The Aesthetical Essays by Friedrich Schiller (reading strategies book .TXT) 📕

thou, profoundest Hell;
Receive thy new possessor! - one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time;
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell. . . .
Here at least
We shall be free," etc.

The reply of Medea in the tragedy belongs also to this order of the sublime.

The sublime of disposition makes itself seen, it is visible to the spectator, because it rests upon co-existence, the simultaneous; the sublime action, on the contrary, is conceived only by the thought, because the impression and the act are successive, and the intervention of the mind is necessary to infer from a free determination the idea of previous suffering.

It follows that the first alone can be expressed by the plastic arts, because these arts give but that which is simultaneous; but the poet can extend his domain over one and the other. Even more; when the plastic art has to represent a sublime action, it must necessarily bring it back to sublimity.

In order that the sublimity of action should take place, not only must the suffering of man have no influence upon the moral constitution, but rather the opposite must be the case. The affection is the work of his moral character. This can happen in two ways: either mediately, or according to the law of liberty, when out of respect for such and such a duty it decides from free choice to suffer - in this case, the idea of duty determines as a motive, and its suffering is a voluntary act - or immediately, and according to the necessity of nature, when he expiates by a moral suffering the violation of duty; in this second case, the idea of duty determines him as a force, and his suffering is no longer an effect. Regulus offers us an example of the first kind, when, to keep his word, he gives himself up to the vengeance of the Carthaginians; and he would serve as an example of the second class, if, having betrayed his trust, the consciousness of this crime would have made him miserable. In both cases suffering has a moral course, but with this difference, that on the one part Regulus shows us its moral character, and that, on the other, he only shows us that he was made to have such a character. In the first case he is in our eyes a morally great person; in the second he is only aesthetically great.

This last distinction is important for the tragic art; it consequently deserves to be examined more closely.

Man is already a sublime object, but only in the aesthetic sense, when the state in which he is gives us an idea of his human destination, even though we might not find this destination realized in his person. He only becomes sublime to us in a moral point of view, when he acts, moreover, as a person, in a manner conformable with this destination; if our respect bears not only on his moral faculty, but on the use he makes of this faculty; if dignity, in his case, is due, not only to his moral aptitude; but to the real morality of his conduct. It is quite a different thing to direct our judgment and attention to the moral faculty generally, and to the possibility of a will absolutely free, and to be directing it to the use of this faculty, and to the reality of this absolute freedom of willing.

It is, I repeat, quite a different thing; and this difference is connected not only with the objects to which we may have to direct our judgment, but to the very criterion of our judgment. The same object can displease us if we appreciate it in a moral point of view, and be very attractive to us in the aesthetical point of view. But even if the moral judgment and the aesthetical judgment were both satisfied, this object would produce this effect on one and the other in quite a different way. It is not morally satisfactory because it has an aesthetical value, nor has it an aesthetical value because it satisfies us morally. Let us take, as example, Leonidas and his devotion at Thermopylae. Judged from the moral point of view, this action represents to me the moral law carried out notwithstanding all the repugnance of instinct. Judged from the aesthetic point of view, it gives me the idea of the moral faculty, independent of every constraint of instinct. The act of Leonidas satisfies the moral sense, the reason; it enraptures the aesthetical sense, the imagination.

Whence comes this difference in the feelings in connection with the same object? I account for it thus: -

