• 1 Cf. R. Safranski, Friedrich Schiller oder Die Erfindung des Deutschen Idealismus, 88, 372, 481, 511

1The parallels and connections between Schiller and Schelling are very rich and seem to traverse not only their philosophical thoughts and interests, but also their biographical backgrounds: from their medical studies, to the urge to bridge the gap left by Kant between nature and freedom, as well as their attempts to conceptualize art as the locus or medium for that very reconciliation. Schelling, like Hegel, held Schiller in high esteem, but it is unclear whether the opposite was the case—following Safranski, one is led to believe that it was not.1

• 2 On how Schiller “makes aesthetic judgment a form of practical reason,” see F.C. Beiser, Schiller (...)

2The aim of this paper is to develop a comparative analysis of Schiller’s and Schelling’s interpretations of the sublime and the tragic, both as aesthetic and moral categories.2 My claim is that examining their particular appropriations of the Kantian sublime, as well as their reception of the tragic and reading of the tragic hero, reveals important aspects of their philosophical conceptions of human freedom. Both authors present the tragic/(sublime) hero as the most perfect incarnation of the complex relation between fate and freedom. To be sure, this in itself is not particular to them; on the contrary, it was a relatively common move in late 18^th and early 19^th century aesthetics. What is specific to each author, however, is the ways in which they understand this seemingly uncontroversial relation between the tragic hero, the sublime and the realization of human freedom. But the nuances of their writings are not always so easy to see without reading them together. Sometimes their writings are so close, it almost seems as if they could be a variation of one another; there are sentences in Schiller’s philosophical essays we could ascribe to Schelling and the other way round. And yet the conclusions they draw or the way in which they interpreted those very sentences are quite often surprisingly different. The aim of this paper is to identify those points of discrepancy and convergence, not only to get a better understanding of both authors, but also to learn ways of interrogating ourselves and our understanding of what it means to be free.

• 3 I would like to dedicate this section to Marsha Bruinen, Una Vrodljak, Lodewijk van Eden and Joe (...)
• 4 First published in 1801, but probably written between 1794-1796 (see NA XXI, 328f.)

3The paper is divided in two main sections. In the first I discuss the notion of the sublime3, in the second the notion of the tragic. For the first, and in order to highlight as much as possible the similitudes and differences between both authors, I will be comparing Schelling’s Philosophy of Art to Schiller’s essay “On the Sublime” (Ueber das Erhabene)4, for this is the text that Schelling himself refers to. In the second part I will mainly refer to Schiller’s essay “On the Cause of the Pleasure we Derive from Tragic Objects” (Ueber den Grund des Vergnügens an tragischen Gegenständen) from 1792.

• 5 For Schelling, this is not a task of differentiating amongst what is already given; instead he th (...)
• 6 See F.W.J. Schelling, Die Philosophie der Kunst, SW V, 377f. and 461f. The English translations a (...)

7Schelling’s Philosophy of Art belongs to his so called Identitätsphilosophie (philosophy of identity) and the Potenzenlehre (or doctrine of potencies). For our purposes and regarding the latter concept it will suffice to bear in mind that what this entails is that although everything that exists (from nature to art, human actions and philosophy) can be seen as an expression of the absolute, they do not present it, they do not incarnate it in the same way or with the same intensity. And this means that one can identify different levels of intensity or perfection, depending on their ability to mirror or incarnate (darstellen) the absolute. This is ultimately what enables Schelling to distinguish, not only between art, nature and philosophy, but also between all the different forms or genres of art.5 For Schelling, however, the main characteristic of art is that it is able to present (darstellen) the infinite or absolute through or within the finite. Schelling expresses this sometimes with the term ‘einbilden’ and ‘ineinsbilden’, which both refer to imagination (Einbildung), as well as to the capacity of construing or forming (bilden) something into something different: in this case, the infinite is informed or conformed into the finite, i.e. into finite forms of art (it later becomes more complicated as Schelling distinguishes precisely between the sublime and the beautiful).6 In more concrete terms, this means that what is presented and made tangible through art is the identity or indifference between the real and the ideal, necessity and freedom. The question is, though: how could one ever determine which works of art fulfil their task of presenting the absolute better than others? What criteria could one follow?

• 8 See idem, SW V, 406, 451f. Gadamer reproduces a similar thought when he argues that the symbol “d (...)

