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Reiner Schürmann

    February 4, 1941 – August 20, 1993
    The Place of the Symbolic
    Origins
    Reading Marx
    On Heidegger's Being and Time
    Modern Philosophies of the Will
    Heidegger on Being and Acting
    • 2024

      The Place of the Symbolic

      Essays on Art and Politics

      • 300 pages
      • 11 hours of reading

      Exploring the intersection of culture, language, and meaning, this book delves into the role of symbols in shaping human experience. It examines how symbols influence identity, communication, and societal structures, offering insights into their power in both personal and collective contexts. Through a blend of theoretical frameworks and practical examples, the text invites readers to reconsider the significance of symbols in everyday life and their impact on understanding the world around us.

      The Place of the Symbolic
    • 2023

      Ways of Releasement

      Writings on God, Eckhart, and Zen

      Never-before-published writing from a key twentieth-century philosopher. In 1962, Reiner Schürmann began studying at the Dominican school of theology Le Saulchoir, outside Paris. That experience radically shaped his life and work, enabling him to begin to develop many of the ideas for which he would later be known: letting be, life without why, ontological anarchy, and the tragic double bind. Ways of Releasement contains never-before-published material from Schürmann's early period as well as a report Schürmann wrote about his encounter with Heidegger; a précis of his autobiographical novel, Origins; and translations and new editions of later groundbreaking essays. Ways of Releasement concludes with an extensive afterword setting Schürmann's writings in the context of his thinking and life.

      Ways of Releasement
    • 2023

      In Being and Time , Heidegger announced the “Task of Destroying the History of Ontology” in order to free what had remained “unthought” in Western metaphysics. The unpublished part of that work was to be titled “Basic Features of a Phenomenological Destruction of the History of Ontology. According to the Guiding Thread of the Problem of Temporality.” This latest work in the Reiner Schürmann Selected Writings and Lecture Notes series aims to carry out Heidegger’s plan. The destruction, or, as it is later called, the deconstruction of metaphysics, has a negative side—the peeling off, or the archeology, of metaphysical history by means of the guiding thread of the question of Being—and a positive side—“retrieval” of the original experience of Being in ancient Greek philosophy. “The destruction has no other intent than to win back the original experience of metaphysics through a deconstruction of those conceptions which have become current and empty.” The purpose of taking to pieces the fabric of Western metaphysics is to show how at each important stage “the question of the meaning of Being has not only remained unattended to or inadequately raised, but that it has become quite forgotten in spite of all our interest in 'metaphysics'.”

      Heidegger's De (con) struction of Metaphysics
    • 2022

      Through the lenses of Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, this edited volume traces the development of the relation between the will and the law as self-given. Modern Philosophies of the Will explores a variety of topics including: the ontological turn in philosophy of the will; the will’s playful character and the problem of teleology; the will as principle of morality as discussed by Kant, of life­forms as discussed by Nietzsche, and of technology as discussed by Heidegger; the formal identity of legislation; and transgression of the law. This volume traces three strategies in the development of the philosophy of will from Kant to Heidegger, through rationality and irrationality of the will, the ontological turn, and law.

      Modern Philosophies of the Will
    • 2021

      Reading Marx

      On Transcendental Materialism

      • 176 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      In this book, Reiner Schürmann argues that what is most original about Marx is his philosophical axis. Extending his highly original engagement with the history of philosophy, Schürmann draws out this axis, which determines and localizes his theories of history, social relations, and economy. Whereas Marxist readings of Marx conceive history, classes, and social relations as primary realities, Schürmann brings out a radically immanent understanding of praxis that introduces multiplicity. This edition is complemented by a reprinting of Schürmann’s Anti-Humanism essay, in which he reads Marx alongside Nietzsche and Heidegger as spelling out the dissociation of being and action. Reading Marx showcases underappreciated facets of Schürmann’s work and offers an interpretation of Marx that resonates with the readings of Jacques Derrida, Michel Henry, Antonio Negri, and François Laruelle.

      Reading Marx
    • 2019

      Tomorrow the manifold

      Essays on Foucault, Anarchy, and the Singularization to Come

      • 272 pages
      • 10 hours of reading

      This collection assembles key essays of Reiner Schürmann focusing on anarchy and the concept of singularization. It begins with the status of practical philosophy at the end of metaphysics and highlights Schürmann’s engagement with Michel Foucault from 1983 to 1991. Through his original interpretation of the philosophical tradition, Schürmann examines identity and difference in Foucault’s historical framework, leading to a radical phenomenological view of anarchy. The essays question the future of philosophy following the critique of the subject and the merging of theory with praxis, as well as philosophy with politics. This collection not only makes Schürmann’s influential readings of Foucault accessible but also serves as a concise introduction to his thought, documenting a significant evolution in his ideas during the 1980s. Collectively, these essays present Schürmann’s key concerns and provide conceptual tools for his final work, which proposes a topology of broken hegemonies. This approach offers an alternative to Foucault’s genealogical method, presenting a subversive re-reading of Western metaphysics that compels us toward a forthcoming singularization. For those new to Schürmann, these texts position him as a radical thinker of the late 20th century, whose insights may resonate in contemporary discourse.

      Tomorrow the manifold
    • 2016

      Origins

      • 272 pages
      • 10 hours of reading

      “Born too late to see the war and too early to forget it.” So writes Reiner Schürmann in Origins , a startlingly personal account of life as a young man from postwar Germany in the 1960s. Schürmann’s semi-autobiographical protagonist is incapable of escaping a past he never consciously experienced. All around him are barely concealed reminders of Nazi-inflicted death and destruction. His own experiences of displacement and rootlessness, too, are the burden of a cruel collective past. His story presents itself as a continuous quest for—and struggle to free himself from—his origins. The hero is haunted relentlessly by his fractured identity—in his childhood at his father’s factory, where he learns of the Nazi past through a horrible discovery; in an Israeli kibbutz, where, after a few months of happiness, he is thrown out for being a German; in postwar Freiburg, where he reencounters a friend who escaped the Nazi concentration camps; and finally, in the United States, where his attempts at a fresh start almost fail to exorcise the ghosts of the past. Originally published in French in 1976, Origins was the winner of the coveted Prix Broquette-Gonin of the Académie Francaise. In close collaboration with the author, this translation was created in the early 1990s, but Schürmann’s premature death in 1993 prevented its publication process and, as a result, one of the most important literary accounts of the conflicted process of coming to terms with the Holocaust and Germany’s Nazi past has been unavailable to English readers until now. Candid and frank, filled with fury and caustic sarcasm, Origins offers insight into a generation caught between disappointment and rage, alignment and rebellion, guilt and obsession with the past.

      Origins
    • 2008

      On Heidegger's Being and Time

      • 176 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      Focusing on Heidegger's seminal work, this book presents a profound exploration by two distinguished philosophers, offering insights into "Being and Time." It serves as both an in-depth analysis and a guide for understanding this philosophical classic. Additionally, it marks the inaugural publication of Reiner Schürmann's acclaimed lectures on Heidegger, enriching the discourse surrounding his influential ideas and interpretations.

      On Heidegger's Being and Time
    • 1987