This entry takes a look at the wishful thinking of one of the greatest playwrights in history (deemed second only to Shakespeare), a prodigious poet, historian, philosopher and aesthete, as well as a close friend of the great Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805). For more on him there will be a special entry The Good And The Beautiful in the Significant Others section, to be posted later. But here, just as I said from the start, only one particular aspect of his philosophy is going to be discussed.
To Schiller belongs the peculiar concept of Spieltrieb, derived from the Kantian vocabulary. He advanced it in his 1794 philosophical work Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen. The Letters were written in the wake of the French Revolution, which had started promisingly for liberal minds, but quickly turned into an ugly mess of unnecessary violence and gross incompetence. Something must have gone wrong, and Schiller identifies the problem as the deficiency of aesthetic education. The moral character of the French people was found wanting in the Revolution. It is only by being touched by beauty that one’s moral character can be elevated and improved.
Following Kant, Schiller looks at the conflict between man’s Sinnestrieb, his sensuous brutal nature, and his Formtrieb, that is his capacity for reasoning and rational judgment. Enter Spieltrieb, the aesthetic drive with its capacity for beauty appreciation, and the conflicts are resolved in mutual content and total happiness.
Thus Spieltrieb rises further, into the area of social generalization, and a picture of the future eutopian state. It is easy now to dismiss Schiller’s eutopia as a hopelessly idealistic and practically unimplementable utopia, if we look at his ideal picture as a whole, a simulated social model for the future. But we do not need to take his ideal as a blueprint for transplant. Once we realize that its component ideas can indeed be transferred to an existing reality to deal not with its particulars, but with certain principles at work within it, the implications of this are rich and rewarding. It is in this sense that Herbert Marcuse, a serious neo-Marxist philosopher, is prepared to take Schiller’s wishful thinking with utmost seriousness. To him, Schiller’s Spieltrieb is a useful alternative to social alienation. In Marcuse’s words, “Schiller's Letters aim at remaking of civilization by virtue of the liberating force of the aesthetic function envisaged as containing the possibility of a new reality principle.”
Remarkably, throughout the Soviet era of Russian history, Spieltrieb had been virtually imposed from above in the USSR, creating a unique aesthetically elitist Soviet culture, which aspect of the Soviet experiment has not been studied enough, if at all, and definitely never from the Schiller perspective. I hope that one day there will be an appropriate study done, connecting the basics of Soviet culture with the concept of Spieltrieb, and some useful socio-cultural discoveries and conclusions will be made, benefiting all humanity, which may not have reached yet a point beyond redemption.
But, anyway, not every utopian creation can be interpreted to become constructive in practical applications, which makes Schiller’s particular utopia even more valuable to us, a firm and resolute step beyond wishful thinking.
To Schiller belongs the peculiar concept of Spieltrieb, derived from the Kantian vocabulary. He advanced it in his 1794 philosophical work Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen. The Letters were written in the wake of the French Revolution, which had started promisingly for liberal minds, but quickly turned into an ugly mess of unnecessary violence and gross incompetence. Something must have gone wrong, and Schiller identifies the problem as the deficiency of aesthetic education. The moral character of the French people was found wanting in the Revolution. It is only by being touched by beauty that one’s moral character can be elevated and improved.
Following Kant, Schiller looks at the conflict between man’s Sinnestrieb, his sensuous brutal nature, and his Formtrieb, that is his capacity for reasoning and rational judgment. Enter Spieltrieb, the aesthetic drive with its capacity for beauty appreciation, and the conflicts are resolved in mutual content and total happiness.
Thus Spieltrieb rises further, into the area of social generalization, and a picture of the future eutopian state. It is easy now to dismiss Schiller’s eutopia as a hopelessly idealistic and practically unimplementable utopia, if we look at his ideal picture as a whole, a simulated social model for the future. But we do not need to take his ideal as a blueprint for transplant. Once we realize that its component ideas can indeed be transferred to an existing reality to deal not with its particulars, but with certain principles at work within it, the implications of this are rich and rewarding. It is in this sense that Herbert Marcuse, a serious neo-Marxist philosopher, is prepared to take Schiller’s wishful thinking with utmost seriousness. To him, Schiller’s Spieltrieb is a useful alternative to social alienation. In Marcuse’s words, “Schiller's Letters aim at remaking of civilization by virtue of the liberating force of the aesthetic function envisaged as containing the possibility of a new reality principle.”
Remarkably, throughout the Soviet era of Russian history, Spieltrieb had been virtually imposed from above in the USSR, creating a unique aesthetically elitist Soviet culture, which aspect of the Soviet experiment has not been studied enough, if at all, and definitely never from the Schiller perspective. I hope that one day there will be an appropriate study done, connecting the basics of Soviet culture with the concept of Spieltrieb, and some useful socio-cultural discoveries and conclusions will be made, benefiting all humanity, which may not have reached yet a point beyond redemption.
But, anyway, not every utopian creation can be interpreted to become constructive in practical applications, which makes Schiller’s particular utopia even more valuable to us, a firm and resolute step beyond wishful thinking.
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