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Schiller and Our Times
GA 51

28 January 1905, Berlin

II. Schiller's Work and its Changing Phases

We have seen how Schiller grew up out of the ideas of the Eighteenth Century and how the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment had taken root in his soul. They had already assumed their peculiar form when he left the Karlsschule and wrote the above-mentioned theses.

If we want to describe these ideas in a word, we may say that the main problem was the emancipation of personality. This liberation from age-old tradition goes still further. When medieval man before the age of “Illumination” thought about his relation to himself, to nature, the universe and God, he found himself ready established within the universe. He worshipped the same God without, who dwelt within his own soul; the same forces which were active in the world without, were active in man's own soul; there was a certain unity to be seen in the laws of the universe and in the nature of man. We need only think of men like Giordano Bruno: This monistic conviction of the relationship of nature to man can be found in his writings.

There was thus no gulf between what we may call the moral claim and the objective laws in nature. This opposition only arose later when man excluded nature from divine influence. The attitude which has grown up in materialism, knew no relation between nature and moral feeling or what man develops within himself as a moral claim.

This was the origin of Rousseau-ism, which is fundamentally a revolutionary feeling, a protest against the whole line of development hitherto. It teaches that when we observe man's demand for freedom and his assertion of morality, a harsh discord appears. It asks whether there really can be such a difference between the objective world and human nature, that men must long to get out of it, to escape from the whole of their civilisation.

These spiritual struggles found expression in the temperament of the young Schiller; and in the three dramas of his youth this longing receives a new form. In the “Räuber,” in “Fiesco” and “Kabale und Liebe” we see depicted concretely, with a vast pathos, the demand that man must do something to produce this harmony. In the figure of Karl Moor, we see the creation of a man who bears in himself the opposition between the objective order and the demand made by his humanity, and feels called upon to produce some harmony between nature and himself. His tragedy arises because he believes that he can restore the law by lawlessness and arbitrariness. In “Fiesco” the longing for freedom crashes on the rock of ambition. The ideal of freedom fails through this disharmony in the soul of the ambitious Fiesco, who cannot find his way so far as to put order into the moral ideal. In “Kabale und Liebe” the demand of human nature in the uprising middle-classes stands opposed to the demands of the world as they were expressed in the ruling classes. The relation between moral ideals and general ideas applicable to the world had been lost. The discord echoes grandly, for all their youthful immaturity, from the first dramas of Schiller.

Such natures as Schiller's find themselves less easily than the one-line, simpler and. unsophisticated type, just as we see in natural evolution that lower creatures require shorter periods of preparation than the more highly developed animals. Great natures have to pass through the most varied phases, because their inmost qualities have to be fetched up from the deepest levels. Anyone who has much in him and comes into the world with a claim to genius, will have a hard path, and will have to work through many earlier stages—as the analogy of the embryonic development of higher animals shows us.

What Schiller lacked was knowledge of man and of the world. His first plays show him with all the defects which arise from that fact, but with all the merits which hardly appear again later so clearly. This judgment is made from a fairly high level; we have to realise what we owe to Schiller's greatness. But things could not remain thus for long. Schiller had to rise beyond this limited horizon; and we see how in his fourth play, Don Carlos, he works his way to another standpoint. We may look from a double angle, first from that of Don Carlos, second that of Marquis Posa. Schiller himself tells us how his interest at first lay with the youthful fiery Carlos and then passed to the cosmopolitan Posa. That indicates a deep change in his own personality.

Schiller had been summoned by his friend Körner to Dresden, so that he might work there in peace. There he grew acquainted with a philosophy and view of the world which was to have a great influence on his own personality. Kantianism was a necessary study for a person like Schiller, and we shall understand his standpoint yet more deeply if we delay a moment over what was then working upon him.

At that time, we can see two quite definite currents in German intellectual life. The one is that which finds most definite expression in Herder's Ideas for the history of the philosophy of mankind; the other the Kantian philosophy. In Herder we have the passion to put man into relation with the whole of nature and to understand him in that relation. It is this striving for unity which makes Herder appear so modern a man. ... Arguments brought now-a-days against Kantianism with its dualism (which is still regarded as only an academic philosophy), exist already in Herder's Metacritic. The whole embraces a mass of great ideas; there is a striving after the unification of nature and man. From the lowest product of nature right up to the thought of man there is one law. What is seen in man as the moral law, is in the crystal the law of its form. One fundamental evolution runs through all that is, so that that which forms the flower in the plant, develops in man into humanity. It is the world-picture which appeared in Goethe also and which he expressed in Faust in the words:

How all weaves itself to a whole; one thing works and lives in the other,

and which he describes in his Hymn to Nature.

