A Remarkable Coalition, Testifying to Particular Totality in the General Spirit of the Greek People
Here we must add a few words on Schiller's discussion in "Über Anmut und Würde". This essay is perhaps better known than the former. Nevertheless, it belongs to a somewhat earlier period of Schiller's philosophical speculations, we would also say a less mature period. At least this seems obvious if we compare it just to that final and triumphantly liberating moment when the full meaning of an opposition--or a harmonious union--between the "sentimental" and the "naive" dawned on his mind.
In Schiller's conception of "grace" and "dignity" we feel that there must be an initial germ, in fact, of that whole bipolarity between the "naive" and the "sentimental", which he later conceived.
But is there any actual bipolarity at all between Schiller's "Anmut" and his "Würde? you may object. Are they not both simply considered as components of that same classical perfection which he opposes to the deficiencies of modern art and modern culture, by and large?
True enough, but one thing should be kept in mind: Schiller probably never believed in a perfection--even in that glorious Parnassus of Greek poetry--which could do entirely without that opposite element, in which the more typically modern poet--and maybe particularly Schiller himself--was bound to excel. Even Greece could hardly reach anything quite worthy of the name of perfection if she limited herself entirely to a rather one-sided indulgence in that pure naiveté.
One thing is unmistakable--in Greek poetry Schiller finds both grace and dignity. And would it be reasonable to overlook the possibility of a bipolarity here, actually corresponding to the general one (and more clearly grasped by Schiller's mind only somewhat later) between the naiveté of Antiquity and the sentimentality of modern times? In fact, grace is the rather original and natural phenomenon. Dignity is the more derived and cultural phenomenon, acquired through civilization. Moreover, who would deny that grace is closely related to the typically naive? A certain primitive prevalence of the senses is undeniable. "Grace" here has a fresh breath of the outward-oriented, of the sanguine: briefly, of the childlike. We have Schiller's own words for that:
Even the brutish man is not lacking in a certain degree of grace when he is animated by love or a similar emotion, and where can one find more grace than in children?[1]
And now the other component of Greek classicism, according to Schiller: dignity. Would it be too bold to call that quality "sentimental"? Notice: that was a term Schiller had not, as yet, "discovered". We mean he had not, to the full, discovered the opposition between the "naive" and the "sentimental".
But it is clear enough, throughout his present essay, to what extent he conceives of grace and dignity in terms of a certain opposition: Grace is a sort of free play ("freies Spiel"). Dignity has more to do with a conscious, intentional control ("Beherrschung der natürlichen Neigung"). In other words: the former is characterized by activity and exhibition, the latter by passivity and inhibition.
Dignity is therefore promoted and shown more in suffering (pathos); grace more in behavior (ethos); for only in suffering can the freedom of the mind, and only in action the freedom of the body, reveal itself.[2]
To be sure, dignity is the more prevailing cultural phenomenon here. Consequently it is more in the field of the "sentimental", the deliberate. It is--in Schiller's own words--"an expression of the resistance which the independent spirit exerts against the natural inclination (Naturtrieb)".[3]
So, indeed, there is a very definite "contrast", if we may use such a strong word, between "Anmut" and "Würde". But the great thing Schiller finds in Greek art is that: both elements are wonderfully united in it.
Of course, that harmonious fusing together of the two, thus producing a perfect whole, is a fact which has impressed many admirers of antiquity before Schiller, and many after him as well. But few have dived so deeply into the underlying secrets of that striking fact. And few have given so good a description of the admirable totality characterizing the Greek mind in a general way, as a result of this synthesis.
For the Greek, nature is never merely nature; therefore, he should not blush to honor it. For him, reason is never merely reason; therefore, he should not tremble to step beneath its standard. Nature and morality, matter and spirit, earth and heaven, flow together wonderfully beautifully in his poetry. He introduced the freedom that is at home only on Olympus into the affairs of sensuality. And for this, one will forgive him for placing sensuality on Olympus.[4]
It is of tremendous interest to us to have this established as genuinely Greek. For if it is genuinely Greek, then Plato cannot be so genuinely Greek as most historians have been inclined to think. We would dare to say that originally he is not at all. At least he is as far from this harmonious "flowing together" as any one can be. According to Schiller's conception of the typically Greek, the material and the spiritual here have no difficulty whatsoever in associating together. In fact, he states: one is simply not allowed except in association with the other. We had rather say: one is not imaginable except in association with the other. At least, in the living current of human life a dissociation of the two would be unthinkable.
