Friedrich von Schelling

German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling was born on January 27, 1775, in Leonberg, Württemberg. Immanuel Kant largely inspired his work. Schelling believed the unconscious and conscious are united in artistic creation. His 1809 work, Of Human Freedom, said that freedom was only real if it was freedom for both good and evil. He died on August 20, 1854.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

In all forms of art Aesthetic idealism is devoted to the philosophical theories of beauty in nature. Schelling was one of the great philosophers in Germany of the late 18th and early 19th century. And according to Schelling, Aesthetic idealism is the best approach to an understanding of philosophy. Schelling was one of the great philosophers in Germany.

In Leonberg, Germany there was a philosopher borned on January 27, 1775 named Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling. His father was Joseph Friedrich Schelling and mother was Gottliebin Maria Cless.Nearby in Bebenhausen, his father is a chaplain and orientalist professor at the cloister school. At first, Shcelling attended in his father’s school and then a Latin school in Nuertingen from 1783 to 1784. He was granted a permission to enrol at the Tubinger Stift Protestant seminary at age of 15 in Wurttemberg, where he studied in the church and ancient Greek philosophers. He graduated from the philosophical faculty in 1792, and he finished his thesis for his theological in 1794. He met August Wilhelm Schlegel’s wife Caroline Schlegel and there begun one of the most fascinating and scandalous romantic stories of that time, leading to Caroline’s divorce and her marriage to Schelling in 1a803.  A few months later Caroline died. Schelling was devastated. In 1812 Schelling married Pauline who was to remain his lifelong partner. In 1854 on 20 August Schelling died at the age of 79 in Bad Ragaz, Switzerland.

Schelling tried to establish a viable connection between his conceptions of nature and spirit or Naturephilosophie, which he saw as two parts of a whole complementary, yet complete in them. He saw the dynamic series of stages in which the ideal structure of nature is realized which he called the organic, the inorganic, and the universal or "World Soul", the latter bases and defines the other two,related to the dynamic stages of the process in which spirit struggles towards consciousness of itself. He held that the presence of the Universal Spirit in nature is an essential condition for the emergence of empirical consciousness individual egos.

Schelling's philosophy composed of a unique form of Idealism, known as Aesthetic Idealism. He believed that, in art, the opposition between subjectivity and objectivity is controlled, and all contradictions between knowledge and action, conscious action and unconscious action, freedom and necessity are harmonized. Schelling's conception of "Naturphilosophie" has not fared well at the hands of modern science, which has completely criticized his fragmentary knowledge of contemporary science, but some of his thoughts are original and valuable. Schelling held that the divisions imposed on nature, by our ordinary perception and thought, do not have absolute validity. They should be interpreted as the outcome of the single formative energy which is the soul or inner aspect of nature. In other words he was a proponent of a variety of organisms. The dynamic series of stages in nature, the forms in which the ideal structure of nature is realized, are matter, as the equilibrium of the fundamental expansive and contractive forces light, with its subordinate processes magnetism, electricity, and chemical action; organism, with its component phases of reproduction, irritability and sensibility.

The continual change presented to us by experience, taken together with the thought of unity in productive force of nature, leads to the conception of the duality through which nature expresses itself in its varied products.Nature, according to Schelling, has its own metaphysical reality, independent of the rising consciousness of the empirical ego contrary to Fichte's conception of Nature as nothing more than a conscious "representation" of the empirical ego. Thus, the Absolute Fichte's "Pure Ego" must be conceived of as the complete identity of the Universal Spirit and Nature.

Schelling’s philosophy talks about the nature and soul .Nature which is our surroundings, source of our needs, part of our daily lives and that nature serves as our soul because nature is part of every one of us without nature we cannot leave in this world and nature also need us to protect and care them to preserve their natural beauty.

Therefore, I conclude that the philosophy of Schelling is about nature and spirit. And has a unique form of Idealism know as Aesthetic Idealism. It talks about the beauty of nature and the spirit of nature as well. Every now and then, Schelling’s philosophy is very useful in terms of our daily life by appreciating the beauty of nature.