The in-text references below are to the Appendix, Diagrams 1 5.

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reason can interact with the phenomenal world of the understanding and sensibility. In this sense the transcendental power of reason, or more generally, the noumenal world, is constantly active, underlies and is relevant to daily life. Despite this, however, it is not directly relevant to aesthetic judgement, according to Kant. Aesthetic judgement occurs at a lower level than the practical reason, and in fact also at a slightly lower level than the conceptualising activity of the theoretical understanding. There is thus no interface between aesthetic judgement and the noumenal, except perhaps in three special cases. Firstly, for instance, if we wish to evaluate the value of an aesthetic judgement; secondly, in the expression of the ineffable aesthetic ideas of reason, by

making use of the allegorical abilities of the practical reason; thirdly, when we presuppose the purposiveness of nature, and judge it according to this ascribed criterion.

In our first possible interpretation of Schiller, we might identify the sense drive with the complex made up, in Kant, of the imagination, sensible intuitions, sensibility and sensation (Diagram 3). This would leave the formal drive as covering the

understanding and its concepts, though not, as pointed out already, the schemata.32 Thus, perceptual judgement would take place once the sense drive had handed its

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sensation over to the formal drive for conceptualisation. This scheme does not allot a place to the practical reason (or Will, in Kant’s sense) or the transcendental ego, however. There is some initial plausibility in this. We can try to map Kant’s system onto Schiller’s drives, as shown in table 3. Note that our previous references to the influence of Reinhold’s conception of the will has probably accounted already for the ambiguous position of the last three terms.

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Table 3: How Kant’s theory of the mind relates to Schiller’s theory of drives

Kant Schiller

imagination sense drive

sensible intuitions^ work together «

sensibility tt

sensation Ct

theoretical reason form drive

understanding J work together ct

concepts C6 ■s practical reason (6 moral judgement y work together tt

freedom form drive + ambiguous position

will tt

schemata, produced by imagination [ambiguous position, probably sense

drive]

In Kant, the aesthetic reflective judgement takes place in circumstances where the imagination has derived some appearance from sensible intuitions, but the

understanding has not applied any concepts to this material. This represents a pleasurable moment of free play among the cognitive powers. We could draw a parallel between this process and Schiller’s description of a point o f balance between the simultaneously reciprocating and competing drives, neither of which succeeds in gaining control of either specific sense experience or its conceptualisation. This is the moment o f tension that constitutes the play drive. P.T. Murray regards the activity of free play as evidence that Schiller agreed with Kant's description o f where and how the appreciation or identification of beauty takes place, though he had simplified

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Kant’s account o f the faculties.33 However, in other respects the two theories do not match so conveniently. To Kant, the beautiful was 'the effect resulting from the free play of our cognitive powers'.34 Schiller, however, involved the practical reason alongside the cognitive powers while the drives are interacting, and as raw data (sense drive) are transformed (form drive) into experience, objects or reactions.

Remembering what Schiller wrote in the Kallias Letters, it is unlikely that the form drive can be equated with either the theoretical reason or understanding. There the practical reason directly perceived the perfectly harmonised form and content of the beautiful object. The object has a semblance of autonomy to which a truly autonomous being can respond. Saying this would support the idea that, in the Aesthetic Letters, the play drive, where the aesthetic judgement is made, is different

from and inferior to, the practical reason (see Diagram 5). Nevertheless, it would be an oversimplification to say that, by occupying an intermediate position between the sensuous and the formal, the aesthetic is a bridge between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. Firstly, Schiller nowhere suggests that the sense drive alone can fulfil all the creative phenomenal tasks of Kantian perception. Secondly, although the form drive can impact on the world, in the same way that the practical reason

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motivates us to try and change the world, if it were to dominate a person or society, it would have adverse effects. Therefore, while being identified with the inner life, and hence the rational side of a human being, it cannot be relied on alone to produce morality.

33 Patrick T. Murray, The development o f German aesthetic theory from Kant to Schiller: a

philosophical commentary on Schiller’s ‘Aesthetic Education o f M an ’ (1795), Lewiston NY; Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1994, pp.l 11,122.

34Frederick C. Copleston, A H istory o f Philosophy, Vol. 6, Wolff to Kant, London: Search Press, 1975, p. 362.

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Any Kantian analysis is thus not straightforward, especially when we consider the other terms that are matched to the drives.

