Friedrich Schiller's Play : a Theory of Human Nature in the Context of the Eighteenth-Century Study of Life
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 12-2009 Friedrich Schiller's play : a theory of human nature in the context of the eighteenth-century study of life. Susan M. Bentley University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Bentley, Susan M., "Friedrich Schiller's play : a theory of human nature in the context of the eighteenth- century study of life." (2009). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 101. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/101 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FRIEDRICH SCHILLER'S PLAY: A THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDY OF LIFE By Susan M. Bentley B.A., University of Colorado, 1969 M.A., University of Denver, 1997 M.D., University of Louisville, 1980 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty ofthe Graduate School of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky December 2009 Copyright 2009 by Susan M. Bentley All rights reserved FRlEDRlCH SCHILLER'S PLAY: A THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDY OF LIFE By Susan M. Bentley B.A., University of Colorado, 1969 M.A., University of Denver, 1997 M.D., University of Louisville, 1980 A Dissertation Approved on December 3, 2009 by the following Dissertation Committee: Dissertation Director ----15issertation Director ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my husband Kim R. Jonason, Ph.D. and to my father Richard W. Molthop 111 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my Dissertation Committee for all the time, effort and encouragement they provided. I am particularly grateful to the Director of Humanities Doctoral Program and Co-Chairperson of my Committee, Dr. Annette Allen, for her untiring support of me (and everyone else) and to my Co-Chairman, Dr. Mark E. Blum, for his helpful enthusiasm and his enjoyment of scholarship. I am much in Dr. Alan C. Leidner's debt for introducing me to Friedrich Schiller and German intellectual history, and for the example he provides in pursuing his intellectual interests. I am grateful as well to Dr. Osborne P. Wiggins, Jr. for making the many difficult things in philosophy more straightforward and to Dr. Lee A. Dugatkin for guiding my study of evolutionary biology. Thanks also to Melissa Horrar, Department Head of Circulation and Interlibrary Loan at Ekstrom Library. I can't thank my husband, Kim Jonason Ph.D., enough for all the help he has given over the years and the honest pleasure he takes in my work. Thanks too to the rest of the family, children and grandchild, Jesse, Carmen and Alton Mather, J. Pike Mather and Melissa Noyes, and to the Love family - especially Sarah, who helped me by reading and also by allowing me to help her with her work. I am also very grateful for the long-time support, friendship and recent proof-reading of Lois U. Davis. I have worked in the memory of my stepson Kristofor R. Jonason, my mentor Lawrence A. Davis, M.D. and my father Richard W. Molthop who managed a disability with intelligence and humor. IV ABSTRACT FRIEDRICH SCHILLER'S PLAY: A THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDY OF LIFE Susan M. Bentley December 15,2009 Friedrich Schiller's psychological theory of play, his hypothesis about human nature, is embedded in the Aesthetic Letters. Its trans-historical value owes much to the committed interest in life in the late Enlightenment, and the theory itself is an example of that period's enthusiastic study of living organisms. It is within this context - of eighteenth-century natural history, natural philosophy and medicine - that the theory can be profitably evaluated. That it is also an example ofthe connection of the humanities of the time and the emerging life sciences suggests its usefulness as a paradigm today: as a general theory of human nature, it might serve as a bio-cultural ground for the humanities. In this dissertation, Schiller's theory'S situation in several contemporary contexts is explored and its relevance to the contemporary humanities and biological sciences, asserted. Chapter II presents Schiller's theory of play. In hypothesizing a theory of species-specific drives, Schiller approached human nature as a unity. In us, the actions of two drives, the sense-drive and the form-drive, create a play-drive which, in relation to v beauty, promotes full personal development. Chapter III reviews the activities of mid eighteenth-century researchers whose attention was turned to the anomalies that defined life. From their work, Schiller drew ideas about nature and the human species. Chapter IV celebrates the identification of a program of life study, vitalism. Schiller's mix of mechanical and organic metaphors, his drives and his history of play are based on its science. Chapter V presents the period's vitalistic epistemology. In it, comparison, analogy and hypothesizing augment observation, experimentation and analysis. As a vitalist, Schiller combined Kant's epistemology with Goethe's scientific intuition. Chapter VI reviews Schiller's German aesthetic heritage. Special focus is given to his text as an example of art, as an organic product, and to Schiller's own life, as an example of the whole man in the process of development. The Epilogue notes current play research in biology and the humanities and suggests that Schiller's play is an evolutionary mechanism, a structural and behavioral adaptation and, as such, a firm ground upon which to steady the humanities against aspects of its own relativism. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................ .iv ABSTRACT ..........................................................................................v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: AT PLAY WITH SCHlLLER ................................... 1 II. SCHlLLER'S THEORY OF PLAy .................................................. 31 III. THE STUDY OF LlFE IN THE ElGHTEENTH CENTURy ..................... 57 IV. SCHILLER AND LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VIT ALlSM ............... l 07 V. A MODEST YET DARING EPISTEMOLOGy ........................................... 171 VI. AESTHETlCS AND ANTHROPOLOGY: THE WHOLE MAN ............... .217 VII. EPILOGUE: SCHILLER TODAy ................................................... .282 REFERENCES .................................................................................. 325 CURRICULUM VITAE ........................................................................ 341 Vll CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: AT PLAY WITH SCHILLER Friedrich Schiller's psychological theory of play - his hypothesis about human nature - is embedded in On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters. It is a red thread laid down by his exploration of the labyrinthine structure of our humanity, a guide that can best be uncovered through careful excavation with the trowels, picks and brushes oflate eighteenth-century natural history and natural philosophy, the time's science oflife and science of man. I His theory's form, its content and its trans-historical value owe much to the committed interest in life at the end of the Enlightenment; the theory itself can be understood as an example ofthat period's enthusiastic and contentious study of living organisms. That it is also an example of the connection of the humanities of the time and its sciences, the complex reciprocal relationship between particular research, philosophy and the arts - among anatomists, physiologists, physicians, philosophers, historians and artists - suggests its usefulness as a paradigm today. As a general theory of human nature, it might serve as a bio-cultural ground for the humanities. I Citation to the Uber die Asthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefim by Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), the Aesthetic Letters, will be made by letter (Roman numeral, I-XXVII) and paragraph (Arabic numeral), then footnote if appropriate (by number if more than 1). For example, XV.9 or XIII.4 fn 2. Citation to the Introduction, Commentary or Appendices will be to the translators: W&W. ---------------------------------- --------- Understanding Schiller's theory of play requires a changed perception of its contexts: given the Aesthetic Letters as the immediate context, the theory benefits from new attention paid to a broader frame, a coherent life-science research tradition of the late Enlightenment. Late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century life science was generally a neglected area of scholarship: before the last quarter century only the admittedly monumental activities of eighteenth-century classifiers, codifiers and popularizers were acknowledged by science historians.2 The identification of a program of life study that was neither animism, mechanism nor materialism, i.e., one that was essentially (but variably) vitalistic, grew out of insights possible only with the maturation of biological science (specifically evolutionary