Regarding the connotation of aesthetic education, Schiller defined it as "freedom". Schiller's "freedom" is an aesthetic freedom that transcends reality, inevitability and rationality. It is also the freedom of aesthetic imagination, the pursuit of free form by imagination, thus jumping into the game of aesthetic freedom. Of course, Schiller's freedom is, in the final analysis, the freedom of human liberation, which is to overcome the division of human nature and move towards the integrity of human nature through aesthetics. It can be seen that this concept of freedom is not limited to the spiritual field, but focuses on real life and pursues a kind of life freedom with complete human nature and political liberation. Therefore, it is a way of life aesthetics, which opens the whole modern aesthetics to the direction of life aesthetics.

The special function of aesthetic education is that it becomes the intermediary between the realms of sensibility and rationality, nature and humanity, knowledge and morality, and sensibility and rationality. This makes aesthetic education the only way to grow from a natural person to a rational person. This is Schiller's "intermediary theory" on the role of aesthetic education, which has become the core link of the whole aesthetic education and constitutes the whole aesthetic mystery.

Aesthetic education depends on the art of beauty. First of all, he discussed the ideal way of aesthetic education from the horizontal angle of art type. That is, from beauty to sublime, to the nobleness of human nature. From a vertical perspective, Schiller outlined the historical process of aesthetic education, that is, from ancient poetry to modern sentimental poetry, and finally to the ideal poetic form of combining the two.