Goethe is wholly permeated by this striving for unity, as it found expression in Giordano Bruno, the Pythagorean. He stands completely within the stream:

What were a God who only touches from without,
And lets the All run past in cycles?
His task it were to move the world within,
To foster nature in himself, himself in nature.

That is the monistic stream, to which Schiller at that period still was a stranger. For him there was still a two-ness, a dualism.

In his Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason Kant had set a definite limit to human knowledge. Man's capacity for knowledge extends as far as reason goes. It can only give him the external, and cannot pierce to the real being of things. That which is the thing-in-itself, is hidden behind the appearance; man cannot even speak of it. But there is something within man which cannot be mere appearance. That is the moral law. On the one side—the world of appearance; on the other—the moral law, the categorical imperative, the “Thou shalt,” which may not be doubted, which rises above knowledge and cannot be taken as appearance. Thus in Kant's philosophy we have not merely a duality such as we saw before, but the whole world of human spiritual life is divided into two halves. That which is to be superior to all criticism, the moral law, is not knowledge at all, but a practical belief, which contains no limits of knowledge but only moral postulates. Thus Kantianism appears as the .most abrupt exposition of dualism.

Before Kant there was a science of external appearance, and then a science of reason which could penetrate by innate activity to God, soul and immortality: that is the form of the Wolffian philosophy. Kant, who had studied the English Sensationalists, Hume and Locke, was at this juncture led to have doubts: how shall we get anywhere if we have always to test the highest ideas of God, Freedom and Immortality by their reasonableness. He says in his introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason I had to destroy knowledge in order to make room for faith.” Because we must believe, and in order that we may believe, he thrust down knowledge from her throne. He wanted to start from foundations which left no room for doubt. Knowledge cannot ever reach to these things, but the “Thou shalt” speaks so decisively that the harmony which man is unable to discover, must be accomplished by God. And so we have to postulate a God. As physical beings we are enclosed in barriers, but as moral beings we must be free. This gives an unbridgeable dualism; there is no balance between man and nature.

Schiller, who in accordance with his temperament still held to the opposition between nature and man, pictures in Don Carlos the growth of man beyond nature to his ideals. He never puts the question of what is possible, but only the question of the “Thou shalt.” In Don Carlos it is not a criticism of court-life that we have: That passes into the background behind the practical moral postulates. “Man, be such that the laws of your action could become the universal laws of humanity.” That was Kant's demand; and in Marquis Posa, the cosmopolitan idealist, Schiller sets up a claim for the independence of the ideal from all that comes from nature.

When he finished Don Carlos, Schiller stood in the completest possible opposition to the view of Goethe and Herder, and therefore at the beginning of his life at Weimar no contact with them was possible. But Schiller became the Reformer of Kantianism: he strove for a monistic view, but could find the unity only in the aesthetic sphere, in the problem of beauty. He shows us how man only lives fully when he both ennobles nature up to his own level and draws morality from above into his nature. The categorical imperative does not subdue him to its sway, but he serves willingly what is contained in the “Thou shalt.” Thus Schiller reaches the heights and rises above Kant. He opposes Kant who makes of man not a free being but a slave, bowed beneath the yoke of duty. He saw clearly that there is something in man quite different from this bowing beneath the yoke of the “Thou shalt.” In monumental phrases we find expressed his approximation to the essential of Goethe's and Herder's attitude: “Gladly serve I my friends, yet alas I do it with pleasure; thus it irks me to find that there's no virtue in me.”

Kant had degraded what man does willingly from his own inclination, and set on a higher level what he did from a sense of duty. Kant apostrophises passionately the stern duty which has nothing attractive in her. Schiller raises man from his own weakness, when he makes the moral law a law of his own nature. Through the study of history, through honest inclination and devotion to human life he reached the harmony that had been lost and thus to an understanding of Goethe. Schiller describes in splendid words in the memorable letter of 23rd August 1794, what was Goethe's way:

“I have for a long time, even though from a distance, observed the course of your spirit and with ever new wonder noted the path you have traced out for yourself. You seek for the necessary in nature, but you seek it along the hardest path, from which all weaker forces would shrink. You take all nature as a whole in order to illuminate a part; and in the totality of their appearances you seek the basis of explanation for the individual.”

