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This chapter examines the qualifications of Johann Hermann von Reidesel as a pupil for Winckelmann and the type of training he underwent. It attempts to determine whether Riedesel's published work and other statements on art indicate the complete realization of Winckelmann's plans for an aesthetic education. It also examines the five main sources of information on Riedesel's approach to art: Briefe, Sendschreiben eines Liebhabers, Sizilien, Levante, and the Scottish letters.

This introductory chapter begins by explaining the rationale behind the author's comparison of Nietzsche's and Schiller's aesthetics. It then sets out the two main arguments of the study. The first is that Nietzsche's early writings owe more to Schiller than either Nietzsche or any commentator since has wished to admit. The second is that there are tangible parallels between the form and content of Die Geburt ter Tragödie and Ästhetische Briefe. In other words, it is argued that there are hitherto overlooked connections between the thought of the two writers, who are usually regarded as chalk and cheese. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

The success of the untimely aesthetic reform programmes outlined in the Ä Briefe and Die Geburt ter Trag Tragödie depends on three interconnected factors: the historical conceptions which underlie the texts, the nature of the aesthetic models they invoke, and the validity of the metaphysical and psychological claims which underpin their aesthetic theories. This chapter addresses the first of these, namely, the conceptions of historical development on which the arguments of the two texts are founded.

The detail of Schiller's and Nietzsche's respective interrogations and interpretations of the Greek past and its legacy is very different. Their underlying motives were, however, strikingly similar. The aim of Ästhetische Briefe was twofold. First, it was to demonstrate that the aesthetic experience was the defining mode of human existence, the harmonizing, catalytic moment between the physical and the moral, where the individual begins the process of restoring his wholeness. Secondly, it was to put his theory to work as a means of tackling and conquering the human problems laid bare by the French Revolution. Nietzsche's purpose in Die Geburt ter Tragödie was to turn to world upside down, to return mankind (or at least Ger-mankind) to the healthy pessimistic worldview he detected in early ancient Greek culture, which was diametrically opposed to what he saw as the arrogant and utterly misplaced 19th-century desire not merely to explain human existence but also to change it for the better. This chapter seeks to answer why Nietzsche and Schiller should have looked to the ancient Greeks. What led them to think that the Greeks, or what they stood for, could have anything to do with the state of contemporary German culture? With reference principally to Die Geburt ter Tragödie and Ästhetische Briefe, the chapter attempts to define and compare Nietzsche's and Schiller's interpretations of the Greek past.