Friedrich Schiller was a poet and a dramatist, and some might argue that he wasn't much of anything else. But he was also a philosopher, and his contribution to aesthetic theory, however flawed, is worth examining; for despite any criticisms levelled against him, including disparaging his writing as nothing more than the work of an amateur, he was undeniably influential, if only on those whose company he kept -- among them such luminaries of German literature and thought as Johann Fichte, the Schlegels, Kant, and Goethe.

Schiller's thoughts about aesthetics were expressed in a series of letters written to a prince of Denmark who was his patron, Friedrich Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Austenberg. The prince had helped Schiller in 1790 or so by giving him a pension of a thousand thalers a year with no stipulations apart from that the money was intended to help Schiller recover from an illness that had been plaguing him for some years. It was a generous gesture, to be sure; and the letters were the first pieces of writing that he produced after his convalescence. They were written in 1793 -- three years after Kant's Critique of Judgment was published -- and they might never have been made public at all if it weren't for Friedrich Christian's interest in what they had to say: the originals were destroyed in a fire in 1794, but he had forwarded copies of some of them on to friends of his who were also interested in aesthetic theory.

Reworked versions of the letters were first published in a short-lived German literary journal called The Graces, of which Schiller was the editor. The collected letters on the aesthetic education of man were first published on their own in 1795.

On to the letters themselves and what influenced them, then. In the aesthetic philosophy of both Schiller and Kant, art (the aesthetic) is used to mediate between the opposing poles of reason and nature, of sense and the sensuous. Schiller was a self-styled Kantian, and indeed was heavily influenced by and indebted to Kant's aesthetic philosophy. But where art's purpose is concerned, Schiller differs considerably from the Kantian view: he observes a connection between art and the moral, but does not seem insistent upon their being more or less interchangeable. Kant does, in a relatively offhand way, but he does not expound on why such a relationship is necessary or even desirable. This distinction could be construed as an accident of the incompleteness of Schiller's philosophy, a consequence of his being an amateur philosopher without the inclination to create an entire system of his own, but it is striking enough to merit attention in its own right as a legitimate criticism of a Kantian failing.

Kant's own philosophy of aesthetics was set forth in his Critique of Judgment. Sketched in very broad terms, it seeks to reconcile the way in which we can make judgments about something's beauty with the fact that such judgments, subjective though they certainly are, seem to be universally consistent -- this follows from common sense, as it is quite evident that people tend to share a sense of what is beautiful and what isn't. To Kant, the study of aesthetics is a science; it deals not just with the observation of beauty, but also with our ability to think it, to understand it.

This, then, is how we can think of the aesthetic: it is a dimension of experience stemming from our relationship with objects that are beautiful. And since an individual's subjective judgment about something is based on the same faculties of cognition as those of any other individual, we ought to be able to apply that same judgment universally. As Kant says:

[I]t seems that when, in judging an object of sense in general, we feel this pleasure, or subjective purposiveness of the presentation for the relation between our cognitive powers, then we must be entitled to require this pleasure from everyone. (Kant, 155)

Conversely, Kant later seems less certain about the wisdom of assuming that such good taste and common sense are universal: he observes that any judgment of taste "is only a private judgment", and that "everyone has his own taste" (Kant, 212). This trouble can be resolved by ascribing good taste and judgment to an indeterminate guiding principle -- something supersensible, inexpressible, but nonetheless critical to our ability to make aesthetic judgments; for how else could we account for the way in which judgments based on taste are not completely singular and unique to each individual? This supersensible principle, says Kant, bears similarities to such concepts as virtue: it is "an indemonstrable concept and a rational idea" that can be demonstrated, but not explained (Kant, 216). Nonetheless, it is something that we all can understand and use, whenever we make an aesthetic judgment.

