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SchillerGedenken - Vergessen - Lesen

Wilhelm Fink

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DAVID FERRIS

The Gift of the Political:Schiller and the Greeks}

Das Ideale bei Schiller - eine falsche AntikeNiensche

In an annotation to Wilhelm von Humboldt's Ober das Studium des Altertumsund die Griechen insbesondere Schiller seizes upon von Hurnboldt's remark thatGreek culture, despite having risen "auf einen Hohen Grad, erhielt sich dennocheine Einfachheit des Sinns und Geschmacks, den man sonst nur in der Jugendder Nationen antrifft. "2 For Humboldt, this youthfulness remains a positivemeasure of Greece's cultural achievement - and in many ways it recalls the "edleEinfalt" that Winckelmann evokes in his account of Greek art. However, forSchiller, this youthfulness is the sign of another aspect of Greece's cultural devel­opment.3 His annotation to Humboldt declares the following:

Die Kultur der Griechen war blog aesthetisch und davon glaube ich, miisste manausgehen, urn dieses Phanomen zu erklaren. Auch muss man niche vergessen, dassdie Griechen es auch im Politischen nicht liber das jugendliche Alter brachten, undes ist sehr die Frage, ob sie in einem rnannlichen Alter dieses Lob noch verdient ha­ben wiirden.4

While Humboldt regards this youthfulness as a quality close to the ideals attrib­uted to Greek culture in the eighteenth century, Schiller sees it as a sign of

1 I would like express my gratitude to Sean Gurd who provided the occasion to deliver the first ver­sion of this essay at Northwestern University, to Rudolf Helmstetter and Holt Meyer whose kindinvitation to present the essay in Erfurt brought it to its present form, and to Ruth Mas for hercareful reading of the text in its final preparation.

2 Von Humboldt's remarks as well as Schiller's annotation are cited in Schiller 1904, S. 361. Thesentiment expressed here is repeated in Letter 10 of Schiller's Ober die iisthetische Erziehung desMenschens (vg!. Schiller 1966, Bd. 19, S. 32).Subsequent references to this edition of Schiller's text will be made parenthetically in the text.This work will be referred to using the short title: Asthetische Erziehung.

3 In the sixth letter of the Asthetische Erziehung, Schiller also evokes this simplicity: "Die Griechenbeschamen uns nicht bloB durch eine Simplizitat, die unserm Zeitalter fremd ist; sie sind zugleichunsre Nebenbuhler, ja oft unsre Muster" (6. Brief, S. 16). In the immediate context of this re­mark, Greece is less a model for the political project of the Asthetische Erziehung than a means ofnegatively defining the modern. Without this definition, there is neither need nor purpose to anaesthetic education. As later passages will show, this idealized naturalness is also the limit towhich Greece could accede since, even here the aesthetic development of the Greeks is also cha­racterized as youthful (the Greeks only possess ndie Jugend der Phantasie" (6. Brief, S. 16).

4 Schiller's annotation is referenced in note 2.

60 DAYID FERRIS THE GIFT OF THE POLITICAL 61

Greece's political immaturity. In effect, the Greeks' aesthetic achievement re­stricted their political development. This is not so say that Schiller regards theaesthetic and the political as inimical to one another. Rather, it is simply a matterof the political significance of the aesthetic not being realized by the Greeks. Thisis why Schiller calls the Greek cultural achievement "bloB iisthetisch".5

This sense of an impaired political development reappears in the tenth letter ofSchiller's Ober die iisthetische Erziehung des Menschen. On this occasion, Schilleridentifies the existence of a political significance prior to the rise of Greece'scultural achievement: ,,Als [...] das goldne Alter der Kiinste herbeikam [...] findetman Griechenlands Kraft und Freiheit nicht mehr" (10. Brief, S. 32). The twoqualities Schiller associates with one another, "Kraft und Freiheit", are moreclearly political rather than aesthetic values. Since these values can no longer befound in Greece after the arrival of the golden age of its art, then, the aestheticand the political remain in an antithetical relationship. It is precisely this anti­thesis that Schiller will attempt to redress in his Asthetische Erziehung. In order todo so, he writes a history in which the aesthetic arrests the political developmentof Greece, and then undertakes a project to recover from the aesthetic thepolitical significance Greece could not attain. What Schiller brings into play hereare the two responses the aesthetic will subsequently receive whenever its politicalsignificance is at stake: dismissal for being merely aesthetic (the position ofideological criticism), or recovery in the name of a political purpose. By using theGreeks as the example of a separation of the political and the aesthetic and thenusing the modern as the historical realization of their close relation, Schiller writesa history of the political that must adopt the aesthetic as the means of articulatingthe significance of the political. Whether Schiller's, or even Humboldt's accountof the Greeks is accurate or not is irrelevant here. The Greeks - the real, historicalGreeks - are not at stake. What is at stake is the aesthetic as the source ofknowledge for modern experience, and, above all, as an affirmation of a relationthe Greeks could not achieve.

