Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (27 January 1775 - 20 August 1854), later (after 1812) von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Johann Gottlieb Fichte, his mentor in his early years, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, his one-time university roommate, early friend, and later rival. +more
Schelling's thought in the main has been neglected, especially in the English-speaking world. An important factor in this was the ascendancy of Hegel, whose mature works portray Schelling as a mere footnote in the development of idealism. +more
Life
Early life
Schelling was born in the town of Leonberg in the Duchy of Württemberg (now Baden-Württemberg), the son of Joseph Friedrich Schelling and Gottliebin Marie. He attended the monastic school at Bebenhausen, near Tübingen, where his father was chaplain and an Orientalist professor. +more
Schelling studied the Church fathers and ancient Greek philosophers. His interest gradually shifted from Lutheran theology to philosophy. +more
In 1797, while tutoring two youths of an aristocratic family, he visited Leipzig as their escort and had a chance to attend lectures at Leipzig University, where he was fascinated by contemporary physical studies including chemistry and biology. He also visited Dresden, where he saw collections of the Elector of Saxony, to which he referred later in his thinking on art. +more
Jena period
After two years tutoring, in October 1798, at the age of 23, Schelling was called to University of Jena as an extraordinary (i. e. +more
In Jena, Schelling was on good terms with Fichte at first, but their different conceptions, about nature in particular, led to increasing divergence. Fichte advised him to focus on transcendental philosophy: specifically, Fichte's own Wissenschaftlehre. +more
Schelling was especially close to August Wilhelm Schlegel and his wife, Caroline. A marriage between Schelling and Caroline's young daughter, Auguste Böhmer, was contemplated by both. +more
In his Jena period, Schelling had a closer relationship with Hegel again. With Schelling's help, Hegel became a private lecturer (Privatdozent) at Jena University. +more
Move to Würzburg and personal conflicts
After Jena, Schelling went to Bamberg for a time, to study Brunonian medicine (the theory of John Brown) with and Andreas Röschlaub. From September 1803 until April 1806 Schelling was professor at the new University of Würzburg. +more
In Würzburg, a conservative Catholic city, Schelling found many enemies among his colleagues and in the government. He moved then to Munich in 1806, where he found a position as a state official, first as associate of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and secretary of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, afterwards as secretary of the Philosophische Klasse (philosophical section) of the Academy of Sciences. +more
Munich period
Without resigning his official position in Munich, he lectured for a short time in Stuttgart (Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen [Stuttgart private lectures], 1810), and seven years at the University of Erlangen (1820-1827). In 1809 Karoline died, just before he published Freiheitsschrift (Freedom Essay) the last book published during his life. +more
During the long stay in Munich (1806-1841) Schelling's literary activity came gradually to a standstill. It is possible that it was the overpowering strength and influence of the Hegelian system that constrained Schelling, for it was only in 1834, after the death of Hegel, that, in a preface to a translation by Hubert Beckers of a work by Victor Cousin, he gave public utterance to the antagonism in which he stood to the Hegelian, and to his own earlier, conception of philosophy. +more
Berlin period
Public attention was powerfully attracted by hints of a new system which promised something more positive, especially in its treatment of religion, than the apparent results of Hegel's teaching. The appearance of critical writings by David Friedrich Strauss, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Bruno Bauer, and the disunion in the Hegelian school itself, expressed a growing alienation from the then dominant philosophy. +more
Works
In 1793 Schelling contributed to Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus's periodical Memorabilien. His 1795 dissertation was De Marcione Paullinarum epistolarum emendatore (On Marcion as emendator of the Pauline letters). +more
Between 1796/97 there was written a seminal manuscript now known as the Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus ("The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism"). It survives in Hegel's handwriting. +more
In 1797, Schelling published the essay Neue Deduction des Naturrechts ("New Deduction of Natural Law"), which anticipated Fichte's treatment of the topic in Grundlage des Naturrechts (Foundations of Natural Law). His studies of physical science bore fruit in Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (Ideas Concerning a Philosophy of Nature, 1797), and the treatise Von der Weltseele (On the World-Soul, 1798). +more
In 1800 Schelling published System des transcendentalen Idealismus (System of Transcendental Idealism). In this book Schelling described transcendental philosophy and nature philosophy as complementary to one another. +more
The "Aphorismen über die Naturphilosophie" ("Aphorisms on Nature Philosophy"), published in the Jahrbücher der Medicin als Wissenschaft (1805-1808), are for the most part extracts from the Würzburg lectures, and the Denkmal der Schrift von den göttlichen Dingen des Herrn Jacobi ("Monument to the Scripture of the Divine Things of Mr. Jacobi") was a response to an attack by Jacobi (the two accused each other of atheism). +more