12This is also, by the way, the thought underlying Schelling’s preference for symbolic works of art, over allegorical or metaphorical works. In the symbol the absolute appears there and then, within the work itself, and not as something external that we could refer to through an allegory or a metaphor.8

• 9 The critical edition refers to these misquotations as Schelling ‘paraphrasing’ Schiller (cf. F.W. (...)
• 10 F.W.J. Schelling, Die Philosophie der Kunst, SW V, 461.
• 11 In § 64, Schelling had made the same distinction and called the former Poesie in art, the latter (...)

13In the “General Section of the Philosophy of Art,” § 65, Schelling introduces and discusses the notion of the sublime in detail. In his analysis Schelling explicitly refers to Schiller’s essay Ueber das Erhabene (whom he interestingly tends to misquote).9 But there is also undoubtedly an implicit engagement with Kant’s third Critique. In the first instance, however, true to his quasi Spinozistic style, Schelling defines the sublime as the configuring or in-forming (Einbildung) “of the infinite into the finite”10—in contrast thus with the Einbildung of the finite into the infinite, which is his definition of beauty. In other words, whereas the beautiful is to be understood as the result of a process in which the particular is re-configured as the infinite or “taken back” (nimmt zurück) to the infinite (i.e. to the infinite that it always was)11, the sublime is understood as the emergence, the irruption of the infinite in the finite.

• 12 In § 4 “Analytic of Beauty” of I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment), a flower (...)
• 13 To contemplate the beauty of nature involves to contemplate it as if it had a purpose, although i (...)

14Although Schelling’s formulations seem very alien to the analysis developed by Kant, it is nevertheless striking to see the extent to which they can be taken to reflect many of Kant’s insights, though retranslated or reinterpreted into his own philosophical system and vocabulary. If we take a typical Kantian example of beauty in nature, a flower12, for instance: one could say that for Kant, to contemplate it as being beautiful involves, among other things, that we see its particular form as being universal, or as belonging to a universal order: a confirming example of a perfectly ordered, meaningful and beautiful universe.13 This seems to be Schelling’s point too: beauty occurs when the finite finds its meaning in the infinite, in its belonging to the infinite (and here the infinite can also be understood as the ideal / universal form). For Schelling, as for Kant, beauty is only conceivable as form.

• 14 F.W.J. Schelling, Die Philosophie der Kunst, SW V, 461.

15Conversely, for Schelling, in the case of the sublime what we see is the infinite in the finite itself. It is as if the infinite exploded within the finite. Schelling himself describes it in terms of an expansion (expandiert sich) and overflow (ergiesst).14 For a moment the infinite is in the finite, for a moment the finite is the infinite. Only that this bursting infinite is not in any way absolute form and order, but pure overwhelming and indomitable chaos. We will come back to the notion of chaos later; for now let us see in more detail, how Schelling develops his analysis.

• 15 Idem, 462.

16Schelling differentiates between the sublime in nature and the sublime reflected in someone’s inner disposition or Gesinnung—which is exemplified by the figure of the tragic hero. Echoing Kant’s distinction between the mathematically and dynamically sublime (although via Schiller), Schelling goes on to distinguish two cases of the sublime in nature: one in which we are presented with an object that surpasses our ability to apprehend (Fassungskraft) it, another in which “our force [unsere Kraft] confronts [entgegenstellt] a power in nature [eine Macht der Natur], against which it turns into nothing.”15

• 16 See note 9 above.
• 17 F. Schiller, Ueber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 42. My emphasis. All translations from Schiller’s works (...)

17Here Schelling is again misquoting Schiller16, who does not talk about the sublime as the result of a confrontation with a power in nature, but instead talks about the “sublime object,” as one that we “contemplate as a power [betrachten ihn als seine Macht] against which our own vital strength [Lebenskraft] turns into nothing.”17

• 18 E. Burke, for instance, writes that: “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of (...)

