Abstract

This essay provides a systematic as well as chronological account of Schiller's concepts of freedom and autonomy. Its main thesis is that the duality of Schiller's moral/aesthetic ideal in the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man - of beauty and the sublime, of play and the moral law - is a result of his use of conflicting concepts of autonomy. While it is widely accepted that Schiller took over Kant's concept of autonomy, I argue that he simultaneously employed another concept of autonomy, that of the contemporary philosopher Karl Leonhard Reinhold, whose criticism of Kant's concept of free will and alternative formulation of the concept of a neutral will influenced Schiller.