page_title: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling / Works
context_page_description: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, later 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 large 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.
context_section_description: 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). In 1794, Schelling published an exposition of Fichte's thought entitled Ueber die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie überhaupt (On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy in General). 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 über 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 über 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.
  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. First published in 1916 by Franz Rosenzweig, it was attributed to Schelling. It has also been claimed that Hegel or Hölderlin was the author.
  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). 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's argument was unsound: in Fichte's theory nature as Not-Self (Nicht-Ich = object) could not be a subject of philosophy, whose essential content is the subjective activity of the human intellect. The breach became unrecoverable in 1801 after Schelling published Darstellung des Systems meiner Philosophie ("Presentation of My System of 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. According to Schelling, the absolute was the indifference to identity, which he considered to be an essential philosophical subject.
  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). A work of significance is the 1809 Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände (Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom), which elaborates, with increasing mysticism, on ideas in the 1804 work Philosophie und Religion (Philosophy and Religion). However,
caption: A February 1848 daguerreotype of Schelling