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Maxwell Cassity
Newcomer
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 Posted - Sep 22 2006 : 12:54:47 PM
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The argument for Shillers work being a transcendental argument posted by Tom seems to make a lot of sense to me. The idea of it being a dialectic makes sense because Shiller’s thoughts are broadcasted to the reader in a dialectical way, but the movement BEHIND the dialog is transcendental. That is he wants to grasp at what is essential in the creation of the ideas that drive the questions which create the dialog.(!) From letter XX:
“Thus, to pass from sensation to thought, the soul traverses a medium position, in which sensibility and reason are at the same time active, and thus they mutually destroy their determinant power, and by their antagonism produce a negation. This medium situation in which the soul is neither physically nor morally constrained, and yet is in both ways active, merits essentially the name of a free situation; and if we call the state of sensuous determination physical, and the state of rational determination logical or moral, that state of real and active determination should be called the aesthetic.”
I think this is part of his conclusive argument. If our physical sensations affect us in a certain way and our moral senses affect us in a certain way, then the sense of being inbetween of these two areas, the time when the mind is determining the effects of the physical or moral sensation is the ‘aesthetic’ or that which we believe to be beautiful or arousing to our being.
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1368 Posts |
Posted - Sep 25 2006 : 07:53:46 AM
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Max,
When you say that Schiller's thoughts “are broadcasted to the reader in a dialectical way,” what do you mean? Is it just that he is, in effect, having a dialogue with the reader, i.e., that he’s speaking to the reader and wants a response? I think that’s true, but Joey [“Frank”] and the other folks who have been talking about dialectic in recent contributions to the forum have in mind. What they're thinking about is the anticipation of the Hegelian dialectic in Schiller's letters in such things as his description of the relation between the sense impulse, the form impulse, and the play impulse. As we shall see, when Hegel speaks of dialectic, what he has in mind is that all sorts of processes in which nothing like conversation in the ordinary sense of the word is to be found nevertheless have a structure akin to that of a Sokratic dialogue. We’ll talk about this more in class soon. It is not an easy conception to wrap one’s head around.
Tom |
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Transcendental?
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