In this 83 year span, the world that Goethe lay witness to a world that changed almost beyond recognition. By the time of Goethe's death in 1832, France had just undergone a second revolution, Napoleon, Beethoven, and Hegel were dead. Jeremy Bentham died later the same year, and a young Karl Marx was entering school in Berlin, Alexis de Tocqueville was touring America in search of democracy, Wagner was 19 and composing his first opera, and Germany had just finished its first railway line.

Goethe's monumental stature as a celebrity is derived not only from his literary achievements as a lyric poet, a novelist and dramatist, but also from his often significant contributions as a scientist (geologist, botanist, anatomist, physicist, and historian of science) and as a critic and theorist of literature and of art. In the last thirty years of his life, Goethe had such an imposing personality that he was the object of pilgrimage from all over Europe and the U.S., making the small town of Weimar a cultural center for decades after his death.

The revolution witnessed in Germany was more or less a bloodless transition from monarchical to bureaucratic absolutism, she had avoided much of the violence that was experienced in France, by allowing discourse for political change to be modeled around the example of France. Of the two, it was Schiller who was politically inspired by the French example of individual liberty. Often Romanticism has been identified directly with the Age of Goethe, but in fact Goethe's comparably long life traversed through several ages, and consequently so did his writing.

For this reason, I would like today to focus on Goethe's academic and literary counter-part, Friedrich Schiller. Friedrich Schiller was born in 1759, and since his death in 1805 his popularity has steadily declined. But during his comparatively short life of 46 years and for some 50 years after his death, Schiller was the most beloved and most widely read of all the German poets, his plays and books surpassing even Goethe in popularity. In this short presentation of Schiller, I would like to trace out the ways in which Schiller's Romanticism motivated the moral and political aspirations that made the bloodless revolution in Germany possible.

It was through Goethe's influence, that Schiller was appointed professor of history at Jena. Before this position, Schiller had exclusively made a living through writing, and was always in need of money. During the years 1787 and 1792 at Jena and Weimar, Schiller wrote almost exclusively on historical subjects, among others the history of the Thirty Years War. But in 1791, Schiller was forced to give up teaching because of pneumonia and other lung related illnesses that he carried with him for the rest of his life. In this sickened state he wrote thousands of pages of philosophical poems and studies about art and aesthetics under the influence of Kant. In the aftermath of the French Revolution and its subsequent wave of terror, Schiller rejected a stipend offered to him by the Jacobins and instead chose to emphasize the humanistic forces of art and aesthetics. Schiller shunned nationalistic sentiment, and preferred to keep his focus on the universality of human beings. In addition to writing, he also assisted Goethe in Weimar in the direction of the Court Theater by adapting many plays for the stage.

Schiller's legacy is two-fold. He was not only a great poet and philosopher, he also was quite a remarkable man in his personal life. Few poets or thinkers have a greater message for mankind than Schiller, nor has there been many writers that could affect someone's everyday life as much as he did. Unlike Goethe, Schiller's work is as much political as it is an examination into our moral nature. When acted upon a stage, his plays evoked stirring expressions of the timeless, supernatural ideas that addressed the questions that the people of his times struggled with - mostly questions about freedom, morality, and social responsibility. His poems inspired and guided men's souls towards the highest of goals and were read by many in search of the courage to make monumental decisions. Schiller's poetry in his own words are about "the ennoblement of feeling and the moral purification of the will" and is the foundation to an understanding of the political and social conditions of man, one which is fully aware of man's being at the mercy of fate. Because we are so helplessly attached to natural forces of determinism, Schiller believed that the only way for a man to answer the call to a higher morality is through independent and self-reliant thinking in the pursuit of truth.

In a letter to his sister, Schiller writes, "I do believe that every human soul that develops its powers is more than the greatest society taken as a whole. The greatest state is a work of man; man is the work of incomparable great Nature. The state is the product of chance, but man is a necessary being, and by what is the state great and venerable except the power of its individuals? The state is only a product of human endeavor, it is a creation of thought, but man is himself the source of the endeavor and the creator of the thought."