18In the English translation of Schelling’s Philosophy of Art from 1989 the translator mentions the incident(s) but avoids translating Schelling’s misquotations and instead reproduces the ‘correct’ quotes from Schiller’s text. But, as we will see, these misquotations already reveal both the esteem Schelling had for Schiller, as well as the disparities between their thoughts. In other words: Schiller’s text transcribed literally is not really compatible with Schelling’s argument. And yet, in this specific case, the difference seems insignificant. For, in the end, both authors agree that the sublime is not an experience that follows from a moment of real danger or real confrontation with life-threatening forces. Our lives are not in danger (which is a relatively common requisite for most authors writing about the sublime18). But, what this ‘safe distance’ involves, and the extent to which we may still speak metaphorically of an encounter with some form of danger is different in both. Thus, in the scenario recreated by Schiller, the subject who experiences the feeling of the sublime is never really ‘at a loss’ or even disturbed. In fact, this passage quoted above comes shortly after Schiller has argued that the reason why the feeling of the sublime is ambivalent (giving both pain and joy) has to do with our own divided nature. But this suggests that in or through the experience of the sublime, the intellectual, spiritual part of us is never really confronted with anything, but merely awakened as our sensuous nature feels helpless.

• 19 F. Schiller, Ueber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 43.
• 20 Ibid.

19This becomes most clear when we compare Schiller’s account of the sublime experience with his account of the beautiful. For Schiller, beauty is the expression of the harmony between reason and the sensuous, between morality and nature’s drives. We experience this harmony when ‘doing the right thing’ is not at odds with our inclinations or drives. Thus, according to Schiller, the beautiful does not depend on our double nature, and would never awaken our most spiritual side and potencies, it “would never enable us to experience that we are destined [bestimmt] and are able to manifest as pure intelligences.”19 Through the sublime, in contrast, we realize that “we can want what our drives abhor and we can repudiate what they crave.”20 This realization is, hence, all about re-discovering the spiritual, moral, rational and so on within us. But the ‘pure intelligence’ that we are or can be is not threatened in any way through the experience of the sublime. In Schelling, as we will see, the situation is a bit different.

• 21 F.W.J. Schelling, Die Philosophie der Kunst, SW V, 462.
• 22 Ibid.
• 23 Cf. I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, § 27: “It is, in other words, for us a law (of reason) and (...)

20To be sure, for Schelling, as for Kant and Schiller, nature’s (infinite) greatness and (infinite) power over and against which we feel inadequate or extremely vulnerable does not in itself constitute the sublime. The common tendency to interpret nature’s immeasurability as the infinite, says Schelling, does not lead to a feeling of the sublime, but rather to one of knockdown (Niederschlagung). But whereas in Schiller (and Kant), we find an opposition between the part of us that can be ‘knocked down’ by nature’s might and the part that cannot be, in Schelling we do not find this distinction. Instead, he claims that the contemplation (Anschauung) of the sublime takes place when the true infinite (wahre Unendlichkeit) appears; and this is made possible at the moment in which we take the merely sensuous infinite (das bloß sinnliche Unendliche) as a symbol for the former.21 “Thus,” he writes, “the sublime is a subjugation of the finite that pretends to be infinite through the true infinite [Unterjochung des Endlichen, welches Unendlichkeit lügt, durch das wahre Unendliche].”22 Later he puts it in terms of the difference between ‘relative’ and ‘absolute’ greatness (Größe): the relative greatness of nature becomes sublime at the moment in which it is made into a symbol of the absolute-great. This, of course, reminds us of both Kant and Schiller, who also explain the movement of the sublime as a movement in which we identify the abasing (verderbend) force and greatness of nature that confronted us with our immense impotence (Ohnmacht) and limitedness, as being only relatively powerful and relatively great.23 The question is, though: relative to what?

• 24 F. Schiller, Ueber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 47. In the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie we ca (...)

22Just after having described the initial feelings of humiliation (Kleinmut) and horror (Entsetzen) vis-à-vis nature, typically felt by those who do not yet “feel the lofty daemonic freedom [dämonische Freiheit] in [their] breast[s]”24, Schiller writes the following:

• 27 Arguably, then, Schiller is closer to Kant, who writes: “Therefore the feeling of the sublime in (...)
• 28 F. Schiller, Ueber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 42.