Let us conclude with this interesting idea Schiller has tried to impress upon our minds regarding the Greek, and regarding whole men wherever they are found.
That "sentimental" quality called "das Erhabene" seeks the company of the "gracious", which means that the great severity inherent in the august and the dignified is eternally united with the "desinvolte" and the perfectly naive. The result of this union is nothing less than the beautiful character. True, the perfect ideal of that character may be a level mortal man is not able to reach, even with his greatest efforts, but it is certainly "the ripest fruit of his humanity".[5]
Indisputably, that merging glory of a naturally enfolding child's most graceful childlikeness on one hand, and the systematically trained adult's dignified maturity on the other, is in fact the supreme fruitage, the highest peak humanity (or humanism) can ever reach.
And still something more is demanded. Something infinitely far beyond this human accomplishment is indispensable in order to restore meaningfulness to human life, in order to make man's existence whole.
We have seen the transcending movement in which Schiller sought his salvation. There must be some saving ingredient which even the relative perfection of the Greeks had not reached. The German poet seems to have realized this dimly.
What is this "third ingredient", transcending both "Anmut" and "Würde", both smiling art and ruminating philosophy? May we try to express it in a way that encompasses human Ethics, and still does not necessarily even stop there:
There is most definitely bound to be an evident need, an urgently crying need of something further, something besides the naive and the natural, to form the truly total character in human life. It is the need of an inflexible WILL to defy natural man's natural bent toward indulgence; that is, toward the carnal (if we may use a term at the same time Christian and Platonic). Schiller had much of that will (at least in its Platonic sense, if not particularly in the Christian one).
Our parentheses here are not without importance. In fact, we have found it necessary to go beyond the proper precincts of both art and philosophy for a moment, and turn to religion. That is where we find the mentioned ingredient in its truly whole-making form. For it is all an urgent question of making man whole. This is the curious effect we find realized in an incomparable way in the admirably sound and well-balanced spirit of the Old and the New Testament.
Of course some may think that there is a certain one-sidedness--or "Halbheit"--in Jewish "nomism" and in Christian "puritanism" also. But in reality the volitional element or the ethos element, here implied, constitutes a remarkable corrective to two different deviations at the same time: on one hand it makes a splendid cure for the superficiality threatening the naturally "naive", as Schiller describes him; that is the opportunistic malleability and too generous softness of the cyclothyme.
On the other hand it also balances the super-tension and boundlessly soaring pride of the schizothyme. That raving sentimentality Schiller speaks about is probably found nowhere more strikingly typical than just in the radical intellectualism and the self-sufficient climbing (autarkeia) of Greek idealism; that is a spiritualistic counterfeit for genuinely spiritual religion.
On both sides there are weaknesses and extremes to be sensibly controlled, and without that sensible harmonious control both of cyclothyme softness and schizothyme pride, human life is doomed to be without both grace and dignity.
But if religion means this purposeful corrective of the respective "Halbheiten", then the Judeo-Christian alternative represents the integration changing a "Halbheit" into a "Ganzheit". The spirit of the Christian Gospel has a remarkable delicacy. It never runs the risk of killing at the same time both the defects of naiveté and that naivete itself. The reason for this delicacy is simple. The wisdom of biblical religiosity implies a sublime type of dignity and a sense of sacred duty which actually manage to carry the naive along, in a most harmonious embrace.
At length we feel we may be somewhat prepared to have our rendezvous with Greek philosophy. And then we shall be well advised not to skip the very beginnings. For right there we have a philosophical trend which, in our opinion, is at least just as "Greek" as any later subsequent phenomenon in the history of ancient Greece. It is even more Greek, more genuinely Greek, as we appraise genuineness in the present case.
Notes: