Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

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Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Schelling by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1835

27 January 1775
Born
Leonberg, Wrttemberg, Holy Roman
Empire
20 August 1854 (aged 79)
Died
Bad Ragaz, Switzerland
Tbinger Stift, University of Tbingen
(17901795; MA 1792; PhD, 1795)
Alma mater
Leipzig University
(1797; no degree)
Era
Region

19th-century philosophy
Western Philosophy
German idealism
Post-Kantian transcendental idealism[1]
Objective idealism (after 1800)[2]
School
Jena Romanticism
Romanticism in science
Naturphilosophie
University of Jena
University of Wrzburg
Institutions University of Erlangen
University of Munich
University of Berlin

Naturphilosophie, natural science,

aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology,
philosophy of religion
System of Naturphilosophie,
Identittsphilosophie (philosophy of
identity), positive Philosophie (positive
Notable philosophy), art as "the eternal organ
and document of philosophy" whose
ideas
basic character is an "unconscious
infinity,"[3] coining the term "absolute
idealism"[4]
Influences[show]
Influenced[show]
Main
interests

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (German: [l]; 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 former
university roommate, early friend, and later rival. Interpreting Schelling's philosophy is regarded
as difficult because of its apparently ever-changing nature.
Schelling's thought in the large has been neglected, especially in the English-speaking world, as
has been his later work on mythology and revelation, much of which remains untranslated. An
important factor was the ascendancy of Hegel, whose mature works portray Schelling as a mere
footnote in the development of idealism. Schelling's Naturphilosophie also has been attacked by
scientists for its analogizing tendency and lack of empirical orientation.[7] However, some later
philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Slavoj iek have shown interest in re-examining
Schelling's body of work.

Contents

1 Life
o 1.1 Early life
o 1.2 Jena period
o 1.3 Move to Wrzburg and personal conflicts
o 1.4 Munich period
o 1.5 Berlin period

2 Works

3 Periodization
o 3.1 Naturphilosophie

4 Reputation and influence

5 Quotations

6 Bibliography

7 See also

8 Notes

9 References

10 Further reading

11 External links

Life
Early life
Schelling was born in the town of Leonberg in the Duchy of Wrttemberg (now BadenWrttemberg), the son of Joseph Friedrich Schelling and his wife Gottliebin Marie.[8] He
attended the monastic school at Bebenhausen, near Tbingen, where his father was chaplain and
an Orientalist professor.[9] From 1783 to 1784 Schelling attended a Latin school in Nrtingen and
knew Friedrich Hlderlin, who was five years his senior. On 18 October 1790,[10] at the age of 15,
he then was granted permission to enroll at the Tbinger Stift (seminary of the EvangelicalLutheran Church in Wrttemberg), despite not having yet reached the normal enrollment age of
20. At the Stift, he shared a room with Hegel as well as Hlderlin, and the three became good
friends.
Schelling studied the Church fathers and ancient Greek philosophers. His interest gradually
shifted from Lutheran theology to philosophy. In 1792 he graduated with his master's thesis,
titled Antiquissimi de prima malorum humanorum origine philosophematis Genes. III.
explicandi tentamen criticum et philosophicum,[11][12] and in 1795 he finished his doctoral thesis,
titled De Marcione Paulinarum epistolarum emendatore (On Marcion as emendator of the
Pauline letters) under Gottlob Christian Storr. Meanwhile, he had begun to study Kant and
Fichte, who greatly influenced him.[9]
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. At this time he also visited Dresden, where he
saw collections of the Elector of Saxony, to which he referred later in his thinking on art. On a
personal level, this Dresden visit of six weeks from August 1797 saw Schelling meet the brothers
August Wilhelm Schlegel and Karl Friedrich Schlegel and his future wife Caroline (then married
to August Wilhelm), and Novalis.[13]

Jena period
After two years tutoring, in October 1798, at the age of only 23, Schelling was called to
University of Jena as an extraordinary (i.e., unpaid) professor of philosophy. His time at Jena
(17981803) put Schelling at the center of the intellectual ferment of Romanticism. He was on
close terms with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who appreciated the poetic quality of the
Naturphilosophie, reading Von der Weltseele. As the prime minister of the Duchy of SaxeWeimar, Goethe invited Schelling to Jena. On the other hand, Schelling was unsympathetic to the
ethical idealism that animated the work of Friedrich Schiller, the other pillar of Weimar
Classicism. Later, in Schelling's Vorlesung ber die Philosophie der Kunst (Lecture on the
Philosophy of Art, 1802/03), Schiller's theory on the sublime was closely reviewed.
In Jena, Schelling was on good terms with Fichte at first, but their different conceptions, about
nature in particular, led to increasing divergence in their thought. Fichte advised him to focus on
philosophy in its original meaning, that is, transcendental philosophy: specifically, Fichte's own
Wissenschaftlehre. But Schelling, who was becoming the acknowledged leader of the Romantic
school, had begun to reject Fichte's thought as cold and abstract.
Schelling was especially close to August Wilhelm Schlegel and his wife, Caroline. A marriage
between Schelling and Caroline's young daughter, Auguste Bhmer, was contemplated by both.
Auguste died of dysentery in 1800, prompting many to blame Schelling, who had overseen her
treatment. Robert Richards, however, argues in his book The Romantic Conception of Life that
Schelling's interventions were not only appropriate but most likely irrelevant, as the doctors
called to the scene assured everyone involved that Auguste's disease was inevitably fatal.[14]
Auguste's death drew Schelling and Caroline closer. Schlegel had moved to Berlin, and a divorce
was arranged (with Goethe's help). Schelling's time at Jena came to an end, and on 2 June 1803
he and Caroline were married away from Jena. Their marriage ceremony was the last occasion
Schelling met his school friend Hlderlin, who was already mentally ill at that time.
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. Hegel wrote a book titled
Differenz des Fichte'schen und Schelling'schen Systems der Philosophie (Difference between
Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy, 1801), and supported Schelling's position against
his idealistic predecessors, Fichte and Karl Leonhard Reinhold. Beginning in January 1802,
Hegel and Schelling published the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie (Critical Journal of
Philosophy) as co-editors, publishing papers on the philosophy of nature, but Schelling was too
busy to stay involved with the editing and the magazine was mainly Hegel's publication,
espousing a thought different from Schelling's. The magazine ceased publication in the spring of
1803 when Schelling moved from Jena to Wrzburg.

Move to Wrzburg and personal conflicts

After Jena, Schelling went to Bamberg for a time, to study Brunonian medicine (the theory of
John Brown) with Adalbert Friedrich Marcus and Andreas Rschlaub.[15] From September 1803
until April 1806 Schelling was professor at the new University of Wrzburg. This period was
marked by considerable flux in his views and by a final breach with Fichte and Hegel.
In Wrzburg, a conservative Catholic city, Schelling had many enemies among his colleagues
and in the government. He moved 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. 1806 was also the year Schelling published
a book in which he criticized Fichte openly by name. In 1807 Schelling received the manuscript
of Hegel's Phaenomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of the Spirit or Mind), which Hegel
had sent to him, asking Schelling to write the foreword. Surprised to find remarks directed at his
own philosophical theory, Schelling eventually wrote back, asking Hegel to clarify whether he
had intended to mock Schelling's followers who lacked a true understanding of his thought, or
Schelling himself. Hegel never replied. In the same year, Schelling gave a speech about the
relation between the visual arts and nature at the Academy of Fine Arts; and Hegel wrote a
severe criticism of it to one of his friends. After that, they criticized each other in lecture rooms
and in books publicly until the end of their lives.

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 (18201827). In 1809 Karoline died, just before he published
Freiheitschrift (Freedom Essay) the last book published during his life. Three years later,
introduced by Goethe, Schelling married one of her closest friends, Pauline Gotter, in whom he
found a faithful companion.
During the long stay at Munich (18061841) 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. The antagonism certainly was not then a new fact; the Erlangen lectures on the
history of philosophy of 1822 express the same in a pointed fashion, and Schelling had already
begun the treatment of mythology and religion which in his view constituted the true positive
complements to the negative of logical or speculative philosophy.

Berlin period
Public attention was powerfully attracted by these vague 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, Feuerbach, and

Bruno Bauer, and the evident disunion in the Hegelian school itself, express a growing alienation
from the then dominant philosophy. In Berlin, the headquarters of the Hegelians, this found
expression in attempts to obtain officially from Schelling a treatment of the new system which he
was understood to have in reserve. The realization of the desire did not come about till 1841,
when the appointment of Schelling as Prussian privy councillor and member of the Berlin
Academy, gave him the right, a right he was requested to exercise, to deliver lectures in the
university. Among those in attendance at his lectures were Sren Kierkegaard (who said
Schelling talked "quite insufferable nonsense" and complained that he did not end his lectures on
time),[16] Mikhail Bakunin (who called them "interesting but rather insignificant"), Jacob
Burckhardt, Alexander von Humboldt[17][18] (who never accepted Schelling's natural philosophy),
[19]
and Friedrich Engels (who, as a partisan of Hegel, attended to "shield the great man's grave
from abuse").[20] The opening lecture of his course was listened to by a large and appreciative
audience. The enmity of his old foe, H. E. G. Paulus, sharpened by Schelling's apparent success,
led to the surreptitious publication of a verbatim report of the lectures on the philosophy of
revelation, and, as Schelling did not succeed in obtaining legal condemnation and suppression of
this piracy, he in 1845 ceased the delivery of any public courses.

Works
In 1793 Schelling contributed to Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus's Memorabilien. His 1795
dissertation was De Marcione Paullinarum epistolarum emendatore (On Marcion as emendator
of the Pauline letters). In 1794, Schelling published an exposition of Fichte's thought entitled
Ueber die Mglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie berhaupt (On the Possibility of a Form of
Philosophy in General).[9] This work was acknowledged by Fichte himself and immediately
earned Schelling a reputation among philosophers. His more elaborate work, Vom Ich als Prinzip
der Philosophie, oder ber das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen (On Self as Principle of
Philosophy, or on the Unrestricted in Human Knowledge, 1795), while still remaining within the
limits of the Fichtean idealism, showed a tendency to give the Fichtean method a more objective
application, and to amalgamate Spinoza's views with it. He contributed articles and reviews to
the Philosophisches Journal of Fichte and Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer, and threw himself
into the study of physical and medical science. In 1795 Schelling published Philosophische
Briefe ber Dogmatismus und Kritizismus (Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism),
consisting of 10 letters addressed to an unknown interlocutor that presented both a defense and
critique of the Kantian system.
In the period 1796/97 there was written the seminal manuscript now known as the "lteste
Systemprogramm des Deutschen Idealismus" ("Oldest System-programme of German
Idealism"). It survives in Hegel's handwriting. On its first publication (1916) by Franz
Rosenzweig, it was attributed to Schelling. It has also been claimed for Hegel and Hlderlin.[21]
[22]

In 1797 Schelling published the essay "Neue Deduction des Naturrechts" (New Deduction of
Natural Law), which anticipated Fichte's treatment of the topic in the Grundlage des Naturrechts
(Foundations of Natural Law). His studies of physical science bore fruit in the Ideen zu einer
Philosophie der Natur (Ideas Concerning a Philosophy of Nature, 1797), and the treatise Von der
Weltseele (On the World-Soul, 1798). In Ideen Schelling referred to Leibniz and quoted from his

