corruption of the Roman church. With the support of
French king Charles VIII, he established a theocratic
REPUBLICin Florence, instituting strict moral codes and
virtuous government. His “Rule and Government of
the City of Florence” detailed an ideal CHRISTIANpolity,
similar to Geneva under John CALVIN. Applying reli-
gious standards to all manner of private and public
conduct, his resembled the PURITANpolitical system of
Oliver CROMWELLand New England. Causing wide-
spread resentment among the worldly and sophisti-
cated citizens of Florence, he was excommunicated by
Pope Alexander VI. Refusing to recant, Savonarola
called for the church council to diminish the authority
of the papacy. He was imprisoned, tortured, and exe-
cuted by hanging.
Savonarola’s main writings (such as “The Triumph
of the Cross”) reflect traditional Catholic doctrine
influenced by St. Thomas AQUINAS. With St. Francis of
Assisi, he is recognized as a Christian reformer
attempting to purge the church and the HOLY ROMAN
EMPIREof luxury, immorality, and corruption, thereby
preventing the breach of the Protestant REFORMATION.
Schaeffer, Francis August (1912–1984) U.S.
political and social critic
In his famous book, The Rise and Decline of Western
Thought and Culture (1976), Schaeffer detailed the
moral and political decline in Europe and the United
States during MODERN times. From an EVANGELICAL
CHRISTIANperspective, he saw the rise of ENLIGHTEN-
MENTrelativism, HUMANISM, and INDIVIDUALISMas con-
tributing to the social evils of the 20th century. This
began, for Schaeffer, with the philosophy of G. W. F.
HEGEL, which replaces Western notions of moral
absolutes with DIALECTICAL relativity in ETHICS. This
quickly led to the EXISTENTIALISM, ALIENATION, and
moral decline of the West. A depreciation of the truths
of the Bible, reason, and God’s plan for humanity leads
to escapist and immoral lifestyles (drug use, pornogra-
phy, ABORTION, HOMOSEXUALITY). This social evil spread
from Europe (especially Germany) to Great Britain to
the United States. It often takes the form of alternative
religions and the occult.
Thus, for Schaeffer, social, economic, and political
problems cannot be separated from religious and spiri-
tual matters. He advised a return to the strict CHRISTIAN
doctrine of St. AUGUSTINEand John CALVIN, an Evangeli-
cal faith based on the inerrancy of the Bible, and a
CHURCH-AND-STATEposition of publicly resisting con-
temporary social ills. Without a moral revival like the
GREAT AWAKENING, the Western world will decline into
chaos and AUTHORITARIANgovernment, he believed.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Schaeffer stud-
ied at a PRESBYTERIANschool (Westminster Theological
Seminary) and was ordained a minister. In 1948, he
moved to Switzerland and established an international
conference center (“L’Abri”) where visitors studied
religion and Modern culture. This retreat center
became world famous and, with Schaeffer’s writings,
greatly affected contemporary discussion of politics
and society.Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von
(1759–1805) Poet, dramatist, and philosopher
Schiller’s contribution to POLITICAL THEORYis closely
connected to, and arises from, his theories on the
nature of art, the understanding of beauty, and the aes-
thetic response.
Schiller’s aesthetics is largely a critical response to
KANT. Where Kant attempted to define beauty through
a rationalist argument whereby agents adopt a disin-
terested stance toward the object that could then ap-
pear in its pure form, Schiller argues that the freedom
that constitutes beauty is displayed and is present in
the object itself. This was an attempt to discover an
objective definition of beauty. An object that has
“overcome” its purpose displays its freedom and thus
its beauty.
The question of FREEDOMand its ethical and politi-
cal consequences occupied an important part of
Schiller’s philosophy. He saw no fundamental division
between freedom in its aesthetic sense as beauty and
freedom in the ethical and political spheres. Schiller
discusses political and ethical questions and their con-
nection to aesthetics in Letters on the Aesthetic Educa-
tion of Man published in 1795. Schiller’s ideas are
clearly a response to the political upheavals occasioned
by the French Revolution. He rejects Kant’s dualistic
account of people as comprised of both reason and
inclination in an antagonistic relation with each other.
He thus rejects Kant’s view that moral duty requires
agents to disregard their inclination and attend only to
their reason. Schiller argued for the intergradations of
both inclination and reason into a balanced whole.
Furthermore, Schiller identified a third impulse
beyond reason and duty, one that he called the aes-Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von 271