Idealism versus Reality

I wish to begin my inquiry and understanding of what Schiller is trying to say by defining and listing Adam’s Smith ideas on division of labor and its beneficial and undesired effects. It is important to do so as Smith is a predecessor to Schiller and the society/circumstances Schiller is subject to is a product of adherence or implementation of Smith’s philosophy since its propagation.

Adam Smith theorizes that division of labor leads to increased efficiency by saving time, as direct result of specialization of labor at each step in production, this specialization on part of labor needs to increased dexterity and ingenuity on part of the laborers who with their experiential knowledge will improvise production or invents things to save their labor and time. All this will leads to betterment of the society because there will be more good and commodities available for the society as whole, but at the cost of the individuals or the class of workers subject to DOL system of production. According to Smith they will turn in to dull human beings, incapable of analysis and protecting their country. And he proposes the idea of compulsory universal education that will at least lessen this undesired outcome of DOL to some degree.

A necessary sacrifice by the part of the society for the betterment of society as a whole. This separation of part from the whole at a macro level is what is going to form the basis of Schiller’s opposition to Smith’s argument for DOL. Schiller argues that why and for who should this part of the society suffer or accept subjugation for just procuring necessities of sustenance. My question is that if the society as a whole is better as direct result of DOL and its necessary sacrifice on the part of the society, then should the benefits of this betterment be appropriated to the same part, rather than to capital owners (the other part) in terms of profit? By giving the example of the Greeks, Schiller argues that it is possible for a society as a whole to achieve its highest zenith, without alienating an individual or the working class.

What makes Smith’s argument more compelling for the better or worse for the society is that Smith was inevitably simply wording out a phenomena that was taking place, which we discusses in class as DOL being an accident in human story on this planet. Whereas Schiller propagates an ideal goal for society and definition of humanity that he tries to exemplify with the help of the Greek Society. Not having a lot of background in Philosophical history I assume that Matthieu’s comment about slavery in the Ancient Greek society in a way takes away from Schiller’s glorification of the Greeks?

For what I know from reading biographical notes on Schiller, I discovered that Schiller was a poet and writer at heart had troublesome life trying to manage a profession that would pay for his sustenance, which was same as his passion for poetry and the arts. This explains the alienation Schiller felt from the whole and humanity and what shaped his views. It brings into perspective the basic question of classical and modern economic idea of scarcity and tradeoffs. Which states that since resources (even time) are scare, and human desires and wants are unlimited, individuals and the society have to make tradeoffs. Yes it is idealistic and good to have everyone educated to become polymaths and be interested in poetry, arts, and every realm of human interest apart from the their area of specialization. But didn’t the Schiller’s Greeks like the of capitalist’s Adam Smith’s subjugate slaves in to dull and incapacitate them in to just laboring machines that provided goods and services to the Greek Society that gave the citizenry to delve into becoming wholesome individual’s with humanity. Now, I do not know if these slaves were of Greek ethnicity or alien to them. Schiller on the other hand, talks about his own society where parts are fragmented and alienated in to laboring machines to provide similar goods and services as the slaves in Greece. This problem of allocating laboring and suffering to a certain segment of society is recurring theme in history, the slave trade and development of the Americas, the outsourcing of manufacturing and call center jobs to third world countries, today. What keeps changing is the where the responsibility of producing and subjugation is subjected to.

I feel the German Idealism failed to move or inspire its benefactors, that is the cultural-political entity called the West, examples of it are slave trade, and subjugation of third world countries as sweatshops production. At this point in our group discussion we concluded that, well if every individual in the society is very well educated, well read, versed in poetry, and has a capacity to think and analyze, they would not want to do minimum wage jobs. And them who will fill in these jobs that are necessary for the society demands, but no one is willing to perform. And the answer we found was either these jobs would have to raise their wages good enough for these Renaissance men and women or would have to be outsourced to third world countries or passed on to illegal immigrants. This phenomenon is true for the moderm economy as well, we see high levels of unemployment in the richest, and most educated parts of the world yet a soaring illegal working population and heavy reliance on imports for labor intensive goods from third world countries.

We concluded that our education systems and its goals are certainly influenced by Schiller’s Idealism for wholesome education of men and women. But in reality, the phenomenon Smith noticed during his lifetime prevails.