F W J Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (Leonberg, 1775 – Ragaz, 1854) was one of the most representative philosophers of German Romanticism. His thought exerted a notable influence on the artists of his time, and among his friends were Goethe, Hölderlin and Novalis, as well as the composer Weber, the musician who felt his imprint most directly. He is credited with the celebrated maxim that architecture is frozen music.

His philosophy was not a single, immovable doctrine, but passed through distinct stages over a life that was both precocious and long. The most influential was his so-called philosophy of nature, which he advocated around 1800. In it he conceived the world as an organism in continuous evolution, comprehensible only in light of its purpose: the attainment of self-consciousness. According to this view, human beings emerge from nature as part of that process, so that it would be a mistake to set spirit against nature. Both are essentially one: nature is visible spirit, and spirit is invisible nature.

The central point of this conception was that the creative process is the same in both realms. A natural organism and a work of art, understood also as an organism, are explained teleologically; the difference is that the genius acts consciously. In the great work of art, therefore, spirit attains consciousness of itself and of its identity with nature, thus fulfilling the ultimate purpose of the world.

Romantic artists adopted this philosophy for two reasons: the identification of man with nature, and the regard for art as the highest of human activities. His work belongs to that broader movement which sought in aesthetics a path to understanding the universe, and his legacy is measured above all by the mark he left on the artistic creation of his era.