Predication and Genesis: Metaphysics as Fundamental Heuristic After Schelling’s ’The Ages of the World’

Wolfram Hogrebe offers a robust, uncompromisingly metaphysical reading of Schelling’s unfinished masterpiece, The Ages of the World, to propose a completely contemporary epistemology. By translating Schelling into the language of predicate logic and philosophy of language, Hogrebe also defends its metaphysical claims, equally foregrounding the relevance and challenges that Schelling’s work presents to contemporary analytic philosophy. Originally published 35 years ago, Hogrebe’s book remains ahead of his time. It masterfully bridges the analytic and continental divide - before most philosophers considered this a possibility - and successfully demonstrates Schelling’s contemporary relevance and vitality. Included in this translation is a new author’s preface to the English edition, his preface to the Italian translation (2011), an introduction to the philosophical themes of the book by the translators who are prominent Schelling scholars, a Postface by Markus Gabriel, Hogrebe’s colleague in Bonn, along with a readers’ guide to Hogrebe’s major works.

Wolfram Hogrebe is Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at The University of Bonn. He is the author of several books in German. This is his first book to be translated into English.

Markus Gabriel is Chair in Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Bonn. He is the author of many books and articles in German. His publications in English include Fields of Sense: A New Realist Ontology (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), The Limits of Epistemology (Polity Press, 2019), Transcendental Ontology: Essays on German Idealism (Continuum, 2011) and co-author with Slavoj Zizek of Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism (Continuum, 2009).

Iain Hamilton Grant is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of the West of England. He is the author of Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (Continuum 2006) and Die Natur der Natur (Merve 2018), co-editor, with Emilio Carlo Carriero, of Rivista di Estetica 74 (2020). He was awarded the Paolo Bozzi Prize for Ontology in 2019. He is currently translating Schelling’s On the World Soul and Other Naturephilosophical Writings and working on a philosophy of ubiquitous creation.

Jason M. Wirth is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Seattle University. His recent books include Nietzsche and Other Buddhas: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy (Indiana University Press, 2019), Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis (SUNY, 2017), Commiserating with Devastated Things (Fordham University Press, 2015) and Schelling’s Practice of the Wild (SUNY, 2015). He is the associate editor and book review editor of the journal, Comparative and Continental Philosophy. He is currently completing a manuscript on the cinema of Terrence Malick as well as a work of ecological philosophy called Turtle Island Anarchy.