Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, << SHEHL ihng, FREE drihkh VIHL hehlm YOTT zehb fuhn >> (1775-1854), was a German philosopher. His earlier works are generally understood as an important link between Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte on the one hand, and G. W. F. Hegel on the other. These early works represent German idealism and romanticism. Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) was the major work of his youth. However, he later criticized his own early works and Hegel’s philosophy as “negative philosophy.” Schelling attempted to develop a “positive philosophy” that stressed revelation and influenced existentialism.
Schelling was born on Jan. 27, 1775, in Leonberg, near Stuttgart, Germany. He entered the Tubingen theological seminary at the age of 16, and became a friend of Hegel and the poet Friedrich Holderlin. Hegel, in the preface to his book Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), criticized Schelling, though not by name, and their relation changed from collaboration to rivalry. Soon, Hegel’s influence exceeded Schelling’s. Schelling became a prominent opponent of Hegel’s philosophy. Schelling died on Aug. 20, 1854.
