Hegel’s great admiration for Schiller is widely known, as is Schiller’s influence on Hegel’s philosophy of art, which Hegel himself notes in his lectures (LFA: 62).Footnote 1 Indeed, Schiller is a regular if sometimes shadowy presence throughout Hegel’s corpus, with references to and quotations from Schiller’s historical, theoretical and literary works appearing in such diverse places as Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Right and Phenomenology of Spirit, among others.Footnote 2 Therefore, it is striking that in his lectures on art, Hegel rarely praises Schiller’s tragedies and is indeed often critical of Schiller’s dramatic works. These criticisms for the most part concern characters who fail to live up to Hegel’s criteria for tragic heroes, as they vacillate, come to an unheroic demise, or are inwardly conflicted about their aims or actions. Despite these criticisms, this article argues that some of Schiller’s tragic heroines are nonetheless beautiful by Hegel’s own lights.
Using Schiller’s Mary Stuart (1800) and The Maid of Orleans (1801), I argue that a deep spiritual beauty is exemplified in Schiller’s Joan of Arc and Mary Stuart, who overcome an inner conflict to achieve spiritual reconciliation. This article uses Hegel’s theory of the ideal in art to understand how these flawed tragic heroines nonetheless achieve aesthetic greatness. Through the hero’s reconciliation—the reconciliation of spirit’s alienation from itself—the drama, the artwork as a whole, affords us the experience of Hegel’s ideal. Schiller’s tragic heroines present the beautiful triumph of an individual’s subjective freedom over great spiritual conflict, which is Hegel’s definition of artistic beauty or the ideal.
I. Hegel’s criticisms
Arguing for the artistic beauty of Schiller’s heroines, as this article does, is complicated by Hegel’s numerous criticisms of Schiller’s dramatic works. This section thus lays out some of Hegel’s criticisms of tragic heroes in general and of Schiller’s in particular. Overall, these criticisms are in light of Hegel’s criteria for ideal heroes, which requires them to be firm and unified with themselves or their aims.Footnote 3 For ideal characterization, literary and dramatic characters should be solid and steadfast—and many of Schiller’s heroes fail along these lines.
In his lectures on art, Hegel goes into detail about how tragic heroes can fail to be ideal, outlining three types of faulty characters. First is the character type he describes as ‘swithering’: vacillating characters who are irresolute or completely perplexed about what to base their decisions on. Of them Hegel says, ‘such dithering figures generally appear by being themselves in the grip of a twofold passion which drives them from one deed to another simultaneously’ (LFA: 1228). These are not solid characters aligned with inherently valid duties or spheres of life—such as family or state, as in Sophocles’s Antigone—nor are they tethered to their subjective passions or goals, as Macbeth and Othello are. Instead, they are incapable of aligning themselves with anything, characters ‘in two minds who cannot acquire a finished and therefore firm individuality’, split in their very core (LFA: 1228). Hegel advises against putting this kind of discord ‘into one and the same individual’, because it ‘must always involve much awkwardness. For mental distraction into opposed interests has its source partly in a vagueness and stupidity of mind, partly in weakness and immaturity’, citing Goethe’s ‘Weislingen [in Götz], […] Fernando in Stella, and Clavigo […] above all’ (LFA: 1228).Footnote 4 Divided in this way, they cannot fixate on anything and lack a central pathos or unification with it, and thus cannot fulfil Hegel’s requirement of firmness or solidity for ideal characterization.
Second, and according to Hegel the worst of the three, is to have the indecisiveness and swithering of character as the point of the drama. This type of drama shows the (actually false, according to Hegel) ‘fact’ that no one is ‘inwardly firm and self-assured’ (LFA: 1229). Hegel is quick to point out that good drama should have characters who struggle to attain their goals, and who sometimes come into opposition with the circumstances of everyday life or with other individuals, so that they experience ‘their finitude and instability’—a universal, unavoidable truth of all human beings (LFA: 1229). However, Hegel posits, such struggle should be within the drama as a whole, not within one character. This experience of finitude and instability, which is for Hegel the only appropriate conclusion, ‘must not be inserted by a sort of dialectical machinery into the individual’s own character’ (LFA: 1229). Doing so would create an ‘empty indeterminate form instead of growing in a living way along with determinate aims and a defined character’ (LFA: 1229). Thus, in Hegel’s classification, this type of aesthetic failure is quite similar to the other two types but takes into account the larger picture of the relationship between the hero and the drama as a whole.
