INTRODUCTION

What Schiller sought to unite in his philosophy of the beautiful was nothing less than love and law, duty and happiness. While Kant, influenced by Protestant church doctrine, considered humans to be originally evil and based all his demands on this viewpoint, Schiller was filled with the ideal image of a golden age in Greece. From this, he drew the conclusion that we could reach such an age again in a coming third stage of culture. There, the motive for morality would no longer be, as Kant taught, a harsh "categorical imperative" of duty, but rather a gentle inclination of the heart toward the harmonious agreement of all things. A clear and pure sense of beauty was intended to ensure that there would no longer be any reluctantly endured, hated duty, and that all good would occur out of free will, indeed out of irresistible inclination.

Schiller considered sensory impressions, such as only a pure art that does not preach morality can provide, to be an effective means of beneficially influencing the soul and thus educating humans to be nobler through beauty. He hinted at this idea in his lecture, "What can a truly effective theater achieve?" and wrote therein: "Our nature, equally incapable of remaining in a state of the animal for long as it is of continuing the finer labors of the intellect, required a middle state..."