208SCHELLING, FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON
a sense of the vitality of the good.
Scheler’s early work employed phenome-
nology in a general, theistic worldview,
though his final work was marked by
pantheism.
SCHELLING, FRIEDRICH WILHELM
JOSEPH VON (1775–1854). German
idealist philosopher. A fellow-student of
Hegel and the poet Friedrich Holderlin
at Tubingen theological seminary, the
precociously brilliant Schelling estab-
lished his philosophical reputation with
a rapid succession of publications begin-
ning in 1794. All of these works—which
explored a bewildering variety of some-
times contradictory ideas—revolved
around one central problem: how to rec-
oncile the moral autonomy of the indi-
vidual, stressed by Kant and Fichte, with
Spinoza’s pantheistic sense of the conti-
nuity of the human spirit with nature.
Struggling with this problem, Schelling
developed Naturphilosophie (an attempt
to reintroduce teleo logy to modern sci-
ence) and a pioneering account of artistic
creativity as the synthesis of conscious
and unconscious mental activity. His
essay On Human Freedom (1809) began a
new phase in his thinking, which involved
a turn toward a (very unorthodox) form
of theism and a recognition (polemically
directed at his former friend Hegel) that
reality may be ultimately ungraspable by
reason. These ideas were subsequently
explored in lectures and in extensive
manuscripts, which, however, remained
unpublished in his lifetime. His works
include Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature
(1797), System of Transcendental Idealism
(1800), Philosophical Inquiries into the
Essence of Human Freedom (1809), and
The Ages of the World (1811–1815).SCHILLER, JOHANN CRISTOPH
FRIEDRICH VON (1759–1805). German
poet, dramatist, and philosopher. Schiller
became famous with his first play, The
Robbers (1781), which explored (in a
highly melodramatic style) ideas of free-
dom, rebellion, solidarity, and the corrup-
tion of ideals. These themes found a more
mature expression in his later historical
dramas, such as Wallenstein (1800).
Interested in contemporary philosophical
developments and deeply influenced by
Kant, Schiller wrote important theoretical
essays on aesthetics, distinguishing, for
instance, between the “Naive” (spontane-
ous) poetry of his friend Goethe and
his own “Sentimental” (more consciously
articulated) style in On Naive and Senti-
mental Poetry (1795). In his major philo-
sophical work, Letters on the Aesthetic
Education of Mankind (1794–1795),
Schiller develops an ambiguous but richly
suggestive argument that it is the aes-
thetic sensibility that can close the gap
between nature and spirit, inclination and
duty, which he felt Kant had left open.SCHLEIERMACHER, FRIEDRICH
ERNST DANIEL (1768–1834). Often