You ask me why, even though the people, following their nature, elevate
themselves above necessity and thus exist in a more manifold and intimate
relation with their world [than do other animals], even though, to the extent
that they elevate themselves above physical and moral needs, they always live
a–in human terms–higher life, so that between them and their world there
be a higher [and] more than mechanicalinterrelation, a higher destiny, even
though this higher relation be truly the most sacred for them because within
it they themselves feel united with their world and everything which they are
[and] possess, you ask me why exactly theyrepresentthe relation between them
and their world, why they have to form an idea or image of their destiny
which, strictly speaking, can neither be properly thought nor does it lie before
our senses?
You ask me, and I can answer you only so much: that man also elevates
himself above need in that he canrememberhis destiny, in that he can and may
be grateful for his life, that he also senses more continuously his sustained
relation with the element in which he moves, that by elevating himself above
necessity in his efficiency and the experience connected to it, he experiences a
more infinite [and] continuous satisfaction than is the satisfaction of basic
needs, provided that, on the one hand, his activity is of the right kind, is
not too far-reaching for him, for his strength and skill, that he is not too
restless, too restricted, too controlled. However, if man approaches it in the
right way, then there exists, in every sphere that is proper to him, a more than
necessity-based, infinite satisfaction.^4Whatever may be the causes and cures (in infinite satisfaction, beyond the
satisfaction of biological needs) of human self-consciousness and desire, the
fact remains that social life is marked and altered by the pursuit of recogni-
tion and of infinite satisfaction, set up by the agencies of self-consciousness
and desire in us.
Art and modernity: Schiller and others
Once upon a time it may have been possible to achieve recognition and
infinite satisfaction to a significant extent in acting so as to rebind everyone
to common ways of social life. This kind of rebinding is a central function of
epics such as the poems of Homer, primeval biblical history, or the Icelandic
(^4) Hölderlin,“On Religion,”inEssays and Letters on Theory, ed. Pfau, p. 90.
Art and society: some contemporary practices of art 255