Friedrich Schelling and the Pulse of Creation
Becoming Co-Creators in the Living Cosmos
The 18th and 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) saw the world as a living, breathing whole, pulsing with creative energy. His philosophy, often overshadowed by bigger names like Hegel and Kant, offers a vision of life that feels like a river in constant flow, where human creativity, nature, and the divine intertwine. Schelling’s ideas are not abstract puzzles for academics to solve but invitations to see ourselves as part of a dynamic, evolving cosmos. His work speaks to anyone who has ever felt a spark of inspiration or wondered how their little life connects to something bigger.
This organic, flowing worldview stands in contrast to the mechanistic vision of Enlightenment rationalism, and anticipates later developments in process philosophy and deep ecology.1 While Descartes split mind and matter into separate substances, and Kant viewed nature largely as the stage upon which reason operates, Schelling insisted on their profound unity. In this, he resonates with thinkers like Ray Peat and Alfred North Whitehead, who also envisioned reality as an unfolding process rather than a static structure.2
Nature as Creative Force
Schelling’s philosophy hinges on the idea that nature is not a dead machine, but a creative force, alive with purpose and possibility. He argued that the natural world and the human mind are not separate, but two expressions of the same underlying spirit. Think of a tree growing toward sunlight, its roots digging deep into the earth, while an artist scribbles lines in a sketchbook, chasing a fleeting image. For Schelling, both are acts of creation; both are nature unfolding. This perspective, which he developed in works like his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), feels urgent today, when we often treat nature as a resource to exploit rather than a partner in existence.3
Schelling’s view foreshadows aspects of phenomenology and environmental philosophy.4 Later figures like Merleau-Ponty, who I will cover soon, would echo this idea of an animated world, in which human perception is intertwined with the rhythms of the earth. In an age of ecological strain, Schelling’s sense of the world as a living totality is poetic and essential.
The Absolute and the Art of Becoming
One of Schelling’s most compelling ideas is his concept of the “absolute,” the source of all reality, which he describes as a unity of opposites. The absolute is not a distant God or an impersonal force, but a living process that holds together freedom and necessity, spirit and matter. In his Philosophy of Art (1802-1803), he likens it to the way a great painting or symphony works: every brushstroke or note is free, yet somehow necessary to the whole. This idea can feel abstract, but it’s grounded in everyday experience. Consider a moment when you’ve been caught up in creating something: a meal, a story, a garden. You make choices, but they feel guided, as if the work itself is leading you. Schelling would say you’re tapping into the absolute, where your freedom and the world’s deeper order meet.
This resonates with Romantic contemporaries like Coleridge and Novalis, who likewise saw artistic creation as a spiritual act.5 It also invites comparison with the Tao in Chinese philosophy: a flowing, self-unfolding principle that underpins both cosmos and human conduct, something which cannot be fully grasped or defined by ordinary thought. Schelling’s absolute is not a fixed substance but a living tension, a becoming, the “life of life.”
Creativity as Participation
Schelling’s emphasis on creativity as a bridge between the human and the divine is profoundly practical. He believed that art, philosophy, and even science are not just human inventions, but ways of participating in the world’s ongoing creation. This perspective can change how we approach our daily lives.
Take a mundane task like cooking dinner. Instead of seeing it as a chore, you might start to notice the small choices—chopping vegetables with care, balancing flavours—that echo the larger creative pulse Schelling describes. Or think of a difficult conversation with a friend. Schelling’s philosophy suggests approaching it with the openness of an artist, listening for the underlying harmony even in disagreement.
In this way, he aligns with the later existentialists, like Simone Weil or Martin Buber, who saw attention, relation, and responsiveness as sacred modes of being.6 To create, in Schelling’s view, is not to impose will on the world but to co-shape reality with it.
Freedom and Necessity
Schelling also wrestled with the tension between freedom and necessity, a question that feels as relevant now as it did in his time. In his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809), he explores how humans can be free in a world governed by natural laws.7 He doesn’t offer a neat answer, but his grappling is what makes his philosophy very human. He suggests that freedom is not about escaping necessity, but about embracing it creatively, like a musician improvising within the structure of a song.8
Here, Schelling marks a significant departure from Kant’s rigid moral formalism and even from Hegel’s more totalising system.9 His existential honesty prefigures Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety as the “dizziness of freedom,” where the awareness of our limitless possibilities and the responsibility to choose provoke existential unease and self-reflection. Similarly, Schelling’s acknowledgment of life’s contradictions and the creative embrace of necessity prefigures Nietzsche’s call to affirm life in all its complexities, including suffering and chaos, as a path to individual self-realisation and vitality.10 In moments of personal struggle—a job that drains us, a decision that confuses us—Schelling’s philosophy invites us to ask: How can I create something meaningful within these constraints?
The Power of Myth and Symbol
His later work, particularly his philosophy of mythology and revelation, gets into how stories and symbols shape our understanding of the world. Schelling saw myths not as primitive fables, but as humanity’s attempt to express the absolute through narrative. A myth like the Greek story of Prometheus, who steals fire from the gods, reflects our longing to create and our defiance of limits. For Schelling, these stories are not just relics; they’re alive, shaping how we see ourselves today.
