Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

German Poet, Playwright, and Philosopher of the Romantic Movement

Jul 18, 2009 Tel Asiado

German great thinker Friedrich Schiller was an influential poet, playwright, philosopher and historian. His philosophy and thoughts are found in his best-known essay Of the Sublime (1801) and Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794-1795).

Brief Biography of Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (10 November 1759 – 9 May 1805) was born in Marbach am Neckar, Germany. During the last 17 years of his life, he became a friend of the famous and influential Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a proponent of Sturm und Drang movement. Schiller also joined this group. Later, the two ended their period of association with it, initiating Weimar Classicism. He died in Weimar, Germany.

Inspired by Immanuel Kant, Schiller produced work of great importance in the philosophy of art, or aesthetics, the branch of philosophy concerned with a person's experiences in relation to music, poetry and the visual arts.

Schiller's Philosophy of Art - Preservation and Conception Drives

His philosophy of art begins in his psychology and philosophy of mind. Profound aesthetic experiences can induce contemplative and emotional reactions, often described as beautiful, exquisite, inspiring, and the life.

Schiller distinguishes two kinds of basic, natural impulses or drives:

• First, there is the impulse of self-preservation, to continue one's existence, what Schiller calls "the preservation-drive."

• Second, there is "the conception-drive" – the urge to change one's circumstances, to be efficient and to give expression to existence.

The preservation-drive is allied with the sensations or feelings of the body, while the conception-drive is allied with perception, thinking and representation.

Fear and Aesthetic Experience

Schiller uses the two drives to give a psychological account of fear, and subsequently of aesthetic experience. He says that fear is a natural defence mechanism to alert the person's preservation-drive to kick into action when natural conditions is disturbed for one's survival. He goes further in saying that fear, however, affects the "sensuous being" but cannot hold sway over a person's will.

On the aesthetic experience, he calls it "the sublime" which is something generated when the force of nature is enormous that it renders no possibility of resistance from the preservation-drive. In the "sensuous being" this gives rise to the mortal fear of pain, but in the conception-drive the awareness of the independence of the will results in a kind of delight.

The necessity of fear to the sublime is shown up by experience. To a certain degree, insofar as a human being tames nature like building dams or installing sheds, nature becomes less sublime. But when nature overwhelms that humankind becomes powerless to do anything then nature becomes sublime again.

Schiller's notion of aesthetic experience is summed as follows: "Great is he, who conquers the frightful. Sublime is he, who, while succumbing to it, fears not."

Works by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

• Blank verse Sturm und Drang plays: Don Carlos (1787), a trilogy on Wallenstein (1799), Mary Stuart (1800), Maid of Orleans (1810), and William Tell (1804).
• "Ode to Joy" which Ludwig van Beethoven used in his 9th Symphony.

Sources:

• Clark, John, Ed. Illustrated Biographical Dictionary. London: Chancellor Press, 1994.
• McGovern, Una, Ed. Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2002.
• Stokes, Philip. Philosophy: The Great Thinkers. London: Arcturus Publishing, 2007.