Here Schiller had reached the height to which he had to evolve. Though he had started from a dualism, he had now reached the unity of man and nature.

Thus he attained to that form of creation which was peculiarly his in the latest period, from the middle of the nineties onward, and to friendship with Goethe. It was a historical friendship because it did not look only for the happiness of their two selves but was fruitful for the world and for humanity.

In this friendship of Goethe and Schiller we have not merely Goethe, and Schiller, but a third something: Goethe plus Schiller. Anyone who follows the course of the spiritual life, will discern in it one being, which could only exist, because in their selfless friendship and mutual devotion something developed which stood as a new being above the single personality. This mood will give us the proper transition to Goethe and to all that he meant to Schiller.

II. Schillers Schaffen und seine Wandlungen

Wir haben gesehen, wie Schiller herausgewachsen ist aus den Ideen des 18. Jahrhunderts, wie die Ideale des Aufklärungszeitalters in seiner Seele wurzelten. Ihre besondere Gestalt hatten sie schon angenommen, als er von der Karlsschule abging und jene vorher erwähnten Abhandlungen geschrieben hatte. Wenn wir diese Anschauungen mit einem Worte charakterisieren wollen, können wir sagen, es handelte sich um die Emanzipation der Persönlichkeit. Dieses Freimachen von uralten Traditionen geht noch weiter.

Wenn der mittelalterliche Mensch vor der Aufklärungszeit nachgedacht hatte über sein Verhältnis zu sich, zur Natur, zum Universum, zu Gott, hat er sich hineingestellt gefunden in dieses Universum. Er verehrte denselben Gott draußen, der in der eigenen Seele lebte; dieselben Weltenmächte, die er in der Natur fand, waren in der eigenen Seele des Menschen tätig; es war eine gewisse Einheit, die man sah in den Gesetzen des Weltalls und in der Natur des Menschen. Man braucht sich nur an Geister wie Giordano Bruno zu erinnern. Diese monistische Überzeugung von dem Zusammenhang der Natur mit dem Menschen spricht aus seinen Schriften. So war keine Trennung zwischen dem, was man moralische Forderung nennt, und den objektiven Gesetzen in der Natur.

Dieser Gegensatz ist erst später gekommen, als man die Natur von dem göttlichen Einfluß ausschloß. Das, was im Materialismus heraufgekommen ist, kannte keinen Zusammenhang zwischen der Natur und dem moralischen Empfinden, dem, was der Mensch als moralische Forderung in sich ausbildet. Aus diesem ging hervor, was man den Rousseauismus nannte. Er ist im tiefsten Grunde eine revolutionäre Empfindung, ein Protest gegen die ganze bisherige Entwickelung. Er lehrt, daß, wenn wir den Ruf des Menschen nach Freiheit, seine Forderung nach Moral betrachten, wir einen tiefen Mißklang finden. Er fragt: kann es denn einen Unterschied geben zwischen der objektiven Welt und der menschlichen Natur, daß die Menschen sich heraussehnen müssen, aus der ganzen Kultur heraus?

Diese geistigen Stürme lebten sich aus als Gesinnung des jungen Schiller. In seinen drei Jugenddramen erhält dieses Sehnen eine neue Gestaltung. In den «Räubern», in «Fiesco» und in «Kabale und Liebe» sehen wir ganz lebendig dargestellt, mit ungeheurem Pathos die Forderung, daß der Mensch etwas tun müsse, um diesen Einklang hervorzurufen. In der Figur des Karl Moor wird herausgearbeitet ein Mensch, der in sich selbst den Zwiespalt zwischen der objektiven Ordnung und den menschlichen Forderungen trägt, und der sich berufen fühlt, zwischen der Natur und sich diesen Einklang hervorzurufen. Seine Tragik entsteht, weil er glaubt, durch Gesetzlosigkeit und Willkür dem Gesetz wieder aufzuhelfen. — In «Fiesco» scheitert das Sehnen nach Freiheit an dem Ehrgeiz. Das Ideal der Freiheit geht unter durch diese Disharmonie in der Seele des ehrgeizigen Fiesco, der sich nicht hineinfinden kann in die Ordnung des moralischen Ideals. — In «Kabale und Liebe» steht die Forderung der menschlichen Natur im aufstrebenden Bürgerstande den Forderungen der Welt gegenüber, wie sie in den herrschenden Ständen zum Ausdruck kamen. — Es war verlorengegangen der Zusammenhang zwischen den moralischen Idealen und den universellen Weltenideen. Dieser Mißklang tönt grandios bei aller jugendlichen Unreife aus Schillers ersten Dramen.

