The Rudolf Steiner Archive

25. What Can the Present Learn from Schiller?

[ 1 ] One must not overlook the fact that the public’s attitude toward Schiller in the second half of the 19th century had to be quite different from that in the first; this was already determined by the developments I have hinted at to you. Schiller’s relationship to truth was such that he could say: “Through the dawn of beauty, you enter the realm of knowledge.” For him, truth was beauty. A work of art was to be a manifestation of the Idea—the Idea that was thought to permeate the entire universe. It was an ideal worldview, a refined and subtle one that only those capable of soaring to subtle, spiritual heights can grasp. The foundation of Schiller’s understanding demands something that places significant requirements on the mind. That is why, in the second half of the century, the veneration of Schiller became somewhat less intense; the rise of the natural sciences necessitated a more detached attitude. People now saw the true only in what is sensory. Schiller never did that. Schiller’s ideals were always truth, but truths grounded in the spiritual. What once resonated deeply with people’s emotions is no longer a tangible reality today. It was the grandeur and breadth of the intellectual horizon from which Schiller emerged: it is the world of Goethe, Lessing, Herder, and Winckelmann. When external reality pressed in with its cruder demands, there was no longer a true connection between the beautiful and the true. On the basis of scientific findings, a Ludwig Büchner was able to construct a purely materialistic worldview. Schiller, however, is not suited to a materialistic age; invoking his views in such an age becomes mere rhetoric. Thus it came to pass that Schiller receded somewhat into the background. Goethe could still mean something for the second half of the 19th century because, in his case, the artistic can be separated from his worldview. Even in Herman Grimm’s work, everything culminates in a panegyric to Goethe, the artist. Admittedly, for those who study Goethe in great detail, it is beyond question that it is not feasible to separate him from his worldview either. Nevertheless, a purely aesthetic consideration is possible with Goethe; with Schiller, such a standpoint is not possible. Today, art is regarded as something that deals with the realm of the imagination. This in itself already implies a rejection of worldview.

[ 2 ] Thus, a gulf has formed between the spirit of the age in which Schiller lived and that of our own, making it possible for a new Schiller biographer, Otto Brahm—who emerged from the Scherer school—to begin his book with the words: “In my youth, I hated Schiller.” It was only gradually, through scholarship and insight, that he worked his way toward a reverence for Schiller. Schiller has found scholarly biographers, but the sensibility of our time has already become alien to Schiller’s true concerns. It cannot comprehend how what is today called “knowledge” can be reconciled with what Schiller stands for. As already mentioned, the artists of an earlier era—a Raphael, a Michelangelo—grew out of the life of their epoch. This was no longer the case after Goethe’s death. We see how an artist like Peter Cornelius creates entirely from thought; he no longer stood in any connection with the spiritual substance of his time. He always felt like an outsider, especially in Berlin; drawn to Catholicism, in which he believed he had founded his artistic ideal, he remained indifferent to the life of his time.

[ 3 ] Thus, the gap between life and art grows ever wider. How alien, then, Schiller appears in 19th-century life. Jakob Minor may well have written thick volumes on Schiller’s youth, but everything points to how foreign Schiller’s views have become to our time. What is recognized as true today has grown out of the scientific worldview. Aesthetics, too, has shifted from an idealistic to a realistic direction. This shift was so profound that Vischer could not bring himself to publish a second edition of his Aesthetics, which had been written from an idealistic perspective; he had now come to question what he had previously advocated. The sensibilities of the first half of the century had become so alien to leading minds that a man of his stature would criticize himself in this way.

[ 4 ] In light of this development, we will understand how Schiller relates to our present day. Thus it was possible for a man like E. Dw« Bois-Reymond—who was himself deeply rooted in Schiller’s style—to say in a speech on Goethe’s Faust that Faust was actually a failed work, that by right Faust ought to marry Gretchen, make significant discoveries, and lead a useful life—and so on. Everything that defines Faust was no longer understood by a prominent man of the 19th century.

[ 5 ] This trend had become dominant. No one dares to contradict it; no one dares to emphasize the validity of the ideal. Even art calls itself realistic. An idealistic interpretation finds little favor with the public. Those who admit that they do not find Schiller appealing are being honest. The notion that beauty is an expression of truth no longer holds. Truth is defined as that which can be seen with the eyes or touched with the hands. The everyday is called truth. This was not the case for Schiller; for him, truth lay in the great, ideal laws. For him, art was the representation of the spiritual hidden within reality, not of the everyday. The “true” that Schiller sought is recognized today neither by science nor by art; no one today understands what Schiller meant by the “true.” Hence this contrast. Today, the “true” is understood to be what Schiller called the “sensual and makeshift.” Schiller sought the ideal of freedom in the harmony between the spiritual and the sensual-necessary. What is called “artistic” today can never be called “artistic” in Schiller’s sense. Another gulf lies between today’s views and Schiller’s. Our time no longer has that deep, intense urge to penetrate to the inner core of the world. That profound seriousness, which hangs like a fragrance over Schiller’s views—that profound seriousness is nowhere to be found anymore.