This humanism transcends most nationalistic systems for Schiller, for he is more concerned with what is universally human, with the inalienable rights of man, and with the highest expression of man's soul as the kindred spirit of the divine - a spark intended on reinvigorating the spiritually lazy or unthinking optimists. In this particular way Schiller was a student of Kant, for they both emphasize the necessity of individual self-determination as a prerequisite for human freedom.

In fact, Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794) was inspired to a certain extent by the questions asked in Kant's third Critique. Schiller addresses the question first posed by Kant, when he asks: What is the value of something that can be understood only when it is viewed without subjectivity and purpose? If the aesthetic experience is to be conceived in the manner of pure "disinterestedness", how can we evaluate those areas of thought where we have no interest?

Schiller's answer to this question seeks to distinguish between things that are means to the aesthetic experience from things that can be valued for their own sake, as ends. The difference can be described between work and play, work is a means to an end, while play is an end in itself. "With the agreeable and good, man is merely in earnest; but with beauty he plays."

But the Romantic attitude can be traced back even further than Kant, as a response to the empiricism of John Locke, David Hume, and Isaac Newton. Contrary to common beliefs in physical science and the passive perception of causes and effects, romantics such as Schiller and Goethe responded by focusing on the witnessing of Nature's processes by a subject that nonetheless experiences and changes simultaneously with that which he observes. For Romanticism, both the individual and the nature he/she lives within are intimately tied to the same process of birth, growth, death, and decay. As living and expressing human beings, we are not mere passive receivers of sensory data, not only are we bombarded by the forces of nature - we are actively caught up in it.

From the perspective of both Schiller and Goethe, the philosophies of Descartes, Locke, and Kant had over-emphasized the scientific method to such a rigorous extent that it was no longer seemed capable of really knowing God. With Kant, God had become completely unknowable; as such knowledge had been relegated to the periphery of mysticism, and or Superstition. In application, these modern philosophies that promote the attitude of the Enlightenment, explain with considerable rigor what is the world is but ultimately fall short of adequately explaining why the world is the way that it is.

From Schiller's correspondence with Goethe, Carlyle quotes the following tribute to the Kantean philosophy: "Kant's philosophy itself, in its leading points, practices no tolerance, and bears much too rigorous a character to leave any room for accommodation. But in my eyes this does it honor, proving how little it can endure to have truth tampered with. Such a philosophy will not be shaken to pieces by a mere shake of the head. In the open, clear, accessible field of inquiry it builds up its system, seeks no shade, makes no reservation, but even as it treats its neighbors, so it requires to be treated, and may be forgiven for lightly esteeming everything but proofs. Nor am I terrified to think that the law of change, from which no human and no divine work finds grace, will operate on this philosophy as on every other, and one day its form will be destroyed, but its foundations will not have this fate to fear, for ever since mankind has existed, and any reason among mankind, these same first principles have been admitted, and on the whole, acted on."

In theological language this Enlightenment approach is tantamount to saying that knowledge of God only involves understanding the things He gave us. It would be too presumptive (Metternich) to say that we can know everything, without knowing God. By paying exclusive attention to the things that we can know, in other words, the mere empirical calculation of all the world's things and processes, we fail to answer why all of this "stuff" exists in the first place. In other words, Enlightenment thinking only considers the explanation of the world after it already is bound up with meaning a priori, as already existing beforehand for the searchlight of reason to turn its gaze upon. Empiricism, as it is found in Locke and Hume, is consumed by the task of calculating what we can know as humans, and is concerned only with knowing what things are in a given moment of time, not why they are the way that they are as eternally involved in a process - which is the more primordial philosophical question.

