Abstract This article discusses the debate between Schelling and Hegel from 1811 to 1820. It considers Schelling’s Ages of the World on which he worked during this period as a counter-concept to the speculative logic presented by Hegel in his Science of Logic , first published in 1812. In contrast to Hegel, Schelling attempts in the first book of The Ages of the World to develop a logic that is both onto-logic and theo-logic and also follows the primacy of the will. According to this view, all conceptual relationships arise from volitional relationships of God or the Absolute. Apart from this difference, Schelling adheres to Hegel’s stage sequence of logic, moving from considerations of being and non-being, to becoming, and finally to something. This article illustrates and traces these stages on the basis of previously unpublished fragments of Schelling’s Ages of the World .

Abstract This essay examines the friendship and ‘rupture’ between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. By analysing the brief but philosophically rich correspondence from 1953, it shows that the rupture was by no means caused solely by personal sensitivities, but by profound political and philosophical differences. The correspondence and published texts from this period shed light on two fundamental ways of determining the relationship between philosophy and politics, two irreconcilable basic positions on how philosophical engagement can be understood and practised.

Abstract This commentary on Christian Damböck’s article “Carnap and Heidegger” (DZPhil 2024; 72(5): 656–671) examines the validity of claims regarding the alleged antiscientific and antirational nature of Heidegger’s philosophy. By contrasting the predominantly negative reception of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks in Germany with their more varied international reception, this commentary argues that the Notebooks reveal the distinctive rationality of Heidegger’s thought, challenging entrenched biases about its supposed irrationality. It cautions against one-sided interpretations that perpetuate unsubstantiated assumptions about Heidegger’s philosophy, while recognising the value of Damböck’s and Carnap’s critical perspectives, provided they engage rigorously with his texts.

Abstract Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy has lately garnered renewed attention. While the kind of political tradition this philosophy belongs to remains a highly contested topic, the paper would like to make a twofold claim. Firstly, that Merleau-Ponty shares elementary assumptions with the tradition known as “postfoundationalism”. Secondly, that historically speaking, his thinking has influenced some of the figures associated with postfoundationalism today and should thus be acknowledged as an integral part of this tradition. In a sense, though, the awareness that all social and political orders are built upon contingency is not a rebuttal of institutions, but rather forces us to rethink their logic. As the paper argues, Merleau-Ponty sketches an alternative way to analyse democratic processes, by holding together both the ‘instituent’ and the ‘instituted’ moment of politics. In that respect, his writings contain what could be described a theory of ‘instituent practice’ inspired by Machiavelli and Marx, that overcomes the traditional dichotomy between force and form still present in contemporary theories of ‘constituent’ and of ‘destituent power’.

Abstract This article considers the way in which Schelling’s late philosophy implies a re-evaluation of the broader project of German idealism. Schelling’s last negative philosophy (in the Darstellung der reinrationalen Philosophie ) is designed as a purely rational science which must exhaust itself. Schelling recurs to Kant to both show the indispensability of the purely rational endeavour and at the same time reveal what is excluded from that project. In this sense, Schelling’s last negative philosophy implies a re-framing of his own early philosophy and of the broader project of post-Kantian German idealism. Specifically, Schelling’s late reading of Kant’s transcendental Ideal sheds light on Schelling’s re-framing of the project of a science of pure reason and illuminates how Schelling’s late system, with its transition from negative to positive philosophy, does not reject the unity of thinking and being, but radically transforms it.