Chapter 12. "Art as Living Form" by Frederich Schiller
Frederich Schiller Duyckinick, Portrait Gallery, 1873
About the work …
In his Letters on the Æsthetical Education of Man[1] Frederich Schiller develops a neoKantian theory of art and beauty whereby individuals become fully human in a free social order. He characterizes two basic instincts in man: (1) the natural sensuous and (2) the formal or rational. Schiller terms the synthesis of these two impluses "the play instinct" whose object is the "living form" of beauty in the world. In other words, the play instinct is an imaginative understanding of the æsthetic qualities of phenomena—the beautiful. This impulse as cultivated through æsthetic education makes humanity and rational social order possible.
Ideas of Interest: Æsthetical Education of Man
Describe the difference between the faculties of sensibility and understanding. How are these related to the opposite impulses of sensuousness and rationality? How are they related to matter and form?
According to Schiller, what are the two fundamental laws of sensuous-rational nature?
Explain to which instinct or impulse the moral sense belongs. Why is this so?
What is the play instinct and how is it related to sensibility and rationality?
According to Schiller, what is a "living form"? What is the source of æsthetics or beauty?
According to Schiller, why is art necessary for culture and free social order? How is it that beauty alone, and not absolute good, "confers happiness on all"?