23Answering my previous question we can now clearly see that for Schiller, the ‘absolute grandeur’ against which the mighty power and greatness of nature become only relative, is our own inner grandeur: the infinite freedom within us; whereas for Schelling, it is the grandeur of the absolute in and for itself.27 One could argue that the difference is not as substantial as it may seem, once we realize that, for Schelling, this absolute grandeur is ultimately also within us. My claim, however, is that the nuance is very significant and betrays important differences, not only regarding Schelling’s and Schiller’s investment in the sublime, but also concerning their understanding of nature and human freedom, as well as our ability to realize it. Moreover, looking closer at Schiller’s text we can find several passages that reveal this same emphasis on the subject, or the human, the echo of which we will not find in Schelling’s analysis, such as for instance, when Schiller writes that in the sublime we feel free because “our spirit [Geist] acts here as if it followed only its own laws.”28

• 29 “There is a cure for everything except for death, says the proverb. But this single exception […] (...)
• 30 Schiller calls it the sad contradiction (Widerspruch) between ‘Trieb’ and ‘Vermögen’ (idem, 38).
• 31 Idem, 39. Undoubtedly, Schiller’s essay can be interpreted as a very unorthodox but at the same t (...)
• 32 We exercise control over nature, claims Schiller, by either using it to fulfil our will or avoidi (...)
• 33 Cf. R. Robertson, “On the Sublime and Schiller’s Theory of Tragedy.”
• 34 This text shows very clearly how much Schiller follows the Kantian insight according to which, if (...)
• 35 F. Schiller, Ueber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 39.

24Schiller, in fact, begins his text On the Sublime emphasizing freedom as the main characteristic of human existence. Immediately after this, however, he exposes all the different ways in which human freedom is de facto hindered and violated, to the extent that the question becomes: how can we possibly assert our freedom, given that we are surrounded by forces and powers that clearly overpower us—not to mention the fact of our own finitude?29 For Schiller, any power that may threaten our own entails that we are not truly free. But, after exposing the wretched situation in which we find ourselves, torn between what we want and what we are actually capable of30, Schiller points towards culture as the answer: “Culture must [soll] set man free and help him fulfil his vocation [Bestimmung].”31 By culture, Schiller means what he calls “physical culture” through which we are able to control nature32, and more importantly “moral culture” (moralische Kultur). Only the latter gives us the absolute freedom we are longing for, because it enables us, he argues, to freely accept what otherwise would be perceived of as fate: it enables us to transform what seems to be an inescapable force of nature into the result of a free choice. To stress the Kantian influence in what appears to be a revival of the stoics33: our moral disposition enables us to do, accept and will the opposite of what we naturally desire, and in this sense is evidence of our elevated nature.34 “Only the morally cultivated man is free,”35 he writes.

• 36 Idem, 40, the idea of nature as might (Macht) is of course the underlying thought in Kant’s analy (...)
• 37 Schiller is using the sublime to bring together two separate aspects from Kant’s philosophy: the (...)

25Now, Schiller acknowledges that this is not an easy feat: one requires an unusual clarity of thought and an unusually strong willpower—perhaps only to be found in fiction. In any case, what this means now is that we are back to zero and that the initial question about the possibility of asserting human dignity and freedom still remains unanswered. And here is also where the sublime comes in, namely as the solution to this aporia. For, as we have already seen, Schiller will present the aesthetic experience of the sublime as a means whereby we are reminded of our infinite dignity (Würde) and superiority over and against nature’s might. The experience of the sublime, he argues, enables us to detach ourselves from our most nature-like being and become independent from nature (considered as might, Macht).36 The value of the sublime according to Schiller lies thus in the fact that it is a means whereby we are able to experience—on a sensuous level—something within us that is so difficult to access directly, namely our true freedom and infinite superiority over the merely physical and sensuous reality of life.37

• 38 Robertson, op. cit., 194, and also see Schiller: the sublime must complement the beautiful in ord (...)
• 39 F. Schiller, Ueber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 53. See also: “the sublime gives us a way out of the sen (...)
• 40 Idem, 48.
• 41 Idem, 51.

27As noted above, Schiller begins his essay on the sublime with a reflection on human freedom and not as a treatise on aesthetics. Moreover, although his text is dedicated to the sublime in art, in the end, it really is about showing how sublime works of art can help us become better, i.e. freer, human beings. In other words, as Ritchie Robertson notes, Schiller’s essay “On the Sublime,” can be seen as the culmination to the project developed in his letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man from 1794, where art and beauty are presented as a necessary means towards a successful and complete education of human-kind.38 And the reason for this lies in the fact that, according to Schiller now, it is the experience of the sublime that enables us to realize something about ourselves that beauty, understood as the harmony between the sensuous and the moral cannot. Thus, he writes: “Without the beautiful, there would be perpetual conflict between our natural and our rational determinations. […] Without the sublime, beauty would make us forget our dignity.”39 Through the sublime we are able to identify (and arguably also satisfy) a human need that goes beyond the basic needs of “living and being well,” and a human vocation (Bestimmung) that goes beyond merely comprehending “the phenomena that surround us.”40 More importantly: being frequently exposed to the experience of the sublime through art, he argues, will train us to experience the world and most especially the sources of suffering differently, namely in such a way that we may be able to “dissolve actual suffering into sublime emotion.”41 As all too imperfect humans, thus, we have a strong interest in promoting the experience of the sublime through art, which is for Schiller, and contrary to Kant, the best means to convey this experience.

