Completion of Humanity, Schiller’s Aestheticism and Freedom

As the great German literary theorist and philosophical aesthetician of the 18th century, Schiller was a giant of the era. Examining the essential function of aesthetic education from the perspective of humanity is the starting point and final destination of Schiller's aesthetic education. In the representative work Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, it is proposed to pursue the perfection of human nature and promote the freedom of reason. Aesthetics plays an important role in restoring the fragmented human nature. First of all, play drive as the internal basis to achieve the complete humanity is the inevitable requirement for people to move towards their own unity, which neutralizes sense and reason. Secondly, the process of play drive is the process of forming a living form, that is, the process of forming beauty in the widest sense. Therefore, beauty is the living form of the harmonious movement of sense and reason. Humanity achieves a whole existence in the freedom of beauty