To counter this trend in the empirical sciences, romantics such as Goethe and Schiller come from a perspective that is quite original for its time, and was thought perhaps to be a solution to the separation of the sciences from its originating source in philosophy. Although Kant's formulation of moral law made a deep impression on him, Schiller did not agree with its universal supremacy. For him, man had been given two natures, a sensual and a moral, and it cannot possibly be his duty to use one to repress the other. Only if the two natures act in union can a man achieve harmony in his being. Rather than asserting that reason is more real than the sensual world, Schiller believes that one's individual struggle for morality in juxtaposition to reason is what lights up the correct path of life. In William Tell, Schiller's most famous play that was adapted many times in the form of Robin Hood; the main character Tell is shown as having a natural, spontaneous, and ingenious morality, one that is independent of conscious reflection. Tell does not have to repress his natural impulses in order to act nobly; this is what Schiller calls "beautiful" or "perfect humanity". William Tell is a personified man-of-the-people, a man who has transcended his particular will and has made the concerns of the whole, a will that is demonstrated by the actions of his non-reflective, holistically conceived will.

In response to these claims, Enlightenment thinking might argue that Romanticism is too dangerous to be allowed to flourish unrestrained in the minds of the peasant populace, and that inevitably this reliance on the unmitigated life of the sensual world would serve to be at the detriment of, or ultimately result in the destruction of civilization. Since most of their writings rely heavily on the promotion of the lives of fictional characters, there can be no guarantee that people will behave in the same manner as these characters in all circumstances. In other words, it's a far way that the spoon has to travel from the bowl to the mouth, and that chaos could result if these ideas were to fully take hold. But the example of Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther takes up this point directly, for Goethe used Werther as an example where the sensual world is allowed to overrun any rational perspective that he might have had over his life. You might say that Werther is too caught up in the sensual world for him to find any escape from his tragic demise. Goethe, in Nietzsche's interpretation, was saying "Look here, this Werther fellow - is not a man.

But as Werther's letters to Lotte demonstrate, a Romantic understanding of the world stems from a solitary engagement between one's soul to the God that created it and participates in the world of one's experiences.

Romantic moments can range from the solitude of enchantment that one experiences when alone in the forest, or sitting by a stream and watching waterfall over rocks, or looking at the pavement and seeing fresh blades of grass creeping through, from the nostalgia of an old abandoned building, or to the nocturnal stillness of the city at night: everyone that has within them a yearning to escape the monotony of everyday life, can be considered a Romantic.

Romanticism has also suffered by historical misinterpretations and misapplications, and when it is used as a political tool in the services of the nation-state, it can be dangerous, and often for the most part one cannot help but be inspired by stories of nationalism and patriotic heroes. For German Romanticism's main contributors, Goethe and Schiller, have transcended nation based politics altogether and strive for universal humanism. With Romantic thinking, one is lured not only by thoughts of distant lands, but also seduced by thoughts about who we are. Knowing who we are is also constituted historically by knowing who we WERE.--- this can range from knowing what it is to be truly German, to finding one's spiritual center in the natural world.

This romantic sentiment can be expressed in variety of ways; from the nostalgic glorifying of a past, to a romancing of a golden age of the future. Romantics strive for an intuition of the whole of nature, both scientifically and artistically, in a manner that understands everything simultaneously and instantaneously.

In The Philosophy Of Physiology Schiller writes "…the universe was the work of an Infinite Understanding, and was designed according to an excellent plan.
Just as it now flows from the design into reality through the almighty influence of divine power, and all powers are active and act on each other, like strings of a thousand-voiced instrument sounding together in one melody; so, in this way, the spirit of man, ennobled with divine powers, should discover from the single effects, cause and design; from the connection of causes and designs, the great plan of the Whole; from the plan, recognize the Creator, love Him, glorify Him; -or, more briefly, more sublime-sounding in our ear: Man is here, so that he may strive toward the greatness of his Creator; that he may grasp the whole world with just a glance, as the Creator grasps it. Likeness-to-God [Gottgleichheit] is the destiny of man. Infinite, indeed, is this his Ideal; however, the spirit is eternal. Eternity is the measure of infinity; that is to say, man will grow eternally, but will never reach it." (p.1)