• 42 F.W.J. Schelling, Die Philosophie der Kunst, SW V, 357.

28Now, Schelling’s analysis of the sublime is of a totally different kind, in the sense that it is embedded within a systematic analysis of the meaning of art and its different forms. As he puts it in the introduction to the Philosophy of Art, the aim is to “to penetrate the organism of art, which produces the highest unity and necessity [Gesetzmässigkeit] out of absolute freedom,”42 and not to explore the ways in which art can make us better human beings. (Indeed, the somewhat controversial underlying assumption here is that to understand the essence of art we first need to be philosophers.) For Schelling, as we have seen, although the essence of art is to present the absolute, not all forms of art do this in the same way. Thus, given that for Schelling the very notion of the sublime also expresses a certain degree of superiority vis-à-vis the beautiful, when he analyzes the sublime he does so in the light of the following question: In which (special) way does the sublime present, express, manifest the absolute? From this point of view, and despite the similarities, it is clear that the projects in Schiller and Schelling are very different—almost incomparable. However, looking further into their analyses of the sublime will enable us to identify even more fundamental (and less obvious) differences within their philosophical standpoints.

• 43 Idem, 463.

29We have seen how Schelling explains the differences between the beautiful and the sublime in terms of the way in which they present (darstellen) the absolute. We have seen that what characterises the sublime is that it is like an explosion, an outburst: the absolute ‘explodes’ within the finite, we saw. And we also saw that, for us to experience the sublime in nature, according to Schelling, the greatness and overwhelming power of nature must become a symbol of the “true infinite”. But what does all this mean? And how should we interpret the passage quoted earlier where Schelling (misquoting Schiller) says that the sublime is like a symbol or a “mirror of the absolute”?43

• 44 F. Schiller, Ueber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 40.
• 45 Idem, 51.
• 46 F.W.J. Schelling, Die Philosophie der Kunst, SW V, 465.
• 47 Schelling will not put it in this way, though. For him, the more accurate expression would be tha (...)
• 48 F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, SW VII, (...)

30One thing is clear: if, as Schelling writes in the first pages of his lectures on art, the absolute cannot be understood as a fixed identity, but rather as one that is in process of becoming etc., then it would be wrong to interpret the ‘absolute’ in the quote above as some form of deity or entity containing the same characteristics as – say – the “absolute grandeur within ourselves” or the “highest [höchste] freedom”44 that Schiller refers us to. Indeed, in Schiller’s account, this “holy [heilige] freedom” is presented as a goal in itself: a fixed horizon where we can flee to (flüchten),45 which is therefore stable, identifiable, unchanging and remains perfectly unthreatened. In Schelling’s text, by contrast, we find that what the sublime reflects by mirroring the absolute is not quite as reassuring as one might have assumed (and if it is, it is so in a different way than we find in Schiller). Indeed, according to Schelling, nature becomes a symbol of the infinite or the absolute only to the extent that we see nature as chaos: what we see when we experience the sublime is the profound chaos underlying everything. Thus he writes: “the fundamental intuition [Grundanschauung] of the sublime is chaos,” and later adds: “the fundamental intuition of chaos itself lies within the intuition of the absolute” and more clearly: “The inner essence of the absolute, that in which all resides as one and one as all, is primal chaos itself.46 In other words, the way in which the sublime according to Schelling presents the absolute is by presenting its fundamental non-stability (non-identity),47 disorder, disharmony, pure potentiality… chaos. To see nature as sublime is not to see the overwhelming power of this concrete volcano or the ungraspable immensity of the ocean, but rather to see the chaotic and invisible forces of nature underlying nature itself. Or, to use a formulation from his Freedom Essay: to see nature as sublime is to see the non-ground underlying everything that exists. And this, moreover, this chaos is presented by Schelling as the true essence of the absolute itself. But perhaps the most important consequence of Schelling’s position here is that the realization of freedom itself will inevitably become something much more precarious and unclear than what we see in Schiller. Freedom is not a pristine goal, but a possibility that is only such to the extent that the absolute opposite is also possible, as he will write in his essay from 1809: “The real and vital concept [of freedom] is that freedom is the capacity for good and evil”48 (and evil, for Schelling is indeed, among others, lack of freedom).

