Early modern Europe · 1775–1854
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
German idealist philosopher of nature, art and freedom
Nature and mind are two expressions of one absolute: nature is visible spirit, spirit invisible nature. Early on he saw art as the place where this unity shows itself; later he turned to freedom, evil and the limits of reason.
Life and thought
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling studied theology at the Tübingen seminary, where he shared rooms with Hegel and the poet Hölderlin. A prodigy, he became a professor at Jena at twenty-three, close to the Romantic circle there. His early systems made him famous; later, as Hegel eclipsed him, he published little for decades, until in 1841 the Prussian king called him to Berlin to counter Hegel’s legacy. Kierkegaard, Engels and Bakunin were among his listeners.
Against Fichte, Schelling held that nature is not just raw material for the self’s striving: it is itself alive and productive, “visible spirit”, while mind is nature become aware of itself. Both spring from an absolute in which subject and object are one. In the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), art is where this unity shows itself, since a work of genius is at once free and necessary. His later essay on human freedom (1809) asked how evil is possible in a world grounded in God, and his late philosophy insisted that existence cannot be derived from concepts — a theme the existentialists took up.