Aesthetic education for a world in crisis: Rethinking Schiller for the 21st Century

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to recover the thought of the poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller on the education of the feelings, the social and historical context of global crisis
that characterizes the beginning of this century. Schiller made a serious analysis of the historical crisis of society within the time he lived in, and the causes for which enlightened reason and must-be ethical were failing in the attempt to become moral and political force in order to establish republics where citizens were free. It concludes that the cause is the separation of reason, morality and sensitivity, it is necessary to overcome the must-be of Kant, and that art and beauty are the means to educate the feelings to rise to a state of true freedom, instead of retreating into a dark age of irrationality and barbarism. Thus, a reading of Schiller illustrates a fundamental task to address the crisis in contemporary mass culture society, while anticipating the response to the failures of modernity in the tradition of critical thinking, as it is presented by J.Habermas.