Although Schiller (1759-1805) was primarily a poet and dramatist, he also produced a number of theoretical works. The most important of these were written in the mid-1790s, just a few years after the publication of Kant’s 3rd critique. The selections on the handout are drawn from the series of 27 letters that form On the Aesthetic Education of Man. They include nearly the whole of the 14th letter, where Schiller introduces what he calls the “play drive”, as well some preparatory material and later selections where he elaborates the idea.

• You can regard the selections from the 12th and 13th letters as representing Schiller’s response to the view of our situation developed in Kant’s first two critiques, which is represented in the third critique by the opposition of the good and the pleasant in the first moment of the analytic of the beautiful.

• The 14th letter is the heart of Schiller’s theory. Think through the idea of a play drive and ask yourself whether the reconciliation Schiller ascribes to it is real. You should also compare his idea to Kant’s association of beauty with a pleasure we feel in the “free play of the imagination and understanding” (see HK 292). Notions of freedom and play are brought together in both but in apparently quite different ways. Do you think that their views are nevertheless similar or is there a fundamental difference? If they are different, how would you compare them?

• You can regard the selections from the 15th letter as Schiller’s account of beauty. How does it compare with Kant’s and with the other accounts we’ve discussed?

• The remaining selections are from the end of the series and serve to fill out the idea of “aesthetic education.” Only the selections from the 26th focus on art specifically, but all say something about the place of art and the aesthetic in human culture, a topic that will become the central concern of aesthetics in the material we will read over the next several weeks.