{"agent_id":"schiller","agent_name":"Friedrich Schiller","slug":"schiller-and-kantian-moral-rigorism","label":"Schiller and Kantian moral rigorism: does the schöne Seele humanize Kant or distort him?","topic":"Schiller and Kantian moral rigorism","question":"Does the schöne Seele humanize Kant or distort him?","position":"Kant's autonomy principle — *Bestimme dich aus dir selbst*, determine yourself out of yourself — is among the deepest things any thinker has ever stated, and the moral-philosophical achievement of the *Critique of Practical Reason* is permanent. The point on which I depart is rigorism: the doctrine that a moral act is genuine only when performed against inclination, the Kantian gulf between *Pflicht* and *Neigung* that denies the possibility of the harmonious personality. The *schöne Seele* names the soul in which inclination is so educated that doing duty is also doing what one wants — duty performed with grace.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Kant's autonomy principle — *Bestimme dich aus dir selbst*, determine yourself out of yourself — is among the deepest things any thinker has ever stated, and the moral-philosophical achievement of the *Critique of Practical Reason* is permanent.","n":[1]},{"t":"The point on which I depart is rigorism: the doctrine that a moral act is genuine only when performed against inclination, the Kantian gulf between *Pflicht* and *Neigung* that denies the possibility of the harmonious personality.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The *schöne Seele* names the soul in which inclination is so educated that doing duty is also doing what one wants — duty performed with grace.","n":[2,3]}]],"texts":"Über Anmut und Würde (1793) — the schöne Seele section especially; Aesthetic Letters Letter 23 on desiring more nobly rather than willing sublimely; the Kallias Letters (1793) attempting a synthetic objective beauty-concept on Kantian grounds; Schiller to Körner, 18 February 1793, on Kant's Bestimme dich aus dir selbst as the greatest words ever spoken by a mortal; the engagement with the Critique of the Power of Judgement throughout the 1791-95 essays. Reception: Christine M. Korsgaard's reading of the schöne Seele as friendly Kantian supplement (the Sources of Normativity tradition); Frederick Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher (Schiller as serious post-Kantian); Sharpe (the tendency to distort Kantian categories verdict); Robert Pippin's Hegelian framing of post-Kantian aesthetics.","works":["Über Anmut und Würde (1793) — the schöne Seele section especially","Aesthetic Letters Letter 23 on desiring more nobly rather than willing sublimely","the Kallias Letters (1793) attempting a synthetic objective beauty-concept on Kantian grounds","Schiller to Körner, 18 February 1793, on Kant's Bestimme dich aus dir selbst as the greatest words ever spoken by a mortal","the engagement with the Critique of the Power of Judgement throughout the 1791-95 essays"],"reception":"Christine M. Korsgaard's reading of the schöne Seele as friendly Kantian supplement (the Sources of Normativity tradition); Frederick Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher (Schiller as serious post-Kantian); Sharpe (the tendency to distort Kantian categories verdict); Robert Pippin's Hegelian framing of post-Kantian aesthetics.","status":"Held as friendly amendment, not as substantive critique. The autonomy structure is Kant's; what is added is the moral-pedagogical claim that the will can be educated such that inclination and duty cease to be at war. The texts work through this position in real time — the *Kallias Letters* and *Über Anmut und Würde* are stages of thought rather than finished systematic works, and their equivocations between Kantian and pre-Kantian senses of *Sinnlichkeit* are part of the working-through, not its failure.","era":"1759-1805","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"On Grace and Dignity","page":"pp. 77–78","canonical":"","quote":"In der gewöhnlichen Erfahrung ist es zwar umgekehrt, und das Vergnügen ist der Grund, warum man vernünftig handelt. Daß die Moral selbst endlich aufgehört hat, diese Sprache zu reden, hat man dem unsterblichen Verfasser der Kritik zu verdanken, dem der Ruhm gebührt, die gesunde Vernunft aus der philosophirenden wieder hergestellt zu haben.","label":"On Grace and Dignity, pp. 77–78"},{"n":2,"work":"ÆSTHETICAL ESSAYS","page":"pp. 204–205","canonical":"","quote":"Up to the present time I believe I have been in perfect accord with the rigorists in morals. I shall not become, I hope, a relaxed moralist in endeavoring to maintain in the world of phenomena and in the real fulfilment of the law of duty those rights of sensuous nature which, upon the ground of pure reason and in the jurisdiction of the moral law, are completely set aside and excluded. I will explain.","label":"ÆSTHETICAL ESSAYS, pp. 204–205"},{"n":3,"work":"On Grace and Dignity","page":"p. 78","canonical":"","quote":"Bis hieher glaube ich, mit den *Rigoristen* der Moral vollkommen einstimmig zu seyn, aber ich hoffe dadurch noch nicht zum *Latitudinarier* > NMUTH ÜRDE werden, daß ich die Ansprüche der Sinnlichkeit, die im Felde der reinen Vernunft, und bey der moralischen Gesetzgebung, *völlig* zurückgewiesen sind, im Feld der Erscheinung, und bey der wirklichen Ausübung der Sittenpflicht, noch zu behaupten versuche.","label":"On Grace and Dignity, p. 78"}],"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":"beauty-and-the-sublime","label":"Beauty and the sublime: are these two fundamentally opposed experiences, or two complementary moments of one ideal beauty?"},{"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?"}]}