Friedrich Schelling

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. Interpreting Schelling's philosophy is regarded as difficult because of its evolving nature.

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. Schelling's ''Naturphilosophie'' also has been attacked by scientists for its tendency to analogize and lack of empirical orientation. However, some later philosophers have shown interest in re-examining Schelling's body of work.

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 Cleß. From 1783 to 1784, Schelling attended the Latin school in Nürtingen and knew Friedrich Hölderlin, who was five years his senior. Subsequently Schelling attended the monastic school at Bebenhausen, near Tübingen, where his father was chaplain and an Orientalist professor. On 18 October 1790, at the age of 15, he was granted permission to enroll at the Tübinger Stift (seminary of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg), despite not having yet reached the normal enrollment age of 20. At the Stift, he shared a room with Hegel as well as Hölderlin, 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'', 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 influenced him greatly. Representative of Schelling's early period is also a discourse between him and the philosophical writer , who was Fichte's housemate at that time, in letters and in Fichte's Journal (1796/97) on ''interaction'', ''the pragmatic'' and Leibniz.

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. 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.

Jena period

After two years tutoring, in October 1798, at the age of 23, Schelling was called to University of Jena as an extraordinary professor of philosophy. His time at Jena (1798–1803) put Schelling at the centre 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 Saxe-Weimar, Goethe invited Schelling to Jena. Schelling was nevertheless unsympathetic to the ethical idealism that animated the work of Friedrich Schiller, the other pillar of Weimar Classicism. Schelling's later ''Vorlesung über die Philosophie der Kunst'' (''Lecture on the Philosophy of Art'', 1802/03) closely reviewed Schiller's theory of the sublime.

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''. But Schelling, who was becoming the acknowledged leader of the Romantic school, rejected Fichte's thought as cold and abstract.

Schelling was especially close to August Wilhelm Schlegel and his wife, Caroline. Schelling grew close to Caroline's young daughter, Auguste Böhmer. Caroline began considering abandoning Schlegel to marry Schelling. Auguste died of dysentery in 1800; many blamed Schelling, who had overseen her treatment. Robert Richards, however, argues in his book ''The Romantic Conception of Life'' that Schelling's interventions were most likely irrelevant, as the doctors called to the scene assured everyone involved that Auguste's disease was inevitably fatal. Auguste's death drew Schelling and Caroline closer. Schlegel moved to Berlin, and Goethe helped Schlegel pursue a divorce. 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 the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who was already mentally ill at that time.

In his Jena period, Schelling resumed his close relationship with Hegel. 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 to Bamberg.

Move to Würzburg and personal conflicts

After Jena, Schelling went to Bamberg for a time to study the Brunonian system of 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. This period was marked by considerable flux in his views and by a final breach with Fichte and Hegel.

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. 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 critical remarks directed at his own philosophical theory, Schelling 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; 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'' tuttgart private lectures 1810), and seven years at the University of Erlangen (1820–1827). In 1809 Caroline died, just before he published ''Freiheitsschrift'' (''Freedom Essay'') the last book published during his life. Three years later, Schelling married one of her closest friends, Pauline Gotter, in whom he found a faithful companion.

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 publicly expressed antagonism towards Hegelianism (and, by extension, his earlier thought). The antagonism certainly was not new; the 1822 Erlangen lectures on the history of philosophy expressed 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 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. In Berlin, the headquarters of the Hegelians, this found expression in attempts to obtain officially from Schelling a treatment of the new system that he was understood to have in reserve. Its realization did not come about until 1841, when Schelling's appointment 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 Søren Kierkegaard (who said Schelling talked "quite insufferable nonsense" and complained that he did not end his lectures on time), Mikhail Bakunin (who called them "interesting but rather insignificant"), Jacob Burckhardt, Alexander von Humboldt (who never fully accepted Schelling's natural philosophy, but admired his work), future church historian Philip Schaff and Friedrich Engels