Theoria - DISA

moral order. Thus even in this play Schiller deviates from his
model King Oedipus.
We can conclude our brief analysis by denning Schiller's
debt to the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare and his own contribution
to German drama of the eighteenth century.
From the Greeks Schiller took over the idea of the inevitability
of fate. He attempted in his plays to construct a chain of events
in which cause and effect are convincingly linked. Nevertheless,
Schiller did not succeed in creating tragedies of destiny in the
manner of the Attic tragedians. For the ancient Greeks the
impression of inevitability arose out of their belief in gods.
These gods of destiny are alien to man who is at the mercy of
their whims. Schiller, on the other hand, regarded fate as the
dispensation of moral law. This moral law is not alien to man's
own striving, and not imposed on him by external forces, but
meets his own needs, for Schiller recognised not only the
autonomy of man but also his orientation towards moral values.
He is convinced that man must atone for violation of the moral
order, but that it is man himself who is responsible for the
consequences of his deeds. Fate is thus controlled by man
himself.
Like Shakespeare Schiller depicted great personalities who
shape their destiny themselves and thus bear witness to the
freedom and autonomy of man. But while Shakespeare was
occasionally attracted even by the great criminal—a fact to which
German students of Shakespeare have perhaps given too much
prominence—Schiller was guided more by his moral evaluation
of greatness. As a German of the eighteenth century and pupil
of Kant Schiller believed that human greatness reveals itself
in the free decision of men to uphold the moral order, even when
such a decision brings about their own physical ruin.
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M. SCHMIDT-IHMS.