Solche Naturen wie Schiller finden sich schwerer selbst als gradlinige, einfache, naive Naturen, wie auch die natürliche Entwickelung zeigt, daß niedere Geschöpfe weniger lange Vorbereitungsstadien brauchen als hochentwickelte Tiere. Große Naturen haben das an sich, daß sie die verschiedensten Wandlungen durchmachen müssen, weil ihr Innerstes aus tiefen Schachten herausgeholt werden muß. In wem viel liegt, wer mit Anwartschaft auf Genie zur Welt kommt, wird schwer sich durchfinden, sich durch mannigfaltige Anfangsstadien durcharbeiten müssen, wie es uns als Analogie die embryonale Entwickelung höherstehender Tierarten zeigt.

Was Schiller fehlte, war Welt- und Menschenkenntnis. Die ersten Dramen zeigen Schiller mit all seinen daraus entstehenden Mängeln, aber auch mit all seinen Vorzügen, wie sie sich später kaum so wiederfinden. — Dieses Urteil ist projiziert aus einer gewissen Höhe: man muß wissen, was man Schillers Größe schuldig ist. Doch es konnte nicht lange so bleiben. Schiller mußte über diesen kleinen Horizont hinauskommen, und nun sehen wir, wie er im vierten seiner Dramen, im «Don Carlos» sich hinarbeitet zu einem anderen Standpunkt. Wir können aus einer doppelten Perspektive «Don Carlos» betrachten: erstens von Carlos, zweitens von Marquis Posa aus. Schiller selbst erzählt uns, wie erst sein Interesse bei dem jugendlich-feurigen Carlos gestanden hat und dann übergegangen ist zum kosmopolitischen Posa. Es bedeutet dies eine tiefe Wandlung in Schillers eigener Persönlichkeit.

Schiller war von seinem Freunde Körner nach Dresden gerufen worden, um dort ruhig zu arbeiten. Er wurde da bekannt mit einer Weltanschauung, die auf seine eigene Persönlichkeit einen tiefen Einfluß ausüben sollte, mit dem Kantianismus. Schillers Wesenheit war so, daß ihm diese Beschäftigung mit Kant notwendig wurde und wir werden dadurch seinen Standpunkt noch tiefer verstehen lernen, wenn wir uns mit dem beschäftigen, was damals auf ihn einwirkte.

Wir haben zu jener Zeit zwei ganz bestimmte Strömungen im deutschen Geistesleben. Die eine Strömung ist diejenige, die sich am gründlichsten ausdrückt in Herders «Ideen zur Geschichte der Philosophie der Menschheit». Die zweite ist die Kantsche Philosophie. Bei Herder haben wir die Sehnsucht, den Menschen hereinzustellen in die ganze Natur, und ihn von da heraus zu begreifen. Es ist dieses Einheitsstreben, was uns Herder als modernen Geist erscheinen läßt. Was sich heute aufbäumt gegen den zwar als Kathederphilosophie noch viel geltenden Kantianismus mit seinem Dualismus, lebt schon bei Herder in seiner Metakritik. Alles schließt eine Fülle von großen Ideen ein; da ist ein Streben nach Einheitlichkeit zwischen Natur und Mensch. Vom untersten Naturprodukt, bis herauf zu dem Gedanken des Menschen, lebt ein Gesetz. Was im Menschen als

Sittengesetz sich darstellt, ist im Kristall sich selbst Gesetz der Gestaltung. Eine Grundentwickelung zieht sich durch alles Bestehende hindurch, so daß, was an der Pflanze sich zur Blüte gestaltet, in dem Menschen sich zur Humanität entwickelt. Es ist das Weltbild, das auch bei Goethe herausgetreten ist, das er in seinem Faust ausgedrückt hat in den Worten:

Wie alles sich zum ganzen webt!
Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt...

und das er in seinem «Hymnus an die Natur» darstellt.

Goethe ist ganz durchglüht von diesem Einheitsstreben, wie es sich in Giordano Bruno, dem Pythagoräer, ausdrückt. Er stellt sich vollkommen in diese Strömung hinein:

Was wär’ ein Gott, der nur von außen stieße,
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen ließe,
Ihm ziemt’s, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen.
So daß, was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist,
Nie Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermißt.

