (preferable with the aid of a later translation).
The good, we may say, pleases by a pure form that is according to reason, the beautiful by a form that is similar to reason, the agreement by no form at all. The good is thought, the beautiful regarded, the agreeable only felt. The first pleases in idea, the second is contemplation, the third in material perception. (Schiller 1845: 280)
Once again it is the second term that is problematic: regarding the beautiful in contemplation is only vaguely in the dimension of action.
The universal bias of all men towards emotion, the power of sympathetic feeling, which impels us in nature to the spectacle of sorrow, fear and horror, which attracts us in art so astrongly, which charms us in the theatre, and exercises our taste so extensively in the delineations of great misfortunes, - all this is indicative of a fourth source of pleasure, which neither the Agreeable, the Good nor the Beautiful are competent to create. (Schiller 1845: 287)
Sympathy still in the sense of "pity", or "feeling with" a grief, e.g. compassion.
Hence the great value of a philosophy of life, which weakens the feeling of our individuality by continual reference to universal laws, which teaches us to lose our little Self in the coherence of the great whole, and thereby puts is in a state to treat with ourselves as with strangers. This sublime temper of the soul is the lot of strong and philosophic minds, who have learned, by continuous labor upon themselves, to subdue the selfish impulse. (Schiller 1845: 313)
Becoming lost in the greater unit.
Experience gives two opposite causes, which hinder enjoyment at emotion: either if compassion is too feebly excited, or so strongly, that the communicated emotion passes over into the vivacity of an original emotion. The former may lie either in the weakness of the impression which we receive from original suffering, in which case we say that our heart remains cold, and we are sensible of neither sorrow nor enjoyment; or it lies in the strong perceptions which resist the given impression, and weaken or entirely destroy the enjoyment of compassion by their preponderance in the mind. (Schiller 1845: 317)
The communication of emotions described as "avowedly spurious" is probably due to the latter - mere expressions of sympathy (e.g. formulae of condolences) produce a weak impression.
So much for the causes which restrict our compassion, and obstruct enjoyment at tragic emotions. The conditions must now be enumerated, under which compassion is demanded and the pleasure of emotions is most infallibly and strongly aroused. All compassion presupposes representations of suffering, and its degree of intensity depends upon their liveliness, truth, completeness and duration. (Schiller 1845: 323)
Compassion is contingent on the show of emotions. Too superficial a showmanship, e.g. purely verbal, will be difficult to sympathize, and doing so will turn out "avowedly spurious".
The more lively the representations are, the more decisively the mind is invited to activity, the more its sensuousness is attracted, and then the more powerfully the moral ability is called into opposition. But representations of suffering may subsist in two different ways, which are not equally favorable to vivacity of impression. Sufferings which we witness affect us more strongly than those of which we first make experience through narration or description. The former abolish the free play of our imagination, and press to our hearts by the shortest route, as they come into direct contact with our sensuousness. In a narration, on the contrary, the particular is first elevated to the universal, from which it is afterward cognized; then much strength is already withdrawn from the impression by this necessary operation of the intellect. (Schiller 1845: 324)
Affirmation of my previous comment. Note that Schiller is here, too, playing on Augustine's natural and artificial signs.
But we can receive the most lively impressions of a suffering, without being brought to a notable degree of compassion, if these impressions are wanting in truth. We must create for ourselves a conception of the suffering in which we should participate; the requisite for this is its agreement with something which existed previously within us. That is to say, the possibility of compassion depends upon the perception or supposition of a likeness between us and the subject of the suffering. Where this likeness can be cognized, compassion is always the necessary result: where it is wanting, compassion is impossible. The greater and the more apparent the likeness, the more lively our compassion is; the less considerable the former is, the weaker the latter is. If we would feel another's emotion reproduced in ourselves, we must have all the internal conditions for such an emotion, in order that the external causes which gave, by their union, origin to another's emotion, may also exert a like influence upon us. We must be able, without doing violence to ourselves, to exchange our personality with him, to transfer for the moment our own Me into his condition. But how is it possible for us to have perception of another's condition, if we have not previously found ourselves in this other person? (Schiller 1845: 325)
Sembling or empathy, the ability to put oneself into the other's shoes, so to say. It's kinda difficult to grasp the death of an acquaintance's father if your own is in perfect health and you are unable to imagine yours deceased, for example. In other words, compassion requires some personal impact.
