‘The Liberty of the Ancients? Friedrich Schiller and Aesthetic Republicanism’, History of...

THE LIBERTY OF THE ANCIENTS? FRIEDRICH SCHILLERAND AESTHETIC REPUBLICANISM

Alexander Schmidt1, 2

Abstract: Schiller’s political thought has been subject to conflicting interpretations.Taking Schiller’s historical essay The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon as apoint of departure, this article locates him more precisely within the context of eigh-teenth-century debates on republicanism and moral philosophy. One of Schiller’s cen-tral criteria in the evaluation of different republics is the question of how theycomply with man’s sensual and passionate nature. By attacking Sparta’s constitutionas despotic and unfit to meet human self-realization, he dissociated himself fromRousseau and repudiated classical republican models. Instead, Schiller sided withmodest proponents of luxury and progress by defending Athens’ abundant and politelifestyle. In response to the French revolution, Schiller developed his own aestheticmodel of cultivating senses and passions to achieve a free society. Despite significantliberal elements, he thereby remained true to the republican principle that freedom andself-realization can only be achieved in the political community.

On 1 March 1798 an official letter from the French National Conventionarrived in the German residential town of Weimar. It had been circulating forsix years until it finally reached its destination because the label ‘To MonsieurGille’ at best vaguely resembled the name of its real addressee, the Germanwriter Friedrich Schiller. Schiller’s friend Johann Wolfgang Goethe instantlycalled it ‘a decree from the realm of the dead’. Indeed, its authors, Roland,Danton, Clavière and Custine, had been dead for years — executed during theTerreur in 1793 and 1794. The content of this letter is well known. Itbestowed the honour of French citizenship on Schiller by the decree of the26 August 1792. Classified as publiciste Allemand, the poet was therebypraised as one of those who ‘have defended the cause of the people against thedespotism of kings’ and ‘with their writings have served the cause of freedomand prepared the liberation of the nations’.3

HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XXX. No. 2. Summer 2009

1 Historisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Fürstengraben 13, 07743Jena, Germany. Email: [email protected]

2 I am grateful to Eva Piirimäe, Richard Tolley, James Vigus, Joachim Whaley andan anonymous reader for commenting on earlier drafts. Earlier versions of this argumentwere presented at conferences in Jena, Munich and Florence in 2005 and 2006. After sub-mission of this article to History of Political Thought, Douglas Moggach’s article‘Schiller’s Aesthetic Republicanism’ appeared (History of Political Thought, XXVIII(3) (2007), pp. 520–41), which takes a different approach to the same topic. All quota-tions from Schiller are from the Schiller-Nationalausgabe (Weimar 1943– ), abbreviatedas NA. All translations from German if not indicated are my own.

3 On this episode see Hans Tümmler, ‘Wirbel um Friedrich von Schiller als citoyenfrançais’, in H. Tümmler, Weimar, Wartburg, Fürstenbund 1776–1820: Geist undPolitik im Thüringen der Goethezeit (Neustadt, 1995), pp. 175–7.

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The circumstances of Schiller’s honorary republican citizenship are notonly of anecdotal interest. Rather, they are part of the symbolic politics of theFrench Revolution as well as an expression of a certain political interpretationof Schiller’s early works. It is thus a central question whether the French revo-lutionaries were right to recognize Schiller as one of them.4 Or, on the con-trary, can the mistaken address be taken as a symbol of a clear misreading? Toprovide a satisfactory answer to these questions we must examine Schiller’sposition within the republican discourse of his time. This article will thus payspecial attention to how he treats classical republican virtues such as patriotismand which concepts of moral philosophy he developed to solve problems arisingas a consequence of the French Revolution and its radical republicanism.

At first glance, the political message underlying Schiller’s poetic and his-torical work seems to be unambiguous. He supports the struggle for freedomwherever it manifests itself: in the Dutch wars of independence against Spainin the sixteenth century, in rebellions of all kinds, in the display of patrioticvirtues and in the assassination of tyrants. No other German author around1800 dedicated so much of his literary writing to classical republican subjectsas Friedrich Schiller. Why not therefore call the ‘poet of freedom’ — as he isoften hailed in Germany — also the poet of republicanism?

Contrasting with these first impressions, an extremely different interpreta-tion of Schiller has been put forward in the later twentieth century, whichdoubts the genuinely political character of his writings altogether. The notori-ous and influential Carl Schmitt and, following him, Reinhart Koselleckclaimed that Schiller ultimately intended to subject politics to the tribunalof a moralizing, public critique.5 Thus, he would provide the bourgeoisie(Bürgertum) with the means secretly to take over power by undermining themoral basis of absolutism. According to Fania Oz-Salzberger, Schiller failedto grasp the republican arguments in his reading of the Scot Adam Ferguson.6

Oz-Salzberger thus argued that Schiller was basically interested in pureaesthetics and human self-perfection as the last stage of a non-politicalBildung. Strikingly, her verdict recalls traditional clichés of an alleged Ger-man antipolitical Innerlichkeit, dating back to Germaine de Staël’s famous De

4 On Schiller’s distant observation of the French Revolution see Peter-André Alt,Schiller — Leben, Werk, Zeit: Eine Biographie, Vol. 1 (Munich, 2000), pp. 655–63.

5 Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürger-lichen Welt (Frankfurt, 1973, first published 1959), pp. 82–6. On Carl Schmitt’s criticismof Schiller see Reinhard Mehring, ‘Hitler-Schiller: Carl Schmitts nachgelassene Hitler-Reflexionen im Licht von Max Kommerells Schiller-Deutung’, Leviathan, 33 (2005),pp. 216–39.

6 Fania Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse inEighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1995), pp. 280–314; cf. Fania Oz-Salzberger,‘Scots, Germans, Republic and Commerce’, in Republicanism: A Shared EuropeanHeritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge, 2002), Vol. 2,pp. 197–226.


l’Allemagne of 1810/13. In contrast, literary historians have always empha-sized the political character of Schiller’s work but often hesitated to locateSchiller in the wider context of eighteenth-century political theory.7 OnlyFrederick C. Beiser has in recent years come forward with a forceful interpre-tation of Schiller as a political philosopher. Based mainly on his On the Aes-thetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters but without taking his historicalwork extensively into account, Beiser argues that Schiller seriously addressesproblems of republican political theory.8 Beiser’s important contribution tothe debate will be discussed in the final sections of this article.

In contrast to most of these readings, this article will show that Schiller didin fact participate in contemporary republican discourse and that he did soeven before the events of the French Revolution unfolded. Even though hemainly reflected this in the medium of history, he nevertheless developed aclear position within current debates on the cultivation of passions and vir-tues. In doing so, he distanced himself from classical, rather martial conceptsof virtue and developed his own agenda to tackle pressing political prob-lems — problems of revolution and reform in an increasingly utilitarian soci-ety, which he ascribed to ignorance of man’s sensual and passionate nature.Like many German enlightened thinkers shocked by the violent course of theFrench Revolution, Schiller turned to man’s aesthetic capacities to achievereform of society and the social interaction between the citizens. This positionshould surely be described as ‘aesthetic republicanism’.9

In the following I will therefore first take a brief look at the complex con-cepts of republicanism and patriotism as discussed in the eighteenth century.Secondly, I will show how Schiller deals with republican theories, particu-larly with regard to virtues and passions, in The Legislation of Lycurgus and

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7 Cf. Paul M. Lützeler, ‘ “Die große Linie zu einem Brutuskopfe” , Republikanismusund Cäsarismus in Schillers “Fiesko” ’, Monatshefte, 70 (1978), pp. 15–28; Dorotheavon Mücke, ‘Play, Power and Politics in Schiller’s “Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zuGenua” ’, Michigan Germanic Studies, 13 (1987), pp. 1–18; Dagmar C. Stern, ‘Schiller’s“Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua”: A Blueprint of Democratic Evolution’,Michigan Germanic Studies, 17 (1991), p. 89–98; Peter-André, ‘ “Arbeit für mehr alsein Jahrhundert”: Schillers Verständnis von Ästhetik und Politik in der Periode derFranzösischen Revolution (1790–1800)’, Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft,46 (2002), pp. 102–33.

8 Frederick C. Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis ofModern German Political Thought (1790–1800) (Cambridge, MA and London, 1992),pp. 84–110; Frederick C. Beiser, Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination (Oxfordand New York, 2005).

9 For a different account of Schiller’s aesthetic republicanism see Moggach,‘Schiller’s Aesthetic Republicanism’. I am much indebted to Eva Piirimäe, whodescribes, in her as-yet unpublished dissertation, Thomas Abbt’s position as ‘aestheticpatriotism’. (Thomas Abbt (1738–1766) and the Philosophical Genesis of GermanNationalism, PhD thesis Cambridge, 2006).



Solon of 1790, a text of his Jena period which has been examined relativelylittle so far. Thirdly, I will consider this text as a contribution to Europeandebates of Schiller’s time by relating it to the French discussions of republic,state, virtues and luxury. Finally I will argue that Schiller — struck by the vio-lence of the French Revolution — became dissatisfied with traditional repub-lican solutions and instead developed his own way of harmonizing thepassions with the intellect in his On the Aesthetic Education of Man of 1795.In doing so, he confronted the central questions of enlightened moral philoso-phy such as human nature, sociability and freedom.