The third way tragic heroes can fail is ‘the tragic case where someone is led astray by passion against his better judgement into opposite aims […] and now must perish unless he can rescue himself from this discord both within and in his external actions’ (LFA: 1229). Hegel gives Johanna, Schiller’s depiction of Joan of Arc in The Maid of Orleans, as an example of this type. Hegel cites her because, after her encounter in Act III with an English knight, she is torn between her romantic feelings for him and her duty to God and France. Hegel warns that poets should avoid making this ‘personal tragedy of inner discord’ the ‘lever of the tragedy’ because it is ‘sad […], painful […] and aggravating’ (LFA: 1229).Footnote 5 However, as it stands at this point in the lectures, it is not clear that Hegel is referring specifically to The Maid of Orleans as part of this warning. There are a few other possible interpretations of his statement: It could be that the inner discord that results from being led by one’s passion to opposite aims is appropriate because it is not the lever of this drama; or, it is possible that Johanna’s conflict is not merely personal; it is also possible that although she is led astray, she rescues herself. At another point in the lectures, Hegel describes the conflict of The Maid of Orleans as between the right of subjective love and ‘the eternal substantial powers themselves, the interests of the state, patriotism, family duties, etc.’, which implies that her conflict could be between two legitimate rights or ethical spheres (LFA: 566). (I return to this point in Sections III and IV.) He also describes Schiller’s Wallenstein as being of the third problematic type: he is led from his duty by his personal desire and ultimately perishes as a result (LFA: 195–96).
Hegel also contends that we can ‘attack’ a great number of literary works—not just tragic dramas—for failing to present ideal characters, and then gives us a list of examples: Corneille’s Le Cid (1637) presents a heart split in two, Racine’s eponymous Phèdre (1677) shifts the blame on another, and Goethe’s hero of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774) is inwardly weak (although nonetheless interesting) (LFA: 241). Next, the ‘beautiful soul’ in Jacobi’s Woldemar (1779) gets the worst of it for being too weak to endure contact with the world, so weak that it turns completely inward and holds itself in a false superiority that cannot endure anything—from true love to everyday events (LFA: 241–42). Following this, von Kleist’s Der Prinz von Homburg (1809–10, first presented on stage in 1821) similarly fails, apparently for its use of sleepwalking, and probably also for what is commonly known as the ‘fear of death scene’ (LFA: 242–43).Footnote 6 Finally, he ends this somewhat breathless attack of ‘these perversities which are opposed to unity and firmness of character’ with a general criticism of the irony of his early German Romantic contemporaries, largely for creating self-destructive characters (LFA: 243).
At bottom, these examples along with the three types of failed tragic figures just outlined all have the same general problem: Truly great heroes must be committed to one aim and not stray from it, waver, or be split, and it seems that Wallenstein, Johanna and a slew of other modern dramatic figures come up short. Nonetheless, in the remainder of this paper, I argue that some of Schiller’s tragedies adhere to Hegel’s criteria for ideal dramatic characterization—and, thus, that some of Schiller’s tragic heroines are beautiful according to Hegel’s own definition of the ideal in art, even if that means they are not the archetypical tragic hero.
II. The ideal in dramatic heroes
So the question at this point is: If ideal tragic heroes are inseparably unified with their aims, and if Schiller’s heroes are not, how could it be that Johanna is beautiful, or that some of Schiller’s tragedies fulfil Hegel’s criteria for ideal art, as this article argues? It will take most of what follows to answer this question. This first order of business is to lay out some key points about Hegel’s ideal, or artistic beauty, which is done in this section. This also allows us to begin to make connections between the ideal and tragic heroes.
Art, as absolute spirit, like philosophy and religion is ‘knowledge of the absolute Idea [Das Wissen der absoluten Idee]’ (EM: §533). In general, for Hegel the ideal (das Ideal) is the embodiment of the idea in an individual, where the idea is ‘the concrete unity of Concept and objectivity’, or the existence of the concept in material reality (LFA: 108). He goes on to say that ‘the beautiful itself must be grasped as Idea, in particular as Idea in a determinate form, i.e. as Ideal’ (LFA: 106). The ideal exists in the world as a sensuous product of the imagination, as the beauty of art. In other words, in art, the idea appears sensuously as a harmony, balance or unity—the beautiful or the ideal (LFA: 111). Thus, in art we experience truth (Das Wissen der absoluten Idee) in a way very similar to that of religion and philosophy but marked by beauty.
