What did Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling try to accomplish in System of Transcendental Idealism?

In his work System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling sought to unite his own philosophy of nature with the ego-centered system of Johann Fichte.1

Schelling aimed to demonstrate that the natural (unconscious) and the spiritual (conscious) spheres emerge from an original state of indifference within the Absolute, rising through successive steps of increasing order. He argued that art serves as the mediator between these two realms, as artistic creation unites natural and spiritual productions.1

Influenced by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller, Schelling emphasized the superiority of the aesthetic faculty over cognition. He suggested that philosophy should return to the realm of poetry and proposed that knowledge is obtained not through logic, but through a quasi-mystical "intellectual intuition" that allows one to grasp the Absolute or "world-soul".2