ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the long philosophical career of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Throughout his life Schelling adopted different and sometimes conflicting philosophical views but much of his thinking revolved around the same set of questions. In particular, the Creation, liberty, evil and God were issues on which he wrote throughout his life. The goodness of creation is underlined by the specifically Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Resurrection of the Flesh. Certain views about the origins of the world entail certain views about its metaphysical and ontological structure, as well as about God, human liberty and evil. In particular, the distinction is important between Judeo-Christian theories of the Creation and competing cosmogonies including Gnosticism, Manicheism, neo-Platonism and Orphism. Man is called upon to cooperate actively and intelligently with the ongoing development of the cosmos. Man's rebellion was made possible by his genuine liberty, which God also created.
