Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen

This text has an occasion that gives it its edge to this day. In 1793, the year of the executions, Schiller wrote to his Danish patron about the failed revolution. The moment had been more favourable than ever, he writes, and it had been missed – not because circumstances were too strong, but because the people were not ready. The state of necessity cannot be exchanged for the state of freedom as long as the citizens are savages or barbarians.

What follows is one of the earliest and harshest diagnoses of modernity. It was culture itself, Schiller writes, that inflicted the wound on modern humanity: the division of labour and specialisation have broken the whole human being into fragments. »Ewig nur das eintönige Geräusch des Rades, das er umtreibt, im Ohre, entwickelt er nie die Harmonie seines Wesens.«

Schiller seeks the cure not in politics but in the aesthetic. Between the sensuous drive, which wants to receive, and the formal drive, which wants to determine, he posits a third: the play drive. In play, the human being is compelled neither by nature nor by reason – and only there fully human. From here the path leads to the »ästhetischen Staat«, in which even the serving tool is a free citizen.

The text follows the first printing in the Horen of 1795. The second printing of 1801 cut heavily – entire steps of the argument are missing there. This edition records the cuts throughout, making visible what Schiller, six years later, no longer allowed into print.