As you might have noticed, this philosophy of Life doesn't exactly align itself with the Christian religion. In fact, the Romantic movement in poetry was critical of the Church's glorification of death and its promotion of the afterlife in place of the actual life that we are now living. In addition, religion's us of superstitious ideas is also not very helpful, and Goethe writes in Herman und Dorthea "The happy do not believe in miracles!" and in his Spruch in Prosa "Mysteries are not necessarily miracles." And in Wether(1774) he writes, "We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things: and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them." Conversely, Schiller bases his play "The Ghost-Seer also takes up this argument against miracles by illustrating what has been termed the shadow side of the European Enlightenment, a fascination with the occult that is clearly at odds with a naive understanding of the Enlightenment as the Age of Voltaire. Ultimately Schiller and Goethe hearken us toward the joyous life of actual deeds, to the vigor of living a life that is full of self-contemplation, and seeks to morally defend humanity at all cost.

For Christianity, science and religion are often taken to be at odds with one anther. What Romanticism seeks is to harmonize science and morality, and brings to life and awareness of the world around us. It seeks to replace religion with a mysticism of nature, and strives to align our understanding with science. This striving for unity in human understanding is also striving for a unity of understanding between Science and Reason when in The Philosophy Of Physiology Schiller writes,

Thus love, the most beautiful, noblest impulse in the human soul, the great chain of feeling nature, is nothing other than the confusion of my own self with the being [Wesen] of fellow creatures. And this intermingling is pleasure. Love thus makes the fellow creature's delight my delight; his sorrow, my sorrow. However, even this suffering is perfection, and therefore must not be without pleasure. Thus, what was otherwise pity as an emotion, is blended from pleasure and pain. Pain, because the fellow creature would suffer. Pleasure, because I share his pain with him, since I love him. Sorrow and pleasure, that I turn his pain from him.

Both Schiller and Goethe were influenced by J.G. Herder's use of mythical poetry in order to describe the origins of man. Schiller's writing in particular takes a deeper focus on classical Greek poetry and tragedy as the absolute of poetic beauty. Schiller felt that the modern sentimental poet, in spite of all the greatness insignificance of ancient poetry, belonged to a broader intellectual culture and sense of humanity by striving for a greater development of reason and ideas, than did the naive poetry of the ancients. The ancient is to the modern as the naive is to the sentimental, Schiller said. The sentimental human being is one who's yearning concerns shows itself as a yearning man of reason.

Through the romantic concept of holistic love, Schiller's writings sought out possible combinations of attributes in his characters; the exalted and the vulgar, the spiritual and sensual, the noble and the robber. Schiller's first play The Robbers (1781) was a landmark in German theatrical history and spoke directly of the ideas of liberty. The play, about a noble outlaw, Karl Moor, who has rejected the values of his father, gained with its revolutionary appeal immediate success among young students. The playwright himself was nearly arrested for neglecting his military duties, perhaps because of this popular play. Romantic writers in England, especially Samuel Coleridge, admired The Robbers and greeted with enthusiasm its theme of liberty. The theme of the conflict between a father and son continued in DON CARLOS (1787). The story was about the eldest son of Philip II of Spain, who is torn between love and the court's intrigues. Verdi's famous opera from 1867 drew on the play. In 1785, Schiller wrote the poem "Ode to Joy" which inspired Beethoven to pay homage to it into his Ninth Symphony.

Schiller has an aesthetic vision of the totality of human nature, and this serves as the essential feature of where he wants education to first focus. Schiller identifies art is the means of human self-completion, and in Letter 21 he says, "it is not just poetic license but philosophical truth when we call beauty our second creator". In the essay On Grace and Dignity, Schiller says that man is different from plants and animals in the sense that only human destiny and left up to one's own fulfillment.