Think about the myths we live by now: success, progress, individualism. Schelling would urge us to question them, to see which ones truly serve life and which ones trap us. I know it’s a clichéd gripe, but this feels especially relevant in our social media age, where we’re constantly crafting personal myths through curated posts and stories. His philosophy nudges us to create narratives that connect us to something bigger, rather than isolating us in shallow self-promotion.
Here Schelling also anticipates the psychoanalytic turn, particularly Carl Jung’s view of archetypes and the collective unconscious. Myth, in this light, becomes not just a story we tell, but a deep structure that shapes how we feel and act.11
The Restless Philosopher
Schelling’s ideas are not without their challenges. His writing can be pretty dense, and he often revised his views, leaving a trail of evolving systems that can feel like chasing a moving target. But this restlessness is part of his charm. He wasn’t trying to build a perfect theory; he was trying to capture the living pulse of existence. His philosophy is less a blueprint and more a map, one that invites us to explore the terrain of our own lives.
In this openness, Schelling bears a spiritual kinship with thinkers like William James or even Heidegger, who likewise resisted fixed systems in favour of lived truth.12 If you’ve ever felt a sense of wonder at the world’s beauty or a quiet urge to create something true, Schelling’s thought offers a way to understand those moments as part of a larger story.
Becoming Co-Creators
In a world that often feels fragmented, Schelling’s philosophy is a reminder that we are not separate from nature, from each other, or from the creative energy that runs through everything. His ideas ask us to live with curiosity, to see our choices as small but meaningful acts of creation. Whether you’re planting a seed, writing an email, or simply pausing to notice the way light falls through a window, Schelling’s vision invites you to feel the pulse of creation in your own life. It’s a call to live not as isolated individuals, but as participants in a world that is always, endlessly, becoming.
The Enlightenment’s mechanistic worldview tended to see the universe as a vast machine operating according to fixed, predictable laws. Enlightenment thinkers like Descartes, Hobbes, and Newton emphasised reason, mathematical order, and empirical science, believing that all phenomena could ultimately be explained by rational, mechanical principles and that the world could be controlled and mastered through scientific knowledge.
Ray Peat and The Art of Becoming (Substack Post)
Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) is a foundational work in German idealism, situated between Fichte’s and Hegel’s major contributions. Schelling’s aim was to develop a comprehensive philosophical system that explains the origin and structure of knowledge, nature, and self-consciousness, working within and expanding upon the Kantian philosophical framework.
In simple terms, phenomenology is about exploring and describing how we experience the world, just as it shows up to us, rather than explaining or analysing what causes those experiences.
For these Romantics, creating art was a way to unite reason and feeling, intellect and imagination, in a harmonious whole—reflecting a higher, even sacred, reality. They believed that through artistic creation, individuals could access deeper truths, foster spiritual growth, and participate in a kind of co-creation with the divine or the infinite. Thus, the act of making art was seen as a means of spiritual self-realisation and connection to something greater than oneself.
Simone Weil saw attention as a sacred, transformative mode of being: true attention is a disciplined, receptive openness that turns away from self-centred willpower and pride, making space for grace and the presence of God. Similarly, Martin Buber regarded genuine relation and responsiveness—what he called the “I-Thou” encounter—as sacred. In such moments of true dialogue or relation, we meet others (and God) not as objects, but as presences, and the everyday is made holy.
Schelling’s 1809 treatise argues that freedom is the deepest ground of human and divine existence, making both good and evil possible. He sees this freedom as rooted in an original duality within Being itself, and insists that a true philosophical system must account for the reality of freedom, individuality, and the possibility of evil.
Necessity refers to the fixed, lawful order of nature; the idea that the world operates according to unbreakable natural laws or deterministic principles, where every event follows inevitably from prior causes. This is the kind of necessity that, if absolute, would seem to leave no room for genuine human freedom, since all actions would be predetermined.
Immanuel Kant’s strict moral formalism grounds morality solely in the universal, rational form of the moral law and insists that moral action must be motivated purely by duty, setting aside all empirical motives. Hegel’s system tends to subsume individual freedom within a totalising rational order or history. Schelling insists that freedom is a deeper, more primordial reality: it is the capacity for both good and evil, rooted in a non-rational ground of being, not just in rational autonomy or conformity to moral law.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy celebrates this active affirmation of existence despite its inherent tensions, resonating with Schelling’s view of freedom as a dynamic, lived reality rather than a mere abstract ideal.
Carl Jung described the collective unconscious as a shared psychic substrate containing archetypes: universal, inherited patterns or images that manifest across cultures in myths, dreams, and symbols. As such, Schelling laid the groundwork for Jung’s psychological theories, highlighting the deep, often hidden structures that influence both individual and collective life.
William James focussed on the plural, evolving nature of experience and Martin Heidegger, a big player in phenomenology, emphasised the openness and finitude of “being.” Like Scheler, they both resisted the temptation to reduce reality to neat conceptual frameworks; instead, they sought to remain receptive to the complexity, ambiguity, and ongoing revelation of lived existence, making their philosophies more attuned to the richness and unpredictability of life itself.