Further, in Hegel’s vivid description, the idea exists as ‘self-enclosed, free, self-reliant, as sensuously blessed in itself, enjoying and delighting in its own self. The ring of this bliss resounds throughout the entire appearance of the Ideal’ (LFA: 157). He continues:
And precisely as a result of this alone is the Ideal genuinely beautiful, since the beautiful exists only as a total though subjective unity; wherefore too the subject who manifests the Ideal must appear collected together in himself again into a higher totality and independence out of the divisions in the life of other individuals and their aims and efforts. (LFA: 157)
This quote is helpful in illustrating how Hegel can quickly move in his lectures from the ideal as beautiful in general to, more specifically, ideal dramatic figures; their unity is beautiful, and the subjective freedom of the individual is a key aspect of this.
Relatedly, Hegel has a tri-fold requirement for aesthetically ideal dramatic heroes in general (before we turn to tragic heroes specifically): First, they must possess a multi-faceted richness of character that gives them a lifelike fullness of personality, rather than a flatness that results from being purely or simply just one pathos (LFA: 237–38). Second, however, out of this diversity, ideal heroes are defined by one ‘essential and conspicuous trait of character’, a particular pathos that ‘leads to specific aims, decisions, and actions’ (LFA: 238). They retain their diversity to allow for believability, interest and to engage in a variety of relationships and situations, but they are determined by one dominant trait in order to have solid, coherent characterization, and so remain true to themselves, to what they are at heart, throughout the drama (LFA: 239–40). Third, the ideal presentation of character requires that this multiplicity be unified by the free subjectivity of the character herself. She maintains herself ‘as an inherently fixed character’ by ‘welding’ (to use Knox’s translation of sich zusammenfassende) her diversity into one totality (LFA: 236). Overall, heroes are solid and ‘self-contained’—they are defined or determined by their overarching aim, but, at the same time, they must be multi-sided, so that they are not hollow, flat caricatures, or mere ‘types’ (LFA: 181).
The aesthetic feature essential in Hegel’s categorization of tragic heroes is one-sidedly adhering to their goal. One-sidedness is the driving force of the tragic drama’s action and is central to Hegel’s three necessary criteria for tragedy: 1) The hero must be so one-sidedly fixed on an aim that she comes into 2) conflict, which 3) must be reconciled (LFA: 1194–98, 1215–20). One cannot have tragedy for Hegel without conflict and its reconciliation, and these are both driven by the heroes’ one-sided pursuit of their aim. Hegel describes the heroes’ one-sidedness as their ‘tragic fixity’ because it causes them to commit crimes, ethical transgressions, and other atrocities in unrelenting pursuit of the aims with which they so fully identify, coming into conflict with what is substantial or right (LFA: 1203). It also leads to the reconciliation of this conflict, which ends up being their own downfall, if not their death, as they are fundamentally destroyed. Yet, however harmful it ends up being to the character, one-sidedness fulfils Hegel’s requirement that heroes be self-contained in complete identity with their pathos, the aim that defines them.
But these may seem to be contradictory requirements: on the one hand, tragic heroes must be one-sided, while on the other, ideal dramatic characters must maintain a multi-faceted diversity of character. This seeming contradiction, I argue, is key to understanding both the flaws and the beauty of Schiller’s tragic heroines (treated in the next section). While a momentary wavering indeed takes away from their perfection as tragic—and thus they do not reach the tragic heights of Sophocles’s or Shakespeare’s unbending heroes—at the same time, this is what makes these dramas great works of art: The movement required for ideal characterization is also required for the spiritual truth of art, the absolute truth of the idea and of humanity as a spiritual animal. Hegel describes humanity as ‘not only the bearer of the contradiction of his multiple nature but the sustainer of it, remaining therein equal and true to himself’, and his requirement for ideal characterization, maintaining oneself as a unity of diversity, appears in the very same discussion (LFA: 240).Footnote 7 As a main tenet of Hegel’s idealism is that the true is the whole, and the whole has been sundered and put back together again, then the absolute truth of art must also entail this feature. As Lydia Moland helpfully puts it throughout her book on Hegel’s aesthetics, for Hegel, art is a ‘unity of unity and division’ (Moland Reference Moland2019).