We seldom arrive at truth except through extremes; we must first exhaust error - and often madness - before we can attain the radiant goal of a peaceful wisdom. (Schiller 1845: 342)
A truism about truth.
Raphael has taught me to think and I am in the path to lament my creation. Creation? - That is only a sound without sense, which my reason cannot admit. There was a time when I was conscious of nothing, when none were conscious of me; so we say, I was not. That time is no more, and so we say that I am created. But we know nothing more of the millions who have appeared for centuries, and yet we say they are. (Schiller 1845: 345)
One of the first philosophical pieces Schelling wrote was "Of the I as Principle of Philosophy, or the Unconditional in Human Knowledge", which I'll have to read when I get to isemus. The beginning of this letter sounded way too warm for Goethe, and of course Schiller and Goethe, turns out, were "Warm Brothers".
Hithero I was content with the modest fame of being called a good son of my family, a friend of my friends, a useful member of society; you have changed me into a citizen of the universe. (Schiller 1845: 347)
Universumikodanik.
The universe is a thought of the Deity. Since this ideal spirit-form has stepped forth into reality and the new-born world has embodied the draught of its maker - pardon me this human representation - it is the business of every thinking being to discover the first outline in this existing whole, the principle of the machine, the unity in the composition; to search for the law in the phenomenon and to analyze the structure to its ground-plan. (Schiller 1845: 354)
In other words, the universe is a simulation. Or as the pythagoreans would have it, it is made of numbers.
Each coming spring, which attracts the budding plant from the earth's bosom, gives me insight into the sad enigma of death, and confutes my anxious fears of an eternal sleep. (Schiller 1845: 355)
Define:confute - prove (a person or an assertion or accusation) to be wrong.
Intuition of the beautiful, the true, the excellent, is a momentary possession of those qualities. We ourselves step into whatever condition we perceive. We are possessors of a virtue, authors of an action, discoverers of a truth, holders of a happiness, at the moment when we entertain a conception of them. We ourselves become the object of our perceptions. (Schiller 1845: 356)
The philosophical equivalent of "you are what you eat". And another variant of the triad: holding happiness (emotion), authoring action, discovering truth (thought).
Then Love - the fairest phenomenon in the animated creation, the omnipotent magnet in the world of spirit, the source of devotion and the noblest virtue - Love is only the reflection of this single power, an attraction of the excellent, founded on an instantaneous exchanges of personality, a reciprocity of being. (Schiller 1845: 360)
Love as an exchange of personality is something I can get behind; it is sweetly embodied in the lyrics sa ei aimagi mis minust sinu sisse jääb.
The whole sum of harmonious activity, which exists together in the divine Substance, is isolated in Nature, the fac-simile of that Substance, into innumerable grades and measures. Nature (allow me this figurative expression) is an infinitely divided God. (Schiller 1845: 364)
One of the very few statements about god that I could get behind. It makes some intuitive sense in light of the Unity, Plurality and Totality triad.
Our whole knowledge, as all philosophers agree, consists in a conventional illusion, with which nevertheless the strictest truth may subsist. Our purest conceptions are by no means images of things, but only their necessarily determined and coëxisting signs. Neither God, nor the human soul, nor the world are actually that which we consider them. Our ideas of those things are only the endemic forms, through which the planet which we inhabit transmits them to us. Our brain belongs to this planet, consequently also the idioms of our conceptions which lie stored there. But the power of the soul is peculiar, necessary, and ever like itself; the caprice of the material through which it expresses itself, does not alter the eternal laws by which that expression is made, so long as this caprice does not contradict itself, so long as the symbol corresponds to the thing symbolized. Just as reflection unfolds the relations of the dioms, these relations must actually exist in the things themselves. Then truth is no property of the idioms, but of [|] the results - not the similarity of the symbol with the thing symbolized, of the conception with the object, but the agreement of this conception with the laws of reflection. In the same way mathematics makes use of figures which exist nowhere but upon paper, and finds by means of them what exists in the actual world. What similarity, for example, have the letters A and B, the signs: A =, + and -, with the fact that constitutes our result? (Schiller 1845: 369-370)
I am very much looking forward to Alessandro Topa's take on Schiller's influence on Peirce. This passage, I suspect, he must have loved.
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