I

In the course of the eighteenth century, discussion of republican theoryreached a new level of intensity and interest.10 Perhaps the most remarkablefeature of this process was the adaptation of traditional civic humanism to thenew conditions of commercial society, guided by self-love (amour propre)and self interest. Republican theorists became aware of the potentials but alsothe risks of commerce, which could lead, as was supposedly exemplified bythe declining Dutch republic, to widespread egoism, corruption of civic vir-tues and thus to a disintegration of the res publica. The task was therefore torefocus social life towards the res publica and avoid the vicious circle of howto build a virtuous republic when both citizens and political structures are cor-rupted. In this context republican vocabulary could be used by an enormouslyheterogeneous group of authors to describe the flaws of a present regime,ranging from British Tories to French philosophes. This resulted in a differen-tiation, modernization and blending of traditional concepts which makes itvery difficult to identify the republicanism of the eighteenth century. JohnAdams, founding father and second US-president, knew this all too well,

10 Cf. Renate Dopheide, Republikanismus in Deutschland: Studie zur Theorie derRepublik in der deutschen Publizistik des späten 18. Jahrhunderts (Diss. phil. Bochum,1980); Wolfgang Mager, ‘Republik’, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. Otto Brun-ner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, Vol. 5 (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 571–629; JacobT. Levy, ‘Beyond Publius: Montesquieu, Liberal Republicanism and the Small-RepublicThesis’, History of Political Thought, XXVII (1) (2006), pp. 50–90; Hans ErichBödeker, ‘The Concept of the Republic in Eighteenth-Century German Thought’, inRepublicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States (1750–1850), ed.Jürgen Heideking and James A. Henretta (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 35–52; The Inventionof the Modern Republic, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge, 1994); Republicanism,Liberty, and Commercial Society (1649–1776), ed. David Wootton (Stanford 1994);Simone Zurbuchen, ‘Politische Tugend zwischen Vernunft und Fanatismus. Zur moral-philosophischen Begründung des Republikanismus im 18. Jahrhundert’, Aufklärung,Vormärz, Revolution, 21 (2001), pp. 11–25.


when he lamented in 1807: ‘There is not a more unintelligible word in theEnglish language than republicanism.’11

Two main meanings of republicanism can, however, be identified: the firstrefers to the republic in the sense of a certain (non-monarchical) constitution,the second refers to concepts of moral philosophy underlying the active par-ticipation of citizens and their virtues.

In German the term ‘Republik/res publica’ not only denoted a ‘free-state’(Freistaat) in an emphatic sense but could also signify any kind of state orcommonwealth.12 The debate in Germany and on the continent in generalwas dominated by Charles de Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois of 1748.Montesquieu defined a republic as being either an aristocratic or a democraticform of government and clearly distinguished it from monarchy and despot-ism.13 Rousseau radicalized the discussion in his Contrat social by strictlybinding the republican constitution to a democratic volonté général, which heregarded as the only legitimate source of government. Viewed from this per-spective, the opposition between monarchy and republic lost its significance.According to Rousseau, constitutions were either republican or despotic.

In Germany, as in France, the examination of ancient history and ancientrepublics allowed one to reflect critically on the political reality of absolutismon a more neutral ground.14 Nevertheless, particularly in the wake of theFrench Revolution, a new constitutional debate was launched. Revolvingaround the separation of powers, representation and the lawfulness of differ-ent types of government, this discussion quickly transcended the limits ofMontesquieu and left the ancient models far behind it. Moreover, EmmanuelSieyès and Kant, the prophets of the new representative republic, conceived aconstitutional monarchy to be in full compliance with republican principles.15

Kant clearly rejected the ancient republics as prone to fall back into despotism

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11 John Adams to Mercy Otis Waren (8 August 1807), quoted after Wooton, Intro-duction: The Republican Tradition — From Commonwealth to Common Sense, inRepublicanism, ed. Wooton, p. 1.

12 The Zedler entries ‘Republick, das gemeine Wesen’ and ‘Republick, in besondermVerstande’ reflect these two meanings. See Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses vollständigesUniversal Lexicon Aller Wissenschaften und Künste, Vol. 31 (Leipzig and Halle, 1742),pp. 656–65. Both meanings can be found in Schiller’s Geschichte des Abfalls derNiederlande: NA 17, 13 and 245.

13 Charles de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1956), pp. 12–19. Cf.Rudolf Vierhaus, ‘Montesquieu in Deutschland: Zur Geschichte seiner Wirkung alspolitischer Schriftsteller im 18. Jahrhundert’, in Rudolf Vierhaus, Deutschland im 18.Jahrhundert: Politische Verfassung, soziales Gefüge, geistige Bewegungen (Göttingen,1987), pp. 9–32.

14 On the French reception of antiquity cf. Chantal Grell, Le Dix-huitième siècle etl’antiquité en France (1680–1789) (2 vols., Oxford, 1995).

15 Pasquale Pasquino, The Constitutional Republicanism of Emmanuel Sieyès, inInvention, ed. Fontana, pp. 107–17; Otto Dann, Kant’s Republicanism and Its Echoes, inRepublicanism and Liberalism, ed. Heideking and Henretta, pp. 53–72. From the



for their lack of the representative principle, thereby targeting Rousseau, theJacobins and their version of direct democracy.16 One of the major criticismsof liberal republicans and monarchists alike was that the ancient republicslacked the complexity of modern commercial societies, which had to integrateand to provide security for vast numbers of people compared with the rathersmall population of the ancient cities.17 The ancient polities had lost their sig-nificance as objects of direct imitation.18

Besides these constitutional debates, another strain can be identified withinrepublican discourse. Iain Hampsher-Monk has described this as the problemof the ‘moral economy’ of a society.19 Within this discussion, patriotism hadbeen understood as an unconditional love for one’s country and thus an emo-tion, necessary for every citizen to fulfil his duties.20 As a positive passion,patriotism was generally believed to be a motivating force. Its essence wasloyalty, self-renunciation and heroic self-denial for the sake of one’s patria,family and compatriots. However, amor patriae was never understood in anexclusively republican sense.21 Indeed, monarchical patriotism sometimesborrowed heavily from the language of civic humanism.

Montesquieu then introduced a famous distinction in 1748. In his Del’esprit des lois he assigned patriotic loyalty and civic virtues exclusively tothe republic, while identifying honour as the central principle of monarchy

Montesquieuan perspective it can be easily overlooked that throughout the eighteenthcentury in Britain republican principles seemed to be totally compatible with constitu-tional monarchy: Cf. J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine PoliticalThought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton and Oxford, 2003), pp. 574–5.

16 Cf. Immanuel Kant, ‘Toward Perpetual Peace’, in I. Kant, Practical Philosophy,trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 324–5.

17 Cf. Friedrich Gentz, ‘Ueber den ewigen Frieden’, in F. Gentz, GesammelteSchriften, ed. Günther Kronenbitter, Vol. 5 (Hildesheim a.o., 1999), pp. 620–3.

18 Paul A. Rahe, ‘Antiquity Surpassed: The Repudiation of Classical Republican-ism’, in Republicanism, ed. Wooton, pp. 233–69; Wilfried Nippel, ‘Die Antike in derAmerikanischen und Französischen Revolution’, in Popolo e potere nel mondo antico,ed. Gianpaolo Urso (Pisa, 2005), pp. 259–69. This recognition of a sharp cleavagebetween antiquity and modernity is already shown by Harold T. Parker, The Cult ofAntiquity and the French Revolutionaries: A Study in the Development of the Revolution-ary Spirit (New York, 1965, first published 1937).

19 Iain Hampsher-Monk, ‘Political Languages in Time: The Work of J.G.A. Pocock’,British Journal of Political Science, 14 (1984), p. 91.

20 Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism(Oxford, 1995).

21 Gaines Post, ‘Two Notes on Nationalism in the Middle Ages’, Traditio, 9 (1953),pp. 280–320; Ernst H. Kantorowicz, ‘Pro Patria Mori in Medieval Political Thought’,American Historical Review, 56 (1951), pp. 472–92; Alexander Schmidt, Vaterlands-liebe und Religionskonflikt: Politische Diskurse im Alten Reich (1555–1648) (Leidenand Boston 2007); Patria und Patrioten vor dem Patriotismus: Pflichten, Rechte,Glauben und die Rekonfigurierung europäischer Gemeinwesen im 17. Jahrhundert, ed.Robert von Friedeburg (Wiesbaden, 2005).


and fear as the principle of despotism.22 He also emphasized that patriotism inrepublics was a virtuous feeling of contributing to society’s coherence, for itcould be shared by everyone. Europe’s leading type of state was now labelledwith a scarcely flattering verdict: according to Montesquieu, monarchies couldnot motivate their subject-citizens to take real interest in the commonwealth.

Montesquieu’s argument provoked some remarkable responses in Franceand Germany. The Prussian author Thomas Abbt and French supporters of thethése royal vehemently claimed love of country and civic virtues for monar-chies as well.23 Particularly in the multi-layered political structure of the Ger-man Empire, patriotism and monarchism were not necessarily considered tobe opposed to each other. Instead, patriotism was often used as a universalmoral formula to describe any kind of action in service of the common good,be it the cultivation of clover, the darling of Enlightened agrarian economy, orthe military defence of the Empire.24

In the context of this moral debate an anonymous author could answer thequestion ‘Whether it is possible for someone with republican beliefs to be agood citizen of a monarchy?’ in the affirmative. Writing against the back-ground of a widespread fear of revolution, the author identified a commitmentto the common good as the core of republicanism, rather than an antimonarchicalattitude or a striving for direct participation. According to this view, republi-cans could even be the best subjects in a monarchy tempered by law.25

II

How did Schiller’s views, all developed under the princely rule of enlighteneddespotism, fit into these debates? First of all, Schiller used republican issuesand anti-despotic pathos, as in the Robbers (1781), in Fiesko (1783) or in DonKarlos (1787), as source material for his dramatic work. A republican vocab-ulary played a central role in Don Karlos, notably with respect to the characterof the Marquis of Posa, a young enthusiast who aims at a radical transforma-tion of the despotic Spanish monarchy under Phillip II. Many of Posa’s ideas

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22 Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Vol. 1, pp. 11–33.23 Thomas Abbt, ‘Vom Tode für das Vaterland’, in T. Abbt, Vermischte Werke,

Vol. 2 (Berlin and Stettin, 1770), pp. 7–103. Cf. Eva Piirimäe, ‘Thomas Abbt’s VomTode für das Vaterland (1761) and the French Debates on Monarchical Patriotism’,Trames: Journal of the Humanities and the Social Sciences, 9 (2005), pp. 326–47; BélaKapossy, Iselin contra Rousseau: Sociable Patriotism and the History of Mankind(Basel, 2006). Montesquieu’s contention that vertu only exists in a republic was alsocriticized by Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social, in Rousseau, Œuvrescomplètes, Vol. 3: Écrits politiques, ed. François Bouchardy a.o. (Paris, 1964), p. 405(III, 4).

24 Rudolf Vierhaus, ‘Patriotismus — Begriff und Realität einer moralisch-politischenHaltung’, in Vierhaus, Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert, pp. 96–109.