To achieve this relation, Schiller's Greece must become the concealed source ofthe political. In other words, the possibility of the relation of the political to theaesthetic must have already been given in Greece. Otherwise, there is no point ininvoking Greece. Accordingly, the task Schiller undertakes in his .ii.sthetischeErziehung is the production of what Greece could not recognize in itself butwhich it gave to the modern age.

Hannah Arendt, in her introduction to a collection of Walter Benjamin'sessays published under the title Illuminationen, makes a remark that addresses thistendency to place Greece at the beginning of our political history. Arendt remarksthat "die griechische Polis wird solange am Grunde unserer politischen Existenz,

5 Alben Meier notes inconsistencies in Schiller's views of the Greeks, however, as Meier points out,these inconsistencies can be traced to the argumentative needs of the context in which the Greeksare evoked. Here, what is at stake is that Greeks should not have realized the political and aesthe­tic unity Schiller envisages (cf. Meier 1985).

auf dem Meeresgrunde also, weiter da sein als wir das Wort ,Politik' im Mundefiihren. "6 With these words, Arendt suggests that what Greece gives is an exampleof community whose significance we are tied to as long as the word politicsremains in use. Arendt is explicit here: "as long as we use the word ,politics'." Herstatement does, however, come with a condition: ,,As long as we use the word". Italso comes with an unexpected metaphor: "at the bo~tom of the sea"'. But first,why this condition? Why should our political existence as well as our relation toGreece turn upon a word? Would our relation to Greece disappear with thedisappearance of the word politics? Would Greece then also disappear and, alongwith it, the recognizability of political existence? Despite the questions raised bythis condition, Arendt remains confident that politics is the one word we willnever be able to stop using. As a result, we will always be assured of an existencethat is not only political but can always be traced to Greece. If this is the case,what has been given to us is not exactly Greece. It is a political existencedependent on the exercise of a word. The continued use of the word politicswould then take the place of any question about the formation and nature of ourpolitical existence. Or, to put this another way, there is no need to pose thequestion of political existence as long as we have the word politics. The gift ofGreece then becomes the inevitability of politics: the gift of a word and itsindispensable use. But shouldn't we be wary of Greeks bearing gifts? Is it becauseof the false ideal of their gift? After all, how and where are we to find this gift? Bydiving to the bottom of the sea? And what are we to find there? A pearl or ashipwreck?

The Greeks in their youthfulness are undoubtedly a gift for Schiller, and hehas little shyness about diving to the bottom of the sea to recover what remains oftheir existence. Yet, for Schiller, unlike Arendt, the gift offered by the emergenceof the Greek polis and its politics is not a matter of a word. It is the gift of aproblem, the problem of how to experience what the Greeks could not. WhatSchiller brings into play with this problem is the task of bringing the political andthe aesthetic together in a common purpose capable of human experience. In thisrespect, Schiller operates under the imperative that the praxis of the political has ameaning other than the event in which it takes place.7 This meaning is theproblem Greece failed to solve. Yet, by accepting the terms in which this problemis conceived, modernity has done no more than to accept such ~erms as the gift of

6 This remark was published in Hannah Arendt's "Introduction" to the English edition of WaiterBenjamin's Illuminations (New York: Harcourt, 1969), S. 49. A typescript of this same introduc­tion, in German, and under the title "Waiter Benjamin", is included in the Hannah Arendt Pa­pers at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Arendt's remarks is cited from page 54 of1967-68 typescript available online at http://memory.Ioc.gov/ammem/arendthtml.

7 Here, the rhetoric of political action as something that remains entirely significant because it is anact that ignores any question about the political meaning of an action because the determinationof that meaning is simply handed over to the conservative or reactionary forces to which it hasbeen directed.

62 DAYID FERRIS THE GIFT OF THE POLITICAL 63

Greece even if Greece failed to realize their relation. When it comes to the Greeksand politics, it is always our birthday, despite any warning the Iliad or the Odysseymay contain about gifts.