The 1815 essay Ueber die Gottheiten zu Samothrake ("On the Divinities of Samothrace") was ostensibly a part of a larger work, Weltalter ("The Ages of the World"), frequently announced as ready for publication, but of which little was ever written. Schelling planned Weltalter as a book in three parts, describing the past, present, and future of the world; however, he began only the first part, rewriting it several times and at last keeping it unpublished. +more
No authentic information on Schelling's new positive philosophy (positive Philosophie) was available until after his death at Bad Ragatz, on 20 August 1854. His sons then issued four volumes of his Berlin lectures: vol. +more
Important
Periodization
Schelling, at all stages of his thought, called to his aid outward forms of some other system. Fichte, Spinoza, Jakob Boehme and the mystics, and finally, major Greek thinkers with their Neoplatonic, Gnostic, and Scholastic commentators, give colouring to particular works. +more
Naturphilosophie
The function of Schelling's Naturphilosophie is to exhibit the ideal as springing from the real. The change which experience brings before us leads to the conception of duality, the polar opposition through which nature expresses itself. +more
Reputation and influence
Some scholars characterize Schelling as a protean thinker who, although brilliant, jumped from one subject to another and lacked the synthesizing power needed to arrive at a complete philosophical system. Others challenge the notion that Schelling's thought is marked by profound breaks, instead arguing that his philosophy always focused on a few common themes, especially human freedom, the absolute, and the relationship between spirit and nature. +more
Schelling is still studied, although his reputation has varied over time. His work impressed the English romantic poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who introduced his ideas into English-speaking culture, sometimes without full acknowledgment, as in the Biographia Literaria. +more
Up to 1950, Schelling was almost a forgotten philosopher even in Germany. In the 1910s and 1920s, philosophers of neo-Kantianism and neo-Hegelianism, like Wilhelm Windelband or Richard Kroner, tended to describe Schelling as an episode connecting Fichte and Hegel. +more
In the 1950s, the situation began to change. In 1954, the centennial of his death, an international conference on Schelling was held. +more
In 1955 Jaspers published Schelling, representing him as a forerunner of the existentialists and Walter Schulz, one of organizers of the 1954 conference, published "Die Vollendung des Deutschen Idealismus in der Spätphilosophie Schellings" ("The Perfection of German Idealism in Schelling's Late Philosophy") claiming that Schelling had made German idealism complete with his late philosophy, particularly with his Berlin lectures in the 1840s. Schulz presented Schelling as the person who resolved the philosophical problems which Hegel had left incomplete, in contrast to the contemporary idea that Schelling had been surpassed by Hegel much earlier. +more
In the 1970s nature was again of interest to philosophers in relation to environmental issues. Schelling's philosophy of nature, particularly his intention to construct a program which covers both nature and the intellectual life in a single system and method, and restore nature as a central theme of philosophy, has been reevaluated in the contemporary context. +more
In relation to psychology, Schelling was considered to have coined the term "unconsciousness". Slavoj Žižek has written two books attempting to integrate Schelling's philosophy, mainly his middle period works including Weltalter, with work of Jacques Lacan. +more
Quotations
"Nature is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature. " ["Natur ist hiernach der sichtbare Geist, Geist die unsichtbare Natur"] (Ideen, "Introduction") *"History as a whole is a progressive, gradually self-disclosing revelation of the Absolute. +more
Bibliography
Selected works are listed below. * Ueber Mythen, historische Sagen und Philosopheme der ältesten Welt (On Myths, Historical Legends and Philosophical Themes of Earliest Antiquity, 1793) # Ueber die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie überhaupt (On the Possibility of an Absolute Form of Philosophy, 1794), # Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie oder über das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen (Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy or on the Unconditional in Human Knowledge, 1795), and # Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kriticismus (Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism, 1795). +more
Collected works in German
AA | Historisch-kritische Schelling-Ausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Edited by Hans Michael Baumgartner, Wilhelm G. +more |
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SW | Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke. Edited by K. F. A. Schelling. 1st division (Abteilung): 10 vols. (= I-X); 2nd division: 4 vols. (= XI-XIV), Stuttgart/Augsburg 1856-1861. The original edition in new arrangement edited by M. Schröter, 6 main volumes (Hauptbände), 6 supplementary volumes (Ergänzungsbände), Munich, 1927 ff. , 2nd edition 1958 ff. |
Notes
Further reading
Ffytche, Matt. The foundation of the unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the birth of the modern psyche (Cambridge University Press, 2011). +more
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