 At this point, however, Schiller admits a problem: historically speaking, art has often had a corrupting effect. Perhaps we should resist being “delivered up to her enervating influence” (NA XX, 340/E 114). Before we draw this conclusion and abandon art as a solution to the modern world’s ills, however, we must assess what definition of art we are using to evaluate its failures. But against what are we to assess historical definitions of art? Such an inquiry would seem to presuppose a concept of beauty; if that concept itself comes from historical examples, the question of how to evaluate art objectively remains unresolved. An adequate analysis of art’s potential, then, would seem to require an ahistorical definition of beauty. Again channeling Kant’s transcendental method, Schiller then suggests that “perhaps experience is not the judgment seat before which such an issue can be decided” (NA XX, 340/E 114). Instead, any definition of beauty would “have to be deduced from the sheer potentialities of our sensuo-rational nature” (NA XX, 340/E 115); the pursuit of beauty requires a “pure concept of human nature as such”. Since this concept in turn cannot be derived from experience, we must follow “the transcendental way” to truth (NA XX, 341/E 115).