Schiller's Critique of Kant's Moral Psychology: Reconciling Practical Reason and an Ethics of Virtue

Gauthier, Jeffrey A.

doi:10.1080/00455091.1997.10717484

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…(Schiller, 1902a: 75-76) Nevertheless, this is only the general picture about Schiller's theory. As some authors contend (Barnouw, 1980;Gauthier, 1997;Tauber, 2006;Deligiorgi, 2006), there are psychological and empirical aspects in Schiller's theory of beauty as freedom which have a tendency to undermine the basic autonomistic paradigm in Schiller's approach to morality and aesthetics. There is, therefore, a real tension between the notions of "freedom" present throughout Schiller's theories.…”

Section: Schiller's Aesthetic Theorymentioning

confidence: 96%

“…In our description of Schiller's theory, we will be generally following Beiser's analysis from (Beiser, 2005; see also: Barnouw, 1980;Guyer, 1990;Roehr, 2003;Gauthier, 1997;Deligiorgi, 2006;Maftei, 2013). Actually, Schiller's ideas about beauty began to take shape long before the publishing of the Aesthetic Letters.…”

Section: Schiller's Aesthetic Theorymentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Without understating the implicit tension between our sensuous motivation for morality and the "autocracy of practical reason" (1997: 528), as defined by Kant's theory, Gauthier (1997) draws attention to what might be considered as the breaking point between Kant's and Schiller's theories. Although Schiller endorsed many times the Kantian position about the superiority of our moral reason over our senses, creating, as we shall see, interesting defences of Kant's ethics, Schiller departs from Kant on a crucial issue: the theory of duty.…”

Section: Schiller's Aesthetic Theorymentioning

confidence: 98%

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Schiller's Aesthetic Freedom and the Challenges of Aesthetic Education

Maftei

2014

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences

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The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to analyze Schiller's notion of aesthetic "freedom" throughout his aesthetic dissertations, a notion which is closely related to his famous theory about the "aesthetic State" as the ultimate form for the aesthetic education, a theory sketched out at the end of his 1794 Aesthetic Letters (or his Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man). Second, to address Schiller's critical reception of Enlightenment's views on beauty, particularly Kant's, who is Schiller's main source of inspiration and criticism in aesthetics, emphasizing the relation of his own theory of beauty to aesthetic education. Third, to discuss the challenges that Schiller's theory brings to the idea of "aesthetic education" in the aesthetic theories of the Enlightenment. Again, our main source for criticism will be Kant.

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Section: Schiller's Aesthetic Theorymentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Schiller's Aesthetic Theorymentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Schiller's Aesthetic Theorymentioning

confidence: 98%

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Schiller's Aesthetic Freedom and the Challenges of Aesthetic Education

Maftei

2014

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences

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“…And nobody is attracted to being coerced. We might note that these points all suggest that Kant rejects Schiller's own positive theory largely due to common sense points about human nature rather than on a metaphysical distinction between active reason and passive inclinations (as Gauthier (1997) suggests), or due to a general pessimism about the moral capacities of humans (as Baxley (2003;2008;2010a; and 2010b) suggests).…”

