How Classical Painting Liberates us from the Shackles of the Senses

An exploration of Schiller’s Aesthetics as it pertains to political revolutions past and future

By Matthew Ehret

This article is based on a lecture given on Feb. 11, 2019 in Montreal Canada.

German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) wrote his twenty six Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man in 1794 in order to address this matter in the most poetic manner ever devised by a philosopher and his investigation into the nature and purpose of the Beautiful and Sublime today stand unparalleled in their organized rigor, commitment to truth and spontaneous creative love.

Schiller formulated a new standard of aesthetics which stands as a revolutionary document to this day. It is vital to keep in mind that he wrote these letters in the tragic wake of the Jacobin Terror that had annihilated all hopes for a new paradigm in Europe when the greatest republican figures of France lost their…