Friedrich Schelling quotes

Friedrich Schelling was a German philosopher, well known for his work in the fields of idealism and nature philosophy. His writings explored the relationship between nature, art, and the self, influencing later thinkers of both philosophy and theology. He played a significant role in the development of German Romanticism and remains a central figure in the history of European thought. Here are 21 of his quotes:

Since it [architecture] is music in space, as it were a frozen music.

Friedrich Schelling

It is easy to see that this problem can be solved neither in theoretical nor in practical philosophy, but only in a higher discipline, which is the link that combines them, and neither theoretical nor practical, but both at once.

Friedrich Schelling

The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with vigour and ethical meaning.

Friedrich Schelling

If the State, modeled after the universe, is split into two spheres or classes of beings – wherein the free represent the ideas and the unfree the concrete and sensate things – then the ultimate and uppermost order remains unrealized by both. By using sensate things as tools or organs, the ideas obtain a direct relationship to the apparitions and enter into them as souls. God, however, as identity of the highest order, remains above all reality and eternally has merely an indirect relationship. If then in the higher moral order the State represents a second nature, then the divine can never have anything other than an indirect relationship to it, never can it bear any real relationship to it, and religion, if it seeks to preserve itself in unscathed pure ideality, can therefore never exist – even in the most perfect State – other than esoterically in the form of mystery cults.

Friedrich Schelling

They think of the philosopher as holding the ideal or subjective in one hand and the real or objective in the other and then have him strike the palms of his hands together so that one abrades the other. The product of this abrasion is the Absolute.

Friedrich Schelling

On its pass through finitude, the being-for-itself of the counter-image expresses itself most potently as "”I-ness”, as self-identical individuality. Just as a planet in its orbit no sooner reaches its farthest distance from the center than it returns to its closest proximity, so the point of the farthest distance from God, the I-ness, is also the moment of its return to the Absolute, of the re-absorption into the ideal.

Friedrich Schelling

To achieve great things we must be self-confined...mastery is revealed in limitation.

Friedrich Schelling

The human brain is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis of the earth.

Friedrich Schelling

Architecture in general is frozen music.

Friedrich Schelling

Yes! We believe in a higher principle than your virtue and the kind of morality you speak of so paltrily and without much conviction. We believe that there is no imperative or reward for virtue for the soul because it simply acts according to the necessity of its inherent nature. The moral imperative expresses itself in an ought and presupposes the concept of an evil next to that of good. P. 43.

Friedrich Schelling

If there is to be any philosophy at all, this contradiction must be resolved – and the solution of this problem, or answer to the question: how can we think both of Presentations as conforming to objects, and objects as conforming to presentations? is, not the first, but the highest task of transcendental philosophy.

Friedrich Schelling

The end of the philosophical dialogue lies in itself; it can never serve a purpose outside of itself. Just as a sculptor does not cease to be a work of art even if it lies at the bottom of the sea, so indeed every work of philosophy endures, even if uncomprehended in its own time. One would be grateful if it were merely a matter of incomprehension. Instead, the work is usually refitted and appropriated by various entities-some playing the part of the opponent; others, that of the proponent. P.3-4.

Friedrich Schelling

There was a time when religion was kept secret from popular belief within the mystery cults like a holy fire, sharing a common sanctuary with philosophy. The legends of antiquity name the earliest philosophers as the originators of these mystery cults, from which the most enlightened among the later philosophers, notably Plato, liked to educe their divine teachings. At that time philosophers still had the courage and the right to discuss the singly great themes, the only ones worthy of philosophizing and rising above common knowledge.

Friedrich Schelling

Nature is visible Spirit; Spirit is invisible Nature.

Friedrich Schelling

The failure to invest in civil justice is directly related to the increase in criminal disorder. The more people feel there is injustice the more it becomes part of their psyche.

Friedrich Schelling

Only he who knows God is truly moral.

Friedrich Schelling

...all phenomena are correlated in one absolute and necessary law, from which they can all be deduced.

Friedrich Schelling

How both the objective world accommodates to presentations in us, and presentations in us to the objective world, is unintelligible unless between the two worlds, the ideal and the real, there exists a pre-determined harmony.

Friedrich Schelling