25 Lorenz, ‘Kann man bei republikanischen Gesinnungen ein guter Bürger einesmonarchischen Staates seyn?’, Deutsches Magazin, 18 (1799), pp. 184–98.



were drawn from Montesquieu. However most of them — as Hans-JürgenSchings has shown — stemmed from the eclectic cosmopolitan-enlightenedideology of the Illuminati, a radical German branch of freemasonry.26 Schillerattributes the ‘republican virtue’ of self-renunciation and self sacrifice to theMarquis in his later Letters on Don Karlos (Briefe über Don Karlos).27 Bydenouncing him as an enthusiast, he also distanced himself from his doomedhero and his methods.28

Taking the early plays together, their protagonists, such as Fiesko or theMarquis of Posa, are often confronted with the tragic consequences of theirattempt to make their Republican ideals come true. It is thus highly problem-atic to deduce any particular political position from Schiller’s heroes caughtup in dramatic action. Oz-Salzberger is thus perfectly right to argue that anunspecific pathos of liberty cannot be equated with a political programme.29

With The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon Schiller took up a clearerstance within the political debates of his time. Published during the constitu-tional debates of the French National Assembly, this essay could attract anumber of interested German readers, among them the young Hegel, who dur-ing his Frankfurt years contemplated a revival of Greek republicanism as ameans for a renewal of Germany.30 Schiller’s text, printed in the journalThalia in 1790, was taken from his lectures as a professor of history at the uni-versity of Jena. Not surprisingly, he embedded the republican models of Ath-ens and Sparta in his Kantian idea of universal history, as developed in hisfirst lecture in 1789 in which he linked mankind’s progress towards higherdegrees of civilization to an ongoing moulding of man’s basic ability to bemorally and politically free. Schiller began his course of lectures on universalhistory with the first human societies. Drawing on the method of speculativeanthropology, he located the beginnings of political organization in the col-lective hunting of large animals, particularly predators. According to Schiller,the cunning leaders of these hunting parties occasionally managed to trans-form their position into one of permanent power over men, using personalguards as well as their privileges in sharing the spoils. Thus, the poet and his-tory professor implicitly repudiated all theories of a voluntary transfer ofpower in mutual interest as in the tradition of absolutist German natural law orof a divine right of kings. On the contrary, he derived monarchical rule fromviolent usurpation. With the Greeks Lycurgus and Solon he then turned his

26 Hans-Jürgen Schings, Die Brüder des Marquis Posa: Schiller und der Geheimbundder Illuminaten (Tübingen, 1996), pp. 101–24.

27 NA 22, 141.28 Ibid.29 Cf. Oz–Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, pp. 292–300.30 Hegel actually made excerpts from Schiller’s text. See Annemarie Gethmann-

Siefert, Die Funktion der Kunst in der Geschichte: Untersuchungen zu Hegels Ästhetik(Bonn, 1984), p. 124 (N 78).


attention to the institution of the rule of law and a commonwealth with partici-pation of citizens.

It is well known that the figure of the legislator was one of the favouriteheroes of eighteenth-century intellectuals.31 Montesquieu, Rousseau, Herderand many other authors of the time ascribed a key role to the sage legislator inthe enlightened and rational organization of the state and in the cultural devel-opment of mankind as a whole. Rousseau portrayed the législateur as some-one ready ‘de changer . . . la nature humaine; de transformer chaque individu,qui par lui même est un tout parfait et solitaire, en partie d’un plus grand toutdont cet individu reçoive en quelque sorte sa vie et son être; d’altérer la consti-tution de l’homme pour la renforcer’.32 Lycurgus and Solon were thereforenot antiquarian subjects but figures of particular contemporary interest to anenlightened audience. As J.G.A. Pocock recently put it in relation to Montes-quieu’s and Gibbon’s reflections on the Roman Empire: ‘The function ofancient history was to problematise modernity.’33 Schiller thus wrote in a con-text where ancient politics — at least as a negative foil — was still consideredto be an important mirror and measure of contemporary political theory andpractice. His own discussion of the early republics and his later considerationson the Crusades were part of a wider narrative of the rise of modern politicsand civilization.

Three years before Schiller, Johann Gottfried Herder had already praisedthe period of the emergence of the Greek republics as an era when men, ‘as ifbeing awakened from dependence began to contemplate their (political) con-stitution’. At this very moment the first answer had been given to the question,‘of how to govern man by man’.34 According to Herder, Athens and Spartaprovided mankind with two indispensable gifts in the course of its ongoingcultivation and refinement. While Sparta displayed the idea of unconditionalself-renunciation for the fatherland,35 Athens provided the first rays ofenlightenment:

294 A. SCHMIDT

31 Cf. David A. Wisner, The Cult of the Legislator in France 1750–1830: A Study inthe Political Theology of the French Enlightenment (Oxford, 1997).

32 Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, in Rousseau: Œuvres complètes, Vol. 3, p. 381 (II, 7).33 J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Vol. 3: The First Decline and Fall (Cam-

bridge, 2003), p. 349.34 Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, Vol. 6: Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der

Menschheit, ed. Martin Bollacher (Frankfurt, 1989), p. 542.35 ‘Die Grabschrift jener Spartaner, die bei Thermopylä fielen . . . bleibt allemal der

Grundsatz der höchsten politischen Tugend, bei dem wir auch zwei Jahrtausende späternur zu bedauren haben, daß er zwar einst auf der Erde der Grundsatz weniger Spartanerüber einige harte Patriziergesetze eines engen Landes, noch nie aber das Principium fürdie reinen Gesetze der gesamten Menschheit hat werden mögen. Der Grundsatz selbst istder höchste, den Menschen zu ihrer Glückseligkeit und Freiheit ersinnen und ausübenmögen.’ Ibid., p. 545.



Patriotism and Enlightenment are the two poles around which the entiremoral culture of mankind revolves. Athens and Sparta will thus alwaysremain the two great sites of memory, in which human statecraft was firstpractised in terms of these ends.36

Schiller went much further than that. He considered the legislation of Lycurgusand Solon not as two complementary models of state, but as fundamentallyopposed. In contrast to Herder, he was not so much interested in the achieve-ments of mankind, generally associated with these two polities. Instead,Schiller reflected in great detail on the specific circumstances as well as thepolitical, moral and cultural implications of the constitutions of Athens andSparta. According to Plutarch, Schiller’s main source, Lycurgus had initiateda number of significant, even revolutionary, changes.37 He had established amixed constitution, had divided the land of Lacedaimon into equal parts, hadbanned all luxuries and had instituted collective forms of life and a rigorouspublic education. Schiller, who started his intellectual career with works onhuman psychology and anthropology, could detect only one aim in all thesedifferent measures: namely, to distract the senses from the usual sensual andaesthetic attractions and to direct all passions and pleasure, from the cradleon, to one object alone.

The fatherland was the first backdrop, which appeared to every Spartanboy, when he learned to think. He awoke in the bosom of the state, every-thing around him was state, nation and country . . . Only in the bosom of thestate could he find occupation, pleasure, honour, reward; all his desires, allhis passions were fixed on this centre.38

By introducing iron money (worthless for international trade), delegatinglabour and commerce to slaves and foreigners and by compelling all citizensto participate in a closely observed daily life in the public eye, Lycurgusensured that every Spartan preferred his fatherland to private property. It isstriking how similar these passages are to what Montesquieu wrote aboutpatriotism in De l’esprit des lois. The French author regards the extinction ofall special inclinations and passions as a key measure to cultivate patriotism.

36 ‘Da nun Patriotismus und Aufklärung die beiden Pole sind, um welche sich alleSittenkultur der Menschheit beweget, so werden auch Athen und Sparta immer diebeiden großen Gedächtnisplätze bleiben, auf welchen sich die Staatskunst der Menschenüber diese Zwecke zuerst jugendlich-froh geübt hat.’ Ibid.

37 See Plutarch, ‘Lycurgus’, in Plutarch, Lives, ed. with an English translation byB. Perrin (Cambridge, MA, and London), pp. 203–303, esp. Chs. IX and X. On hisaccount of Solon see ibid., pp. 403–99.

38 ‘Das Vaterland war das erste Schauspiel, das sich dem spartanischen Knabenzeigte, wenn er zum denken erwachte. Er erwachte im Schooß des Staats, alles was umihn lag, war Nation, Staat und Vaterland . . . Nur im Schooße des Staats fand erBeschäfftigung, Ergötzung, Ehre Belohnung; alle seine Triebe und Leidenschaftenwaren nach diesem Mittelpunkt hingeleitet.’ NA 17, 422.


He compares this to the ascetic existence of monks.39 Measured by its ownstandards, Schiller conceded, Lycurgus’s legislative work had been crownedwith success: Sparta became a state of public education and patriotism.

Sparta’s institutions, its rigorous laws and its patriotism had long beenhailed as exemplary in the classical republican tradition. However, Schillercomes to the opposite conclusion. He clearly rejects the static, progress-resistant model of Lycurgus, and not only because of the existence of slaveryand the cruel suppression of its Helot population. According to Schiller’scosmopolitan vision, the state can never serve as an end in itself. The state canonly be one of the means by which the purpose of mankind can be achieved.Schiller specifies this purpose as ‘development (Ausbildung) of man’s capabil-ities, i.e. progress’.40 This could never have been accomplished in Sparta; forits legislator had banned nearly all trade with other nations, as well as the vastmajority of sciences and artistic skills. Schiller applies a moral universalismand a certain philosophy of history as standard to Sparta’s constitution — andit fails. He thus clearly gives preference to cultured human perfection over thesimple stability of the state and morals, which was traditionally admired in thewriting on Sparta.

