We’ve been discussing notions of play and the aesthetic, so I thought I’d post my understanding of Schiller’s theory of play, from his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.
Under the play drive, the sensuous drive and the form drive are united.
The sensuous drive looks for our experience of time to be filled with content; we expose ourselves to determination by things. To be determinable is to be alive, to expose ourselves to the world.
Under the form drive, we form things; what we wish is to bring about figures, suspend time. We seek an end to change, it is a state of determination.
Play is a way of uniting change and identity. In play we remain exposed to impressions that come to us from the world, and think ourselves. Play is the aesthetic state, we must dwell in the aesthetic state to experience beauty; beauty is a figure that has come alive (form + sensuous), and we are only able to relate to it through play.
No comments:
Post a Comment