Schiller's philosophy

This will be the last post in which I'll be working from Leon Chai's book on the connections between Europe's romantics and America's Renaissance figures, because I am near finished with said book. For one of my earlier invocations of Chai, go here.

That scholar's summary of Schiller's philosophy is as follows: "For Schiller, there is a pathetic, moving eloquence [in the relation of consciousness and object]: never can the object attain the nature of the idea, in which reposes the infinitude of the purely ideational. Consciousness here embodies, implicitly, a state of striving or aspiration: having informed or identified itself with an object, it then attempts in relating that object to an idea to pass from finite to infinite, the transcend the material element of its own content through realization of the purely ideational."

What the heck does that mean? I don't know.

To those of us who aren't ever going to be tested on our grasp of 19th century German philosophy, there is a simple rule of three. If you don't want to be left out of the smart-kids' conversations entirely, know something about Kant. Know something about Hegel. Know something about Karl Marx. Know the names of at least three German-speaking followers/disciples of each.

I refer here to the "long 19th century," which began for German-speaking people around the time of the Battle of Valmy (1792) and continued until the death of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, the rude start of the slaughters of the 20th. Though most of Kant's work including the Critiques preceded that century even so extended, his work on "Religion within the Bounds of Reason" followed Valmy, as did his political testament, "Perpetual Peace."

My suggestion: economize on your brain power. There are hosts of other 19th century German philosophers the smart kids will mention. You might want to be familiar with the names of at least nine of the non-bold-faceable ones. Just bow your head politely and stroke your chin and wait until talk turns, as it will, to one of the above-named bold faced three.

So, for your use when you happen to find yourself surrounded by members of a philosophy faculty who know these things: here again are the Big Three followed by three of their epigones:

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)
Friedrich Schiller (1759 - 1805)
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762 - 1814)
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schilling (1775 - 1854)

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 -1831)
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772- 1829)
Heinrich Leo (1799 - 1878)
Bruno Bauer (1809 - 1882)

Karl Marx (1818 - 1883)
Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826 - 1900)
Ferdinand August Bebel (1840 - 1913)
Rosa Luxemburg (1871 - 1919).

Luxemburg's book on The Accumulation of Capital appeared in 1913, just in time to put a convenient philosophical cap on the "long 19th century" as defined above. Now you know 19th century German philosophy according to the rule of threes!

It doesn't matter all that much what Schiller meant in the stuff above. He is a non-bold-faced name. Just practice the nods.

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