Das ist die monistische Strömung, der Schiller in jener Zeit noch fremd gegenübersteht. Für ihn ist noch die Zweiheit da, der Dualismus.

Kant hat in seiner «Kritik der reinen Vernunft» und in seiner «Kritik der praktischen Vernunft» dem menschlichen Erkenntnisvermögen eine entschiedene Grenze gesetzt. So weit der Verstand reicht, geht menschliches Erkenntnisvermögen. Es kann nur äußeres geben, reicht aber nicht zu dem Wesen der Dinge. Was das Ding an sich ist, verbirgt sich hinter den Erscheinungen; der Mensch darf gar nicht darüber sprechen. Aber es lebt etwas im Menschen, was unmöglich nur Erscheinung sein kann. Das ist das Sittengesetz. Auf der einen Seite: die Welt der Erscheinungen; auf der anderen Seite: das Sittengesetz, der kategorische Imperativ, das «Du sollst», an dem nicht zu mäkeln ist, das erhaben ist über Erkenntnis und nicht als Erscheinung aufzufassen. So tritt uns in Kants Philosophie nicht nur die Zweiheit, die wir früher sahen, entgegen, sondern die ganze Welt menschlichen Geisteslebens trennt sich in zwei Hälften: das, was erhaben sein soll über alle Kritik, das Sittengesetz, soll überhaupt nicht Wissen sein, sondern praktischer Glaube, der keine Erkenntnisgesetze hat, sondern lediglich sittliche Postulate. So erscheint der Kantianismus als die schroffste Darlegung des Dualismus.

Vor Kant gab es eine Wissenschaft über die äußeren Erscheinungen, dann eine Vernunftwissenschaft, die durch eingepflanzte Tätigkeit bis zu Gott, Seele und Unsterblichkeit dringen konnte: so stellt sich die Wolffsche Philosophie dar. Kant, der die englischen Sensualisten Hume und Locke studierte, kam dadurch zum Zweifel in diesem Punkt. Er sagte sich: Wohin will man kommen, wenn man die höchsten Begriffe, Gott, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit, immer wieder prüfen muß auf ihre Vernünftigkeit hin? — Er erklärt in der Einleitung zu seiner «Kritik der reinen Vernunft»: Ich mußte also das Wissen aufheben um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen. Weil man glauben soll und damit man glauben kann, hat er das Wissen vom Throne gestürzt. Er wollte von zweifellosen Grundlagen ausgehen und sagt daher: das Wissen kann überhaupt nicht bis zu diesen Dingen vordringen, aber das «Du sollst» spricht so streng, daß der Einklang, den der Mensch zu finden ohnmächtig ist, durch Gott muß bewirkt werden. Das führt dazu, einen Gott zu postulieren. Wir sind als physische Wesen zwischen Schranken eingeschlossen, müssen aber als moralische Wesen frei sein. Dies gibt einen unüberbrückbaren Dualismus, aber keinen Ausgleich zwischen Mensch und Natur.

Schiller, der seiner Anlage nach damals an dem Gegensatz zwischen Natur und Menschen festhielt, schildert im «Don Carlos» das Herauswachsen des Menschen über alle Natur zu den Idealen hinauf. Er stellt nicht die Frage nach dem, was möglich ist, sondern nur die Frage nach dem: «Du sollst». Im Carlos ist es nicht eine Kritik des Hoflebens, die uns Schiller gibt. Diese tritt zurück hinter praktisch sittlichen Postulaten. «Mensch werde so, daß die Gesetze deines Handelns allgemeine Gesetze der Menschheit werden könnten», hatte Kant gefordert, — und in dem Marquis Posa, dem kosmopolitischen Idealisten, stellt Schiller die Forderung nach der Unabhängigkeit des Ideals von allem, was aus der Natur herauswächst.

