Kant's and Schiller's different understandings of the human person

Freedom is an eternal theme of thought in modern Europe. In philosophers, freedom is embodied in the freedom of reason, and in poets, freedom is embodied in the freedom of human nature. Unlike the philosopher Kant, who defined a person as the subject of practical reason and took the realisation of the supreme good—that is, the freedom of the moral person—as the goal of his thought, the poet Schiller understands the person as a “beautiful personality” harmonising sensibility and rationality, and the fulfilment of human nature as the ultimate goal of his thought. Here, the motive of Schiller's thought is embodied in an ideal, which is manifested in the pursuit of human nature to reach infinity—that is, sanctity. At the same time, in ideal art, what emerges from the unity of body and spirit, sensibility and reason, is the personality as an idea in itself, with its own stipulation of beauty.