In the course of the second letter, Schiller formulates the relation of thepolitical to the aesthetic as the need to resolve the problem of politics as a matterof experience "um jenes politische Problem in der Erfahrung zu losen" (2. Brief,S. 8). What Schiller refers to as a political problem is defined at the beginning ofthe second letter as "der Bau einer wahren politischen Freiheit" (2. Brief: S. 6).The problem of politics is no just the problem of experiencing political freedom.Rather, it is the problem of experiencing such freedom under the aegis of· truth.Experiencing true freedom will then be Schiller's gift - in effect, the gift of

.Greece rewrapped. For Schiller to give such a gift requires that true politicalfreedom can be experienced, that experience can be fundamentally political.insome way. While the French Revolution could provide the example of suchexperience, this is not the case for Schiller. In fact, the French Revolutionbecomes the precise historical reason why Schiller is compelled to resolve theproblem of true political freedom. For Schiller, the French Revolution is less asolution to the problem of the political than one more manifestation of thepolitical as a problem. Schiller now has two compelling reasons for the politicalproject of the Aesthetische Erziehung: the failure of the French Revolution and thefailure of Greece to realize its political maturity. The only difference betweenFrance and Greece in this respect is that the French Revolution precipitates thisneed through a violent realization of freedom. Rather than construct true politicalfreedom, the French Revolution unleashes individual acts of freedom - of whichCharlotte Corday's assassination of Jean-Paul Marat in 1793 is an example andalso happens to be the same year in which Schiller begins to write the letters thatare eventually published as the Aesthetische Erziehung. In this act of assassination,the attempt to express politics in an action is unambiguous. Accordingly, theFrench Revolution fails because it remains a praxis in search of a politicalsolution. No Revolutionary Calendar could disguise that failure for long. Suchsolutions are hardly what Schiller has in mind as the opening paragraph of thesecond letter makes clear:

Es ist nicht wenigstens auger der Zeit, sich nach einen Gesetzbuch fur die asthe­tische Welt umzusehen, da die Angelegenheiten cler moralischen ein so vid naheresInteresse darbieten und der philosophische Untersuchungsgeist durch die Zeitum­stande so nachdriicklich aufgefordert wird, sich mit dem vollkommensten allerKunstwerke, mit dem Bau einer wahren politischen Freiheit zu beschaftigen? (2.Brief, S. 6)

If only Charlotte Corday had concerned herself with the most perfect of all art­works, Of, had had an aesthetic education of some sort, Marat could have at leastfinished his bath. In Schiller's allusion to "Zeitumstande" there is the recognitionof the challenge of contemporary events. Rather than face the challenge of con­fronting such events, Schiller proposes the task of producing the "das vollkom­meneste aller Kunsterwerke" as the means of achieving this "Bau einer wahren

politischen Freiheit". This task is the task Greece could not complete but in tak­ing on this task, Schiller is far from pursuing a simple return to Greece.

A more complex positioning of Greece is already apparent in Schiller'sannotation to Humboldt. Schiller takes precisely those qualities so often cited inthe 18th century as proof of Greece's achievement and defines them as stageswithin the history of the political rather than as a model for that history. As aresult, it is not a matter of pursuing Winckelmann's paradoxical imitation of theGreeks: "Der einzige Weg fur uns [...] unnachahmlich zu werden, ist dieNachahmung der AIten". What Winckelmann sees as the achievement of Greece,that is, the inimitability we are to copy in order to be as great as Greece, consistsof a modern expression of the freedom experienced by the Greeks. In this case,Winckelmann's Greeks have already resolved the problem Schiller retains. Theirgift is then without historical significance since it is the completion of adevelopment that can only repeat the significance of the past. Why Schillerrefuses this account of Greece and the modern is because his understanding oftrue political freedom is not a matter of experiencing the representation offreedom as it is in Winckelmann. Instead, what is at stake for Schiller is anaesthetics that is true political freedom.

Schiller's refusal to view Greek politics as anything more than a youthfulachievement injects an uncertainty into the history that would always placeGreece at the bottom of our political existence. Thus, Greece is not the answer tothe question of the political but rather the form in which a failure to answer thisquestion has been given. This form is what we recognize not just as democracybut as politics, the discourse of the polis. Politics takes the place of the questionof the political but in so doing it poses the question of its own significance, thequestion of whether its history represents a purpose. In other words, whereverpolitics appears as the representation of the political, it poses the question ofwhatit in fact represents. The development of the polis, the gift of Greece becomes inthis context the response to a question that can only be asked for the first timebecause of the failure of this response - as long as this failure is seen as the failureto achieve the later historical resolution from which it is judged as a failure.

