The Philosophy of Play in Friedrich Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” and its Value for Contemporary Aesthetics of Play

Abstract

[EN] Friedrich Schiller is a pioneer in the study of play. In his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), he reflected on the need for an aesthetic education to face the dehumanizing process of modern culture. He diagnosed the fragmentation of the subject due to the increasing rationalization of society that ultimately leads to a political fracture between the individual and the State. The way to restore the integrity of a human being, he argued, was aesthetic education. A central part of his aesthetic thinking is a mixture of formalist and action-oriented philosophy of play.