Abstract

In the fifth and sixth letter of Friedrich Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man [Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen], which is based on letters written from 1793 to 1795 to his patron, the Duke of Augustenburg, Schiller critiques his contemporary society and culture. He describes how the organization of a state based on rationality alone does not develop but rather alienates man in a society in which "the dead letter succeeds the living intellect and a trained memory leads more securely than genius and sensibility."1 In other words, he describes a society based on scientific knowledge, habit, and rote learning that doesn't leave room for judgment, imagination, and sensibility—and thereby neither...