Despite deliberately limiting the politics developed by Greece so that freedomcan emerge as a question, Schiller will still give Greece a significant and definingrole in solving the construction of a true political freedom. This role appears withSchiller's first direct reference to Greece in the sixth letter:

Aber bei einiger Aufmerksamkeit auf den Zeitcharacter muss uns der Kontrast inVerwunderung setzeil, der zwischen der heutigen Form der Menschheit und zwis­chen der ehemaligen, besonders der griechischen, angetroffen wird. Der Ruhm derAusbildung und Verfeinerung, den wir mit recht gegen jede andre blofe Naturgeltend machen, kann uns gegen die griechische Natur nicht zustatten kommen. (6.Brief, S. 16)

Here, Greece appears as an example of a naturalness that undercuts any attemptby modernity to judge its cultural achievement by evoking the distance betweenaesthetic and merely natural states. Because of this naturalness, Schiller claims,

64 DAVlD FERRIS THE GIFT OF THE POLITICAL 65

the Greeks were able to attain a relation in which the individual is representativeof his age (6. Brief, S. 17). In contrast, the modern age is one in which such rep­resentation is no longer possible. Modern individuals are fragments unable to givea representative account of their age because the only unity available to the mod­ern age takes the form of an aggregation of individuals.8 Schiller accounts for thisdifference between Greece and the modern age by claiming that the Greek indi­vidual received its _form from "die alles vereinende Natur" whereas the modernindividual receives its form from "der alles trennende Verstand". The cause of thisdifference is subsequently attributed to the development of civilization. Schillerwrites:

Die Kultur selbst war es, welche der neuern Menschheit diese Wunde schlug. 50­bald auf der einen Seite die erweiterte Erfahrung und das bestimmtere Denken einescharfere Scheidung der Wissenschaften, auf der andern das verwickeltere Uhrwerkder Staaten eine strengere Absonderung der Stande und Geschafte notwendigmachte, so zerriss auch der innere Bund der menschlichen Natur, und ein verderbli­cher Streit entzweite ihre harmonischen Krafte. (6. Brief, S. 17)

The goal of attaining true political freedom is now nothing less than a recoveryfrom the wound inflicted by a history of increasing differentiation. Although thiswound originates through the exercise of Verstand, the crucial moment in thehistory Schiller outlines here occurs when the division effected by Verstand isturned into strife by the state. Schiller's characterization of how this strife is sus­tained - not as or like clockwork but by clockwork - is reiterated in a subsequentcomparison of modern existence to that of Greece. On this occasion, the clock­work of the state is invoked in order to explain why no solution to the problem ofthe political can appear:

Jene Polypennatur der griechischen Staaten, wo jedes Individuum eines unabhangi­gen Lebens genoss und, wenn es not tat, zum Ganzen werden konnte, ma~hte jetzteinem kunstreichen Uhrwerke Platz, wo aus der Zusammenstiickelung unendlichvieler, aber lebloser Teile ein mechanisches Leben im Ganzen sich bildet. (6. Brief:S. 18)

The collective life of the modern is now contrasted with Greece in a way thatmakes the privileged place of Greece rely upon a modernity whose existence isself-reflexive (sich bildet). Here, more than before, what is at stake in Schiller'spolitics begins to emerge. If Greece is to contribute to resolving the problem ofpolitics, Schiller must make the modern define a prior era in which neither naturenor the aesthetic can counter its mechanical production of difference. But, thisdoes not mean that Greece is set up as what must be returned to in order to solvethe problem of politics. After all, as Schiller's annotation to Humboldt states,Greece did not achieve true political freedom since the path to such a freedom

8 "Wie ganz anders bei uns Neuern! Auch bei uns ist das Bild der Gattung in den Individuen ver­gro~ert auseinander geworfen - aber in Bruchstiicken, nicht in veranderten Mischungen, dassman von Individuum zu Individuum herumfragen muss, urn die Totalitat der Gattung zusarn­menzulesen" (6. Brief, S. 6-17).

was interrupted by the arrival of the merely aesthetic. For that reason alone, anyreturn to Greece would be mistaken since such a return would involve, as it didin Winckelmann, the mere representation of political freedom. Thus, any possi­bility that Schiller can resolve the problem of the political requires that true po­litical freedom has been interrupted in each of the historical eras Schiller evokes:antiquity and the modern. What Schiller then undertakes is to account for apolitics that would fulfill the image of Greek unity presented in his AesthetischeErziehung. But, is this interruption the gift of Greece or a gift that Schiller hasgiven to himself in the form of Greece? And, if it is a gift to himself, preciselywhat does this gift consist of?

