The Revenge Of The ‘Untere Seelenvermögen’ In Schiller’s Plays

To what extent does a ‘rehabilitation of the senses’ take place in Schiller’s writing? Traditionally, Schiller criticism has seen mind and body as equal partners, ideally in harmony, but actually in conflict. But recent theoretically‐inclined criticism would tend to see the body in Schiller’s writing as a false replica that has been created by a domineering rationality. In the analysis offered here, mind‐body con‐flict in Schiller’s writing is seen in the context of dramatic ‘hubris and revenge’ plots. The ‘lower mental faculties’ take revenge on reason for its political hubris. The moment of revenge is presented as a psychosomatic crisis or ‘revolution’, which is accompanied by symbols of disrupted harmony. In the early plays, crisis is part of a teleological anthropology inherited from classical medicine; the violent crisis brought on by political rationality can be curative. But after the French Revolution Schiller limits the extent of the violence in psychosomatic crises. Real revenge is excluded as the world of the dramas is reorganised according to the rationality of the ‘aesthetic state’. Exemplo quodcumque malo committitur, ipsi displicet auctori. prima est haec ultio, quod se iudice nemo nocens absolvitur, improba quamvis gratia fallaci praetoris vicerit urna.