In the same way that our being consists of two principles and natures, so also and consequently our feelings are divided into two kinds, entirely different. As reasonable beings we experience a feeling of approbation or of disapprobation; as sensuous creatures we experience pleasure or displeasure. The two feelings, approbation and pleasure, repose on satisfaction: one on a satisfaction given to a requirement of reason - reason has only requirements, and not wants. The other depends on a satisfaction given to a sensuous want - sense only knows of wants, and cannot prescribe anything. These two terms - requirements of reason, wants of the senses - are mutually related, as absolute necessity and the necessity of nature. Accordingly, both are included in the idea of necessity, but with this difference, that the necessity of reason is unconditional, and the necessity of sense only takes place under conditions. But, for both, satisfaction is a purely contingent thing. Accordingly every feeling, whether of pleasure or approbation, rests definitively on an agreement between the contingent and the necessary. If the necessary has thus an imperative character, the feeling experienced will be that of approbation. If necessity has the character of a want, the feeling experienced will be that of pleasure, and both will be strong in proportion as the satisfaction will be contingent. Now, underlying every moral judgment there is a requirement of reason which requires us to act conformably with the moral law, and it is an absolute necessity that we should wish what is good. But as the will is free, it is physically an accidental thing that we should do in fact what is good. If we actually do it, this agreement between the contingent in the use of free will and the imperative demand of reason gives rise to our assent or approbation, which will be greater in proportion as the resistance of the inclinations made this use that we make of our free will more accidental and more doubtful. Every aesthetic judgment, on the contrary, refers the object to the necessity which cannot help willing imperatively, but only desires that there should be an agreement between the accidental and its own interest. Now what is the interest of imagination? It is to emancipate itself from all laws, and to play its part freely. The obligation imposed on the will by the moral law, which prescribes its object in the strictest manner, is by no means favorable to this need of independence. And as the moral obligation of the will is the object of the moral judgment, it is clear that in this mode of judging, the imagination could not find its interest. But a moral obligation imposed on the will cannot be conceived, except by supposing this same will absolutely independent of the moral instincts and from their constraint. Accordingly the possibility of the moral act requires liberty, and therefore agrees here in the most perfect manner with the interest of imagination. But as imagination, through the medium of its wants, cannot give orders to the will of the individual, as reason does by its imperative character, it follows that the faculty of freedom, in relation to imagination, is something accidental, and consequently that the agreement between the accidental and the necessary (conditionally necessary) must excite pleasure. Therefore, if we bring to bear a moral judgment on this act of Leonidas, we shall consider it from a point of view where its accidental character strikes the eye less than its necessary side. If, on the other hand, we apply the aesthetical judgment to it, this is another point of view, where its character of necessity strikes us less forcibly than its accidental character. It is a duty for every will to act thus, directly it is a free will; but the fact that there is a free will that makes this act possible is a favor of nature in regard to this faculty, to which freedom is a necessity. Thus an act of virtue judged by the moral sense - by reason - will give us as its only satisfaction the feeling of approbation, because reason can never find more, and seldom finds as much as it requires. This same act, judged, on the contrary, by the aesthetic sense - by imagination - will give us a positive pleasure, because the imagination, never requiring the end to agree with the demand, must be surprised, enraptured, at the real satisfaction of this demand as at a happy chance. Our reason will merely approve, and only approve, of Leonidas actually taking this heroic resolution; but that he could take this resolution is what delights and enraptures us.

This distinction between the two sorts of judgments becomes more evident still, if we take an example where the moral sense and the aesthetic sense pronounce a different verdict. Suppose we take the act of Perigrinus Proteus burning himself at Olympia. Judging this act morally, I cannot give it my approbation, inasmuch as I see it determined by impure motives, to which Proteus sacrifices the duty of respecting his own existence. But in the aesthetic judgment this same act delights me; it delights me precisely because it testifies to a power of will capable of resisting even the most potent of instincts, that of self-preservation. Was it a moral feeling, or only a more powerful sensuous attraction, that silenced the instinct of self-preservation in this enthusiast. It matters little, when I appreciate the act from an aesthetic point of view. I then drop the individual, I take away the relation of his will to the law that ought to govern him; I think of human will in general, considered as a common faculty of the race, and I regard it in connection with all the forces of nature. We have seen that in a moral point of view, the preservation of our being seemed to us a duty, and therefore we were offended at seeing Proteus violate this duty. In an aesthetic point of view the self-preservation only appears as an interest, and therefore the sacrifice of this interest pleases us. Thus the operation that we perform in the judgments of the second kind is precisely the inverse of that which we perform in those of the first. In the former we oppose the individual, a sensuous and limited being, and his personal will, which can be effected pathologically, to the absolute law of the will in general, and of unconditional duty which binds every spiritual being; in the second case, on the contrary, we oppose the faculty of willing, absolute volition, and the spiritual force as an infinite thing, to the solicitations of nature and the impediments of sense. This is the reason why the aesthetical judgment leaves us free, and delights and enraptures us. It is because the mere conception of this faculty of willing in an absolute manner, the mere idea of this moral aptitude, gives us in itself a consciousness of a manifest advantage over the