The German idealist and romantic philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) developed a metaphysical system based on the philosophy of nature.

Born in Württemberg on Jan. 27, 1775, the son of a learned Lutheran pastor, F. W. J. von Schelling was educated at the theological seminary at Tübingen. He became friends with two older classmates, G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Hölderlin, and shared their ardent support of the French Revolution. Schelling read widely in the philosophies of Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte. His first two treatises, Über die Möglichkeit einer Philosophie überhaupt (1795; On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy in General) and Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie ... (1795; On the Ego as Principle of Philosophy), were influenced by Fichte's philosophy of the Absolute Ego. Indeed Fichte's critics mockingly referred to Schelling as the "street...