On the Aesthetic Education of Man
The history of education can easily be described as theme and variation on one motif: reform. From Plato's critique of the Sophists in Protagoras to John Henry Newman's considerations of education in The Idea of a University in 1854, from the educational projects of Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, and Loris Malaguzzi in the 20th century to Kieran Egan's call for a reimagination of education in the 21st, educators and philosophers have regularly turned to two fundamental questions: "What is the purpose of an education?" and "How is it to be achieved?" This is the essence of Friedrich Schiller's letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man.

For Schiller, the salvation of education--and of man--lies in the realization of Beauty. Only Beauty, in his thought, has the ability to ennoble both thinking and sentiment, and only Beauty can allow the human person to awaken what he calls the "play impulse," which manifests itself as "the extinction of time in time and the reconciliation of becoming and absolute being, of variation with identity" (Fourteenth Letter). Play is important to Schiller because play returns the human person to himself: "For, to declare once and for all, Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing" (Fifteenth Letter).

It is important in times such as ours that we turn to philosophies of education that emphasize not the utilitarian desires of governments and corporations but the simultaneously transcendent and immanent qualities that reveal to us what it is to be human. Friedrich Schiller's letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man is such a text. Schiller does not provide us with a pedagogical strategy, nor does he offer us a definitive answer as to what such an aesthetic education would look like. But he does indicate where we should seek the right kinds of questions. (From the Foreword.)

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On the Aesthetic Education of Man
The history of education can easily be described as theme and variation on one motif: reform. From Plato's critique of the Sophists in Protagoras to John Henry Newman's considerations of education in The Idea of a University in 1854, from the educational projects of Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, and Loris Malaguzzi in the 20th century to Kieran Egan's call for a reimagination of education in the 21st, educators and philosophers have regularly turned to two fundamental questions: "What is the purpose of an education?" and "How is it to be achieved?" This is the essence of Friedrich Schiller's letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man.

For Schiller, the salvation of education--and of man--lies in the realization of Beauty. Only Beauty, in his thought, has the ability to ennoble both thinking and sentiment, and only Beauty can allow the human person to awaken what he calls the "play impulse," which manifests itself as "the extinction of time in time and the reconciliation of becoming and absolute being, of variation with identity" (Fourteenth Letter). Play is important to Schiller because play returns the human person to himself: "For, to declare once and for all, Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing" (Fifteenth Letter).

It is important in times such as ours that we turn to philosophies of education that emphasize not the utilitarian desires of governments and corporations but the simultaneously transcendent and immanent qualities that reveal to us what it is to be human. Friedrich Schiller's letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man is such a text. Schiller does not provide us with a pedagogical strategy, nor does he offer us a definitive answer as to what such an aesthetic education would look like. But he does indicate where we should seek the right kinds of questions. (From the Foreword.)

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On the Aesthetic Education of Man

On the Aesthetic Education of Man

On the Aesthetic Education of Man

On the Aesthetic Education of Man

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Overview

The history of education can easily be described as theme and variation on one motif: reform. From Plato's critique of the Sophists in Protagoras to John Henry Newman's considerations of education in The Idea of a University in 1854, from the educational projects of Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, and Loris Malaguzzi in the 20th century to Kieran Egan's call for a reimagination of education in the 21st, educators and philosophers have regularly turned to two fundamental questions: "What is the purpose of an education?" and "How is it to be achieved?" This is the essence of Friedrich Schiller's letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man.

For Schiller, the salvation of education--and of man--lies in the realization of Beauty. Only Beauty, in his thought, has the ability to ennoble both thinking and sentiment, and only Beauty can allow the human person to awaken what he calls the "play impulse," which manifests itself as "the extinction of time in time and the reconciliation of becoming and absolute being, of variation with identity" (Fourteenth Letter). Play is important to Schiller because play returns the human person to himself: "For, to declare once and for all, Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing" (Fifteenth Letter).

It is important in times such as ours that we turn to philosophies of education that emphasize not the utilitarian desires of governments and corporations but the simultaneously transcendent and immanent qualities that reveal to us what it is to be human. Friedrich Schiller's letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man is such a text. Schiller does not provide us with a pedagogical strategy, nor does he offer us a definitive answer as to what such an aesthetic education would look like. But he does indicate where we should seek the right kinds of questions. (From the Foreword.)


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781621385837
Publisher: Angelico Press
Publication date: 01/12/2015
Pages: 130
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) was one of the founders of German Romanticism and one of the greatest playwrights, poets, and theorists writing in German. Some of the most productive years of his short life were spent in Weimar, where his creative friendship with Goethe has taken on a mythic status. His poem “Ode to Joy” became the basis for the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and is now the European Union’s anthem.

Alexander Schmidt (introducer) teaches at the Friedrich Schiller University, Iena, Germany, and is currently the Feodor Lynen Fellow at the University of Chicago.

Keith Tribe (translator) has studied and taught at universities in Germany and the UK and is a distinguished author and translator.

Table of Contents

Introduction1
First Letter23
Second Letter25
Third Letter27
Fourth Letter30
Fifth Letter34
Sixth Letter37
Seventh Letter45
Eighth Letter47
Ninth Letter50
Tenth Letter55
Eleventh Letter60
Twelfth Letter64
Thirteenth Letter67
Fourteenth Letter73
Fifteenth Letter75
Sixteenth Letter81
Seventeenth Letter85
Eighteenth Letter87
Nineteenth Letter91
Twentieth Letter97
Twenty-First Letter100
Twenty-Second Letter102
Twenty-Third Letter107
Twenty-Fourth Letter113
Twenty-Fifth Letter119
Twenty-Sixth Letter124
Twenty-Seventh Letter131
Index141
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