As a consequence, Schiller attacked the patriotism instilled into Spartanchildren. He criticized the Spartan practice of separating children from theirparents and thereby distorting the soul’s natural beauty and balance of emo-tions. Lycurgus had ‘sacrificed the most natural and beautiful feelings ofmankind to this most artificial impulse’.41 Schiller’s criticism can be read as adistinct statement within the contemporary debates on education. He rejectedone specific element of Lycurgus’s legislation, which French philosophessuch as Helvétius described with great admiration: the early separation ofchildren from their parents and an education conducted completely in public.Helvétius considered this to be the solution for the contemporary issue ofsocial cohesion in modern societies. By cutting family ties, Lycurgus hadallegedly prevented society from splitting into a plurality of loose and selfishinterests, implanting the amour de la patrie into every soul.42

296 A. SCHMIDT

39 Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Vol. 1, p. 46 (V, 2).40 NA 17, 423.41 NA 17, 424.42 ‘Il [Lycurggus A.S.] brisa toutes les liens de la parenté en déclarent tous les

citoyens de Lacédémone enfans nés de l’état. C’est, dit un beau génie de ce siecle[Helvétius A.S.], l’unique moyen de étouffer les vices, qu’autorise une apparence devertu, & d’empêcher la subdivision d’un peuple en une infinité des familles ou de petitesociétés, dont les interêts, presque toujours opposé à l’intérêt public, éteindroient à la findans les ames toute espece d’amour de la patrie.’ Louis de Jaucourt, ‘Lacédémone,republique de’, in Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et desmétiers, ed. Jean Le Rond D’Alembert and Denis Diderot, Vol. 9 (Neuchatel, 1765),p. 153. Cf. Elizabeth Rawson, The Spartan Tradition in European Thought (Oxford,1991), p. 252. It cannot finally be proved that Schiller was referring to Helvétius. How-



Schiller hereby repudiated a classical notion of love of country. Accordingto the humanist and natural law tradition, patriotism was a pre-eminentlynatural passion: a natural moral knowledge, instilled by God in man’s heart.Humanists and natural jurists thus regarded it as higher than or at least on thesame level as love of one’s parents.43 Famous examples of this ‘natural’ loveof country were drawn from (among others) Sparta. Again and again school-men, textbooks and emblem books retold Plutarch’s anecdote about theSpartan mother, who slew her son because he showed cowardice in the faceof the enemy. It is highly probable that Schiller was referring to examples ofthis kind. In another text he repudiated this story as a denial of motherly feel-ings.44

The picture Schiller draws of Solon’s Athens stands in sharp contrast to theone he presents of Sparta. Solon not only created a sophisticated web of con-stitutional and legal regulations, he also moderated social inequality bycancelling private debts. Most of all, he limited the validity of his laws to amaximum of a hundred years. Schiller’s Solon had thus wisely understoodthat laws have to be adapted and changed from time to time in accordancewith the cultural development and progress of each nation. Even more,Schiller praises Solon’s laws for their sensitivity regarding personal freedom.They had been ‘flexible strings, which allowed the citizens’ spirit to movefreely and easily in all directions, without making them feel coerced’.45

The effects of these laws could be observed in three ways. Firstly, Athenscould achieve prosperity. Secondly, arts and sciences flourished. Thirdly,since the passions were not brutally suppressed, these laws cultivated a cer-tain type of Athenian habitus or character, which Schiller pictured as exactlythe opposite to the rather unpleasant, proud-hearted Spartan:

In contrast [to the Spartan A.S.], the Athenian was soft-hearted and gentle incompany, polite and witty in conversation, generous towards his servants,hospitable and obliging towards strangers. He loved luxury and finery, butthis did not prevent him from fighting like a lion on the battlefield.

ever, the similarity of these passages is striking. That Schiller was a regular reader ofHelvétius has been shown by Wolfgang Riedel, Die Anthropologie des jungen Schiller:Zur Ideengeschichte der medizinischen Schriften und der Philosophischen Briefe(Würzburg, 1985), pp. 178–82.

43 Cf. Schmidt, Vaterlandsliebe und Religionskonflikt, Ch. I.44 ‘Lange Zeit hat man jene spartanische Mutter bewundert, die ihren aus dem

Treffen entkommenen Sohn mit Unwillen von sich stößt, und nach dem Tempel eilt, denGöttern für den gefallenen zu danken. Zu einer solchen unnatürlichen Stärke des Geisteshätte man der Menschheit nicht Glück wünschen sollen. Eine zärtliche Mutter ist eineweit schönere Erscheinung in der moralischen Welt, als ein heroisches Zwittergeschöpf,das die natürliche Empfindung verläugnet, um eine künstliche Pflicht zu befriedigen.’NA 17, 424. Cf. NA 20, 143 f. where Schiller discusses the spectator’s mixed feeling inthe face of fratricide out of patriotic motives.

45 NA 17, 440.


Although he went to war dressed in delicate purple and smelling of thefinest ointments, all his enemies, from the rough Spartans to the myriadhosts of Xerxes quaked equally at his courage.46

Interestingly, Schiller’s Athenians with their concern for good looks andpolite manners remind one of English gentlemen rather than martial ancientrepublicans. They seem to have been filled with a subtle spirit of politeness,similar to that which Shaftesbury espoused as the standard of cultured man-ners.47 The citizens of Athens not only combined traditional virtues with agreat sense of liberality, they also assigned a great significance to purposelessbeauty — the schöne Schein (beautiful appearance). As Wilhelm von Humboldtbelieved — in full accordance with Schiller — elegance (Gewandtheit) andeloquence were necessary conditions to engage the citizens’ interests in thedemocratic culture of Athens.48 The cultured sophistication and politeness ofthe Athenians thus produces political responsibility. Even the simple classesof the people — guided by Solon’s laws — show a surprisingly strong senseof patriotism and a stupendous knowledge of their polis.49 This comes downto the prominence given in Athens to the ‘principle, on which all states shouldbe based . . . to impose laws on and by oneself, which have to be obeyed, and

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46 ‘Der Athenienser hingegen war weichmüthig und sanft im Umgang, höflichaufgeweckt im Gespräch, leutselig gegen den Geringen, gastfrey und gefällig gegen denFremden. Er liebte zwar Weichlichkeit und Putz, aber dieß hinderte nicht, daß er imTreffen wie ein Löwe kämpfte. Gekleidet in Purpur und mit Wohlgerüchen gesalbt,brachte er die Millionen des Xerxes und die rauhen Spartaner auf gleiche Weise zumZittern.’ NA 17, 441. Schiller ignores that, according to Plutarch, even the Spartans wentdelicately dressed to battle. See Plutarch, ‘Lycurgus’, XII, 1.

47 Cf. Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourseand Cultural Politics in Early Eigtheenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994); L.E. Klein,‘The Third Earl of Shaftesbury and the Progress of Politeness’, Eighteenth-CenturyStudies, 18 (1984–5), pp. 186–214; Iain Hampsher-Monk, ‘From Virtue to Politeness’,in Republicanism, ed. Gelderen and Skinner, Vol. 2, pp. 85–105.

48 Cf. Humboldt’s manuscript Ueber das Studium des Altertums of 1792, on whichSchiller carefully commented: ‘Die einzige eigentlich gesezmäßige Verfassung inGriechenland war die republikanische, an welcher jeder Bürger mehr oder minderAntheil nehmen konnte. Wer also etwas durchzusezen wünschte, mußte, da ihm Gewaltfehlte, Ueberredung gebrauchen. Er konnte also Studium der Menschen, und Fähigkeitsich ihnen anzupassen, Gewandtheit des Charakters, nicht entbehren.’ NA 21, 65.

49 ‘Wenn man aber auf der andern Seite bedenkt, wie gut auch der gemeinsteAthenienser mit dem gemeinen Wesen bekannt war, wie mächtig der Nationalgeist inihm wirkte, wie sehr der Gesetzgeber dafür gesorgt hatte, daß dem Bürger das Vaterlandüber alles gieng, so wird man einen bessern Begriff von dem politischen Verstand desatheniensischen Pöbels bekommen, und sich wenigstens hüten von dem gemeinen Volkebey uns voreilig auf jenes zu schließen.’ NA 17, 440.



to fulfil one’s duties out of patriotism, not for slavish fear of punishment orout of blind and weak surrender to the will of a master’.50

It is therefore quite clear that Schiller drew more heavily on civic humanistconcepts than Oz-Salzberger and other critics are willing to concede.51 Patri-otic virtues, a strong interest in the republic and individual cultured politenessform an idealized synthesis in his image of Athens. In contrast, the Spartansseem, despite their strong patriotism, to lack the quality of virtue like ordinarysubjects of a despotic government. By separating this patriotism from virtue,Schiller divides two aspects of morality which traditionally had been held tobe inseparable. This striking division is the result of a thorough transforma-tion of the catalogue of classical virtues in the eighteenth century. Schillerincorporates new qualities such as refinement, politeness and notably Bildunginto the new canon of personal qualities.

III

Schiller’s harsh attack on the mythical legislator Lycurgus requires an expla-nation. This short text should really be read as an answer to Rousseau andother republicans similarly enamoured of Sparta. In his Discours of 1750 onthe influence of arts and sciences on the improvement of morals the Genevanphilosophe had famously praised Sparta for its ‘happy ignorance’ (heureuseignorance) as well as for the ‘sagacity of its laws’ (sagesse de ses lois). Hecontrasted this to Athens. In this latter centre de la politesse et du bon goût,vices were introduced as a kind of entourage of the fine arts.52

As Elizabeth Rawson has shown, Rousseau was only one representative of awidespread enthusiasm for Lycurgus and the Spartan model among French en-lightened thinkers.53 Rousseau, Helvétius, the Abbé de Mably and to a limitedextent Montesquieu all referred positively to Sparta’s mixed constitution, its

50 ‘Grundprinzipium worauf alle Staaten ruhen müssen . . . sich selbst die Gesetze zugeben, denen man gehorchen soll, und die Pflichten des Bürgers aus Einsicht und ausLiebe zum Vaterland, nicht aus sklavischer Furcht vor der Strafe, nicht aus blinder undschlaffer Ergebung in den Willen eines Obern zu erfüllen.’ NA, 17, 440.

51 She claims that Schiller, in sharp contrast to Ferguson, was not fascinated by the‘tribal cohesion of the Spartans and the public spirit of the Athenians, but the Greeks’sense of beauty . . . Like Winckelmann and the next generation of German students ofancient Greece, Schiller was more charmed by its aesthetics than by its politics.’Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, p. 306. If Schiller maintains in his com-mentary on Humboldt that Greek culture was purely aesthetic he means their mainly sen-sual character — in contrast to the modern rationality, which he does not separate fromthe political. See NA 21, 65.