With this in mind, we can begin to see how some inwardly torn tragic heroes can also be beautiful. As Hegel puts it, while the ideal appears in art as repose and bliss, its ‘inner and spiritual element exists nevertheless only as active movement and development. But this development is nothing without one-sidedness and separation’ (LFA: 177–78). Thus, while the ‘beautiful exists only as a total though subjective unity’, this unity is achieved through, or is, reconciliation (LFA: 157). True beauty for Hegel is a complex picture of both movement and unity, most explicitly embodied in individual dramatic characters who display free subjectivity—as in, for example, Schiller’s tragic heroines.
III. Schiller’s tragic heroes
As we have begun to see, for Hegel, being a unification of diversity is a fundamental truth of humanity and thus a requirement for ideal dramatic characterization—as art, a form of absolute spirit, must present such truth. And, as I argue in this section, this is exactly what Schiller’s tragic heroines present, as Johanna goes down fighting for her cause and Mary Stuart boldly faces death with dignity. Hegel’s requirement of ideal heroes, maintaining oneself as a unity, is key to understanding the beauty or aesthetic greatness of Schiller’s tragic heroines even in the face of his criticisms.
As Hegel describes The Maid of Orleans, Johanna sustains a ‘dissonance of the heart’, an inward split that entails separation and self-transcendence (LFA: 158). Yet, I posit, she is beautiful according to Hegel’s definition of the ideal in art because she overcomes this split. From the very start of the drama through the bitter end, Johanna proves herself a warrior. Her first words in the drama are to demand a battle helmet. After giving rousing speeches that describe her mission as given to her by holy spirits, she bids her beloved home goodbye forever and runs off to battle, seeming to know she will die in her quest. Throughout the drama she is committed to her cause of fighting for France under the hand of God, vowed to keep her love of heaven and country pure and steadfast. Throughout, her almost completely one-sided adherence to her goal is exhibited in her merciless battle ethic, seen for example when she kills Montgomery in Act II.
The one exception is when she uncharacteristically spares the life of an English opponent in battle at the very end of Act III. Dramatically, this moment stands out in contrast to the fact that she had not spared any opponent’s life until his. Here, Johanna displays what may seem to be inner weakness unworthy of a hero. However, I argue, she possesses a deeper subjectivity and a more complex characterization than simple one-sidedness or flatness of character—as required by Hegel’s criteria for ideal characterization. She diverges from her path and comes into conflict with her own true aim. As mentioned in Section I, when faced with Lionel, the English knight she spares, Johanna is caught between, on the one hand, what Hegel describes as an eternal, substantial power—he lists ‘state, patriotism, family duties’ as examples—and, on the other, romantic love (LFA: 566). It is important to note that Hegel also describes romantic love (as opposed to maternal love or love of one’s country, for example) as linked to physical or sexual attraction. Johanna’s actions and reactions during and after their brief encounter display this. She is overcome by this type of love only when she lifts Lionel’s visor to reveal his face and, immediately after, is again unable a second time to slay him when looking upon him unmasked. The entire following scene is her monologue in which she describes her inner turmoil, alternating between regret and guilt on the one hand and feelings of love on the other. She recounts Lionel’s physical attributes—his voice, his eyes, his noble brow—the stage directions even calling for soft music and flutes (see Act IV.i).
Despite that this is her only physical contact with Lionel, Johanna feels that by letting herself fall in love, she has broken her vow of loyalty to God and country. Hegel describes this tragic conflict as being between love ‘as a vital right of subjective emotion’, and her objectively valid duties; because Johanna recognizes the validity of both sides, her heart ‘engages in a fight with itself’ (LFA: 566). It takes great inner strength to recognize and maintain this discord, and this is key to her greatness as a tragic heroine. This fight with or within herself is also what opens the space for her spiritual beauty: Johanna dramatically presents an overcoming of inner struggle, a return to the path (or pathos) from which she strayed. The virgin and warrior of God must atone for letting herself fall in love with a human—an enemy soldier, no less—and she redeems herself in the manner of her death. In Schiller’s retelling, Joan of Arc is not burned at the stake, but miraculously breaks her chains to die gloriously on the battleground, aiding the victory of France. She started out demanding a helmet, and ultimately goes forward to meet her end head-on wearing it; she fights her own way back to the path from which she strayed.