• 49 I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, § 23.
• 50 “Flesh is the true chaos of all colours and for just that reason resembles none in particular, bu (...)
• 51 Idem, 635.
• 52 Idem, 465.

31To be sure, the connection between the experience of the sublime and chaos is not in any way new. Kant, for instance, writes that “it is rather in its chaos, or in its wildest and most irregular disorder […] that nature mainly excites the ideas of the sublime.49 But in Schelling’s case, the notion of chaos acquires a new meaning and recurs, though rather inconspicuously, throughout his Philosophy of Art and beyond. Schelling uses the notion of chaos, for instance, to explain how the colour flesh is the “absolute colour” in the sense that it contains all colours and it reflects the most perfect unity or identity between light and matter.50 Later, explaining the relation between language (as a totality) and the poetic work of art, which is both particular (a particular speech) and absolute (since it refers to or mirrors that very totality), he will write that “[l]anguage in itself is the chaos from which poesy is to construct the bodies of its ideas.”51 Of interest for us now, though, is that when Schelling introduces the notion of chaos in his section on the sublime, he refers once again to Schiller’s text Ueber das Erhabene. Nature, writes Schelling, is also sublime in its chaos “or as Schiller puts it, in the confusion of its appearances.”52 However, by now it will not be surprising to see that both authors have quite a different reading of this chaos.

• 53 F. Schiller, Ueber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 48.
• 54 Ibid.
• 55 Ibid.

32In his essay on the sublime, and following Kant’s analysis, Schiller argues that as we give up our desire to bring the “lawless chaos of appearances under a unity of knowledge,” we realize our independence from (and hence superiority over) nature. And hence, he explains that what we lose in understanding we gain in reason.53 Schiller also claims that the stronger the chaos or the stronger we sense this total lack of purposiveness in nature, the more it becomes an image (Sinnbild) for (our) pure reason.54 Indeed, the idea that the chaos of nature, or as he also puts it, “nature’s wild unrelatedness [die wilde […] Ungebundenheit der Natur]”55 can reflect our truest independence from (or our own unrelatedness to) nature might resonate with the move we saw earlier in Schelling whereby nature’s greatness becomes a symbol of the true infinite or absolute. But the difference here between the two could hardly be more profound. For, in Schelling, the idea is that the absolute itself is chaos. So, if anything, one would have to say that for Schelling, in or through the sublime, nature’s wild unrelatedness becomes an image / symbol of the true chaos underlying it all.

• 56 Idem, 47.
• 57 Ibid. The original German is: “[…] auch das Unfassbare für den Verstand, die Verwirrung, kann sob (...)
• 58 For instance, here: Schiller criticizes those who cannot accept the thought that all is governed (...)
• 59 Idem, 38.
• 60 Idem, 43.
• 61 Idem, 47.

33Moreover, for Schiller, the fact that “what is ungraspable for the understanding, confusion [Verwirrung]” should “serve as a presentation of the suprasensuous” can only be the case if, as he puts it: “it advances to greatness and announces itself as a work of nature” (my italics).56 Anything else, he writes in a somewhat Kantian fashion, would be “contemptible.”57 In effect, for Schiller (nature’s) chaos only becomes an image of the sublime to the extent that it falls back on (nature’s) reason. Or to put it differently: Schiller’s text does not rest on the Schellingian insight that nature is essentially chaos. Instead, the underlying assumption is that by enabling us to experience the sublime, nature ensures that we awaken to our true essence and vocation. For Schiller then, and as much as this may contradict the pathos depicted at many points of his analysis,58 the fundamental characteristic of nature is its reasonableness: “all nature proceeds rationally [Vernünftig handelt die ganze Natur].”59 It is nature that through nature, so to say, teaches us that we are more than merely sensuous, and that “we are destined and able to manifest ourselves as pure intelligences.”60 In a rather touching passage, Schiller even speculates that it is perhaps our encounter with the sublime in nature that has made certain ideas, thoughts or heroic decisions possible… ideas that would have never been born in “the prison-study [Studienkerker]” of the man of science or social gatherings.61 Nevertheless, this teleological (to say the least) reading of nature means that ultimately, in Schiller’s case—and quite opposite to what we find in Schelling—the ground of reason, morality and freedom, is never chaos but rather reason, morality and freedom.