52 Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, Vol. 3, p. 12. On Rousseau’s enthusiasm for Spartacf. fragments nr. XII (‘Parallèle entre les deux républiques de Sparte et de Rome’) and nr.XIII (‘Histoire de Lacédémone’): ibid., pp. 538–48.

53 Rawson, Spartan Tradition, pp. 220–67. The circulating enthusiastic images ofSparta in France are summarized in the Encyclopédie: Jaucourt, ‘Lacédémone’.


frugal living and its austere public education.54 No wonder Sparta symbolizeda clear alternative within the extensive eighteenth-century debates on luxury,and on the pros and cons of free commerce with regard to culture and moralprogress. Sparta’s enlightened sympathizers demanded a rigid restriction ofluxury in order to promote common spirit and action for the common good.

This enthusiasm was certainly not aroused by the attractions of Spartan cui-sine, such as the famous black pudding. In fact, it was part of a serious searchfor answers to pressing contemporary problems. Against optimistic views ofhistory, Mably and Rousseau emphasized the negative effects of progress,such as moral decline, the loss of an undivided personality, inequality and alack of solidarity among the citizens, particularly in modern monarchies.55

Most of all Lycurgus’s egalitarian distribution of land was generally regardedas a model of how to keep equality among the citizens. Eric Nelson hasrecently highlighted the question of property to identify two different strainswithin the republican tradition.56 In contrast to the ‘Roman tradition’, the‘Greek tradition’ — according to Nelson — considers the safety of propertyto be less important than balancing questions of justice, happiness andinequality. Following Plato, More, Harrington and Montesquieu regardedequal distribution of land as an efficient instrument to prevent corruption andguarantee concord and a virtuous life.

Among the many features of Sparta which attracted attention from eighteenth-century writers one might single out the educational control of the passionsand their transformation into patriotic virtues. Rousseau made strong adapta-tions of the Spartan model when he developed a programme of reform for aPoland shaken by internal crisis and foreign jealousy in his Considérationssur le gouvernement de Pologne (1772).57 To stand its ground against power-ful neighbours, the commodity-poor Poland should — following Lycurgus’sexample — invest in the patriotism and virtues of its citizens. He thus pro-posed a militia, a patriotic education fostered by the state and national tourna-ments, to be modelled on antiquity. His article Économie in the Encyclopédiehad already ascribed to the state a greater interest in the raising of the children

300 A. SCHMIDT

54 Cf. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, Vol. 1, pp. 39–40. On Mably cf. NicoleDockes-Lallement, ‘Mably et l’institution de la societé spartiate’, in Réflexions idéologiquessur l’état: Aspects de la pensée politique mediteranéene (Aix and Marseille, 1987),pp. 231–59; Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge,2005), pp. 177–83.

55 This originated from a clear opposition to the Physiocrats: ‘Le mythe de Sparte etde Rome fut à l’origine, élaboré contre la doctrine des économists; il lui répondait terme àterme, opposant au présent, un passé idealisé; au luxe, la pauvreté; à l’idée de progrés,celle de décadence; à l’idée de puissance, celle de déclin.’ Grell, Le Dix-huitième siècle,Vol. 1, pp. 500–1.

56 Nelson, The Greek Tradition.57 Cf. his praise of Lycurgus, Moses and Numa: Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, Vol. 3,

pp. 956–7.



than their fathers. Education should therefore be brought back into the handsof the state and the public. Rousseau claimed that one of the basic principlesof a legitimate government was to raise its children as loyal and virtuous citi-zens. Apart from the Cretans and the Persians, this had however only beenachieved by the Spartans.58

This leitmotif can also be identified in German educational writing.59 Asearly as 1763 the Swiss Jacob Daniel Wegelin espoused a programmatic aswell as naïve enthusiasm for the famous Greek city on the Eurotas river. In histract on Lycurgus’s legislation he aimed to do away with a common miscon-ception: namely that Greek constitutions could not be applied to contempo-rary states.60 Notably, Wegelin was interested in how Lycurgus preventedallegedly negative passions, such as greed or the craving for pleasure, fromdeveloping. He praised the mythical legislator for replacing them with astrong sense of honour and patriotism. This staunch adherent of Rousseaubelieved the latter virtues to be directly connected with frugal living and theSpartan limitations on travel and property. He thus implicitly rejected luxuryand profit-seeking as morally and politically pernicious. For the Spartan peo-ple had always regarded selfishness and the mere ‘multiplication of privateproperty as a violation of patriotism’. In almost the same manner as Helvétius,Wegelin considered the fragmentation of society into autonomous familyunits with their particular interests to be the central problem, which Lycurgushad most efficiently solved. On the one hand, by keeping them in poverty, hehad undermined their material power basis. On the other hand, Lycurgus had,from the beginning, mandated the indoctrination of children into patriotic ele-ments of the polis through public education.61 Like many other enlightenedtheorists, Wegelin did not hold passions, desires and the senses to be some-thing negative per se.62 Within this mainstream trend to rehabilitate thesenses, he rather advocated taking the passions into service to inspire certainmoral and patriotic action. He was thus full of praise for Lycurgus’s

58 Ibid., pp. 260–1.59 Cf. Paul Joachim Siegmund Vogel, ‘Lykurg’, in P.J.S. Vogel, Biographie grosser

und berühmter Männer des Alterthums, Vol. 1 (Nuremberg, 1788), pp. 23–106.60 Johann Jakob Wegelin, Politische und moralische Betrachtungen über die

spartanische Gesez-Gebung des Lykurgus (Lindau a.o., 1763), fol. 2v. On the eighteenth-century Swiss debates about patriotism see Simone Zurbuchen, Patriotismus undKosmopolitismus: die Schweizer Aufklärung zwischen Tradition und Moderne (Zurich,2003); Kapossy, Iselin contra Rousseau.

61 ‘Dieweil also keiner ein besonderes Eigenthum für sich erlangen konte, so warendie Familien keine eigene kleine Staaten, wie in andern Regierungsformen. Ein jedergehörte unbedingt der Republick zu, deswegen wurden die Kinder zu erst beaufsichtiget,ehe sie für Bürger erkannt wurden.’ Wegelin, Politische und moralische Betrachtungen,p. 19.

62 On the general Enlightenment trend to rehabilitate the senses cf. PanajotisKondylis, Die Aufklärung im Rahmen des neuzeitlichen Rationalismus (Munich, 1986).


psychagogie of his fellow citizens; in his view the legislator had consistentlyreplaced noxious passions in their souls with honour and patriotism.63

Wegelin’s work received devastating criticism from Thomas Abbt, authorof the famous tract Vom Tode fürs Vaterland (On Dying for the Fatherland).He approved neither of Wegelin’s literary talents nor of his classical republi-canism. In his review in the Briefe die Neueste Literatur betreffend of 1765 hesharply repudiated the Spartan republican model while taking a fairlyhumanitarian and cosmopolitan stance similar to that of Schiller twenty-fiveyears later.64

IV

Given this wider contemporary debate, it should now be clearer what Schillerwas actually doing by attacking Sparta’s constitution. On the one hand, hedissociated himself from Rousseau by repudiating classical republican mod-els. Schiller thus criticizes a concept of virtuous, frugal life which onlyrevolves around the res publica, the republic, without taking humanity and itspotential for improvement seriously into account. On the other hand, bydefending Athen’s luxurious lifestyle, he sided with modest proponents ofluxury and progress such as Saint-Lambert.65 The latter had summarized thismodest position in the article Luxe of 1759 in the Encyclopédie where hedismissed the claim that abundance and luxury would prevent virtue andpatriotism from flowering. In fact, he suggested, everything depended on how

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63 ‘An statt dieser zwo gedämpften Leidenschaften sezte Lykurgus die Liebe derEhre und des Vaterlandes ein. Die Ehre mußte des Reichthums Stelle vertretten, wie dasVaterland der Gemächlichkeit.’ Wegelin, Politische und moralische Betrachtungen,p. 38. ‘Das Vaterland war also in einem eigentlichen Sinn, die Speise und Schatzkammereines jeden. Kein Spartaner konte glücklich seyn; wenn es nicht das Ganze war.’ Ibid.,p. 40.

64 With regard to the suppression of the Helotes, Abbt claimed: ‘His [i.e. Lycurgus’s]constitution was not intended for mankind: It was planned for 7000 or 8000 men and it[i.e. Sparta’s constitution] sinned against the rest of the human race. Lycurgus felt noth-ing for mankind, only for his city’s children.’ (‘Seine Verfassung war nicht für dieMenschheit berechnet: Sie war für 7 oder 8000 Menschen berechnet, und sündigte gegendas übrige menschliche Geschlecht. Lykurg fühlte nichts für die Menschen, sondern nurfür seine Stadtkinder.’) Thomas Abbt, ‘Drey hundert und zwanzigster Brief’, Briefe dieNeueste Literatur betreffend (1765), pp. 93–146, quote p. 115. Abbt’s praise of Spartanpatriotism in Vom Tode für das Vaterland does not stand in real contradiction to this.Abbt here was not concerned with the Spartan constitution. The conventional anecdotesof the famous Spartan mothers or of Leonidas’ courage rather functioned as examples ofthe motivating force of patriotism in republics, easy to recognize by the common reader.Cf. Abbt, Vom Tode, pp. 8 and 24.

65 On the eighteenth-century luxury debate see Istvan Hont, ‘The Early Enlighten-ment Debate on Commerce and Luxury’, in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge, 2006),pp. 379–418.



luxury was distributed and on whether it was prudently controlled by thestate.66

In contrast to Hume, Adam Smith, Saint-Lambert and others, Schiller wasneither a proponent of commerce nor particularly interested in the economicaland social problems of modern commercial societies. It is true that, in his Jenaperiod, as a professor of history, he viewed commercial exchange, the flour-ishing of arts and sciences and a civilized, cultured society in general as a partof man’s moral perfection as well as an indispensable condition for a histori-cal progress towards more freedom. These general convictions of Enlighten-ment historiography, however, do not imply that economy and social progresswere problems with which Schiller’s writings were much concerned. Never-theless, as will be discussed below, he was fully aware of the implications forhuman society of a modern specialization of knowledge and separation oflabour.