For Schiller, Greece must have no option but to fail. An historical rather thanan essential account of politics is at stake in this necessity. The account ishistorical, because there must be a link between the present and the birth of thepolitical in Greece. Accordingly, Schiller insists that Greece already provides thedirection that modernity must also follow if politics is to realize its significance inpolitics. Moreover, modern civilization, despite its mechanical clockwork, mustalso play a role in this realization. Neither Greece nor modern civilization is givena choice in this matter. In order to play its part in this history, Greece must fail toattain a "hoher[e] Ausbildung" (6. Brief, S. 20). Because of this failure, Schilleradds, the Greeks must also "wie wir, die Totalitat ihres Wesens aufgeben und dieWahrheit auf getrennten Bahnen verfolgen" (6. Brief: S.20). Despite Greece'sgift of the concepts that guide Schiller's attempt to solve "the problem of thepolitical as a matter of experience", it would also have had to submit, "wie wir",to the clockwork of civilization. Since this future is also viewed as the logical stepbeyond the stage Greece had attain~d, then, a primary consequence of theargument Schiller makes here is that civilization and its clockwork is already apossibility within the history of Greece. The single element that will distinguishand preserve a different political future for Schiller is his judgment that Greeceonly achieved a youthful stage of development. What then guides the AesthetischeErziehung is Schiller's ability to avoid the return of the clockwork-like develop­ment that Greece's gift to modernity could not exclude for itself.

To avoid such a return, Schiller embarks on an elaborate (kunstreich) accountof just what foundation a true political freedom requires - as if such a distinctioncould only be legitimized by this belated account. Schiller begins by arguing thatthe modern state cannot undertake this task. First, because the modern state isdirectly responsible for the separation and differentiation Schiller's account of thepolitical seeks to overcome; second, because the state cannot (even a stateconceived by Reason) lay the foundation on which it is to be founded (7. Brief,S.23). What is required for Schiller is that "die Trennung in dem innernMenschen wieder aufgehoben [...] ist" (7. Brief, S. 23). Removing this split doesnot however proceed by way of a political solution. Rather, human nature as anartist ["Klinstlerin"] is required in order to guarantee to reality of the politicalcreation of reason: "urn [...] der politischen Schopfung der Vernunft ihre Realitatzu verbiirgen" (7. Brief, S. 28). The political creation of reason in its reality is the

66 DAVID FERRIS THE GIFf OF THE POLITICAL 67

work of the aesthetic production that must be prevented from becoming purelyaesthetic like Greece in its Schillerian youthfulness. But why then, when Schillerdescribes how the artist is to make the political real, does it fall once more toGreece to provide the example and the means? First, the example:

Die Vernunft se1bst wird zwar mit dieser rauhen Macht, die ihren Waffen wider­steht, unmitte1bar den Kampf nicht versuchen und so wenig als der Sohn des Sa­turns in der Ilias, selbsthande1nd auf den finstern Schauplatz heruntersteigen. Aberaus der Mitte der Streiter wwlt sie sich den wlirdigsten aus, bekleidet ihn wie Zeusseinen Enkel mit gottlichen Waffen und bewirkt durch seine siegende Kraft diegroBe Entscheidung. (8. Brief, S. 24)

Like Zeus, Schiller must choose and what he chooses as his instrument is "dieschone Kunst" which he refers to in the ninth letter as the source of "unsterbli­che[ ] Muster[ rc

• It is this source that Schiller confesses is "der Punkt [...] zuwelchem alle meine bisherigen Betrachtungen hingestrebt habencc (9. Brief:S. 26). Yet, the point at which Schiller arrives is indistinguishable from his pointof departure: it involves a separation based on youthfulness, precisely the separa­tion "die schone Kunst" is intended to overcome. The artist who will provide theanswer to the problem of politics is a child but a child who must be separatedfrom his own age. In this respect, the child cannot be a Greek since it is a ·char­acteristic of the Greeks to be of their age, to represent their age, and that age ispolitically youthful. Nevertheless, in order to achieve the political goal of theAesthetische Erziehung, Schiller insists that the child who is not Greek must go toGreece so that he may overcome all youthfulness and become a man. Once this isaccomplished, he is to return to his own age. But when he returns, why doesSchiller make this occur as if the history of the political had already been writtenby the Greeks and written according to the plot of a tragedy? Why indeed has themost singularly highest form of Greece's aesthetic accomplishments become themeans of achieving what Greece could not achieve according to Schiller? (Andanother issue posed here is why the tragic, in contrast to other aesthetic forms,retains a special political value). Schiller states:

Der Kiinstler ist zwar der Sohn seiner Zeit, aber schlimm fur ihn, wenn er zugleichihr Zogling oder gar noch ihr Glinstling ist. Eine Wohltatige Gottheit reiBe denSaugling bei Zeiten von seiner Mutter Brust, nwre ihn mit der Milch eines bessernAlters und lasse ihn unter fernem griechischen Himmel zur Mlindigkeit reifen.Wenn er dann Mann geworden ist, so kehre er, eine fremde Gestalt, in seinJahrhundert zurlick; aber nicht urn es mit seiner Erscheinung zu erfreuen, sondernfurchtbar wie Agammenons Sohn, urn es zu reinigen. (9. Brief, S. 27)

If Schiller's solution to the problem of politics begins to read like a Greek tragedywe may, after all, only have the Greeks to blame and not just because it was al­ready Plato who, in the Laws, had compared the "authoring" of a state (politeia:what the polis belongs to and is governed by) to a tragedy. This return of themodern age to itself in the form of the avenging figure of a Greek tragedy marksthe return of the aesthetic from Greece but it is now an aesthetic that cannot bepure. To be pure is to remain Greek, to remain caught in its youthful state. What

then returns is the form of Greece that will be as strange to Greece as it will be tothe modern age. What constitutes this strangeness is not however what this childis but, as Schiller indicates, its form. It is "eine fremde Gestalt" that returns, "einefremde Gestalt"·produced by a Greece that could not, in Schiller's account, relateits aesthetic forms to political significance. To solve this problem, Schiller con­structs a history that takes the form of a tragedy. Within this tragedy, the failureof Greece and the failure of modern civilization are scenes that precede a purifi­cation or katharsis whose denouement promises the advent of a true politicalfreedom.

Schiller's focus on form is, at the same time, a focus on beauty as the source ofthe truth in which the political and the aesthetic, the state and the individual willrealize a relation in which the freedom of the latter is continually preserved. LikeSchiller's example of how Zeus will work through Achilles, this truth will alsowork by proxy. The proxy in this case is what Schiller calls illusion ("Tausch­ung"). Schiller states this in the context of a remark that, once again, comparesthe humanity of the modern to the past but in terms that reveal that what is to beresolved is not an issue that lies between the aesthetic and the political, but anissue within the aesthetic:

Die Menschheit hat ihre Wlirde verloren, aber die Kunst hat sie gerettet und auf­bewahrt in bedeutenden Steinen; die Wahrheit lebt in der Tauschung fort, und ausdem Nachbilde wird das Urbild wieder hergestellt werden. (9. Brief: S. 27)

Schiller envisages the moment in which true political freedom will be constructedas the moment in which the "Nach-bildcc or after-image will reveal the image or"Ur-bildcc it has been concealing all along. This concealment is crucial and neces­sary, not just because it provides history with a reason to exist (the promise ofsuch revelation), but because what it reveals is not a specific truth. Rather, it re­veals the form in which truth is to be known. Schiller's text is explicit on thispoint: what is revealed is the repetition of one image in another - Nach-bildlUr-bild. Thus, "die schone Kunstcc' as an example of the aesthetic, and the aes­thetic, as the means through which the true construction of individual freedom isto be arrived at, all return through the problem posed by an image whose exis­tence is .derived from its belated return. The truth that founds Schiller's under­standing of the political cannot appear unless there is this after-image. WhatSchiller's project now amounts to is that the founding of the political state per­formed through the aesthetic can only be legitimized by an aesthetic that pre­serves at every stage of history (as if it were immortal) the Bild as a form of repre­sentation. This is nothing less than the aesthetic in its purest form, the produc­tion of beautiful appearance as the illusion of what exists. At the heart of Schil­ler's construction of a true political freedom lies a tautology in the guise of twoimages, two appearances, Nachbild and Urbild.

Rather than admit this tautology, Schiller will seek to legitimize it as a form ofrepresentation. This occurs in a footnote to his definition of the aesthetic inLetter 20 when Schiller, in what he calls a superfluous remark, asserts once again

68 DAVID FERRIS THE GIFT OF THE POLITICAL 69

the freedom of the aesthetic state but at the same time insists that such a freedomis "keineswegs frei von Gesetzen". Yet, what prevents this aesthetic state fromreverting to logical necessity in thinking or moral necessity in willing,. is,according to Schiller, the fact that these laws are not being represented ("nichtvorgestellt werden"). By not being represented, these laws, Schiller adds, m~et upwith no resistance ("keinen Widerstand finden"), therefore do not appear to bean effect of force ("nicht als Notigung erscheinen") (20. Brief, S. 63).9

