Ep. 318: Friedrich Schiller on the Civilizing Potential of Art (Part One)
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2023
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can art make us better people? Musician Markus Reuter joins Mark, Wes, and Seth to discussion the first half of On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795).
Given the failure of the French Revolution, this famous German poet wondered what could make the masses capable of governing themselves? His answer: Beauty! Aesthetic appreciation puts us at a distance from our savage desires, enables the abstract thought necessary for Kantian rationalist morality, and yet keeps us in touch with our feelings so that we don't just become cogs in the industrial machine.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This episode of The Partial Exam in Life is sponsored by ExpressVPN. |
| 0:03.8 | Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash P-E-L. |
| 0:08.0 | You're listening to The Partial Exam in Life, a podcast by some guys who had one point |
| 0:19.4 | said on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. |
| 0:22.7 | Our question for episode 318 is something like, how can art make people more ethical? |
| 0:28.5 | We read letters 1-15 in Friedrich Schiller's on the aesthetic education of man from 1795. |
| 0:35.2 | For more information, please see partiallyexaminalife.com. |
| 0:38.7 | This is Mark Linton-Meier in Madison, Wisconsin, carrying within myself a pure ideal man with |
| 0:43.9 | whose unalterable unity it is the great task of my existence to harmonize. |
| 0:48.7 | This is Seth Pascon, leading a degraded humanity beneath the tyrannous yoke of necessity in |
| 0:55.2 | Austin, Texas. |
| 0:57.2 | Why am I not surprised you guys went exactly opposite to Hitchhund's on the mega for the |
| 1:03.6 | in between. |
| 1:04.6 | This is Wes All Ones somewhere between savagery and barbarity, and Cambridge Messages. |
| 1:10.9 | And we have a special guest. |
| 1:12.6 | My name is Marcus Roeter and that's who I am, really. |
| 1:17.0 | I am my name. |
| 1:22.0 | I had this on my list of aesthetics episodes. |
| 1:24.9 | We haven't done one of those in a few months. |
| 1:27.8 | Dylan announced that he couldn't make it, so I went through my rolodex of who among my |
| 1:31.4 | music guests sounded like, and Marcus, you've done your own podcast. |
| 1:36.2 | Actually, was being on my music podcast. |
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