The Need For An Aesthetic Education
Hello again. This is Altalena and welcome back to An Aesthetic Education. In these troubled and unsettled times, a level of comfort and enlightenment can be found in the wisdom and philosophies of the past. These philosophies can help to fulfil the need that we as individuals have to reach out and grasp some semblance of certainty to help explain the difficulties, we are experiencing in our own lives today. With all the discussions that we have had about aesthetics, beauty, and philosophy it is important to recognize and appreciate the pedagogical origin of some of these ideas and the wider philosophical conflict that we are all in some small way a part of. When I first began to gain insight into the purpose and depth of aesthetics, it was the words of Friedrich Schiller that showed me the importance of utilizing philosophy as a tool for the education of others. Not to create a generation of philosophers and abstract thinkers, but rather to provide a spark of insight and to highlight the many intellectual pathways that are available to any individual who is open to pursue them. So, let’s begin today’s special episode by taking a look at Friedrich Schiller and why he felt there was nothing more important than an Aesthetic Education.
At the end of the 18th century when the world was experiencing seismic societal changes, Friedrich Schiller, the German poet and playwright, published a series of letters entitled: On the Aesthetic Education of Man. At the height of his illustrious career, Schiller said that this work of philosophy, which attempted to explain the importance of the relationship between beauty, art, and morality, was the best thing he had done in his life. This is a bold statement from an individual whose poems and plays make him one of Germany’s most important classical writers. Yet, Schiller felt that compiling an investigative treatise into the importance of aesthetic education was more worthwhile than any poem or play he wrote. Within each letter, Schiller explains to the reader the distinct role that the study of aesthetics can have upon both the individual and society at large. He challenges us to see ourselves and the world around us not as we wish, but as it really is, as he says: “Man defines himself by his deeds – and what kind of image of man do we see in the mirror of our present times?” The appreciation of beauty was seen by philosophers as the key point of reference to reestablishing a sense of individual morality. It was believed that individual pleasure from an aesthetic experience was in fact almost independent from the consideration of personal gain. The joy one felt from experiencing and appreciating beauty was pure and independent of the worst of man’s sociable inclinations. This idea that our aesthetic response to beauty was the one point of human nature that was immune to the egotistical drive of selfish pursuits, led Immanuel Kant to famously claim that ‘beauty was the symbol of morality’.
To some extent, we all possess what Rousseau termed amour-propre, which roughly translated means self-love or vanity. Schiller, building off of many of the societal critiques made by both Kant and Rousseau, was concerned with the notion that a society is built upon increasing a person’s social capital at the expense of others. In the Fifth letter, Schiller outlines his concerns saying, “Egoism has established its system at the heart of the most elaborated sociability, and in the absence of its very own sociable heart we experience all the contagion and affliction of society.” The affliction of society comes in the form of ego driven actions. An individual’s desire to earn social capital at any price sets a dangerous precedent and comes at such a high personal cost that it limits their capacity to live a free and moral life. Schiller’s solution to overcome these inherit sociable flaws is through the aesthetic education of the individual. True moral freedom can be taught and realized within the individual. No government program or mass movement can force it into existence. A person who can appreciate and understand the world through an aesthetic lens can learn to act in a just and moral manner. Only through this combination of aesthetic appreciation and individual actions, will the affliction of egoism in society be lessened and true freedom will become more bountiful.
Of course, Schiller’s work was incomplete, and he never explicitly told us exactly what this education would look like. Instead, we are left with his works as well as those of the other 18th century philosophers. But more importantly we have a world full of art, music, poetry, and literature that can provide the foundations for an aesthetic education. At the end of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, Tamino and Pamina having passed through the trials of fire and water and helped to banish the forces of evil back into the darkness, bask in the rising sun. The High Priest Sarastro proclaims the sun’s victory over the night, enlightenment is achieved, and a new day has come. This beautiful final act cements the belief that true enlightenment only comes through the individual’s striving for inner freedom, and only through that can we push back the darkness and let in the light.
“Enter the holy temple of the spirit,
If you would flee from life’s discordant throng:
For freedom dwells but in the realm of visions,
And beauty lives but in the poet’s song.”
-Friedrich Schiller
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Thank you for listening.
