Friedrich von Schelling

Friedrich von Schelling (1775-1854), German philosopher, one of the leading exponents of idealism and of the Romantic tendency in German philosophy. Born in Leonberg, Württemberg, on January 27, 1775, and educated at the University of Tübingen, Schelling served on the faculties of most of the leading universities in Germany and in 1841 was called to Berlin by Frederick William IV, King of Prussia. Schelling died in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland, on August 20, 1854.

Schelling's philosophy was continually evolving. Originally, his thinking was based chiefly on a close study of the views of the German philosophers Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte and those of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The distinguishing principle of this phase of his work is the identity of subject and object, which became the basis of an identity philosophy that was pantheistic in its general nature, equating God with the forces and laws of the universe. In the second period, rejecting pantheism as negative, he developed what he called a positive philosophy, in which he defined human existence as the mode of self-consciousness on the part of the Absolute. The essence of humanity is free creative activity.

Schelling's many works include The Philosophy of Art (1807; trans. 1845), Of Human Freedom (1809; trans. 1936), and fragments of a large, unpublished work that were translated into English as The Ages of the World (1942).