So the aesthetic is something that is universal in its experience and its application. Kant also says that it stems from a priori principles, not from empirical observation. This means that judgments made about beauty are drawn from within the observer rather than from without, for otherwise they could not be universalised. This bears many similarities to Kant's conception of moral principles and their necessity -- only reason can truly yield it with certainty, because experience can only yield probability. (Empirically I cannot know whether I will be burnt each time I touch a hot stove -- for if I consider only what I have felt, all I am left with is that each time I touch the stove, it is probable that I will be burnt.) Thus, the aesthetic is planted firmly within the realm of reason alone; and this is how Kant can relate it symbolically with morality.

As with moral principles (like the categorical imperative), aesthetic judgments are universal and a priori; this has been established. Apparently this similarity is enough for Kant to take steps toward making the two nearly synonymous, through a drawn-out analogy. It begins with that "[t]he morally good is the intelligible that taste has in view" -- it is this same "intelligible" that is the supersensible governing principle of aesthetic judgments and taste (Kant, 228). The morally good and the aesthetic are also similar in that we relate to each "without any interest" (Kant, 229) -- e.g., we appreciate a painting of an apricot without wanting to eat it, just as we might appreciate a Kantian moral imperative without wanting to consider its consequences. Both involve the harmony of our faculties: in the case of the aesthetic it is the interplay between "the freedom of the imagination" and "the lawfulness of the understanding", and for the moral it is "the will's harmony with itself according to universal laws of reason" (Kant, 229). And furthermore,

[t]he common understanding also habitually bears this analogy in mind, and beautiful objects of nature or of art are often called by names that seem to presuppose that we are judging [these objects] morally. We call buildings or trees majestic and magnificent, or landscapes cheerful and gay; even colors are called innocent, humble, or tender, because they arouse sensations in us that are sometimes analogous to the consciousness we have in a mental state produced by moral judgments. (Kant, 230)

The end goal of all of this is to provide an answer to the problem posed at the beginning: how to resolve the apparent opposites of the sensuous pleasure we derive from observing the beautiful and the rational drive to uncover the explanation for why we should have found it pleasurable in the first place. Kant's answer follows from the aesthetic as governed over by the supersensible, which itself bears a more than passing resemblance to the moral: thus can nature be resolved into reason, using the aesthetic and our relationship to it as a means to get there.

Similarly, for Schiller, the aesthetic is used as a tool to mediate between nature and reason. But it is also treated as an end in itself, not just as a means to the ulterior end of reconciling sense and the sensuous; it is created, performed, or engaged with as art for art's own sake, and as its own reward. Any benefits that might be derived therefrom -- deeper understanding of nature and of oneself, for instance, or a richer and more satisfying comprehension of the depth and breadth of God's love -- are completely incidental, and should not be considered as part of its purpose. There is no need to drag morality into the fray, because it follows naturally from having one's faculties in harmony -- which end can be achieved through the aesthetic, but without having to discard it once one has reached the endpoint.

With that in mind, Schiller's thoughts on the aesthetic fall loosely into two categories, one of them considerably more Kantian in origin than the other. First, a sort of "ladder theory", where the sensuous is clambered over and left behind once sense has been found; and secondly a sort of dialectic, which seeks to synthesise nature and reason without having to discard either of them.

The first, the "Three Stages" theory, sees sensuous Man as a less-developed creature than rational Man, because it is not until he is fully conscious of his own nature that he can become truly free. Schiller depicts Man as coming to consciousness from a "sensuous slumber" -- the state of nature -- and finding himself thrown into a State built on sheer force, from which he must emerge to create a new State built on moral laws (Schiller, 28-29). The problem is that before he can adequately create this new State, Man needs to have a developed sense of morality -- something he cannot learn in his original state of nature. In order to make the transition from one to the other, there then needs to be a stage somewhere in between: Schiller conceives of this as being the proper place for the aesthetic. As in Kant, Schiller thinks that contemplating the beautiful leads to a unity between the sensuous and the sense that guides it; and "it is through Beauty that we arrive at Freedom" (Schiller, 26).