Table 4: Additional terms that Schiller relates to the drives

Sensuous drive Formal drive Play drive

condition person

changeable (time) constant (outside time)

determined undetermined [ambiguous "

whether this belongs here] _V

belongs also to the play drive

free [ditto] ditto

moral [ditto] ditto

relaxing beauty energetic beauty balance / equilibrium

harmony free play

Taken together with Table 3 above, this shows that some of Schiller’s dichotomies, such as freedom, and the Good Will, match, not Kant's imagination / understanding distinction, but the phenomenal / noumenal distinction. When using the play drive, the human mind is undetermined; it would seem to have attained the condition for which Kant said the reason strives, yet the practical reason and morality lie in the form drive, and Kant did not envisage the aesthetic reflective judgement as taking place in the interface between the noumenal and phenomenal, (see also Diagrams 1 and 4). Perhaps Schiller has ignored the understanding, as having no role in the free play of aesthetic perception. However, Kant identifies two ways in which the aesthetic can be regarded as a failure to conceptualise, the second of which involves a link between the

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phenomenal and noumenal, firstly, when the passive perception of sensuous beauty is not conceptualised by the understanding, and secondly, when rational ideas are too complex or indeterminate to be conceptualised adequately - the ineffable and the sublime.33 We have to express aesthetic ideas of this kind as images, by means of analogy, allegory and metaphor, making use of the practical reason. ‘Beauty... can in general be called the expression of aesthetic ideas.’36 Many such ideas permeate our language, and have been absorbed into our everyday discourse,37 but they are also, more obviously, expressed artistically, for instance as in Kant’s famous example of

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Jupiter’s eagle. Admittedly Kant’s discussion deals here with our inability to

express ideas conceptually, whereas Schiller seems to be discussing our receptivity to beauty, but since the play drive encompasses freedom, moral improvement and indeterminability, he may have found this section of the Third Critique useful.39 The aesthetic ideas that we try to represent are ‘representations of the imagination’, ‘as a cognitive faculty’ but they ‘strive towards something lying beyond the bounds of experience, and thus seek to approximate a presentation of concepts of reason (of intellectual ideas)’. ‘No concept can be fully adequate to them’, all of which suggests that they are transcendentally present simply in our rationality, not specifically in our

35 Immanuel Kant, Critique o f the Power ofJudgement, (ed.) Paul Guyer, (tr.) Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, §49, 5: 314, pp. 192, 193.

36 Immanuel Kant, Critique o f the Power ofJudgement, (ed.) Paul Guyer, (tr.) Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, §51, 5: 314, p. 197.

37 Immanuel Kant, Critique o f the Power o f Judgement, (ed.) Paul Guyer, (tr.) Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews, Cambrdge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, §59, 5: 314, p.226.

38 Immanuel Kant, Critique o f the Power ofJudgement, (ed.) Paul Guyer, (tr.) Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, §49, 5: 314, p.193.

39 Treating K ant’s discussions o f so-called rational (handmill / despotism analogy) and aesthetic (Jupiter’s eagle) ideas as if they were one may be elliptical, but seems reasonable since the imaginative ingenuity that produces the thought-provoking imagery that he calls ‘aesthetic’ is called into play only in the service o f the reason that finds itself without a sufficient conceptual means for expressing an abstract, rational idea.

For an opposing view, see:

Kirk Pillow, ‘Jupiter’s Eagle and the D espot’s Hand Mill: Two Views on M etaphor in K ant’, in The

Journal o f Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 59, no.2 (Spring 2001), esp. pp.202, 206.

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understanding or practical reason. If we try to express them, we attempt to retrieve them from the presupposed, noumenal structures of our thought.

So far as a writer like Schiller was concerned, however, the use o f imagery to represent ideas was his raison d'etre. He had to translate ideas into something

accessible to his readers, but which he nevertheless recognised would, as Kant said occasion much thinking, though without it being possible for any determinate thought, ie. concept to be adequate to it, which consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible40

At the same time, he had to know what it was to experience and judge beauty, a human capacity without which his creative work was in vain. From Schiller’s correspondence with Komer we know of his dissatisfaction with the idea of a Gemeinsinn,41 by means of which Kant thought we could generalise among individuals. Acknowledgement of a Gemeinsinn made aesthetic activity too

subjective, contrary to Kant’s and Schiller’s hopes for a more scientific theory. In the Aesthetic Letters, by referring to the interaction of the drives, he has been able to

avoid postulating its existence, and yet explain the common response among observers of beauty, and the ability of an artist to predict an audience response. However, it seems he no longer regarded the objective definition of beauty as his