Hegel does not mention Schiller’s Maria Stuart in the Hotho version of his lectures on art, but I posit that she fits the bill here of ideal beauty at least as well as Johanna does.Footnote 8 Otherwise always true to her country—this time Scotland—Mary for a moment believes that she has a chance to make peace with her cousin, Elizabeth, Queen of England. This change of heart could certainly be motivated by Mary’s desire to be freed from prolonged house arrest under Elizabeth’s orders. Yet, under Schiller’s description, it seems at least for a moment that she truly desires acceptance and familial love from her cousin. However, their reconciliation is complicated by the fact that Mary believes that Elizabeth’s crown is rightly her own, as Elizabeth has been legally de-legitimatized as heir. Whether her ultimate motivation is for familial love or to be freed, we see Mary depart from her fixed allegiance to her beliefs when she considers acquiescing to Elizabeth. She has always been fiercely true to Scotland and her belief that the English crown was hers; even when she hears a meeting has been set up for her to have the chance to talk with Elizabeth face-to-face, she vows she will not kneel before her, even for the possibility of freedom and being returned to Scotland (III.iii). But when they do meet, she does bow down to Elizabeth, falling at her feet (III.iv). Immediately, however, Mary regains her composure and becomes even greater than before: she passionately tells Elizabeth how she truly feels, and then proceeds to face her own resulting death sentence not just with dignity, but fully embracing it.
As I see it, there are four important and related ways that Mary and Johanna aesthetically present the ideal and achieve heroic greatness, not despite but because of their momentary wavering. First, simply put, their momentary lapse allows for fuller characterization than if they were simply one pathos—fulfilling the first of the three requirements for ideal dramatic heroes outlined earlier (in Section II). This is certainly not to say that no properly one-sided tragic heroes are beautiful or aesthetically great in other ways. For example, Antigone’s greatness in Hegel’s view is famously due to her very fixity, and Shakespeare’s heroes and tragedies achieve great heights of beauty as a result of a variety of artistic devices employed by the artist in addition to their tragic one-sidedness, as I have argued elsewhere.Footnote 9 Rather, this article argues that we can use Hegel’s theory of the ideal in art to better understand how these flawed tragic heroines nonetheless achieve aesthetic greatness.
Second, both heroines win their inner struggles by choosing to return to the path from which they strayed. As Hegel puts it: ‘greatness and force are truly measured only by the greatness and force of the opposition out of which the spirit brings itself back into unity with itself again’ (LFA: 178).Footnote 10 In my reading, then, they do not fall prey to the third way tragic figures can fail (described in Section I), since they do rescue themselves (LFA: 1229). Recall also that ‘the ideal presentation of character requires that this multiplicity be unified by the free subjectivity of the character herself’, and their return is accomplished in this way (LFA: 236). In this light, we can also see further why Wallenstein fails to be a great hero for Hegel, in addition to the reasons mentioned in Section I. If we take Hegel at his word that he sees Wallenstein as the same character-type as Johanna, then we also see that Wallenstein never returns to his original path. In reuniting with themselves or their true aims, these heroines exercise the agency that Wallenstein fails to attain.Footnote 11 Whereas Mary and Johanna return to their duty, Hegel’s reading is that Wallenstein is led from his duty by his personal desire and ultimately perishes as a result (LFA: 195–96).Footnote 12
Third, although this return entails their demise, they willingly face their destruction, which is a result of their free choice to return to their duty. One of the requirements for ideal characterization was to have a defining trait, and surely dying for one’s cause effectively conveys this. In contrast, Wallenstein’s demise is brought about externally and not as a result of his own volition; he does not choose to follow or return to his duty, nor does he acknowledge his failure to do so.Footnote 13 Additionally, Johanna’s personal desire is not the cause of her demise; rather, she chooses not to follow her romantic desires, but instead her duty. Hegel describes such a hero as one that attains ‘a recognition that its fate, however bitter, is merely the one appropriate to its action’ (LFA: 1231). And as Schiller’s heroines take control of their tragic fate they again display subjective freedom as well as great strength, as they bravely and willingly face their own destruction.Footnote 14 (More will be said on this in the next section.) When they rescue themselves, they rescue their defining characteristic and so ultimately remain true to it and to themselves.