The second theory is perhaps more interesting, because it is here that Schiller turns in a new direction, away from Kant. It too involves a dichotomy between nature and sense, but rather than using the aesthetic as a means to navigate between them, the aesthetic itself is a synthesis of the two opposites. It falls between them, but does not need to be overcome; nor does the sensuous need to be cast away, in the presence of reason. They exist harmoniously together, encapsulated by the aesthetic: the play between what we can feel, and how we can rationalise it.

The nature/reason dichotomy is also perceived in this case as a conflict between the multiplicity of the former and the all-encompassing unity of the latter. But neither of them on their own make up a totality. Here again is a place for the aesthetic to mediate, allowing Man to gain enough understanding that he is able to govern himself by reason, without destroying the state of nature from which he is emerging:

When therefore Reason introduces her moral unity into physical society, she must not injure the multiplicity of Nature. When Nature strives to maintain her multiplicity, there must be no rupture in its moral unity; the triumphant form rests equidistant from uniformity and confusion. Totality of character must therefore be found in a people that is capable and worthy of exchanging the State of need [necessity, or nature] for the State of freedom [reason]. (Schiller, 34)

Where nature and reason are to be combined into the aesthetic, Schiller gives them new names: they are the "sensuous impulse" and the "formal impulse", and both are valuable. But there is still a need for a third impulse in between the two poles, to check both and keep the balance between them. If one swung too far to the sensuous side, one would be governed by inclinations alone, and since "individuality and [...] present need will be swept away by change", inclination cannot successfully govern one for long (Schiller, 66). To be governed by the formal impulse alone is to be a completely moral person, in the sense that Kant would have it:

when you acknowledge truth because it is Truth and practise justice because it is Justice, you have turned a single case into a law for all cases, and treated one moment of your life as eternity. (Schiller, 67)

But an integral part of being human is acknowledging (and glorying in) both of these impulses, to experience both the sensuous and the rational to their fullest possible extents. To this end, there again needs to be a mediator, as above: once more it is the aesthetic, in this incarnation described as another impulse, the "play impulse". When it is engaged, says Schiller, both the formal and sensuous impulses have free rein to create, each operating under the influence of the other: the formal impulse, which desires to create and impose order, manipulates the sensuous impulse, which desires to receive direction (Schiller, 74). And, since the two sides do not hinge on each other -- they are merely loosely connected, through the play impulse -- there can also be free interplay between morality and the physical self: this has the interesting side-effect of making happiness and moral life not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Kant's morality allows for no such freedom of impulses. In the Critique of Practical Reason, he is very forthright about telling us that an action must be entirely divorced from inclinations in order to be moral. The moral worth of an action is based on its accordance with the moral law -- the categorical imperative -- and the intentions of the person who performed it. If consequences are taken into account before an action is carried out, then it can no longer be a moral action because the intention was coloured by the idea of a punishment or reward, and not just adherence to the moral law.

The way that Kant relates the aesthetic to the moral good in the Critique of Judgment means that the former must be as limited and limiting as the latter is; if it were not, then they could not possibly be conceived of as the same and the analogy would collapse in on itself. Whether it was his intention to undermine the aesthetic by identifying it with morality is a difficult question. But regardless of its answer, Kant's aesthetic can never be experienced as fully as Schiller's can be, because it is condemned to be only a means for understanding morality, never created as an end in itself.

For Schiller, despite his self-identification as a Kantian, life as a Kantian moralist would be hollow and unfulfilling because it leaves no room for following sensuous impulses, nor does it allow for aesthetic play as a valuable enterprise for its own sake. It is Schiller's conception of the role of the aesthetic -- much broader than Kant's -- that allows for this sort of freedom, where following inclinations does not have to preclude living a moral life.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987.
Schiller, Friedrich. On the Aesthetic Education of Man, trans. Reginald Snell. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2004.