Section: An Inclination For Dutymentioning

confidence: 98%

An Unfamiliar and Positive Law: On Kant and Schiller

Winegar

2013

Archiv Für Geschichte Der Philosophie

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A familiar post-Kantian criticism contends that Kant enslaves sensibility under the yoke of practical reason. Friedrich Schiller advanced a version of this criticism to which Kant publicly responded. Recent commentators have emphasized the role that Kant's reply assigns to the pleasure that accompanies successful moral action. In contrast, I argue that Kant's reply relies primarily on the sublime feeling that arises when we merely contemplate the moral law. In fact, the pleasures emphasized by other recent commentators depend on this sublime feeling. These facts illuminate Kant's views regarding the relationship between morality, freedom, and the development of moral feelings. A familiar post-Kantian criticism contends that Kant's moral theory does not provide true freedom but, rather, places the master inside us, as Kant's sharp distinction between reason and sensibility enslaves sensibility under the yoke of practical reason. 1 This criticism was first advanced by the poet Friedrich Schiller in his 1793 essay On Grace and Dignity, where he accuses Kant of banishing grace from the idea of duty and providing grounds for the adoption of a monkish attitude-a criticism to which Kant publicly responded in a footnote added to the second edition of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. 2 1 For example, in the Spirit of Christianity, Hegel suggests that Kant's moral agent "carries his lord in himself, yet at the same time is his own slave. For the particular-impulses, inclinations, pathological love, sensuous experience, or whatever else it is called-the universal is necessary and always something alien and objective" (TW 1:323/ETW 211). And in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel repeats the same objection when he writes, "[A]bstract reflection fixes this moment in its difference from and opposition to the universal, and so produces a view of morality as a perennial and hostile struggle against one's own satisfaction" (TW 7:233/PR §124R). 2 There is, of course, much dispute over the question how seriously Schiller intends to criticize Kant. Guyer suggests that Schiller's 'criticisms' might be better construed as helpful suggestions or clarifications of Kant's own position. For example, Guyer writes: "In the end, surely, the point of Schiller's twofold ideal of grace and dignity is not primarily to criticize Kant's ethics but to use his artistic powers to defend Kant's view, perhaps from the more scornful tendency within himself and certainly from the many critics who had ridiculed Kant's separation between happiness and virtue from the moment the Groundwork was published" (Guyer 1993, 354). As we shall see below, Guyer is absolutely right to emphasize that Schiller was largely sympathetic to Kant's project. In fact, Schiller claims that his major complaints largely concern Kant's presentation of the moral law, rather than Past scholarship often assumed that Schiller primarily intended to object that Kant's philosophy requires people to renounce all happiness and joy in the fulfillment of the moral law. However, rece...

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“…In general, the recent literature has centered almost exclusively on the question of whether Kant and Schiller disagree, if at all, in their moral and aesthetic principles. See, for example, Beiser (2005), Deligiorgi (2011), Gauthier (1997), Guyer (1993), Henrich (1957), Louden (2000), Munzel (1999), Roehr (2003a), Timmermann (2007, Wildt (1982), andWinegar (2013). My aim in this article is to open up a new conversation within this otherwise rich body of scholarship.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Schiller on Evil and the Emergence of Reason

Ware¹

2018

History of Philosophy Quarterly

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Even Kant required a long lifetime to purify his philosophical mantle of many impurities and prejudices. And now he has wantonly tainted it with the shameful stain of radical evil [mit dem Schandfleck des radicalen Bösen beschlabbert] in order that Christians too might be attracted to kiss its hem. 1 1 T hese words, written by Goethe in private correspondence, captured a sentiment many German intellectuals felt upon reading Kant's essay "On the Radical Evil in Human Nature" (1792), which later became Part I of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793). To many, it seemed that Kant was betraying the spirit of Enlightenment thought that he had worked so hard to defend. His critique of reason had shown that all pretensions to know the nature of God and the soul-the topics of traditional metaphysics-are empty of cognitive significance. And Kant had argued that the only legitimate role for these concepts is practical: they are mere "postulates" for guiding our pursuit of virtue. So when the Religion first appeared, it shocked Kant's contemporaries to find him appealing to a doctrine many considered antithetical to everything for which his philosophy stood: the doctrine of original sin. All human beings, he now claimed, harbor a propensity within themselves to choose self-love over the moral law-and none of us, Kant added, is exempt from this propensity: "No, not one" (RGV, AA 6:39).While the shock caused by the Religion was felt by many at the time, my aim in this article is to explore its effect on one of Kant's early followers: Friedrich Schiller. Like Goethe, Schiller was taken aback by the doctrine of radical evil, judging it "scandalous" for anyone who believed in human progress and perfectibility. 2 Nor did Schiller hesitate to make public his dissatisfaction with this new doctrine, writing in 1793 that HPQ 35_4 text.

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Schiller's Critique of Kant's Moral Psychology: Reconciling Practical Reason and an Ethics of Virtue

Cited by 18 publications

References 13 publications

Schiller's Aesthetic Freedom and the Challenges of Aesthetic Education

Schiller's Aesthetic Freedom and the Challenges of Aesthetic Education

An Unfamiliar and Positive Law: On Kant and Schiller

Schiller on Evil and the Emergence of Reason

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