Fourth, the heroine’s return is not only a reconciliation with her own tragic fate, but also the reconciliation of the conflict of the drama, and thus key to why the work of art itself, as a whole, is beautiful. Recall that ‘the beautiful exists only as a total though subjective unity; wherefore too the subject who manifests the Ideal must appear collected together in himself again into a higher totality and independence out of the divisions in the life of other individuals and their aims and efforts’ (LFA: 157). Reconciliation is thus a necessary aspect of the ideal, and this reconciliatory aspect of Hegel’s theory of art entails that contradiction and conflict are also fundamental to art, as an aesthetic presentation of spiritual truth (LFA: 236).Footnote 15 As I will describe in the next section, the heroines’ self-reunification entails an inner discord solidified in the reconciliation of the drama’s spiritual conflict.
IV. Historical standpoint
Note that Hegel’s examples of failed characters in Section I are all from the same historical era, the first third of the seventeenth century through the early 1800s (near the time of Hegel’s lectures on art). As I have argued elsewhere, Hegel is not arbitrarily choosing examples from a particular era or intentionally leaving out swithering figures from Shakespeare or before; instead, this particular flaw of wavering characters actually only appears on the scene at this point in history.Footnote 16 According to Hegel’s philosophy of spirit, beginning around the time of the European Enlightenment, individuals possess greater freedom and a deeper subjectivity than they did in early modernity, and this is aesthetically presented in art of that era (see, e.g., LFA: 187, 243; Hegel Reference Hegel and Knox1967: §140R). In other words, both the spiritual beauty and the flaws of Schiller’s heroes (and of the others listed in Section I) are a result of spirit’s historical standpoint in late modernity. This is not to say that all heroes from this era are in fact more free or beautiful than earlier ones (clearly not, as we have seen), or that they all present the unity of diversity that I argue Johanna and Mary Stuart do (e.g., Wallenstein does not), or even that they all waver. Rather, in this section, I suggest that according to Hegel’s theory of the progress of subjective freedom in the Western world, this particular brand of tragic hero is only possible in a certain cultural moment.Footnote 17 Indeed, as absolute spirit, the beauty of all art for Hegel is spiritual, but I posit that this deeper spiritual beauty is only available to late modern heroes (and any art of this era).
In Hegel’s view, ancient Greeks have not yet broken from a natural, unreflective standpoint. Because they see much of their lives as destined—things ultimately could not have turned out otherwise—ancient tragic heroes accept their fate, and this harmony is part of their artistic ideality, their beauty (EL: §147A).Footnote 18 Under Hegel’s description, ancient tragic heroes completely identify themselves with an objective right or an aspect of the ethical substance (ethical life in its immediate, ancient Greek form) (LFA: 1195–96). In this way, due to their one-sidedness the ancient tragic hero remains firmly on the side of a right or a just cause through to the very end.
With the advent of Christianity, art displays a greater degree of subjective depth and freedom than the classical art of Ancient Greece (LFA: 79).Footnote 19 (Art of this era Hegel terms the romantic art form, but to avoid confusion with European Romanticism I will continue to refer to it as modern art.) Then, with the Protestant Reformation’s stress on individual responsibility, individuals begin to truly know themselves as subjects possessing self-determination (LPH: 438). With this subjective turn in early modernity, drama presents such freedom and is focused on the character’s ‘inner subjective life’ (LFA: 193). Heroes’ aims are also more subjective, so that they are no longer necessarily tied to a right or an ethical sphere—to the point that they can even be evil (e.g., Macbeth).Footnote 20
However, according to Hegel, spirit does not fully realize subjective freedom until it can hold itself under the scrutiny of its own reason, as introduced by the philosophical and cultural movements of the Enlightenment (LPH: 438–42). At this point, individuals achieve an even greater depth of subjectivity and freedom than they possessed in the early modern period (LHP: 131). Following the political and industrial revolutions of the time, the resulting alienation of the individual from nature, from herself, and from society opens the potential for a spiritual discord within individuals that was not previously possible. This shift in subjectivity is presented in tragic heroes who waver, stray from their path, or are inwardly torn (LFA: 113). The deeper subjective freedom that was implicit in early modernity has now been fully won, but at the cost of completely one-sided heroes (LFA: 189).