Monadology. He held Leibniz in high regard because of his view of nature during his natural
philosophy period.
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. Fichte reacted by stating that Schelling was working on the basis
of a false philosophical principle: in Fichte's theory nature as Not-Self (Nicht-Ich = object)
couldn't be a subject of philosophy, whose essential content is the subjective activity of the
human intellect. The breach became unrecoverable in 1800, after Schelling published
"Darstellung des Systems meiner Philosophie" ("Description of the system of my philosophy").
Fichte thought this title absurd, since in his opinion philosophy could not be personalized.
Moreover, in this book Schelling publicly expressed his estimation of Spinoza, whose work
Fichte had repudiated as dogmatism, and declared that nature and spirit differ only in their
quantity, but are essentially identical (Identitt). According to Schelling, the absolute was the
indifference or identity, which he considered to be an essential subject of philosophy.
The "Aphorisms on Naturphilosophie" published in the Jahrbcher der Medicin als
Wissenschaft (18061808) are for the most part extracts from the Wrzburg lectures, and the
Denkmal der Schrift von den gttlichen Dingen des Herrn Jacobi was a response to an attack by
Jacobi (the two accused each other of atheism[23]). A work of significance is the 1809
Philosophische Untersuchungen ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit
zusammenhngenden Gegenstnde (Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human
Freedom), which carries out, with increasing tendency to mysticism, the thoughts of the previous
work, Philosophie und Religion (Philosophy and Religion, 1804). However, in a change from the
Jena period works, now evil is not an appearance coming from the quantitative differences
between the real and the ideal, but something substantial. This work clearly paraphrased Kant's
distinction between intelligible and empirical character. Otherwise, Schelling himself called
freedom "a capacity for good and evil".
The tract "Ueber die Gottheiten zu Samothrake" ("On the Divinities of Samothrace") appeared in
1815, ostensibly a portion of a greater 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. The
other two parts were left only in planning. Christopher John Murray describes the work as
follows:
Building on the premise that philosophy cannot ultimately explain existence, he merges the
earlier philosophies of Nature and identity with his newfound belief in a fundamental conflict
between a dark unconscious principle and a conscious principle in God. God makes the universe
intelligible by relating to the ground of the real but, insofar as nature is not complete intelligence,
the real exists as a lack within the ideal and not as reflective of the ideal itself. The three
universal ages distinct only to us but not in the eternal God therefore comprise a beginning
where the principle of God before God is divine will striving for being, the present age, which is
still part of this growth and hence a mediated fulfillment, and a finality where God is consciously
and consummately Himself to Himself.[24]

No authentic information on the new positive philosophy (positive Philosophie) of Schelling was
available till after his death (at Bad Ragatz, on 20 August 1854). His sons then began the issue of
his collected writings with the four volumes of Berlin lectures: vol. i. Introduction to the
Philosophy of Mythology (1856); ii. Philosophy of Mythology (1857); iii. and iv. Philosophy of
Revelation (1858).

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. In
Schelling's own view, his philosophy fell into three stages. These were:
1. the transition from Fichte's method to the more objective conception of nature i.e. the
advance to Naturphilosophie
2. the definite formulation of that which implicitly, as Schelling claims, was involved in the
idea of Naturphilosophie, that is, the thought of the identical, indifferent, absolute
substratum of both nature and spirit, the advance to Identittsphilosophie
3. the opposition of negative and positive philosophy, an opposition which is the theme of
his Berlin lectures, though its germs may be traced back to 1804.

Naturphilosophie
Main article: 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. The dynamical series of stages in nature are
matter, as the equilibrium of the fundamental expansive and contractive forces; light, with its
subordinate processes (magnetism, electricity, and chemical action); organism, with its
component phases of reproduction, irritability and sensibility.[9]

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. Unlike Hegel,
Schelling did not believe that the absolute could be known in its true character through rational
inquiry alone.

