Friedrich Schiller
On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters.
Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1977. Translation by Reginald Snell of "Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen" (1795). 0804468192 146 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 5.5" x 8.75", exhibits very light shelfwear. Binding is sound. Pages are clean and bright.
"How best to lead a man to wholeness? This problem Schiller set out to answer in these 27 letters. The answer to fragmentation, he believed, lay in aesthetic education: The worship and service of Beauty "paves the way ... to a transition from sensation to thought ... Through Beauty the spiritual man is brought back to matter and restored to the world of sense".
Influenced by Kant, Mendelssohn, Burke, and above all by Goethe, who is the "ideal artist" described in the Ninth Letter, Schiller recast every idea into a shape wholly his own. His poetic genius lent his philosophical writings a grace and ringing vigor that make the "Letters" sheer pleasure to read."