• 62 We find a similar thought in A.W. Schlegel’s lectures on art.

35One of the consequences of Schelling’s processual conception of the absolute, is that, for the work of art to truly mirror it, the identity of the opposites needs to occur, it needs to happen, within the work itself. This is one of the reasons why Schelling claims that drama is superior to poetry or epic narratives, namely because the identity that is being presented through the play is one that is actually taking place while it is being presented.62 Likewise, he will argue that although they all (poetry, epic and drama) present the identity of the finite and the infinite, the object and the subject, necessity and freedom, there are important differences that have to do with the fact that in poetry there is an Übergewicht or prevalence of subjectivity and freedom and in the epic narrative there is a prevalence of objectivity and necessity (the necessity that comes from narrating the past), whereas in tragedy we find an absolute Gleichgewicht or Indifferenz between freedom and necessity. More importantly, the indifference that emerges between freedom and necessity in drama is one that does not exclude conflict and real opposition. In fact:

• 64 Idem, 696.

36This situation of initial conflict and final indifference between the opposites is the reason why, according to Schelling, tragedy represents the highest form of art and is the most sublime form of art (die erhabenste Erscheinung der Kunst). The fact that Schelling uses the term erhaben or erhabenste to characterize dramatic poetry, however, becomes more significant when we see that, like for Schiller, the underlying question that is motivating his analysis of tragedy is: How can it be that we find pleasure in something that should distress us? “Aren’t these contradictions not simply devastating, and where is the ground of the beauty that Greek tragedies nevertheless achieved?”64

• 67 Cf. K. Hay, Die Notwendigkeit des Scheiterns. Das Tragische als Bestimmung der Philosophie bei Sc (...)

40If we read carefully we will find that there are different meanings of freedom and necessity at play here. There is in effect, what might be called a transformation and internalization of fate67: The fate that first seems impossible to combat, imposed by some external, overwhelming power, against which the hero could do nothing, is internalized and transformed by the hero himself into a fate that he can fight, that he can overcome. And he does so, by interpreting it as an act of free will (i.e. in order to accept the guilt, Oedipus has to see his offense as a result of his own free will). The emergence of indifference or identity between freedom and necessity that we find at the end is, thus, made possible at the moment in which the tragic hero voluntarily accepts the guilt for an act that he did not want to do, i.e. an act that he experiences in the first instance as having been imposed on him by virtue of some overwhelming necessity that he could not have foreseen, let alone combatted. But for this act of acceptance to be possible the hero has to reinterpret that externally imposed and overwhelming fate as a result of his own free will, or to put it differently: as an internal fate, an internal necessity.

• 68 See also F.W.J. Schelling, Die Philosophie der Kunst, SW V, 703: “The kind of evil that [only] go (...)

41Although this process may resonate with what Schiller had said in his essay about the sublime (namely, that the sublime helps us understand that sometimes the only way we have to destroy a force to which we must succumb is by submitting to it voluntarily) there are again significant differences. These differences have to do precisely with what I am calling a movement of internalization and transformation of the notion of fate. It is in effect not by chance that Schelling will emphasize at several points that true tragic fate, tragic necessity, must be an internal necessity, an innere Notwendigkeit. Any other type of necessity or fate, one for instance that could not be incorporated or reinterpreted in this way by the hero (such as an overwhelming fate only to be overcome by another kind of overwhelming power68) would never lead to the true realization of the identity between freedom and necessity.

• 71 In his essay “On the Sublime,” Schiller writes: “in the sublime […] reason and sensuousness do no (...)

46Now, from a Schellingian perspective we could say that Schiller has made the opposition too strong. That is to say, too strong for a true identity or indifference between freedom and necessity to emerge (which also means, as we have seen, for freedom to triumph). And this is because the “adversary” (such as Schiller sees it) cannot be fought and cannot be overcome on its own ground (which is another way of saying that such an adversary or evil fate cannot be internalized). In effect, what we find in Schiller’s analysis of the tragic-sublime and tragedies in general is that the opposites remain opposites. There is no transformation. The overwhelming power (Macht) (as he will refer to it in his later essay) remains eternally opposed to our freedom and moral vocation. As we saw earlier, in the sublime (like in tragedy) the sensuous and moral realms remain eternally opposed.71

• 74 In Die Notwendigkeit des Scheiterns, I have argued that the theoretical explanation of freedom th (...)