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primary aim, since he has not pursued his earlier interest in siting beauty in the objective world.42

If Schiller’s interpretation of Kant in the Aesthetic Letters at first seemed ambiguous, it is thus because he had abandoned Kant, in order to integrate his explanation for our relationship to aesthetic ideas, which supposedly originates at the

40 Immanuel Kant, Critique o f the Power o f Judgement, (ed.) Paul Guyer, (tr.) Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, §49, 5: 314, pp. 192.

41 Frederick C. Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher: a re-examination, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p.50.

42 Frederick C. Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher: a re-examination, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, p.75.

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noumenal level, with an account of our relationship to beautiful objects that Kant thought took place at the interface between understanding and imagination. Schiller’s solution is to analyse the human mind in his own way. He employs perceptual and rational features that Kant had already recognised as constitutive of the human mind, but re-groups them. The content remains similar, but the structure has been redrawn, sometimes in ways that oblige us to accept a certain lack of clarity. However, if we wish temporarily to preserve a Kantian terminology, it ultimately does appear that when the sensuous and the formal interact, and when the third drive, the play drive, is generated, there is a broad sense in which a move between the phenomenal and noumenal has taken place, in that the play drive is a state of undetermined freedom that will enable us to progress as moral beings.

Beyond merely changing the structure of Kant’s analysis, Schiller has

furthermore introduced notions of productive conflict and competition into aesthetics, in place o f calm, Kantian contemplation, despite the fact that both men identify a calm endpoint o f free play and pleasurable harmony. Behler goes so far as to regard

Schiller’s apparent emphasis on harmony and balance, as a mere mask that barely conceals the underlying violence of his conception. The aesthetic educational process that would bring mankind into harmony with itself is ‘The Theatre of Sublime

Cruelty’.43 Interesting though Behler’s interpretation is, it conflicts with Schiller’s consistent contention in both the Aesthetic Letters and Anmut und Wiirde that suppression or external control of the human psyche are unstable and ineffective means o f developing human potential. Inclination and law must genuinely coincide. Form drive and sense drives must do so too. Admittedly, Behler seems to class any means, including persuasion, by which a creature could be brought to change its mind

43 Constantin Behler, Nostalgic Teleology: Friedrich Schiller and the Schemata o f Aesthetic Humanism, Bern; Berlin etc: Peter Lang, 1995, ch.3, p. 183.

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or behaviour, as cruelty or violence. Schiller’s ambivalence towards the role of nature might possibly encourage this view. He wished to change an existing nature, whether it might be the animal-like savage of primitive, tribal society, or the cold intellectual of eighteenth century Germany, in the name of an ideal human nature. This means that Schiller’s desired manipulation of human nature, however underhand, disguised or sugar-coated it may be, is intended nevertheless to be complete. Perhaps Behler sees this process as being something akin to brain-washing. In any case he questions, possibly, whether the aesthetic education would be completely ethical, and, certainly, whether the overall process would be as pleasant and painless as Schiller leads us to believe.

Schiller’s attempts to distinguish between actual, possible and ideal human natures, between the good and the distorted, between what we might call givens and becomings, the real and the potential, are factors that may seem to invite criticisms such as Behler’s. They also emerge in both this chapter and the last as significant ways in which he came to differ from Kant. However, we have already seen in our discussion of the Kallias Letters that Schiller accepted that beauty could be freedom in appearance, and that the actor could, in a sense, both be and not be Hamlet.44 It is almost an extension of the indeterminate free play characteristic of Kant’s aesthetics that permits Schiller to conceive of a human as being at once weak and primitive (in fact) and capable of great creative and moral projects (in the right circumstances). As we examine the implications of Schiller’s mature aesthetic theory for art and the artist in our next chapter, we shall see that, while still using some Kantian concepts,

Schiller provides a fuller account than Kant of what an artist does, and what art

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achieves. In the form of free semblance, and later, the sentimental, we shall also see how the ambivalence we have already noted is central to Schiller’s view o f art.

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CHAPTER 5

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR ART OF FRIEDRICH SCHILLER’S