Humans are different from all other creatures on this earth because they alone have the privilege of breaking the chain of necessity by an act of will. Because nature's processes determine our actions, our coming to grips with the forces of nature compels us as humans to overcome our predetermination. While nature supplies the conditions for the possibility of existence, the expansion and fulfillment of this possibility lives within the power of the individual. Consequently, an artist's duty is to cultivate and heighten the aspirations of human nature through art. In the poem The Artists (1789), "mankind's dignity" is placed in the care of the artist. In this way, Schiller's philosophy of art leads to a kind of anthropological aesthetics, because for him education is both personal and socio-political because it is aesthetic, and therefore moral.

Schiller's anthropological perspective focuses on the basic dynamism of human nature, an his investigation is drawn towards finding a synthesis of rationality that is also experienced aesthetically.

Schiller's early training in medicine and physiology undoubtedly led to his series of the unity between the psyche and the unconscious. In his Essay on the Connection between the Animal and Spiritual Nature of Man, Schiller declares "the destiny of Man is to be God's peer…Man's ideal is infinite: but the spirit is eternal. Eternity is the measure of Infinity. In other words, the spirit will develop infinitely but will never attain its ideal." Thus the unity of human nature is the unity that consist precisely in the creative and ongoing synthesis between the "person" and one's "condition" as morally bound.

In the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller promotes an aesthetic sense, a "feeling for the beautiful", that has function of the reinvigorating human potentiality that has been otherwise diminished by the marketplace of everyday experience. For him, the way to achieve a higher stage of humanity and politics is through art. In Letter 2, Schiller writes, "in order to solve the problem of politics in practice it must be approach to the problem of aesthetics, because it is only through Beauty that man makes his way to freedom". Human beings can do one of three things: they can suppress their physical nature in favor of rationality, or they can fully succumbed to the sensuous nature, or thirdly, they can find a harmony between the demands of nature and reason. Politically these three options can manifest anthropologically in three ways: a stifling monarchy where tastes are regimented to correspond to the suppression of the physical nature, or they can be political anarchy incomplete tastelessness correspond to the second option. The third option, and logically speaking, unites in a "beautiful bond Grace and dignity, predilection an obligation," and ultimately, law and freedom. In the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, this third attitude is characterized as the "aesthetic condition" on in individual level and as an "aesthetic state" on political level.

These ideas from both Goethe and Schiller are closely aligned with Spinoza's philosophy of the three types of knowledge. According to Spinoza, human understanding is swimming in a see of imagination when we have inadequate ideas about God or Nature. This first type of knowledge can yield common notions of the second type, which are adequate ideas of God because they are repeatable notions of truth. For Spinoza, we only come to the third type, and understanding and intuition of the whole of nature, by climbing up the ladder of common notions and at some point kicking it out from under or feet. This third stage is called "blessedness" where we are strive to love God and all the knowledge of this Infinite Substance, but not expect God to love us back in return. Romanticism ultimately strove to incorporate modern notions of individuality with Spinozian conceptions of a knowable, infinite substance, called God. Naturally the problem of the freewill is a pivotal point in the speculations of Goethe and Schiller, who were both great ethical thinkers of romanticism. Schiller, like Spinoza and Leibniz, Lessing and Hume, Goethe and Hegel, renounced absolute freedom of the will.

While Rousseau brought to our attention to the over cultivated world, and promoted the simplicity of primitive existence. For long time, thanks to Rousseau's declarations, the philosophy of history has revolved around this one problem. But contentment in the primitive social order, or into a rather lack of order, was not plausible especially to German thinkers. German idealism very soon renounced the desire to lead humanity backwards to a doubtful contentment which contained no trace of culture, and sought rather to lured on to culturally higher spiritual perfection. Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and yes, Schiller, all point in this direction. Not contentment, but moral goodness, not a spiritless golden age of the past, but as a spiritually quickening to golden age of the future is more what Schiller's political views hoped to attain.