Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775– 1854), German philosopher whose metamorphoses encompass the entire history of German idealism. A Schwabian, Schelling first studied at Tübingen, where he befriended Hölderlin and Hegel. The young Schelling was an enthusiastic exponent of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre and devoted several early essays to its exposition. After studying science and mathematics at Leipzig, he joined Fichte at Jena in 1798. Meanwhile, in such writings as Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kritizismus (‘Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism,’ 1795), Schelling betrayed growing doubts concerning Fichte’s philosophy (above all, its treatment of nature) and a lively interest in Spinoza. He then turned to constructing a systematic Naturphilosophie (philosophy of nature) within the context of which nature would be treated more holistically than by either Newtonian science or transcendental idealism. Of his many publications on this topic, two of the more important are Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (‘Ideas concerning a Philosophy of Nature,’ 1797) and Von der Weltseele (‘On the World-Soul,’ 1798).
Whereas transcendental idealism attempts to derive objective experience from an initial act of free self-positing, Schelling’s philosophy of nature attempts to derive consciousness from objects. Beginning with ‘pure objectivity,’ the Naturphilosophie purports to show how nature undergoes a process of unconscious self-development, culminating in the conditions for its own self-representation. The method of Naturphilosophie is fundamentally a priori: it begins with the concept of the unity of nature and accounts for its diversity by interpreting nature as a system of opposed forces or ‘polarities,’ which manifest themselves in ever more complex levels of organization (Potenzen).
At Jena, Schelling came into contact with Tieck, Novalis, and the Schlegel brothers and became interested in art. This new interest is evident in his System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800), which describes the path from pure subjectivity (self-consciousness) to objectivity (the necessary positing of the Not-I, or of nature). The most innovative and influential portion of this treatise, which is otherwise closely modeled on Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, is its conclusion, which presents art as the concrete accomplishment of the philosophical task. In aesthetic experience the identity between the subjective and the objective, the ideal and the real, becomes an object to the experiencing I itself.
For Schelling, transcendental idealism and Naturphilosophie are two complementary sides or subdivisions of a larger, more encompassing system, which he dubbed the System of Identity or Absolute Idealism and expounded in a series of publications, including the Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie (‘Presentation of My System of Philosophy,’ 1801), Bruno (1802), and Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums (‘Lectures on the Method of Academic Study,’ 1803). The most distinctive feature of this system is that it begins with a bald assertion of the unity of thought and being, i.e., with the bare idea of the self-identical ‘Absolute,’ which is described as the first presupposition of all knowledge. Since the identity with which this system commences transcends every conceivable difference, it is also described as the ‘point of indifference.’ From this undifferentiated or ‘indifferent’ starting point, Schelling proceeds to a description of reality as a whole, considered as a differentiated system within which unity is maintained by various synthetic relationships, such as substance and attribute, cause and effect, attraction and repulsion. Like his philosophy of nature, Schelling’s System of Identity utilizes the notion of various hierarchically related Potenzen as its basic organizing principle. The obvious question concerns the precise relationship between the ‘indifferent’ Absolute and the real system of differentiated elements, a question that may be said to have set the agenda for Schelling’s subsequent philosophizing. From 1803 to 1841 Schelling was in Bavaria, where he continued to expound his System of Identity and to explore the philosophies of art and nature. The most distinctive feature of his thought during this period, however, was a new interest in religion and in the theosophical writings of Boehme, whose influence is prominent in the Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (‘Philosophical Investigations concerning the Nature of Human Freedom,’ 1809), a work often interpreted as anticipating existentialism. He also worked on a speculative interpretation of human history, Die Weltalter, which remained unpublished, and lectured regularly on the history of philosophy. In 1841 Schelling moved to Berlin, where he lectured on his new philosophy of revelation and mythology, which he now characterized as ‘positive philosophy,’ in contradistinction to the purely ‘negative’ philosophy of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. Some scholars have interpreted these posthumously published lectures as representing the culmination both of Schelling’s own protracted philosophical development and of German idealism as a whole. See also FICHTE, HEGEL, KANT. D.Br.