This chapter presents a reading of the posthumously published fragment The Ages of the World (Die Weltalter) to show that the deconstruction of sovereignty demands a re-thinking of the question of history. Confronting Hegel's pantheistic-immanent philosophy of history, it attempts to reveal an eschatological vision of history at work in Schelling's The Ages of the World which radically puts into question the secularising theodicy formulated by Hegel in his lectures on the philosophy of history. He thereby opens up the possibility, later elaborated by Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin, of a messianic-eschatological critique of historical Reason. Such an eschatological-messianic conception of history, by withdrawing from the triumphal march of universal world-historical politics, gives voice to those who are oppressed by the irresistible demand of progress.
