Most important, this “Jena set,” as I’ve called them, put the self at center stage and redefined our relationship with nature. They composed poems, drafted philosophical treatises and translated passages from great literary works. They worked, wrote, read and laughed together. There were the poets Goethe, Schiller and Novalis the visionary philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel the young scientist Alexander von Humboldt, the contentious Schlegel brothers - Friedrich and August Wilhelm - as well as the latter’s wife, the free-spirited Caroline Schlegel (who would later divorce August Wilhelm and marry Schelling).

The circle included some of Germany’s most famous minds.

He was part of a group of rebellious philosophers, poets and writers who lived and worked in the small university town about 130 miles southwest of Berlin. Schelling was only 23 when he had become the youngest professor at the University of Jena that winter. As a historian, I have looked at the relationship between humankind and nature, and I believe that Schelling’s philosophy of oneness might provide a foundation on which to anchor the fight for our climate and our survival. To me it seems that we sometimes forget that we’re part of nature - physically of course, but also emotionally and psychologically - and this insight is missing from our current climate debates. It was an idea that would change the way humans think about themselves and nature. “At the first moment, when I am conscious of the external world, the consciousness of my self is there as well,” he said, “and vice versa - at my first moment of self-awareness, the real world rises up before me.” Instead of dividing the world into mind and matter, as many philosophers had done for centuries, the young professor told his students that everything was one. He explained this by pointing to the moment when the self becomes aware of the world around it. His idea, that the self and nature are in fact identical, was as simple as it was radical. There is a “secret bond connecting our mind with nature,” the professor, Friedrich Schelling, told the students. At the lectern, a young man lit two candles and the students saw him bathed in light. They jostled for seats, took out ink and quills and waited. As darkness settled over the small German town of Jena in the late winter of 1798, large groups of young men rushed to the town university’s biggest auditorium to listen to their new philosophy professor.

The invention of nature wulf