His criticism was not confined to Sparta, but could be targeted at theancient free states in general. This can be seen from some of Schiller’s lessenthusiastic remarks about Solon’s legislation. He critically scrutinizes notonly the missing principles of representation but also the entire intention ofthe ancient laws. As Quentin Skinner has convincingly shown, laws play acentral role in republican theory as a means of preventing corruption and rein-forcing virtues. He distinguishes this from a (roughly) liberal concept, whichregards laws as instruments for claiming certain rights from society.67 Schillerconcedes that modern legislation does not take a virtuous life sufficiently intoaccount. However, he accuses ancient legislators of ‘imposing moral dutiesby force of law’. Three years before the Jacobin Terreur Schiller rejects anyattempt to enforce ‘moral virtues through legal punishment’.68 He cites Athe-nian laws, prescribing honour to our parents and friends. Drawing aestheticand moral categories together, he saw the ‘beauty’ of moral action as beingthreatened by such measures. Even prior to his systematic reception ofKantian philosophy, he not only viewed autonomy as the essence of moralagency. He also clearly associated this moral autonomy with the quality of

66 ‘Ils disent que le luxe éteint [sic!] les sentimens d’honneur & d’amour de la patrie.Pour prouver le contraire, je citerai l’esprit d’honneur & le luxe des françois dans lesbelles années de Louis XIV. & ce qu’ils sont depuis; je citerai le fanatisme de patrie,l’enthousiasme de vertu, l’amour de la gloire qui caractérisent dans ce moment la nationangloise.’ Jean François de Saint Lambert, ‘Luxe’, in Encyclopédie, ed. D’Alembert andDiderot, Vol. 9, p. 764.

67 Quentin Skinner, ‘Machiavelli on Virtù and the Maintenance of Liberty’, inQ. Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 160–85, particularly pp.173–5; Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998).

68 NA 17, 438. Cf. ibid.: ‘Indessen muß man auch hier in Anpreisung des Alterthumssehr behutsam seyn. Fast durchgängig kann man behaupten, daß die Absichten der altenGesetzgeber weise und lobenswürdig waren, daß sie aber in den Mitteln fehlten. DieseMittel zeugen oft von unrichtigen Begriffen, und einer einseitigen Vorstellungsart.’


beauty. Positive legal proscription of duties would take away the free appear-ance of moral action and replace it with a mechanical fulfilment of law, whichmight be driven by fear of punishment not a rational love of doing good.

Schiller’s reflections are part of a general transformation of the concept ofliberty in the latter decades of the eighteenth century. One might describe thisparadigm shift in terms of Benjamin Constant’s famous opposition of the lib-erty of the ancients versus that of the moderns.69 As a general rule, some en-emies of the radical French revolution and, notably, Jacobin rule associatedtheir criticism with a clear rejection of ancient politics and the praise of classi-cal models in revolutionary rhetoric.70 Part of their argument was that ancientpolitics was cruel, barbaric and based on a narrow understanding of morality,which should be overcome by cultured modern societies. The claim that theJacobins wanted to imitate the liberty, austerity and frugality of ancient repub-lics was in many ways a distortion of their complex position.71 However, thesepolemics by their enemies proved to be highly successful. Constant particu-larly drew on the accusation that ancient liberty expressed by permanentdirect participation was completely incompatible with modern conditionssuch as large populations and the division between private and public.

With his criticism of Sparta Schiller thus moved closer to liberal and consti-tutionalist positions than might be expected from the republican rhetoric andhatred of tyrants that characterized his earlier dramas. In fact, there areremarkable similarities between Schiller’s underestimated historical lecturesand Constant’s famous De la liberté des anciens of 1819 and his Esprit deconquête of 1813, in which he first developed these ideas at length.72 Espe-cially in their praise for Athens and contempt for Sparta, Schiller and Con-

304 A. SCHMIDT

69 Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge,1988), pp. 308–28. There is a vast literature on this subject: Luciano Guerci, Libertàdegli antichi e libertà dei moderni (Naples, 1979). Isaiah Berlin famously took this dis-tinction as a point of departure for his own argument on the nature of negative and posi-tive liberty: Berlin, Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford, 2002), pp. 30–54 and 166–217.Cf. Skinner, Liberty. This distinction between negative and positive liberty was recentlyattacked by Eric Nelson in ‘Liberty: One Concept Too Many?’, Political Theory, 33(2005), pp. 58–78.

70 Gentz, ‘Ueber die Grundprinzipien’, pp. 184–5; [Anon.], ‘Ueber einige alteRepublicken. Geschrieben zu Paris im July 1802’, in Minerva (1803), Vol. 2, pp. 193–204.These texts can be accessed via: http://www.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/diglib/ aufklaerung.

71 Cf. Parker, The Cult of Antiquity; Julien Boudon, Les Jacobins: Une traduction desprincipes de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris, 2006).

72 Benjamin Constant, ‘De l’esprit de conquête et de l’usurpation’, in Œuvrescomplètes, Vol.VIII.2, ed. Kurt Kloocke and Béatrice Fink (Tübingen, 2005), p. 753–65.On Constant and antiquity cf. Giovanni Paoletti, Benjamin Constant et les Anciens:Politique, Religion, Histoire (Paris, 2006).



stant shared essentially the same argument.73 Schiller also concurred withsome basic ‘liberal’ convictions in seeing the state as a mere contingent entitymade by men, compared with the necessary existence of man himself.74 Fur-thermore, modernity is characterized, according to Schiller, by a natural anduniversal freedom (Menschenfreyheit) unknown to the Romans and Greeks,for whom liberty did not extend beyond the realm of their city.75 Schiller hereis in many respects in line with the reflections of his friend Wilhelm vonHumboldt of 1791/2.76 Humboldt stresses the difference between modern(constitutional) monarchies and the ancient republics with respect to freedomand defends society, individual liberty and private space against state interfer-ence. In contrast to many other early liberals, he wants to secure this individ-ual space not primarily as a means for economic activity but rather to allowindividual self-perfection and Bildung.

Frederick C. Beiser was one of the first to identify some important similari-ties between Schiller’s ideas and liberal thinking.77 However, it would bewrong to see Schiller and his complex concept of liberty simply within theliberal or even utilitarian paradigm. Particularly with regard to the FrenchRevolution, he took a more fundamental, anthropological approach to theproblems of contemporary society. Constant and others, despite their criti-cism, were basically supporting the results of the Thermidorian revolution. Insharp contrast, in the early 1790s Schiller was already decreasingly convinced

73 ‘Il seroit plus possible aujourdhui de faire d’un peuple d’esclaves un peuple deSpartiates que des former des Spartiates par la libertè.’ Constant, ‘De l’esprit deconquête’, Œuvres complètes, VIII.1, p. 631.

74 In 1788 (27 November) he wrote to Caroline von Beulwitz: ‘Der Staat ist einMenschenwerk, der Mensch ist ein Werk der unerreichbaren großen Natur. Der Staat istein Geschöpf des Zufalls, aber der Mensch ist ein nothwendiges Wesen, und durch wassonst ist ein Staat groß und ehrwürdig, als durch die Kräfte seiner Individuen?’ NA 25,146–7.

75 ‘Keiner von unsern Staaten hat ein römisches Bürgerrecht auszutheilen, dafür aberbesitzen wir ein Gut, das, wenn er Römer bleiben wollte, kein Römer kennen durfte [. . .]wir haben Menschenfreyheit; ein Gut, das — wie sehr verschieden vom Bürgerrecht desRömers! — an Werthe zunimmt, je größer die Anzahl derer wird, die es mit uns theilen,das von keiner wandelbaren Form der Verfassung, von keiner Staatserschütterungabhängig, auf dem festen Grunde der Vernunft und Billigkeit ruhet.’ NA 19 I, 16.

76 Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action, ed. J.W. Burrow (Indianapo-lis, 1993). Cf. Corah Lee Price, ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt und Schillers “Briefe über dieaesthetische Erziehung des Menschen” ’, Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft,11 (1967), pp. 358–73.

77 Beiser, Enlightenment, pp. 84–110. Beiser draws no comparison with Constant. Inhis brilliant recent account, Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination, pp. 123–6, how-ever, he places Schiller in the republican tradition. On this and my differing position seebelow.


about the possibility of a real political change unless the subjects of such achange themselves had been prepared for freedom.78

In his On the Aesthetic Education of Man (also referred to as Aesthetic Let-ters) of 1795 he returned in many ways to a Rousseauean analysis of modernsociety.79 Moving towards a less optimistic position, he now became rathersceptical about the achievements of Athens. In the tenth of his Aesthetic Let-ters he claims that only in modern times — if ever — could liberty and culturebe reconciled. Sparta and indeed Athens had lost their liberty together withtheir barbarism.80 In contrast, contemporary society, according to Letter VI, ischaracterized by an alienating division of labour, man’s intellectual facultiesand personality, a mechanized bureaucracy and the separation of the privateand public spheres. As highlighted in recent research, he thereby developed asimilar sensitivity to the implications of the separation of labour as contempo-rary Scottish thinkers such as Adam Ferguson to whose moral philosophySchiller was much indebted during his early period.81 That he fails to developa similarly complex view of this problem in terms of political economy as theScots was, however, not least due to a somewhat different focus. While hisanalysis clearly encompasses the economic sphere, his examples of how thestate transforms individuals into functional parts of its machinery are ratherconcerned with the expansion of bureaucracy by enlightened absolutist rulersin Germany.

Furthermore, he particularly emphasizes the separation of man’s intellec-tual faculties as a necessary sacrifice for the scientific progress of humanity.He mentions the discovery of the satellite of Jupiter by telescope or the writ-ing of the Critique of Pure Reason. Further — a point rather overlooked byOz-Salzberger and others — he took up debates on the specialization ofknowledge which were most prominently laid out by Jean Le Rond d’Alembertin his Discours préliminaire to the Encyclopédie.82 In contrast to d’Alembert,

306 A. SCHMIDT

78 Cf. Alt, ‘ “Arbeit für mehr als ein Jahrhundert”.79 On the Aesthetic Letters see Lesley Sharpe, Friedrich Schiller: Drama, Thought

and Politics (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 146–69; Bernd Bräutigam, ‘Konstitution undDestruktion ästhetischer Autonomie im Zeichen des Kompensationsverdachts’, inRevolution und Autonomie: Deutsche Autonomieästhetik im Zeitalter der FranzösischenRevolution, ed. Wolfgang Wittkowski (Tübingen, 1990), pp. 244–59; Beiser, Schiller asPhilosopher. A modern English edition is Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Educationof Man in a Series of Letters, ed. Elizabeth M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby (Oxford,1967, reprinted 1982).