49This contrasts sharply with what we saw in Schelling, whose tragic hero is presented as affirming his past crime and making it his own by taking on the guilt in an extraordinary act of free will (by stabbing his own eyes). But for this, as we already saw, the hero (and the philosopher) also had to reinterpret the nature of that deed as an inevitable part of himself, and internalize it as an inevitable part of what it means to be free. Both freedom and necessity, good and evil needed to be transformed, reconceptualized.74

• 75 F. Schiller, Ueber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, NA XX, 374 (...)
• 76 In this sense, perhaps one would be forced to argue that Schiller remained a dualist and in the e (...)

51Thus, in spite of Schiller’s ideal, such as he expresses it in On the Aesthetic Education of Man, regarding the importance of understanding humankind as a whole and understanding that human freedom can only be truly fulfilled by not in excluding the sensible (man is a complete being only when both his fundamental drives are fully developed75), in spite of this, in his analysis both of the tragic and the sublime the two opposite realms, the physical and the moral, necessity and freedom remain in absolute opposition. No mediation seems to be possible, except for the one given by the work of art itself. The final harmony, the source of pleasure we get from the sublime is in spite of the pain. There is no real interaction between the two realms, as we saw in Schelling.76 On the contrary, as Beiser has argued:

• 78 In his Freedom Essay, Schelling will introduce the idea that freedom is only truly possible to th (...)

To put it differently: the misdeed, the violation of the moral law is not incorporated as having become internally necessary, as having become the condition of possibility of the realization of freedom, but remains external to it.78

• 79 Cf. R. Safranski, op. cit., p. 370.
• 80 In this essay Schiller had also emphasized that both poles (grace, where morality is in harmony w (...)

53Schiller, on the other hand, presents tragedy as an example of the sublime and there is a perfect continuity between his analysis of tragedy and his analysis on the sublime. But, in a certain way, the weight of the tragic itself is missing. For, in Schiller’s account the tragic hero does something extraordinary the aim of which is to remind us of our superiority over nature, our dignity. The tragic hero shows us how human freedom can be realized in the face of an overwhelming power. But, for Schiller, this very specific way of expressing and realizing human freedom (in direct conflict with the other of freedom and reason) does not represent the only possible way to conceive of a free, moral action. It does not represent, like in Schelling, the ‘tragedy’ of freedom. The tragic conflict is not a condition of possibility for the realization of human freedom. If anything, it constitutes a “limit case”79 as Safranski put it. For it nevertheless still remains true that in some cases the harmony between our senses and our reason, pleasure and duty is a given. This is precisely what characterizes beauty and grace, the beautiful soul that does naturally what is right, as he had argued in his essay from 1793, “On Grace and Dignity.”80 According to Schiller it is possible to act freely without there being a conflict, and this, I argue, makes all the difference and ultimately influences his interpretation of the tragic hero as one who is (or should be) filled with sorrow, self-contempt and remorse.

• 81 S. Fitzgerlad, The Crack-Up, 80f.

54To put it differently, in Schiller’s analysis, the fact that the tragic hero Oedipus only realized afterwards, après coup, that he had committed the crime he was so desperately trying to avoid is a mere detail. There is nothing to it, and there is no special meaning to be given to that detail in the story. What is important according to Schiller is that the hero eventually realizes the wrong committed and feels remorse. This is what makes the fact that he accepts his guilt sublime. But the idea that he necessarily (and not contingently) committed a fatal mistake, and that this ultimately constitutes the condition of possibility for him to truly realize his freedom, the idea that freedom is perhaps only really to be realized après coup and that this reflects something about the complex structure of human freedom is absent in Schiller. And this means that for Schiller the sublime, and tragedy itself, is not strictly speaking tragic. For the sublime, I would argue, becomes tragic if and when it represents the only possible form in which human freedom and morality can be realized; that is to say: only if we identify completely with the tragic hero and see him or her as the true and unique symbol of human action, can we say it is tragic. This is what Scott Fitzgerald called having “a sad attitude towards sadness, a melancholy attitude toward melancholy and a tragic attitude toward tragedy.”81 And this is, I argue, what Schelling does in his analysis of Greek tragedy of 1803.