Als «Don Carlos» fertig war, stand Schiller in größtmöglichstem Gegensatz zu der Weltanschauung Goethes und Herders, und im Anfang seines Lebens in Weimar konnte sich deshalb keine Annäherung an diese vollziehen. Nun ist aber Schiller zum Reformator des Kantianismus geworden: er strebt jetzzt zum Monismus, findet aber die Einheitlichkeit nur auf ästhetischem Gebiete: im Problem der Schönheit. Er zeigt uns, wie der Mensch sich erst da auslebt, wo er die Natur heraufadelt zu sich und das Sittliche von oben in seine Natur aufnimmt. Der kategorische Imperativ zwingt ihn nicht unter ein Joch, sondern freiwillig dient er dem, was im «Du sollst» enthalten ist. So stellt sich Schiller auf seine Höhe, indem er über Kant hinauswächst. Er wendet sich gegen Kant, der den Menschen nicht zum freien Wesen, sondern zum Sklaven machen will, gebeugt unter das Joch der Pflicht. Es wurde ihm klar, daß im Menschen etwas ganz anderes lebt, als dieses Beugen unter ein «Du sollst». In monumentalen Sätzen kommt zum Ausdruck, wie er sich dem nähert, was Goethes und Herders Anschauung ausmacht: «Gerne dien’ ich den Freunden, doch tu’ ich es leider mit Neigung, und so wurmt es mir oft, daß ich nicht tugendhaft bin.»

Kant hat das herabgewürdigt, was der Mensch aus Neigung, was er freiwillig tut, und dagegen was er aus Pflicht tut, als das Höhere gepriesen. Kant wendet sich in pathetischer Apostrophe an die strenge Pflicht, die nichts Verlokkendes haben soll. Schiller holt den Menschen aus seiner Schwäche heraus, indem er das Sittengesetz zum Gesetze seiner eigenen Natur werden läßt. Durch das Studium der Geschichte, durch aufrichtige Neigung und Hingabe an das menschliche Leben, kam er zu dem verlorenen Einklang und damit zu dem Verständnis Goethes.

Herrlich beschreibt Schiller Goethes Weise in dem denkwürdigen Brief vom 23. August 1794: «Lange schon habe ich, obgleich aus ziemlicher Ferne, dem Gang Ihres Geistes zugesehen, und den Weg, den Sie sich vorgezeichnet haben, mit immer erneuter Bewunderung bemerkt. Sie suchen das Notwendige der Natur, aber Sie suchen es auf dem schwersten Wege, vor welchem jede schwächere Kraft sich wohl hüten wird. Sie nehmen die ganze Natur zusammen, um über das einzelne Licht zu bekommen; in der Allheit ihrer Erscheinungsarten suchen Sie den Erklärungsgrund für das Individuum auf.»

Damit war Schiller auf der Höhe angekommen, zu der er sich entwickeln mußte. War er selbst ausgegangen von der Zweiheit, so war er jetzt gekommen zu der Einheit zwischen Mensch und Natur. So kam er zu der Art des Schaffens, die ihm in der letzten Zeit, seit der Mitte der neunziger Jahre eigen war, und zur Freundschaft mit Goethe. Es war eine geschichtliche Freundschaft, weil sie nicht nur nach Glück für die beiden allein suchte, sondern fruchtbringend war für die Welt, für die Menschheit. In dem, was wir an Goethe und Schiller haben, haben wir nicht nur Goethe und Schiller, sondern wir haben noch ein Drittes: Goethe pl/us Schiller. — Wer den Gang des Geisteslebens verfolgt, sieht darin ein Wesen, das nur dadurch entstehen konnte, daß in der selbstlosen Freundschaft, aus der gegenseitigen Hingabe, sich etwas entfaltete, was als neues Wesen über der Einzelpersönlichkeit stand. Diese Stimmung wird uns den rechten Übergang zu Goethe und dem, was er für Schiller bedeuten sollte, ergeben.

II. Schiller's work and its transformations

We have seen how Schiller outgrew the ideas of the 18th century, how the ideals of the Enlightenment took root in his soul. They had already taken on their particular form when he left the Karlsschule and wrote the aforementioned treatises. If we want to characterize these views in a word, we can say that they concerned the emancipation of the personality. This liberation from ancient traditions goes even further.

When medieval man before the Enlightenment thought about his relationship to himself, to nature, to the universe, to God, he found himself placed within this universe. They worshipped the same God outside that lived in their own souls; the same world powers that they found in nature were active in their own souls; there was a certain unity that could be seen in the laws of the universe and in human nature. One need only remember minds such as Giordano Bruno. This monistic conviction of the connection between nature and man speaks from his writings. Thus, there was no separation between what we call moral demands and the objective laws of nature.