[ 6 ] Thus, our age attempts to juxtapose great minds as fundamentally different as Tolstoy and Nietzsche in a thoroughly superficial manner. Materialism has become a worldview; it has become a gospel, an integral part of our time. The masses, in particular, stand on a purely materialistic foundation; they refuse to accept any other worldview. For them, the only truth is what natural science permits to be called “real.” To illustrate the consequences this leads to, here is a brief anecdote. It was the last time that an idealistic—albeit pessimistic—worldview had an impact on the world: Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious.

[ 7 ] The work was the target of numerous attacks. Among them was a scathing critique titled: “The Unconscious from the Perspective of the Theory of Descent and Darwinism.” The book bore no author’s name. Natural scientists described it as the best refutation of E. von Hartmann’s work. In the second edition, the author revealed his identity: it was E. von Hartmann himself. He had wanted to show that it is easy to descend to the materialist standpoint once one has ascended to a higher one. Those who stand on a higher standpoint can understand a lower one, but those on a lower one cannot understand the higher one. It is certainly true that those who stand on an idealistic standpoint are quite prepared, in a certain sense, to acknowledge the materialistic one. Those who stand on Schiller’s standpoint can assess Büchner and modern art from their materialistic perspective; conversely, however, the materialist cannot see through the idealist.

[ 8 ] Schiller was a believer in the ideal. One of his profound sayings goes: “Which religion do I profess? None of those you name. — And why none? — Out of religion.”

[ 9 ] That is what is so great about him: that his aesthetic commitment was at the same time his religious one, that his artistic creation was his worship. The fact that his ideal lived within him in this way is an integral part of his greatness. And so we do not ask, “Can Schiller mean anything to us today?” On the contrary, he must mean something to us again, precisely because we have forgotten how to understand that which transcends the purely material. We will then once again understand an art that seeks to reveal the mysteries of existence.

[ 10 ] But through him we will also come to understand a new ideal of freedom. Today, people speak a great deal about freedom; they wish to be free from governmental and economic constraints. Schiller understood freedom differently. How does a person become free within themselves? How do they become free from their base desires, free from the constraints of logic and reason? Schiller, who wrote about the state and life in society, arrives at a new goal here—a pointer toward future ideals. If, in our time, we wish to rightly demand that the individual be able to develop freely, we must understand harmony in Schiller’s sense. Let us measure what is demanded today against what Schiller demanded. Let us consider two figures: Max Stirner and Schiller. What could seem more dissimilar, more opposed, than Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own and Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters? At the time when Schiller’s influence receded into the background, Stirner’s influence rose to prominence. Stirner, who had been overlooked throughout that period, was rediscovered in the 1890s; his work formed the basis of what is now referred to as individualism. This sentiment of our time has some merit, but, as it currently appears, it must seem somewhat unrestrained. In Schiller’s “Aesthetic Letters,” the demand for the liberation of the human personality is raised in an even more radical manner. Schiller articulated this ideal in a less petty-bourgeois manner than Stirner. The ideal of cooperation among people who have become inwardly free serves as a reminder to others. There are no commandments or coercive regulations where people live in this way. Today, people seem to believe that everything must descend into chaos if people are not constrained by police regulations. And yet one must be clear: countless events in world history take place without laws. Every day, one can observe how, all on their own, people give way to one another in the busiest streets without any rule governing it. Ninety-eight percent of our lives proceed without laws. And one day it will be possible to get by entirely without laws, without coercion. But for that to happen, people must first become free within themselves.

[ 11 ] Schiller presents us with an ideal of immeasurable magnitude. Art is meant to lead humanity to freedom. Art, having grown out of the substance of culture, is to become the great educator of the world. Artists should not provide mere photographs of the external world; they should be messengers of a higher spiritual reality. Then artists will once again create as they did in the past, drawing from the ideal. Schiller wanted to guide us through art toward a new understanding of reality; he was serious about this.

[ 12 ] If our age is to truly understand Schiller, it must synthesize the insights it has gained into a higher idealism that elevates it to spiritual reality. Then there will also be those who can once again speak from the depths of their hearts, in the spirit of Schiller.

[ 13 ] It is of little use to open the theaters in Schiller’s honor if the people sitting inside have no appreciation for Schiller. Only when we rise to such a level of understanding of Schiller will there be people who, like Herman Grimm speaking of Goethe, can speak of Schiller from the bottom of their hearts.