The aesthetic state is governed by laws but these laws turn out to be aestheticlaws in the same sense that the idea governing aesthetic judgment in Kant mustbe an aesthetic idea. Through the failure of this law to submit to representationSchiller would reconcile the conflict between law and freedom that lies at the baseof every attempt to construct a state. Without law, there is no state, but withoutfreedom, there is no point to the state for its individual citizens. Recognition ofan antinomy between these two aspects of the state leads to the necessity of whatSchiller calls an aesthetic education. The purpose of such an education is then topermit the recognition of laws that are never represented, in effect, therecognition of something that acts like the law but can never take the form of alaw. To put this more succinctly, what Schiller must maintain, if the problem ofthe political is to be solved, is that the aesthetic is the means to represent thefailure of the means of representing such laws. An unavoidable consequence ofSchiller's argument is the fact that it must be known that these laws are notrepresented, otherwise neither the aesthetic nor the political state foundedthrough the aesthetic can be a lawful undertaking. Here, the problem of thepolitical emerges in the form of a representation that can only register that it isgoverned by laws when it does not represent those laws. The law of the aestheticis that the aesthetic cannot represent the law. The aesthetic is thus a represent­ation without content and without reference to anything else except its failure torepresent such a law. Since this is what the aesthetic is constrained to become inSchiller, it is not surprising that an education is necessary in order to know thesignificance of a representation that does not represent. Maintaining thisdistinction is the task of an aesthetic education, that is, an education that willteach how the aesthetic is to be understood as a form of representation even whenit cannot represents the laws that found the state as a lawful undertaking.

The difference that makes Schiller's political project conceivable in terms ofexperience is his insistence that representation is regulated by a law that assures itwill always be able to represent. But what this law cannot decide is whether themeans by which it is not represented constitutes a representation rather than anillusion carried out in its name. Since aesthetic representation can never make itslaw present, it can never prove that this absence is dictated by the law. No proofis possible when the law never appears to claim its representation. According to

9 In describing how such laws are given, Schiller can only claim that they are a matter of "dictati­on". See 1. Brief (S. 5), 2. Brief (S. 8) and 27. Brief (S. 91) where this dictation becomes ventri-loquism.

Schiller's argument in this text, if the law were to make such a claim, it wouldhave to forgo its ability to guarantee true political freedom. The existence of thepolitical, as the unconditional law of the state, therefore turns upon an aestheticthat like the modern age for Schiller, wounds itself in order to survive. At thesame time, through this wounding, the modern age is able to determine theGreeks as the first representation of the law to which political freedom mustsubmit. This law requires the political- not to mention law itself - to refuse toappear so that what belongs to Erfahrung will always stand in its place.

To rescue this law from the Greeks is the task of Schiller's aesthetic education,but to effect such a rescue requires that Schiller refuse what he claims the Greeksrefused. Remember, Schiller claims such a refusal for the Greeks when he statesthat they did not wish to transcend their naturalness and develop to a higherlevel. In this case, Schiller's Greeks already act in accordance to the law that willlater recognize political freedom. This refusal by the Greeks already accepts thelaw that Schiller's aesthetic is intended to teach. But, like Schiller's account ofhow the laws of true political freedom are "represented", it is merely an aestheticrefusal. In this way, Schiller already makes the Greeks succumb to the laws thatgovern his political account of the aesthetic. If Greece had made this law present,Schiller would have no need to propose that an aesthetic education be necessary,and, more importantly, we would have no need to celebrate Greeks who nevergave what Schiller celebrates as true political freedom. For Schiller, not to give isthe gift that Greece gave. The limiting of this refusal to Greece's youthfulness isSchiller's way of re~sing to recognize that the problem of the political is not theconstruction of a true political freedom. Rather, to speak of the problem of thepolitical is to speak of the problem of Greece's gift. The problem given byGreece, even in Schiller's account, is nothing less than the problem ofexperiencing the political as a matter of practical experience. As a result, Greece'sinvention of politics invents the problem of the political as the question that willbe reiterated over and over again in a history that seeks significance, not just foritself, but also for the cultural and aesthetic productions of that history. Schiller'saesthetic account of politics thus becomes one more moment in this history anddoes so at the very moment he tries to settle the question of the purpose of theaesthetic. In this context, the failing of Greece lies in its inability to provide ananswer to the meaning of its cultural achievement. Greece therefore leaves openthe question of the significance of the aesthetic and its relation to the political ­an openness dismissed as either being its youthfulness by Humboldt or its failureby Schiller.