This contrast only came later, when nature was excluded from divine influence. What emerged in materialism knew no connection between nature and moral sentiment, what humans develop within themselves as moral demands. From this arose what was called Rousseauism. At its core, it is a revolutionary sentiment, a protest against all previous developments. It teaches that when we consider man's call for freedom, his demand for morality, we find a deep discord. It asks: can there be such a difference between the objective world and human nature that people must yearn to escape from culture as a whole?

These intellectual storms found expression in the attitudes of the young Schiller. In his three early dramas, this longing takes on a new form. In “The Robbers,” “Fiesco,” and “Intrigue and Love,” we see vividly portrayed, with tremendous pathos, the demand that man must do something to bring about this harmony. The character of Karl Moor is portrayed as a man who carries within himself the conflict between objective order and human demands, and who feels called upon to bring about this harmony between nature and himself. His tragedy arises because he believes that he can restore the law through lawlessness and arbitrariness. — In “Fiesco,” the longing for freedom fails because of ambition. The ideal of freedom perishes because of this disharmony in the soul of the ambitious Fiesco, who cannot come to terms with the order of the moral ideal. — In “Kabale und Liebe” (Intrigue and Love), the demands of human nature in the aspiring bourgeoisie are contrasted with the demands of the world as expressed by the ruling classes. — The connection between moral ideals and universal world ideas had been lost. This dissonance resounds magnificently in all the youthful immaturity of Schiller's early dramas.

Natures such as Schiller's are harder to find than straightforward, simple, naive natures, just as natural development shows that lower creatures need less time in the preparatory stages than highly developed animals. Great natures have the characteristic that they must undergo the most diverse transformations because their innermost being must be brought out from deep within. Those who have great potential, who are born with the promise of genius, will find it difficult to find their way, will have to work their way through manifold initial stages, as the embryonic development of higher animal species shows us by analogy.

What Schiller lacked was knowledge of the world and human nature. His early dramas reveal Schiller with all his resulting shortcomings, but also with all his virtues, which are hardly to be found again later. — This judgment is projected from a certain height: one must know what one owes to Schiller's greatness. But it could not remain that way for long. Schiller had to move beyond this narrow horizon, and now we see how, in his fourth drama, Don Carlos, he works his way toward a different point of view. We can view Don Carlos from two perspectives: first from Carlos's, and second from Marquis Posa's. Schiller himself tells us how his interest first lay with the youthful and fiery Carlos and then shifted to the cosmopolitan Posa. This signifies a profound change in Schiller's own personality.

Schiller had been summoned to Dresden by his friend Körner to work in peace. There he became acquainted with a worldview that was to have a profound influence on his own personality: Kantianism. Schiller's nature was such that this preoccupation with Kant became necessary for him, and we will come to understand his point of view even more deeply if we consider what influenced him at that time.

At that time, there were two very distinct currents in German intellectual life. One current is most thoroughly expressed in Herder's “Ideas on the History of the Philosophy of Mankind.” The second is Kant's philosophy. In Herder, we find the longing to place human beings within the whole of nature and to understand them from that perspective. It is this striving for unity that makes Herder appear to us as a modern spirit. What today rebels against Kantianism, with its dualism, which is still widely accepted as academic philosophy, is already alive in Herder's Metacritique. Everything encompasses a wealth of great ideas; there is a striving for unity between nature and man. From the lowest product of nature up to the thought of man, a law lives. What manifests itself in man as a moral law is, in crystal, the law of form itself. A fundamental development runs through everything that exists, so that what forms itself into a flower in the plant develops into humanity in man.

The world view that also emerged in Goethe, which he expressed in his Faust in the words: It is the worldview that also emerged in Goethe, which he expressed in his Faust in the words:

How everything weaves itself into a whole!
One thing works and lives in another...

and which he depicts in his “Hymn to Nature.”

Goethe is completely imbued with this striving for unity, as expressed by Giordano Bruno, the Pythagorean. He places himself completely within this current:

What would a God be who only pushed from the outside,
Let the universe run in a circle on his finger,
It befits him to move the world from within,
To cherish nature in himself, himself in nature.
So that what lives and weaves and is in him,
Never misses his power, never misses his spirit.

This is the monistic current, which Schiller still regards with suspicion at that time. For him, duality, dualism, still exists.