80 Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Wilkinson and Willoughby,p. 67. Cf. NA 20, 339.

81 Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, pp. 306–8.82 See d’Alembert, ‘Discours préliminaire’, in Encyclopédie, ed. d’Alembert and

Diderot, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1751), pp. IX, XV and particularly XVIII. Here he lays out aseparation between érudits, philosophes and beaux esprits as a consequence of the spe-



Schiller was less optimistic about the liberating effects of this differentiationof man’s intellectual capacities and their growing separation from passionsand feelings.

Consequently, he was very much aware of the problems of coupling libertywith modern civilized society. Despite this gloomy diagnosis, Schiller wasnot part of a broad group of intellectuals such as Rousseau, Adam Fergusonand other adherents of the civic humanist tradition who proposed classicalrepublican virtues as both a remedy and a countermeasure. In the twenty-sixthletter he mocked ‘these severe moralizers’ who dared to return to ‘the sincer-ity, soundness and solidity of former times’. He criticized their mistakenrefusal of modern ‘politeness’ (Höflichkeit) as hypocrisy as well as their wishto revive the primitive manners of a ‘Gothic Age’.83 For him the traditionallanguage of virtues did not apply to this changed environment. Enlivening theideal of (temporarily) integrated personality and the unity of senses and intel-lect, his own (neo)classical solution, however, rather surprisingly looked verymuch like a transformed ancient and less like the vision of a ‘Modern’.

What struck Schiller most was the outbreak of sheer violence — in particu-lar by women — in the early years of the Revolution. He ascribed this to man’sunfinished cultivation of his moral character. Schiller was deeply convincedthat passions and reason or intellectual capacities had not been reconciled orharmonized within a fractured society. Man’s full nature was consequentlystill suppressed in two senses. Either he was dominated by the despotism ofhis natural needs, his passions and senses, or he suffered from the asceticismof a rule of abstract rational principles over his sensual and emotional nature:a polarity he expressed by the terms ‘savage/barbarian’ (Wilder/Barbar).84

Both models can be linked to a certain type of state: the first applies to the tra-ditional feudal and absolutist state. Schiller calls it the Naturstaat (Naturalstate) which only provides the necessary means for human survival such assecurity. It very much resembles the Hobbesian ‘Leviathan’, invented to con-tain man’s unruly physical nature.85 The barbarian is to some extent linked tothe Vernunftstaat (State of Reason), the enlightened state based on moral andegalitarian principles, as envisioned by the revolutionaries.

cialization of man’s intellectual faculties, which results in their rivalry and mutual igno-rance of each others’ achievements.

83 Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Wilkinson and Willoughby,p. 201. NA 20, 404–5.

84 NA 20, 318.85 ‘Dieser Naturstaat (wie jeder politische Körper heissen kann, der seine Einrichtung

ursprünglich von Kräften, nicht von Gesetzen ableitet) widerspricht nun zwar demmoralischen Menschen, dem die bloße Gesetzmäßigkeit zum Gesetz dienen soll, aber erist doch gerade hinreichend für den physischen Menschen, der sich nur darum Gesetzegiebt, um sich mit Kräften abzufinden.’ NA 20, 314. Schiller describes human nature inthe same passage as egoist and brutal (selbstsüchtig und gewaltthätig) aiming at thedestruction rather than the preservation of society. NA 20, 315.


Nevertheless, he still aimed at the Vernunftstaat, where law follows theprescription of the categorical imperative, as the sole end of social reform. InLetter XXVII he names it the ‘ethical state’ (ethischer Staat) which he posi-tions against the ‘dynamic state’, essentially the Naturstaat of Letter III. Thedynamic state is characterized as a state where people claim rights and forceeach other into society to fulfil their self-interest. Despite his criticism of thisHobbesian model, he rejected the methods used by the revolutionaries toovercome the ‘Naturstaat’ as misguided because they did not take the morallyunprepared nature of man into account. Schiller agreed that a revolution wasnecessary — but first and foremost a ‘revolution in [man’s] whole way offeeling’ (Empfindungsweise), i.e. an anthropological revolution.86 Again, it isstriking to see how Schiller develops his argument along a Rousseauean linewhile coming up with a completely different solution. He basically sharesRousseau’s diagnosis of modern man’s alienation from both political societyand his own nature. Since Rousseau views a return to the primal state of inno-cent humanity as unrealistic, he argues that to overcome this alienation manmust become fully political as in ancient Sparta. In contrast, Schiller claimsthat we must develop the full potential for our humanity before we can attainfull political liberty. Taking up the language of republican moral economy inhis letters to the Prince of Holstein-Augustenburg in 1793, the first drafts ofthe Aesthetic Letters, he claims that only the moral character of the citizenscan produce and sustain political and civil liberty in the state. He leaves nodoubt that freedom is the ‘the most sacred of all goods . . . and the centre ofculture’. But a free constitution must be built ‘on the firm ground of ennobledcharacter’.87 It is thus clear why he gives such preference to the problem ofman’s nature instead of constitutional theory.

Combating the opposition between our sensual and intellectual nature,manifested in the two state models, Schiller proposed aesthetics as a remedyto reconcile them. His point of departure was Kantian philosophy, in particu-lar the Critique of Judgement, which he eagerly studied in 1791. He wasstruck by Kant’s concept of autonomy as self-determination and independ-ency from rules not approved by one’s reason. Appropriating this notion,while at the same time distancing himself from Kant, Schiller strove to squarethe circles. He wanted to have things both ways, preserving the autonomy of

308 A. SCHMIDT

86 Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Wilkinson and Willoughby,p. 205.

87 ‘Politische und bürgerliche Freiheit bleibt immer und ewig das Heiligste allerGüter . . . und das große Centrum aller Kultur — aber man wird diesen herrlichen Bau nurauf dem festen Grund eines veredelten Karakters aufführen.’ NA 26, 265. For a similar,but earlier, position by the Swiss historian and political theorist Iselin cf. Kapossy, Iselincontra Rousseau, p. 129.



morality and art while at the same time moving them closer together.88 Thiscould only be achieved by developing an aesthetic notion of man’s characterand freedom. Beauty and art should function as a means to morality and a freesociety as well as remaining ends in themselves. This is the core of the notionof aesthetic education. He thus departed from dominant ideas of using arts asmere tools to improve morality and virtue.

In fact, since the Kalliasbriefe of 1793 Schiller took great pains to overcomeKant’s notion of beauty as a mere symbol of morality and to give it a moreobjective character. The various turns and facets of his argument have beenimpressively analysed by Beiser and need not be rehearsed here.89 The centralpoint is that Schiller basically develops two notions of freedom. One followsthe Kantian notion of a free and spontaneous (moral) reasoning. However, ashe makes very clear, this moral freedom can be inhibited by our physical andsensitive nature, our passions and drives, from fully realizing its capacities inthe world. He thus proposes a second notion of freedom, in which oursensitive nature is not suppressed by but reconciled with our intellect. Only inthis condition of aesthetic freedom can we realize the full capacities of ourbeing. Art and beauty are not only symbols of this equilibrium. Humanself-realization or wholeness is itself a form of beauty which allows us to fullyarticulate our moral autonomy.

Schiller was building on the Kantian concept of disinterested pleasure as itis already manifested in the anthropological play-drive of children and primi-tives and is further refined in the appreciation of the arts. A certain, consciouslyidealized understanding of the Greek or, more precisely, the Athenian citizenuniting civic duties with aesthetic expertise was still very much at the core ofhis concept of the aesthetic education and the aesthetic state.90 Only theGreeks had achieved a harmonious relation of reason and passions and thusunderstood the ideal of moral beauty and of disinterested pleasure, ‘the freest,most sublime state of being’.91 With this ideal of kalokagathia in mind,

88 For Kant’s own attempt to link aesthetics to morality see Paul Guyer, Kant and theExperience of Freedom (Cambridge, 1993).

89 I am much indebted to Beiser’s analysis. See Beiser, Schiller, pp. 150–64.90 In the sixth letter Schiller asks: ‘What individual Modern could sally forth and

engage, man against man, with an individual Athenian for the prize of humanity?Whence this disadvantage among individuals when the species as a whole is at such anadvantage? Why was the individual Greek qualified to be the representative of his age,and why can no single Modern venture as much? Because it was from all-unifying Naturethat the former, and from the all-dividing Intellect that the latter, received theirprospective forms.’ Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Wilkinson andWilloughby, p. 33. Cf. NA 20, 322. On Schiller’s utopian vision of an Aesthetic state seeJosef Chytry, The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought (Berkeley a.o.,1989), pp. 70–105; Beiser, Schiller, pp. 161–4.

91 Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Wilkinson and Willoughby,p. 109.


Schiller thereby drew extensively on the eighteenth-century concept of thebeautiful soul.92 As Beiser argues, Schiller’s model was not Shaftesbury,despite strong sympathies, but rather his Weimar friend Christoph MartinWieland and, of course, Kant.93

In terms of political theory, his aesthetic republicanism did not take personalvirtue as its point of departure, as was traditional, but rather moral freedom inits Kantian, voluntarist version. Only from this transcendental capacity formoral freedom and rational autonomy, Schiller believed, could one proceed tocivil and political liberty.

The immediate publishing context of his Aesthetic Letters provides furtherevidence that Schiller was indeed still aiming at republican reform. Strik-ingly, another article in the Horen of 1795, where the Aesthetic Letters werefirst published in the same year, shared Schiller’s position. The anonymousauthor, in fact Schiller’s Jena colleague Karl Ludwig Woltmann, argued that‘aesthetic education’ was the only education which could be of any use for the‘Newfranks’ (Neufranken): ‘They can only be enabled to become real repub-licans through art, not through philosophical reasoning. France must becomethe garden of beauty before the fruits of liberty will ripen.’94 However,Schiller’s concept of an aesthetic education was not confined to republics noran exclusively republican constitution. It was rather a republican remedy directedto heal the deficiencies and the utilitarian corruption of European societies,monarchies and republics alike, caused by commerce and bureaucracy.