Schelling's thought 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. Coleridge's critical work was itself influential, and it was he who
introduced into English literature Schelling's concept of the unconscious. Schelling's System of
Transcendental Idealism has been seen as a precursor of Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of
Dreams (1899).[25]
By the 1950s, 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. His late
period tended to be ignored, and his philosophies of nature and of art in the 1790s and first
decade of the 19th century were the main focus. In this context Kuno Fischer characterized
Schelling's early philosophy as "aesthetic idealism", focusing on the argument where he ranked
art as "the sole document and the eternal organ of philosophy" (das einzige wahre und ewige
Organon zugleich und Dokument der Philosophie). From socialist philosophers like Gyrgy
Lukcs, he received criticism as anachronistic. An exception was Martin Heidegger, who treated
Schelling's On Human Freedom in his lectures in 1936. Heidegger found there central themes of
Western ontology: the issues of being, existence, and freedom.
In the 1950s, the situation began to change. In 1954, the centennial of his death, an international
conference on Schelling was held. Several philosophers including Karl Jaspers gave
presentations about the uniqueness and relevance of his thought, the interest shifting toward his
later work on being and existence, or, more precisely, the origin of existence. Schelling was the
subject of the 1954 dissertation of Jrgen Habermas. In 1955 Jaspers published a book titled
Schelling, representing him as a forerunner of the existentialists. Walter Schulz, one of organizers
of the 1954 conference, published a book 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. Theologian Paul Tillich wrote: "what I learned from Schelling became
determinative of my own philosophical and theological development".[26] Maurice Merleau-Ponty
likened his own project of natural ontology to Schelling's in his 1957-58 Course on Nature.
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. His influence and
relation to the German art scene, particularly to Romantic literature and visual art, has been an
interest since the late 1960s, from Philipp Otto Runge to Gerhard Richter and Joseph Beuys.
In relation to psychology, Schelling was considered to have coined the term "unconsciousness".
Slavoj iek has written two books attempting to integrate Schelling's philosophy, mainly his
middle period works including Weltalter, with the work of Jacques Lacan.[27][28] Ken Wilber
places Schelling as one of two philosophers who "after Plato, had the broadest impact on the
Western mind".[29]

Quotations

"Nature is visible Spirit; Spirit is invisible Nature." (Ideen, "Introduction")

"History as a whole is a progressive, gradually self-disclosing revelation of the Absolute."

(System of Transcendental Idealism, 1800)

"Now if the appearance of freedom is necessarily infinite, the total evolution of the
Absolute is also an infinite process, and history itself a never wholly completed
revelation of that Absolute which, for the sake of consciousness, and thus merely for the
sake of appearance, separates itself into conscious and unconscious, the free and the
intuitant; but which itself, however, in the inaccessible light wherein it dwells, is Eternal
Identity and the everlasting ground of harmony between the two." (System of
Transcendental Idealism, 1800)

"Has creation a final goal? And if so, why was it not reached at once? Why was the
consummation not realized from the beginning? To these questions there is but one
answer: Because God is Life, and not merely Being." (Philosophical Inquiries into the
Nature of Human Freedom, 1809)

"Only he who has tasted freedom can feel the desire to make over everything in its image,
to spread it throughout the whole universe." (Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of
Human Freedom, 1809)

"As there is nothing before or outside of God he must contain within himself the ground
of his existence. All philosophies say this, but they speak of this ground as a mere
concept without making it something real and actual." (Philosophical Inquiries into the
Nature of Human Freedom, 1809)

"[The Godhead] is not divine nature or substance, but the devouring ferocity of purity
that a person is able to approach only with an equal purity. Since all Being goes up in it as
if in flames, it is necessarily unapproachable to anyone still embroiled in Being." (The
Ages of the World, c. 1815)

"God then has no beginning only insofar as there is no beginning of his beginning. The
beginning in God is eternal beginning, that is, such a one as was beginning from all
eternity, and still is, and also never ceases to be beginning." (Quoted in Hartshorne &
Reese, Philosophers Speak of God, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1953, p. 237.)

Bibliography
Selected works are listed below.[30]

1. Ueber die Mglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie berhaupt (On the Possibility of an
Absolute Form of Philosophy, 1794),
2. Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie oder ber das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen
(Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy or on the Unconditional in Human Knowledge,
1795), and
3. Philosophische Briefe ber Dogmatismus und Kriticismus (Philosophical Letters on
Dogmatism and Criticism, 1795).

1, 2, 3 in The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays 17946,

translation and commentary by F. Marti, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press (1980).

De Marcione Paulinarum epistolarum emendatore (1795).[31]

Abhandlung zur Erluterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre (1796).

Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das Studium dieser Wissenschaft
(1797) as Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature: as Introduction to the Study of this Science,
translated by E. E. Harris and P. Heath, introduction R. Stern, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press (1988).

Von der Weltseele (1798).

System des transcendentalen Idealismus (1800) as System of Transcendental Idealism,

translated by P. Heath, introduction M. Vater, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia
(1978).

Ueber den wahren Begriff der Naturphilosophie und die richtige Art ihre Probleme
aufzulsen (1801).

