Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775

1854)

F. W. J. von Schelling is one of the great German philosophers of the late 18 th and early
19th Century. Some historians and scholars of philosophy have classified him as
a German Idealist, along with J. G. Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel. Such classifications
obscure rather than illuminate the importance and singularity of Schellings place in the
history of philosophy. This is because the dominant and most often limited
understanding of Idealism as systematic metaphysics of the Subject is applicable more
to Hegels philosophy than Schelling's. While initiating the Post-Kantian Idealism of the
Subject, Schelling went on to exhibit in his later works the limit and dissolution of such
a systemic metaphysics of the Subject. Therefore, the convenient label of Schelling as
one German Idealist amongst others ignores the singularity of Schellings philosophy
and the complex relationship he had with the movement of German Idealism.
The real importance of Schellings later works lies in the exposure of the dominant
systemic metaphysics of the Subject to its limit rather than in its confirmation. In this
way, the later works of Schelling demand from the students and philosophers of German
Idealism a re-assessment of the notion of German Idealism itself. In that sense, the
importance and influence of Schellings philosophy has remained untimely. In the
wake of Hegelian rational philosophy that was the official philosophy of that time,
Schellings later works was not influential and fell onto deaf ears. Only in the twentieth
century when the question of the legitimacy of the philosophical project of modernity
had come to be the concern for philosophers and thinkers, did Schellings radical
opening of philosophy to post-metaphysical thinking receive renewed attention.
This is because it is perceived that the task of philosophical thinking is no longer the
foundational act of the systematic metaphysics of the Subject. In the wake of end of
philosophy, the philosophical task is understood to be the inauguration of new thinking
beyond metaphysics. In this context, Schelling has again come into prominence as
someone who in the heyday of German Idealism has opened up the possibility of a
philosophical thinking beyond the closure of the metaphysics of the Subject. The
importance of Schelling for such post-metaphysical thinking is rightly emphasized

by Martin Heidegger in his lecture on Schelling of 1936. In this manner Heidegger

prepares the possibility of understanding Schellings works in an entirely different
manner. Heideggers reading of Schelling in turn has immensely influenced the PostHeideggerian French philosophical turn to the question of the exit from metaphysics.
But this Post-Structuralist and deconstructive reading of Schelling is not the only
reception of Schelling. Philosophers like Jrgen Habermas, whose doctorate work was
on Schelling, would like to insist on the continuation of the philosophical project of
modernity, and yet attempt to view reason beyond the instrumental functionality of
reason at the service of domination and coercion. Schelling is seen from this perspective
as a post-metaphysical thinker who has widened the concept of reason beyond its selfgrounding projection. During the last half of the last century, Schellings works have
tremendously influenced the post-Subject oriented philosophical discourses. During
recent times, Schelling scholarship has remarkably increased both in the AngloAmerican context and the Continental philosophical context.

1. Life
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born on 27 January, 1775 in Leonberg, Germany. His
father was Joseph Friedrich Schelling and mother was Gottliebin Maria Cless. In 1785 Schelling
attended the Latin School in Nrtingen. A precocious child, his teachers soon found nothing
more to teach him. In 1790, Schelling joined the Tbingenstift, a Protestant Seminary, in
Tbingen where he befriended Hlderlin who was later to become a great German poet, and
Hegel who was to become a great philosopher. In 1794 Schelling published ber die Mglichkeit
einer Form der Philosophie berhaupt, in the same year of the publication of
Fichtes Wissenshaftlehre. FichtesWissenshaftlehre, along

with

Kants Critique

of

Judgment that was published four years before (1790), proved to be of decisive importance for
Schellings early philosophical career. In 1798 at the age of just 23, Schelling was called to a
professorship at the University of Jena where he came in contact with German Romantic poets
and philosophers like the Schlegel brothers and Novalis. He also met August Wilhelm Schlegels
wife Caroline Schlegel and there begun one of the most fascinating and scandalous romantic
stories of that time, leading to Carolines divorce and her marriage to Schelling in 1803. In 1803

he left Jena for Wrzburg where he was called to a professorship. In the Autumn of 1805
Wrzburg fell to Austria. The following year Schelling left for Munich where he was to stay till
1841 apart from a break between 1820-1827 when he lived in Erlangen. In 1809 Schelling
published his great treatise on human freedom, Philosophical Inquiries Concerning the Nature
of Human Freedom. A few months later Caroline died.. Schelling was devastated. In 1812
Schelling married Pauline who was to remain his life long companion. In 1831 Hegel died. In
1840 Schelling was called upon to the now vacant chair in Berlin to replace Hegel where he
sought to elaborate his Positivphilosophie which was attended by the likes of Sren Kierkegaard,
Alexander Humboldt, Bakunin and Engels. In 1854 on 20 August Schelling died at the age of 79
in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland.

2. Philosophy

Encounter with the works of Schelling often baffles the scholars and historians of
philosophy. Schellings works seem to exhibit the lack of consistent development or
systematic completion which most of his contemporaries possess. As a result scholars
and historians of philosophy complain of the absence of a single Schelling. Recent
scholarship, however, while accepting the often disruptive and discontinuous movement
with which Schellings thinking moves that defies and un-works the completion of a
single definite philosophical system, finds issues that are singular to Schellings
continuous attention and unceasing concern. Thus the absence of a systematic
completion is what has become the source of fascination for recent Schelling
scholarship. Schelling appears to be the mark that delineates the limit of the systematic
task of philosophy, the end of philosophy and the task of thinking as Heidegger says.
Prominent Schelling scholars like Manfred Frank and Andrew Bowie (1993) have,
however, pointed out that Schelling had never abandoned the idea of system, although
the idea of system was no longer grounded on a restricted, narcissistic concept of
reason as totalizing and self-grounding but as opening to that which cannot be thought
in the concept.