In his “Critique of Pure Reason” and his “Critique of Practical Reason,” Kant set a decisive limit on human cognitive ability. Human cognitive ability extends as far as the intellect reaches. There can only be the external, but it does not extend to the essence of things. What the thing is in itself is hidden behind appearances; humans are not allowed to speak about it at all. But there is something within humans that cannot possibly be mere appearance. That is the moral law. On the one hand, there is the world of appearances; on the other, there is the moral law, the categorical imperative, the “thou shalt” that cannot be criticized, that is sublime above knowledge and cannot be understood as an appearance. Thus, in Kant's philosophy, we encounter not only the duality we saw earlier, but the entire world of human spiritual life is divided into two halves: that which is to be exalted above all criticism, the moral law, is not to be knowledge at all, but practical faith, which has no laws of knowledge, but only moral postulates. Thus, Kantianism appears as the most abrupt expression of dualism.

Before Kant, there was a science of external phenomena, then a science of reason that could penetrate to God, the soul, and immortality through implanted activity: this is how Wolff's philosophy presents itself. Kant, who studied the English sensualists Hume and Locke, came to doubt this point. He said to himself: Where will we end up if we have to constantly examine the highest concepts, God, freedom, and immortality, for their rationality? — He explains in the introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason: I therefore had to suspend knowledge in order to make room for faith. Because one should believe and in order to be able to believe, he has dethroned knowledge. He wanted to start from unquestionable foundations and therefore says: knowledge cannot penetrate these things at all, but the “Thou shalt” speaks so sternly that the harmony which man is powerless to find must be brought about by God. This leads to the postulation of a God. As physical beings, we are confined within barriers, but as moral beings we must be free. This creates an unbridgeable dualism, but no balance between man and nature.

Schiller, who at that time adhered to the opposition between nature and man, describes in “Don Carlos” the growth of man beyond all nature toward ideals. He does not ask the question of what is possible, but only the question of “thou shalt.” In Carlos, Schiller does not give us a critique of court life. This recedes behind practical moral postulates. “Become such that the laws of your actions could become universal laws of humanity,” Kant had demanded—and in the Marquis Posa, the cosmopolitan idealist, Schiller demands the independence of the ideal from everything that grows out of nature.

When Don Carlos was finished, Schiller stood in stark contrast to the worldview of Goethe and Herder, and at the beginning of his life in Weimar, no rapprochement with them could take place. Now, however, Schiller has become a reformer of Kantianism: he now strives for monism, but finds unity only in the aesthetic realm: in the problem of beauty. He shows us how man only lives out his life when he elevates nature to himself and absorbs morality from above into his nature. The categorical imperative does not force him under a yoke, but he voluntarily serves what is contained in the “thou shalt.” Thus Schiller rises to his height by growing beyond Kant. He turns against Kant, who wants to make man not a free being but a slave, bent under the yoke of duty. It became clear to him that something quite different lives in man than this bowing under a “thou shalt.” In monumental sentences, he expresses how he approaches what constitutes Goethe's and Herder's view: “I gladly serve my friends, but unfortunately I do so with inclination, and so it often bothers me that I am not virtuous.”

Kant disparaged what humans do out of inclination, what they do voluntarily, and instead praised what they do out of duty as the higher good. Kant addresses strict duty, which he claims has nothing appealing about it, in a passionate apostrophe. Schiller lifts humans out of their weakness by making the moral law the law of their own nature. Through the study of history, through sincere inclination and devotion to human life, he came to the lost harmony and thus to the understanding of Goethe.

Schiller describes Goethe's way wonderfully in the memorable letter of August 23, 1794: "For a long time now, although from a considerable distance, I have been observing the course of your mind and noting the path you have charted for yourself with ever-renewed admiration. You seek the necessity of nature, but you seek it by the most difficult path, which any weaker force would be wary of. You take nature as a whole in order to gain insight into the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the explanation for the individual."

Schiller had thus reached the height to which he had to develop. Having started out from duality, he had now arrived at the unity between man and nature. This led him to the kind of creativity that had been characteristic of him in recent years, since the mid-1890s, and to his friendship with Goethe. It was a historic friendship because it not only sought happiness for the two of them alone, but was also fruitful for the world, for humanity. In what we have in Goethe and Schiller, we have not only Goethe and Schiller, but we also have a third: Goethe plus Schiller. Anyone who follows the course of intellectual life sees in this a being that could only have come into being because, in selfless friendship and mutual devotion, something developed that stood above individual personalities as a new being. This mood will give us the right transition to Goethe and what he was to mean to Schiller.