The Schiller Institute has just published Friedrich Schiller’s most important philosophical work, The Aesthetic Education of the Human Being, in a new, improved translation by this author.

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) was a historian, dramatist, poet, and philosopher—a very special, beautiful thinker whose ideas remain of crucial importance for the present world, and for humanity in the future. In all of his works, be they his dramas, essays on universal history, poems, or philosophical writings, his intention was to create a worthy future for humanity through the ennoblement of the individual as a path to political freedom. He used to be widely known throughout the United States as “The Poet of Freedom,” a title bestowed upon him by the great American orator and statesman Frederick Douglass, and there are statues of him in parks all over the country.

As the U.S. celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it is important to understand the impact this revolution had in other countries. At the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, many thinkers in Europe—including Schiller—hoped that this might become similar to the American one, leading to the establishment of free republics in Europe, and thus the developments in France were closely followed. Schiller had read Christian Schubart’s reports about the developments in America in his German Chronicle (Deutsche Chronik), and he had a painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill over his desk.

When the French Revolution degenerated into a barbaric regime of terror, Schiller’s hopes were dashed, and he wrote that “a great moment in history has found a little people.” His response was to prove that only through the aesthetic education of the human being—the ennoblement of the individual with the beautiful as mediator—could true political freedom be created.

In the 1790s, Schiller thus wrote a number of profound philosophical essays and poems, of which The Aesthetic Education of the Human Being in a Series of Letters is the zenith—and Schiller himself recognized that in several letters to friends.

“One must follow the path through the aesthetic, because it is through the beautiful that one proceeds to freedom,” Schiller writes in the second of the 27 letters.

Experiencing the beautiful allows us to uncover the “divine spark” in all of us, because the subject of art is the creative process as such.

Schiller’s intention was to rout the dominant influence of Immanuel Kant, who believed that there is no intelligible standard for truth and the beautiful, and that the sensuous part of your being must be negated—contrary to Schiller’s view that the human being must become a harmonious whole, who must strive to educate his or her emotions through Classical art in order to bring them into harmony with intellectual reason.

Schiller writes that we must strive to become beautiful souls. “We call a soul beautiful when it can confidently let its emotions guide its own will, without any risk of coming into contradiction with its [the will’s] own decisions…. In a beautiful soul, sensuousness and reason, duty and inclination harmonize, and grace is its epiphany.” Think of the Good Samaritan parable. The whole character of a beautiful soul is moral. Love (agapē) is the emotion of the beautiful soul, the emotion that generates creativity.

In 1801, Schiller wrote On the Sublime, another gem which is included in this book. Schiller wrote this essay late in life, and it is perhaps his most refined discussion of the process of the development of the soul.

This book is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about educating children and youth to develop all the capabilities they have been born with, so they truly can be citizens of their country, and of the world, and is thus for all individuals who care about the future of mankind.

The book is now available for $15 on Amazon. It can also be ordered from the Schiller Institute for $15 (U.S. postage included. Foreign orders add 7 dollars) by emailing: info@schillerinstitute.org.