I posit that in Hegel’s aesthetics, it follows from his philosophy of history that, beginning with the Enlightenment, the beauty of art is slightly different than that of earlier eras of European art: art can now more explicitly present this alienation, deeper subjectivity and individual freedom (LFA: 517). This connection helps explain why Hegel only complains of wavering in heroes starting at this point in European history, and why the many examples he attacks are all from ‘more modern art [neuern Kunst]’ (LFA: 241). My claim is admittedly hard to completely support, as Hegel calls the beauty of all art in his romantic form ‘spiritual beauty [geistigen Schönheit]’ (LFA: 518). And, as he says elsewhere, while art is inherently serene, ‘in romantic art the distraction and dissonance of the heart goes further and […] the oppositions displayed in it are deepened and their disunion may be maintained’ (LFA: 158). Nonetheless, while all post-Christian art in his view must have an element of this spiritual beauty to be considered truly absolute spirit (or truly art), his own accounts of history and of art align in this way and mutually illuminate each other. My claim is that as a presentation of the spiritual truth of humanity, late modern art can now include the deeper self-reflectiveness and subjective freedom along with the discord and alienation Hegel sees as inaugurated by the Enlightenment. For tragic heroes, this is manifested as the awareness of their own one-sidedness, the separation or alienation from their aims, and their free choice to return. This is beauty born of struggle. Hegel’s descriptions of the overcoming of inner dissonance in romantic art as a ‘transfiguration of grief’ and as ‘smiling through tears’ articulates just what is so compelling and admirable about tragic heroes such as these (LFA: 158).
Thus, Schiller’s late modern heroines are aesthetically presenting a spiritual aspect that earlier tragic heroes do not possess. While heroes that waver do not completely fulfil Hegel’s requirement of fixity for tragic heroes, they ultimately may be more beautiful—or, at least, a different kind of beauty, one that is, in a sense, more true. As I have argued, for Hegel, the ideal in art entails that the work presents or contains (or is) the reconciliation of conflict, discord, movement, suffering, or the like.Footnote 21 Further, in Hegel’s words: ‘Works of art are all the more excellent in expressing true beauty, the deeper is the inner truth of their content and thought’ (LFA: 74).
Relatedly, we can see an additional feature contributing to the aesthetic greatness of Johanna and Mary: their noble aims or identification with what Hegel calls the eternal, substantial powers.Footnote 22 As described earlier, although they momentarily waver in their commitment to their duty, they nonetheless ultimately remain true to their higher cause, rather than following merely personal or subjective aims or passions as Wallenstein does, and as many of Shakespeare’s heroes do. The reconciliation of their inner discord includes the knowledge that they have chosen these aims, and we see this in both Johanna’s and Mary’s demise, as they display their conviction that what they are fighting for is worth their destruction. Their inner reconciliation fits Hegel’s description of a ‘satisfaction’ that is ‘religious when the heart knows that it is assured of a higher and indestructible bliss in exchange for the destruction of its mundane individuality’ (LFA: 1231). In addition to reconciliation in the final battle of Maid of Orleans, earlier in the play Johanna exhibits reconciliation with her fate when she does not defend herself from her father’s accusations of witchery. And Mary celebrates her execution as a way to freedom and as an honour befitting a true queen, and she passionately looks forward to meeting God in heaven (V.vi).
It is here that we most explicitly experience their deep spiritual beauty. Johanna and Mary are the epitome of those who embrace their fate and achieve ‘reconciliation with God’ (LFA: 525). As mentioned earlier, Hegel describes art of the romantic form as reminiscent of Christ’s crucifixion and rebirth, in which there is ‘a spiritual inwardness, a joy in submission, a bliss in grief and rapture in suffering, even a delight in agony’ (LFA: 158). There is reconciliation between an individual and God—in the sacraments, confession, absolution—and a resulting spiritual harmony. In this light, referring to Wallenstein’s prologue, Hegel’s perhaps strange-sounding point becomes clearer: ‘Schiller’s phrase holds good: “Life is serious, art cheerful”’ (LFA: 157). In life, such a submission, especially one that results in death, is certainly not one that could be called cheerful or bright; but in art, the audience can experience this truth without the pain of the actual loss of a real, existing life. We experience bliss in the reconciliation of the drama, as the hero is reconciled with her chosen and rightful fate.