"Darstellung des Systems meiner Philosophie" (1801), as "Presentation of My System of

Philosophy," translated by M. Vater, The Philosophical Forum, 32(4), Winter 2001,
pp. 339371.

Bruno oder ber das gttliche und natrliche Prinzip der Dinge (1802) as Bruno, or On
the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things, translated with an introduction by M.
Vater, Albany: State University of New York Press (1984).

Philosophie der Kunst (lecture) (delivered 18023; published 1859) as The Philosophy of
Art (1989) Minnesota: Minnesota University Press.

Vorlesungen ber die Methode des akademischen Studiums (delivered 1802; published
1803) as On University Studies, translated E. S. Morgan, edited N. Guterman, Athens,
Ohio: Ohio University Press (1966).

System der gesamten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere (Nachlass)

(1804).

Philosophische Untersuchungen ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die
damit zusammenhngenden Gegenstnde (1809) as Of Human Freedom, a translation
with critical introduction and notes by J. Gutmann, Chicago: Open Court (1936); also as
Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and
Johannes Schmidt, SUNY Press (2006).

Clara. Oder ber den Zusammenhang der Natur- mit der Geisterwelt (Nachlass) (1810)
as Clara: or On Nature's Connection to the Spirit World trans. Fiona Steinkamp, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2002.

Weltalter (181115) as The Ages of the World, translated with introduction and notes by
F. de W. Bolman, jr., New York: Columbia University Press (1967); also in The Abyss of
Freedom/Ages of the World, trans. Judith Norman, with an essay by Slavoj iek, Ann
Arbor: The University of Michigan Press (1997).

"Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrake" (1815) as Schelling's Treatise on 'The Deities of
Samothrace', a translation and introduction by R. F. Brown, Missoula, Mont.: Scholars
Press (1977).

Darstellung des philosophischen Empirismus (Nachlass) (1830).

Philosophie der Mythologie (lecture) (1842).

Philosophie der Offenbarung (lecture) (1854).

Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (probably 18334) as On the History of Modern
Philosophy, translation and introduction by A. Bowie, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press (1994).

Collected works in German

Historisch-kritische Schelling-Ausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Edited by
AA Hans Michael Baumgartner, Wilhelm G. Jacobs, Jrg Jantzen, Hermann Krings and Hermann Zeltner,
Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1976 ff.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings smmtliche Werke. Edited by K. F. A. Schelling. 1st
division (Abteilung): 10 vols. (= IX); 2nd division: 4 vols. (= XIXIV), Stuttgart/Augsburg 1856
SW
1861. The original edition in new arrangement edited by M. Schrter, 6 main volumes (Hauptbnde),
6 supplementary volumes (Ergnzungsbnde), Munich, 1927 ff., 2nd edition 1958 ff.

See also

History of aesthetics before the 20th century

Nondualism

Perennial philosophy

Notes
This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has
insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more
precise citations. (July 2013)
1.
Nectarios G. Limnatis, German Idealism and the Problem of Knowledge: Kant, Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel, Springer, 2008, pp. 166, 177.
Frederick Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801,
Harvard University Press, 2002, p. 470.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling by Saitya Brata Das in Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, 2011.
The term absoluter Idealismus occurs for the first time in Schelling's Ideen zu einer
Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das Studium dieser Wissenschaft (Ideas for a Philosophy
of Nature: as Introduction to the Study of this Science), Vol. 1, P. Krll, 1803 [1797], p. 80.
Joseph B. Maier, Judith Marcus, and Zoltn Tarrp (ed.), German Jewry: Its History and
Sociology: Selected Essays by Werner J. Cahnman, Transaction Publishers, 1989, p. 212.
Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age
of Goethe, University of Chicago Press,, 2002, p. 129.
Andrew Bowie (19 July 2012). "Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling". Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Richard H. Popkin, ed. (31 December 2005). The Columbia History of Western
Philosophy. Columbia University Press. p. 529. ISBN 978-0-231-10129-5. Retrieved 22 July
2012.
1911 Encyclopdia Britannica: "Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von"
John Morley (ed.), The Fortnightly Review, Volume 8, Chapman and Hall, 1870, p. 500.
History of Philosophy: From Thales to the Present Time, Volume 2, C. Scribner's Sons,
1874, p. 214.
The thesis is available online at the Munich Digitization Center.
Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age
of Goethe (2002), p. 149.
Richards, p. 171 note 141.
Wallen, Martin (2004). City of Health, Fields of Disease: Revolutions in the Poetry,
Medicine, and Philosophy of Romanticism. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 123. ISBN 978-0-75463542-0. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
See On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates by Sren Kierkegaard,
1841
Lara Ostaric, Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays, Cambridge University Press, 2014,
p. 218.
"Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling - Biography" at egs.edu

