The Absolute and the Event: Schelling after Heidegger by Emilio Carlo Corriero undertakes a philosophical investigation into the enigmatic connections between the concept of the Event (das Ereignis) in Heidegger’s later thought and Schelling’s speculative philosophy of the Absolute. At its core, this work wrestles with the question of how Heidegger’s post-metaphysical conception of the Event might herald a transformative beginning for Western philosophy—a beginning that emerges not only from his own phenomenological investigations but also through a subtle, often overlooked, engagement with Schelling’s philosophical legacy. The book goes into Heidegger’s attempts to grapple with the limits of ontology, tracing how his appropriation of Schelling’s insights provides fertile ground for rethinking the fundamental nature of being, time, and history.
Heidegger’s notion of the Event—controversial, obscure, and shadowed by his involvement with National Socialism—invites scrutiny not merely as a philosophical concept but as a historical pronouncement on the destiny of Western metaphysics. Corriero explores this notion as a rupture, a singular occurrence through which being itself gives and withdraws presence. Here, the Event functions as a radical temporalization of being, an occurrence beyond the grasp of calculative reason, one that opens the possibility of an entirely new philosophical orientation. It is precisely in this shift that the affinities between Heidegger and Schelling begin to crystallize, particularly in how Schelling’s philosophy anticipates a conception of being that is inherently dynamic, self-revealing, and entangled with the organic unfolding of time.
The volume methodically reconstructs Heidegger’s engagement with Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809). This text, which occupied Heidegger’s attention in his 1927-28 seminar and later courses in 1936 and 1941, offers a crucial hinge upon which Heidegger’s own ontological investigations pivot. Schelling’s idea of an Ur-grund—a primordial ground that is neither being nor non-being but the turbulent source of both—becomes a forerunner to Heidegger’s Event. The ambiguous, unsettling nature of this primal ground mirrors the structure of Heidegger’s Ereignis: an ontological happening that defies the metaphysical craving for fixed presence. Corriero shows how Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology and his pursuit of a post-metaphysical Absolute find their conceptual resonance in Schelling’s notion of a positive philosophy that confronts the limitations of rational abstraction.
In unraveling these connections, Corriero exposes the depth of Heidegger’s debt to Schelling. Where Heidegger sees the Event as a giving of being that cannot be anticipated or controlled, Schelling conceptualizes the Absolute as a living, self-differentiating totality that transcends the sterile formalism of negative philosophy. For Schelling, the Absolute is not an inert metaphysical principle but an active, generative force—a band of living powers in constant conflict and resolution. This dynamic structure of the Absolute is essential for understanding the historical trajectory that both Schelling and Heidegger trace for Western thought. The organic, self-positing nature of Schelling’s Absolute anticipates Heidegger’s vision of a historical Event that might redeem philosophy from the technocratic destiny of modernity.
The book does not shy away from addressing Heidegger’s fraught political implications. By situating Heidegger’s notion of the Event within the context of his troubling flirtation with National Socialism, Corriero engages with the ethical and historical dimensions of Heidegger’s thought. Could Heidegger’s conception of the Event, with its emphasis on historical destiny and new beginnings, be read as a philosophical legitimation of a destructive political ideology? Corriero grapples with this question, arguing that while Heidegger’s historical misjudgments cannot be ignored, the philosophical core of the Event must be disentangled from its political misapplications. In doing so, he returns to Schelling’s notion of freedom—a freedom that emerges from the turbulent ground of nature and history, resisting the reduction to any singular political project.
In its detailed exploration, The Absolute and the Event also aligns Heidegger and Schelling with Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche’s rethinking of being as perpetual becoming resonates with the dynamic, non-static ontology that both Schelling and Heidegger pursue. Heidegger’s later thought, with its rejection of fixed essences in favor of temporal, historical occurrences, finds a philosophical ally in Nietzsche’s vision of reality as a ceaseless flux. Corriero deftly shows how the eternal recurrence and the Event both resist the metaphysical temptation to freeze being into static categories, instead affirming an ontology that is vibrant, historical, and open-ended.
Corriero’s The Absolute and the Event is not merely a historical analysis of philosophical affinities but a key reflection on the future of philosophy itself. By tracing the subtle interrelations between Schelling’s Absolute, Heidegger’s Event, and Nietzsche’s becoming, this work gestures toward a post-metaphysical philosophy that does not abandon the question of being but rethinks it in terms of temporal dynamism and historical unfolding. The book reveals how Heidegger’s attempt to inaugurate a new beginning for Western thought is deeply connected with Schelling’s vision of an organic, self-revealing Absolute—an Absolute that, while resisting conceptual closure, remains the inexhaustible ground of freedom, time, and being.
Simon Gros 
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