v on Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775–1854)

Abstract Schelling is, along with J. G. Fichte and G. W. F. Hegel, one of the greatest of the German Idealist philosophers, although accounts vary concerning the precise nature of Schelling's significance. One interpretation, frequently repeated in histories of philosophy, sees Schelling as a crucial intermediate stage of post‐Kantian Idealism, a bridge between the Subjective Idealism of Fichte and the Absolute Idealism of Hegel, usually regarded as the culmination of German Idealism. This account, while not false, is rather a halftruth, overlooking as it does the importance of Schelling's later philosophy, which in many ways goes beyond Idealism, and represents a bridge to the various anti‐Idealistic philosophies of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Schelling's later philosophy is highly religious in character – taking up in an original way problems such as the nature of God, the essence of human freedom, the problem of evil, and the uniqueness and significance of the Christian revelation and its relation to philosophy – and had a wide influence on 19th and 20th century Christian theology.