The student will analyze the foundations of one of the few contradictory sub-trends in the thinking of contemporary European philosophy, which is associated with the name of the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux and his concept of so-called correlationism, also called "speculative realism". At a first glance, it does not seem that a philosophy stating a correlationist circle of knowledge (understanding) and therefore requiring further stabilization of the cognitive subject would go any further in principle than, for example, Adorno's statement of the "salvation of philosophy" for modernity by a turn to the transcendental subject. Nevertheless, speculative realism is slowly turning into a broad movement in contemporary continental philosophy, and there is not only a growing number of its adherents, but also a growing number of commentaries on Meillassoux's hitherto major work, After Finitude. A Debate on the Necessity of Contingency and other texts that develop the issues he thematizes. The task of this thesis will therefore include a mapping of this debate.

The student will work through the problematic history of Neo-Hegelianism with emphasis on the impulses that have persisted in the history of European philosophy to the present.

The student will elaborate a problem analysis of the concept of political democracy in the epoch of the Anthropocene with reference to the tradition of critical theory of society and the theory of post-democracy, aversive democracy, simulation democracy and other ways of processing the problem of democracy.