Johannes Stoffers, Eine lebendige Einheit des Vielen. Das Bemühen Fichtes und Schellings um die Lehre vom Absoluten, «Spekulation und Erfahrung» (SuE), Abteilung II «Untersuchungen», Bd. 58, Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart - Bad Cannstatt 2013. Un volume di pp. 460

The relationship between the philosophical perspective of Fichte and that of Schelling was certainly very much studied, but most of the time the comparison was limited to the years 1794-1802, in which a young Schelling enthusiastically approaches the transcendental philosophy and the frequent exchanges of letters between the two allow for a fruitful and well-founded research based on sources. Moreover, some studies extend the comparison between the two authors to the perspectives they have respectively developed in the last years of their production. Stoffers' essay, on the contrary, presents itself as a novelty within the panorama of studies: in fact, it aims at exposing and comparing the development of Fichte and Schelling's thought in the years 1807-1814, i.e. in the period in which the communication between the two was almost totally interrupted. The challenge that the Author sets himself through this "fictitious exchange" (p. 16) between the positions of the two philosophers is certainly arduous: if up to that moment both thought trajectories, although they differed considerably from each other, remained on common ground, starting from 1804, instead, both knew significant changes and took completely different directions. The unquestionable merit of this study is that it is able to maintain a balanced perspective, able to make a comparison between the two philosophical visions without making the mistake of distorting them. To this end, the cut given to the investigation, which springs from the identification of what, in the Author's opinion, is the central problem of both, namely the conciliation of the one and the many, appears to be completely centred.