When1: 1781
When2: 1805
Who: Johann von Schiller [Schiller, Johann von]
What: poet/playwright/philosopher
Where: Germany
works\ Die Rauber or The Robbers [1781: play]; An die Freude or Ode to Joy [1785: poem]; Don Carlos [1787: play]; Wallenstein [1800: play]; Die Jungfrau von Orleans or Young Woman of Orleans [1801: play]; Wilhelm Tell [1804: play]; Story of the Bell [1805: poem]; What is Universal History? [1789: essay]; On the Aesthetic Education of Man [1795: essay]; Naive and Sentimental Poetry [1796: essay]
Detail: He lived 1759 to 1805.
Aesthetics
Beauty is freedom in phenomenal appearance. It is not subject to concepts, understanding, or related phenomena. It has no known cause and makes cause meaningless. It is not about ethics, because it does not relate to duty. It is play. It involves no want or need, and so no will. It can create state in which sensuous and moral natures harmonize. Art silences natural will, allowing moral will to work.
Politics
Man started in instinctive state, following moral laws, because sensuous and moral natures were yet to come to consciousness. History and poetry evolved together. In first state, naive poetry was about unity with nature, was realistic, and used author-narrator. Middle states are sentimental and are about personal reflection, appeals to nature, and poet as subject. In final state, moral law will reunite with will.
Arts>Literature>History>Poetry
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Date Modified: 2022.0224