Letter on the Aesthetic Education of Man by Friederich Von Schiller

Schiller is a German literary theorist and dramatist and a critic of modern civilization. In this essay, he deeply analyzed modern civilization, which emerged from the fountain of enlightenment. He examined culture of European enlightenment and found the tragic and miserable predicament of humanity.

According to him, enlightenment emphasis on reason that leads to disastrous condition in which individual psyche becomes dichotomous, furthermore, he compares civilization of enlightened Europe with primitive Hellenic Greek civilization. In addition, he found primitive Greek civilization unified, integrated coherent and representative. On the contrary, he found human beings on the threshold of modernity being in the fragmented condition. Therefore, he locates that the civilization is the cause of the bifurcation of man’s sensibility into sense and intellect. He expresses the belief that there is a means by which man can regain freedom from division, and that means is art. This division of sensibility into sense and intellect can also be understood from psyche getting divided into reason (rationalist) and intuition (empiricist).

Schiller argues that man possesses two fundamental drives: the sensuous drive and the formal drive. The sensuous drive is that drive which is strengthened by five sense organs. Any drive emerging from sense is sensuous in other words; the sensuous drive is characterized by the domination of change. Man, in this state, is merely a unit of quantity, an occupied moment of time. He is dominated by sensation. By formal drive, we mean reason, rationality, conscience, capacity to distinguish what is good, and what is bad. This drive rejects time and change, in its quest for the abstract, eternal and absolute.

There exists diametrically opposite relationship between these two drives. Yet there can exist reciprocal relationship between them. These drives demand reconciliation in a higher drive, which is play drive associated with art. Play is the expression of man’s fullest nature in aesthetic experience, the healing of division. In play, mind is free and self-contained dominated neither by ‘sense’ nor by ‘form’. By associating the experiencing of art with freedom, Schiller makes huge claim for its cultural value.

Schiller’s major focus is on human civilization. He is rather nostalgic in tone because the integrity, holistic notion has been fragmented. In ancient Greece, there was totality as people could co-ordinate between imagination and reason. There was harmony between them.

Here he sounds like Nietzsche, who believed that in Greek time there was blending between Apollonian and Dionysian elements. But in the modern time such holistic combination is not achieved instead there is fragmentation because of the development of modern science and civilization. The division in human mind is human tragedy as it brings disharmony in man’s life.

Schiller talks about three psychic forces or drives-

a) Sensuous Drive: Similar to Nietzscheian Dionysian element.
b) Formal Drive: Similar to Apollonian element
c) Play Drive: Combination of both sensuous and formal drive.

Sensuous drive starts from our physical life and is limited with time and space unlike heavenly world. It is irrational, pleasure seeking, emotional. It is related to desire and necessities of body. We have the association with material world, which is changeable and transitory. Here man is selfish and self- centered since he is dominated by sensation.

Formal drive initiated with the reasoning world-from mind. It is guided by reason and intellect. People are bound with high moral sense. It demands timelessness and eternity. It wants to transcend time and space. This drive has no any association with matter.

Again these two drives (sensuous and formal) demand reconciliation to reach a higher drive “play drive”. It is eternal drive. This drive is not possible in ordinary world because it has the sublime quality. This world is the world of complete freedom in which both emotion and morality are subdued. Play drive can be possible only in art.

Receptive faculty is related to sensuous drive and if this faculty is followed completely, one lacks his/ her own identity. Determining faculty however is related to formal drive where the development of self becomes difficult. Determining faculty remains constant and static but receptive faculty is in action. He is interested in determining the nature of art by explaining its value.