Further, this type of reconciliation is related to how Schiller’s heroines are one-sided yet not fully so, and how this is key to their beauty. In aesthetic contemplation, one-sidedness is reconciled (or revealed as un-true) in both the audience and artwork; the absolute truth of the concrete unity of subject and object or of concept and reality is experienced in the work’s beauty, which has no other end but such contemplation or experience of the absolute, and which itself is such a unity (LFA: 112–15). In ancient and early modern tragedy, the tragic hero’s one-sidedness is stripped away as the hero is destroyed. But as we have seen, late modern heroes rescue themselves from such one-sidedness and achieve a higher ideality. Rather than being merely one-sided, late modern tragic heroes can also sustain self-separation and discord, as they carry with them not just their victory but also the broken heart, unrequited love and disappointments of other great failures of what could have been. This requires great inner strength, and the ability of Schiller’s tragic heroines to do this rests on the deeper subjectivity possible only in late modernity. This is indeed different than ancient heroes, who are beautiful in a more traditional sense of the term—immediately unified and in harmony with themselves or their aims—and Shakespeare’s heroes who, despite being aesthetically and subjectively complex, nonetheless are completely one-sided like their ancient counterparts. These differences give each type of tragic hero their unique aesthetic value. It is this nuance in Hegel’s theory of the historical progress of subjective freedom that allows us to see how the ideal in art appears as a particular type of spiritual beauty in late modern tragic drama. Now, art maintains an underlying dissonance that retains both the harmony that was in classical art and the inward turn and subjective freedom of early modern art.
Hegel describes how one could ‘sum up in one word this relation of content and form in romantic art […]. The keynote of romantic art is musical and, if we make the content of this idea determinate, lyrical’ (LFA: 528). I posit that in late modern tragedy, this musicality is harmony that results from the hero recovering from her inner split or wavering. As Hegel puts it, this harmony must be found even in strife, and is found in all art: ‘Even in suffering, the sweet tone of lament must sound through the griefs and alleviate them, so that it seems to us worth while [sic] so to suffer as to understand this lament. This is the sweet melody, the song in all art’ (LFA: 159). As we have seen, the ideal in art is not a simplistic one-sidedness but a unification of diversity (LFA: 236–38). When these heroines in their lapse momentarily lose hold of their tragic fixity, they maintain a many-sidedness and are able to explicitly display this due to their breach and return. One needs diversity, not one note, in order to have discord or harmony, and one needs movement to have melody. Their beauty is not one-sided, but infinite and free.
V. Concluding remarks
As this article focused on only two of Schiller’s tragedies and just a few facets of Hegel’s philosophy of art, there is certainly much more to be said on the wide variety of relationships between Hegel and Schiller, even if keeping the topic narrowed to tragedy—which itself is just a small slice of possible topics.Footnote 23 The aim of this article was to tease out often overlooked details in Hegel’s theories of the ideal in art and of tragic heroes in order to mutually illuminate them. Using Schiller’s Mary Stuart and The Maid of Orleans, I argued that a deep spiritual beauty is exemplified in these heroines who overcome their inner turmoil to achieve spiritual reconciliation, which is Hegel’s definition of the ideal. It is hoped that this reading has offered a new perspective not only on Hegel’s philosophy of art, but also on the power and beauty of Schiller’s tragic heroines. Schiller’s Joan of Arc and Mary Stuart are what it looks like to allow oneself to submit to the very live possibility of leading oneself down the wrong path, and of finding one’s way home again. In these heroines, we see spirit pulling itself apart and then back into itself, a painful process that ends with harmony restored, yet at a cost that keeps the reconciliation from being flatly affirmative. Through the reconciliation of their inner conflict, Johanna and Mary present Hegel’s beautiful melody of lament. They have overcome their struggle, finding harmony after, and perhaps even while, maintaining dissonance, offering us an experience of Hegel’s aesthetic ideal.Footnote 24
