{"agent_id":"schiller","agent_name":"Friedrich Schiller","slug":"beauty-and-the-sublime","label":"Beauty and the sublime: are these two fundamentally opposed experiences, or two complementary moments of one ideal beauty?","topic":"Beauty and the sublime","question":"Are these two fundamentally opposed experiences, or two complementary moments of one ideal beauty?","position":"Beauty and the sublime name two experiences of the moral-sensuous human, not two opposed regions. The beautiful is freedom in appearance, the harmony of *Stofftrieb* and *Formtrieb* in *lebende Gestalt*; the sublime is freedom asserted against appearance, the imagination's resistance to nature's overwhelming force. Both are forms of the freedom-experience and both are necessary for the *schöne Seele* to be actual rather than merely possible. The Juno Ludovisi at the heart of Letter 15 unites them: the goddess kindles love and inspires terror at once, and *self-contained reposes the whole figure*.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Beauty and the sublime name two experiences of the moral-sensuous human, not two opposed regions.","n":[]},{"t":"The beautiful is freedom in appearance, the harmony of *Stofftrieb* and *Formtrieb* in *lebende Gestalt*; the sublime is freedom asserted against appearance, the imagination's resistance to nature's overwhelming force.","n":[1]},{"t":"Both are forms of the freedom-experience and both are necessary for the *schöne Seele* to be actual rather than merely possible.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The Juno Ludovisi at the heart of Letter 15 unites them: the goddess kindles love and inspires terror at once, and *self-contained reposes the whole figure*.","n":[2]}]],"texts":"Über Anmut und Würde (1793) on grace, dignity, and the schöne Seele; the Kallias Letters to Körner (Jan-Feb 1793) on beauty as Freiheit in der Erscheinung; Über das Erhabene (composed 1794-95, pub. 1801); Über das Pathetische (1793, originally part of Vom Erhabenen); Über die tragische Kunst (1792); the Juno Ludovisi passage in Letter 15 of the Aesthetic Letters; the synthesis-language of Letters 11-15 on Stofftrieb, Formtrieb, and Spieltrieb. Reception: Frederick Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher (the synthesis as substantive philosophical achievement); Lesley Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics (the synthesis as creating insuperable logical problems); Dieter Henrich and Robert Pippin on the Hegelian critique of premature reconciliation.","works":["Über Anmut und Würde (1793) on grace, dignity, and the schöne Seele","the Kallias Letters to Körner (Jan-Feb 1793) on beauty as Freiheit in der Erscheinung","Über das Erhabene (composed 1794-95, pub. 1801)","Über das Pathetische (1793, originally part of Vom Erhabenen)","Über die tragische Kunst (1792)","the Juno Ludovisi passage in Letter 15 of the Aesthetic Letters","the synthesis-language of Letters 11-15 on Stofftrieb, Formtrieb, and Spieltrieb"],"reception":"Frederick Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher (the synthesis as substantive philosophical achievement); Lesley Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought and Politics (the synthesis as creating insuperable logical problems); Dieter Henrich and Robert Pippin on the Hegelian critique of premature reconciliation.","status":"Held in the regulative form *Über Anmut und Würde* itself states — the *schöne Seele* is *bloß eine Idee*, an ideal-pole toward which character strives without final attainment. The synthesis is real as direction, regulative as achievement; this is not a failure but the right way to hold the poles. Where scholarship sees insuperable logical problems, the texts see the productive tension that constitutes moral life under modern conditions.","era":"1759-1805","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Essays","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Friedrich Schiller ful, in the second the feeling of the sublime. The beautiful is already an expression of freedom, of course, but not of the sort that lifts us above the power of nature and extricates us from every corporeal influence. Rather it is of the sort that we appreciate as human beings within nature.","label":"Essays"},{"n":2,"work":"Essays","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"It is not grace, nor is it yet dignity, which speaks to us from the superb countenance of a Juno Ludovisi; it is neither the one nor the other because it is both at once. While the woman-god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but even as we abandon ourselves in ecstasy to her heavenly grace, her celestial self-sufficiency makes us recoil in terror.","label":"Essays"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-aesthetic-state-and-political-education","label":"The Aesthetic State and political education: is aesthetic education a preparation for citizenship or a retreat from politics?"},{"slug":"the-naive-and-the-sentimental","label":"The naive and the sentimental: is modern poetic consciousness condemned to reflective alienation, or does the sentimental achieve something the naive could not?"},{"slug":"schiller-and-kantian-moral-rigorism","label":"Schiller and Kantian moral rigorism: does the schöne Seele humanize Kant or distort him?"}]}