<p>The feature which distinguishes the great works of materialist thought, from Lucretius' <em>De rerum natura </em>through <em>Capital </em>to the writings of Lacan, is their unfinished character: again and again they tackle their chosen problem. Schelling's <em>Weltalter</em>drafts belong to this same series, with their repeated attempt at theformulation of the 'beginning of the world,' of the passage from thepre-symbolic pulsation of the Real to the universe of logos.</p><p>F.W.J. Schelling, the German idealist who for too long dwelled in theshadow of Kant and Hegel, was the first to formulate the post-idealistmotifs of finitude, contingency and temporality. His unique workannounces Marx's critique of speculative idealism, as well as theproperly Freudian notion of drive, of a blind compulsion to repeatwhich can never be sublated in the ideal medium of language.</p><p><em>The Indivisible Remainder </em>beginswith a detailed examination of the two works in which Schelling'sspeculative audacity reached its peak: his essay on human freedom andhis drafts on the “Ages of the World.” After reconstituting their lineof argumentation, Slavoj Zizek confronts Schelling with Hegel, andconcludes by throwing a Schellingian light on some “related matters”:the consequences of the computerization of daily life for sexualexperience; cynicism as today's predominant form of ideology; theepistemological deadlocks of quantum physics.</p><p>Althoughthe book is packed with examples from politics and popular culture —the unmistakable token of Zizek's style — from <em>Speed</em> and <em>Groundhog Day</em> to <em>Forrest Gump,</em>it signals a major shift towards a systematic concern with the basicquestions of philosophy and the roots of the crisis of ourlate-capitalist universe, centred around the enigma of modernsubjectivity.</p>