Schiller's attempt to resolve the problem of this relation indicates, at the veryleast, that the significance of Greece in our political histories may have less to dowith what it is assumed to have given than with what it did not give. lO What

10 Here, it is important to note that it is only within the modern age, specifically the nineteenthcentury that the political status of Greece emerges as the example for modern democracy (cf. Ro­binson 2003, S. 4).

70 DAVID FERRIS THE GIFT OF THE POLITICAL 71

remains of Greece in Schiller is not the question of the significance of its politiaor a polis, but the modern question ofwhat meaning can be given to the aesthetic.Schiller is not alone in undertaking this project, which reappears whenever thepolitical appeals to a theory of representation for its significance. The questionSchiller turns from when he insists on an unrepresentable law is the question thatled him to voice this insistence in the first place: how to solve the question oJpolitics in experience. This question sets the terms for a project that, likeSchiller's account and concept of Greece, must fail. Here, it is not a question· 01finding a form of experience for political freedom, but a question of whether theexperience that Schiller offers is able to account for why it is political. Is this whySchiller resorts to the following analogy in his first reference to clockwork in theAesthetische Erziehung?

Wenn der Kiinstler an einem Uhrwerk zu bessern hat, so lasst er die Rader ablaufen;aber das lebendige Uhrwerk des Staats muss gebessert werden, indem es schlagt,und hier gilt es, das rollende Rad wahrend seines Umschwunges auszutauschen.Man muss also fur die Fortdauer cler Gesellschaft eine Stiitze aufsuchen [...] (3.Brief, S. 10)

Just as it is the artist who has a privileged role "urn [...] der poIitischen Schopfungder Vernunft ihre Realitat zu verbiirgen" (7. Brief, S. 28), it is also the artist whois called upon to fIX the state. Here, what the artist must perform is clearly givenas the creation ofan illusion. Accordingly, what is at stake in this repair is also theefficacity of reason, of the law that governs the possibility of political freedom.For reason to fulfil this role vis avis freedom, the clock in which the state is fig­ured must be fIXed while it still runs. There must be no interruption while thisrepair is being made. But, in order to make this repair, a support is necessary.The necessity of this support indicates that the law Schiller invokes in order toapply to the wound that civilization has inflicted on true political freedom is nomore than a prop - the prop provided by the illusion that civilization, and thestate, can, in the example of such a clock, be fIXed without bringing all to a stand­still. And yet, as the example of the clock shows, the interruption required forsuch a repair is what can never be represented. This is the law of Schiller's truepolitical freedom: a politics that is capable of experiencing its own repair withoutmissing a beat. Only in the illusion of such an uninterrupted repair can politicsavoid the risk of being suspended by the condition of its own existence, the con­dition that demands that even the word representation take on a metaphoricalvalue when faced with the law that can never be present. What returns at thispoint is not just the problem of the experience of a politics defined by freedom.What returns is also the experience of the failure to represent the laws that guar­antee the possibility of true political freedom. As a result of such failure, Schillercan only represent the political in the illusion of its freedom. This failure isnothing less than the means by which the practice of politics sustains its signifi­cance in a future that cannot be represented - this is its law. In this case, whatreturns is an account of the political in the form of a history whose failures de­mand that, at the end of the day, there will be true political freedom. But, at the

end of the day, isn't the crucial question why the illusion created by the aestheticmust be the arbiter of what politics means? By recognizing the persistence of thisillusion, it becomes clear why an aesthetic education is so necessary. Only withsuch an education is it possible to entertain a distinction between an illusion anda law that is present by not being represented. But what will this education teachus? That politics is indispensable, unavoidable but only present because itsmeaning cannot be experienced except in its absence? At the bottom of such apolitics, won't we always be forced to say that there is an aesthetics? And, won'twe be forced to say this as long as we inhabit a history in which the exercise ofpolitics is nothing less than the experience of a freedom that cannot be experi­enced?

Literatur

Meier 1985: Albert Meier, Der Grieche, die Natur und die Geschichte, in: Jahrbuch tierDeutschen Schi/lergeseUschaft 29, Marbach a. N., S. 113-124).

Robinson 2003: Eric W. Robinson, Introduction, in: Ancient Greek Democracy: Readingsand Sources, Maiden MA.

Schiller 1904: Friedrich Schiller, Siimtliche Werke, Bd. 12, hg. v. Eduard von der Hellen,Stuttgart.

Schiller 1966: Friedrich Schiller, Uber die asthetische Erziehung des Menschen, in: Ge­samtausgabe, Bd. 19, hg. v. Gerhard Fricke, Miinchen.