Responding to an extensive debate on sociability, Schiller argued that soci-ety could be sufficiently integrated neither by an egoistic striving for peaceand utility nor by abstract moral principles. He thus opined that it was onlythrough beauty and taste that men could become really sociable and acquire asense of mutual recognition and geselligen Charakter.95 Although he made nodirect reference to commercial sociability, it is clear that Schiller repudiatedutility and self-interest as the sole basis for a future society. They form the

310 A. SCHMIDT

92 Robert E. Norton, The Beautiful Soul: Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Century(Ithaca and London, 1995), pp. 225–45.

93 Beiser, Schiller, pp. 91–4.94 [Karl Ludwig Woltmann], ‘Beitrag zu einer Geschichte des französischen

Nationalcharakters’, in Die Horen: Eine Monatsschrift, ed. Friedrich Schiller, Nr. 5(1795), p. 40.

95 ‘Though it may be his needs which drive man into society, and reason whichimplants within him the principles of social behaviour, beauty alone can confer upon hima social character. Taste alone brings harmony into society, because it fosters harmony inthe individual . . . All other forms of communication divide society, because they relateexclusively either to the private receptivity or to the private proficiency of its individualmembers, hence to that which distinguishes man from man; only the aesthetic mode ofcommunication unites society, because it relates to that which is common to all.’Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Wilkinson and Willoughby, p. 215. Cf.NA 20, 410–11.



principles of the primitive Naturstaat. Instead, only a common love of beautycould render possible the harmonic integration of the individual with theintersubjective demands of mankind. Following Shaftesbury, Baumgartenand Kant, Schiller therefore made aesthetic experience, conceptualized as aninterplay of Stofftrieb and Formtrieb, into an important prerequisite of politicalfreedom. In this way he laid great emphasis on social interaction and a harmo-nized sociability. Aesthetic education would thus result in a cultured personal-ity giving greater respect to the moral autonomy and freedom of others.96

Aesthetic education was not conceived as the state’s responsibility. Sincethe current state was identified in the seventh letter as one source of the pres-ent evils, it could not become the agent of reform.97 Schiller would haveabhorred the idea that the artist or poet could dedicate himself to a kind of civilart as a functional equivalent to Rousseau’s civil religion, filling formerchurches with the notorious busts of Marat and Brutus. Schiller made use ofand extended, and in a sense reversed, the civic humanist argument chal-lenged already by David Hume and others that arts and sciences could onlyflourish under a free government.98 Opposing Rousseau, Schiller claimed thatonly the flourishing of the (narrower) beaux arts could provide the basis oftrue liberty for the citizens by harmonizing passions and intellect. A rather lib-eral implication of this was, however, that the beaux arts were autonomousand not subject to political and governmental interference:

Art, like Science, is absolved from all positive constraint and from all con-ventions introduced by man; both rejoice in absolute immunity from humanarbitrariness. The political legislator may put their territory out of bounds;he cannot rule within it. He can proscribe the lover of truth; Truth itself willprevail. He can humiliate the artist; but Art he cannot falsify.99

96 In 1793 he wrote to Christian Gottfried Körner: ‘Es ist auffallend, wie sich der guteTon (Schönheit des Umgangs) aus meinem Begriff der Schönheit entwickeln läßt. Daserste Gesetz des guten Tons ists: Schone fremde Freiheit. Das zweyte: zeige selbstFreiheit. Die pünktliche Erfüllung beider ist ein unendlich schweres Problem, aber dergute Ton fodert sie unerläßlich, und sie macht allein den vollendeten Weltmann. Ichweiß für das Ideal des schönen Umgangs kein paßenderes Bild als einen gut getanztenund aus vielen verwickelten Touren componierten englischen Tanz.’ NA 26, 216.

97 ‘Can we perhaps look for such action from the State? That is out of the question.For the state as present constituted has been the cause of the evil . . . we must continue toregard every attempt at political reform (Staatsveränderung) as untimely, and everyhope based upon it as chimerical, as long as the split within man is not healed, and hisnature restored to wholeness that it can itself become the artificer of the State, and guar-antee the reality of this political creation of Reason.’ Schiller, On the Aesthetic Educa-tion of Man, ed. Wilkinson and Willoughby, p. 45. Cf. NA 20, 328–9.

98 David Hume, ‘Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences’, in D. Hume,Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (Indianapolis, 1987), pp. 111–37.

99 Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Wilkinson and Willoughby,p. 55. Cf. NA 20, 333.


Schiller is not very clear about the specific practice of this social ideal of aestheticeducation and how it could be accomplished. However, he was not so naïve as toadvocate a complete return to the integrated personality of the ancient cities. Hisvision was not a complete fusion of beauty and morality but was rather conceptu-alized as a condition for the possibility of moral and political reform.

V

Several important themes and motives place Schiller in a liberal tradition. It isthus finally necessary not only to summarize some of my findings but also tosharpen and further defend my categorization of his general political vision as‘aesthetic republicanism’.

Schiller’s historical reflections in The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solondirectly lead into eighteenth-century debates about legislation, constitutionand the place of virtues, passions and manners within this legislative frame-work. The fundamental question here was ‘What is the legislator’s concept ofthe nature of man: his passions and moral obligations, particularly with regardto the historical progress of mankind?’ According to Schiller, Lycurgus hadtaken a completely mistaken approach, while Solon showed more sensitivityto his task in leaving his institutions open to change. Taking Schiller’s reflec-tions on the early Greek republics into account, the claim made by Oz-Salzberger that he took no interest in questions of participation and politicaltheory while fleeing into mere aesthetics cannot be sustained. With his strongpolemics against Sparta he clearly repudiated many values of classical repub-licanism, such as frugality, self-denial and a strong patriotism. Nevertheless,he remained cautious about presenting Athens as a direct model suitable forimitation. From here, one might draw parallels to the moderate Girondists aswell as to liberals like Constant.

Schiller’s criticism of Spartan republicanism sprang from a new sensitivitytowards public force and methods of manipulation such as those used by theIlluminati. This was supported by a moral universalism, as expressed in themaxim never to treat men as means, only as ends. Schiller thus came outagainst all forms of coercion exercised by the laws and the state. He refused tocontemplate any attempt to limit human self-perfection by whatever princi-ple. Schiller remained particularly sceptical about imposing benevolent forceon man’s sensual nature. This was partly due to his Kantian concept of moralphilosophy which refused to see passions either as naturally good or naturallyevil.

Despite this liberal scepticism towards the modern state his agenda remained,significantly transformed, basically republican. As Beiser has recentlyemphasized, Schiller was still concerned with the personal qualities of thecitizen.100 He however thereby transformed the traditional concept of virtue

312 A. SCHMIDT

100 Beiser, Schiller, pp. 123–6.



into the notion of ennobled character (veredelter Charakter), on which hewanted to build the Vernunftstaat. Consequently, he refuses the minimalsociability, self interest and the strong separation between the public and pri-vate, propagated by classical liberalism, as basic political principles. He wasrather critical of the fact that — as Constant famously put it — ‘les modernes’find nearly all their joys ‘dans leur existence privée’.101 Schiller would haverather sided with his Jena colleague Friedrich Schlegel in his 1796 praise ofAthenian political culture against the rejection of ancient republics in Kant’sPerpetual Peace.102 As Beiser argues convincingly: ‘The basic idea is thatpeople participate in the social organism from inclination, from love, and notfrom a sense of self interest. What Schiller has in mind here is something likepatriotism.’103 Beauty is not only a psychic state in which human beings experi-ence themselves as a morally and sensitively integrated and thus free person-ality. Even more, by making this a necessary condition for a free constitution,as stressed in the first letters, Schiller directly relates this to our capacity tobecome co-legislators in a free society.

However Beiser is stretching this relation to the Republican tradition toofar, when he directly relates Schiller to such contrasting figures as Ferguson,Rousseau and Montesquieu. For reasons given above, there was in reality asharp contrast between his and their writings. Self renunciation — as Schillerunderstood republican virtue in his Letters on Don Karlos — played no role inhis aesthetic republicanism. Aesthetic education strongly aimed at openingand securing a free space to manoeuvre in the social relations between autono-mous individuals. At the core of his concept of aesthetic republicanism thuslay a strong sense of man’s self cultivation and perfection in the social sphere.In the republican tradition the laws functioned as decisive means in enforcingmoral behaviour, virtue and freedom. Overcoming the (Kantian) mind–bodydualism, Schiller replaces laws by the soft internal force of aesthetic culture(ästhetische Kultur) which tames passions already in the physical and sensualsphere of the individual through reason and form (Letter XXIII).104

Opposing the shortcomings of traditional concepts of sociability and sev-eral modes of despotism, Schiller’s aesthetic republicanism places his hopes

101 Constant, ‘De l’esprit de conquête’, Œuvres complètes, VIII.2, p. 755.102 ‘With regard to the community of the morals, the political culture of the modern

state is in a state of infancy compared to the ancient; and no state has reached a greaterdegree of freedom and equality than the Attic. The ignorance of the political culture ofthe Greeks and Romans is the source of unspeakable confusion in the history of human-ity; and is even disadvantageous to the political philosophy of the moderns, which inthese respects has much to learn from the ancients.’ Friedrich Schlegel, ‘The Concept ofRepublicanism’, in The Early Political Writings of The German Romantics, ed. andtrans. Frederick C. Beiser (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 103–4.

103 Beiser, Schiller, p. 163.104 Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, ed. Wilkinson and Willoughby,

pp. 166–9.


in the cultivating force of beauty and aesthetic and moral autonomy. Accord-ing to him, the citizen who has educated his senses by experiencing works ofbeauty has equipped himself for harmonized social relations and is thereforecapable of constituting and sustaining a free society, which is part of man’sself-realization. Beauty functioned in a double sense both as means andend.105 Schiller’s commonwealth was thus surely no ‘structure of virtue’ inthe Pocockian sense but, perhaps, a structure of beauty — the aesthetic state(ästhetischer Staat).

Alexander Schmidt FRIEDRICH-SCHILLER-UNIVERSITY JENA

314 A. SCHMIDT

105 Cf. Beiser, Schiller, pp. 165–8, who against traditional accounts of Schillerdefends this position as not self-contradictory.


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