Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling was an influential German philosopher during the Age of German Idealism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Born in 1775, in Wurttemberg, Germany, Schelling was the son of a clergyman. He studied philosophy and theology at Tübingen in 1795 and then went on to Berlin in 1798.
In Berlin, Schelling became part of a group which included Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, both of whom were seeking to rethink the foundations of philosophy. Schelling was heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried Herder and his early works focused mainly on issues of philosophical anthropology. By 1800, Schelling had developed his own system, often referred to as ‘transcendental idealism’, which saw the individual as connected to a larger philosophical framework, the Absolute.
Schelling’s early and mid-career works shaped and developed German idealism. He published Philosophy and Religion (1800–01) which demonstrated the impossibility of intuition without a subjective element to knowledge, as well as Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797). He also wrote and gave lectures about the mutual interdependence of the physical, mental and moral realms and their common root in the Absolute, earning him such labels as the ‘God Builder’ and the ‘ Theorist of Nature’.
Schelling’s later works delved into more philosophical and metaphysical topics, such as in Die Weltalter (The Ages of the World, 1815). He argued that the world is an aspect of the Absolute, resembling notions of pantheism. He further developed other aspects of his system such as the identity of opposites theory and the notion of the creative self-sufficiency of nature.
In 1827, Schelling was appointed as professor at the University of Berlin and in 1841 he became the rector of the University of Erlangen. Later in his career he wrote and lectured on the philosophy of history, the philosophy of paganism, aesthetics, religion and mythology. He was an advocate of absolute idealism and rejected materialism, determinism, and positivism.
Schelling saw the world as being composed of various aspects, which he identified as Nature, Life, Activity and Form. He argued that all of these aspects, as well as their apparent opposites, such as mind and body, and unconscious and conscious, are interdependent and part of a greater unity.
He believed that the entire universe is ultimately one complete and unified thing, which can only be understood from the standpoint of philosophy. Schelling’s ideas on philosophy, his system of absolute idealism, and his concept of the interrelatedness of all aspects of the world, have provided a cornerstone for many modern philosophical inquiries.
His works were influential throughout the 19th and early-20th century, particularly with German Romantics and Existentialists. His most important works include System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), On the World Soul (1804-06), Ages of the World (1815), Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy (1842) and Freedom (1809). Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling died in 1854 in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland.