 Nicolaas A. Rupke, Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography, University of Chicago

Press, p. 116.
Tristram Hunt, Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels (Henry Holt
and Co., 2009: ISBN 0-8050-8025-2), pp. 4546.
Shaw, Devin Zane (10 February 2011). Freedom and Nature in Schelling's Philosophy of
Art. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 56. ISBN 978-1-4411-5624-2. Retrieved 22
July 2012.
Kai Hammermeister, The German Aesthetic Tradition, Cambridge University Press,
2002, p. 76.
John Laughland, Schelling Versus Hegel: From German Idealism to Christian
Metaphysics (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007: ISBN 0-7546-6118-0), p. 119.
Christopher John Murray, Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850 (Taylor &
Francis, 2004: ISBN 1-57958-422-5), pp. 100102.
Bowie, Andrew (1990). Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant to Nietzsche. Manchester
University Press ND. p. 265. ISBN 978-0-7190-4011-5. Retrieved 22 July 2012.
Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought 438 Simon and Schuster, 1972
iek, Slavoj (1996). The indivisible remainder: An essay on Schelling and related
matters. London: Verso. ISBN 9781859840948.
iek, Slavoj (2009). The parallax view (1st paperback ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.
ISBN 0262512688.
See Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything (1996), chap. 17 (pp. 297308).
For a more complete listing, see Stanford bibliography.
1.

Available online at Google Books.

References

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm,
Hugh, ed. (1911). "Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von". Encyclopdia Britannica
(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Further reading

Bowie, Andrew (1993), Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: an Introduction,

New York: Routledge.

Golan, Zev (2007), God, Man and Nietzsche, NY: iUniverse. (The second chapter, listed
as "A dialogue between Schelling, Luria and Maimonides", examines the similarities
between Schelling's texts and the Kabbalah; it also offers a religious interpretation of
Schelling's identity philosophy.)

Grant, Iain Hamilton (2008), Philosophies of Nature after Schelling, New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, ISBN 978-1847064325.

Tilliette, Xavier (1970), Schelling: une philosophie en devenir, two volumes, Paris: Vrin.
(Encyclopedic historical account of the development of Schelling's work: stronger on
general exposition and on theology than on Schelling's philosophical arguments.)

Tilliette, Xavier (1999), Schelling, biographie, Calmann-Lvy, collection "La vie des
philosophes".

Wirth, Jason M. (2005), Schelling Now: Contemporary Readings, Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press.

iek, Slavoj (1996), The Indivisible Remainder: an Essay on Schelling and Related
Matters, London: Verso.

External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling.
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
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Wikisource has the text of the The Nuttall Encyclopdia article Schelling, Friedrich
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Works by or about Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling at Internet Archive

Works by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, 1807 "On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to
Nature". Retrieved 24 September 2010.

Martin Arndt (1995). "Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm (von) Joseph". In Bautz, Traugott.
Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German) 9. Herzberg:
Bautz. cols. 104138. ISBN 3-88309-058-1.

Friedrich Jodl (1890), "Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von", Allgemeine Deutsche
Biographie (ADB) (in German) 31, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 627

Watson, John, 18471939, 1882 "Schelling's Transcendental Idealism". Retrieved 28

September 2010.

Andrew Bowie. "Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling". Stanford Encyclopedia of

Philosophy.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling by Saitya Brata Das in Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, 2011

Links to texts

Biography of Schelling at NNDB

A History of Philosophy: 18th and 19th century German Philosophy, By Frederick

Charles Copleston, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2003 pp. 94ff

Bhme, Traugott (1920). "Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von". Encyclopedia

Americana.
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