Books by Reiner Schurmann

How did the will come to dominate the self-understanding of the modern subject? What lies at the root of the megalomania of desire that defines human experience in the age of global technology? In Modern Philosophies of the Will, Reiner Schürmann traces a philosophical archeology of the willing subject from Ancient Greece into the 20th century. Through a series of original readings of Kant, Schelling, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, Schürmann uncovers the strategic interplay of submission and command that sets the stage for the will's epochal "triumph," while hinting at possibilities of subverting its mastery over both the self and the world. With an appendix offering a polemical critique of Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind, as well as an editorial afterword contextualizing these lectures in Schürmann's broader work, this volume will be of value to specialist and student alike.

In this lecture course, Reiner Schürmann reads Marx's work as a transcendental materialism. Arguing that what is most original in Marx is neither his political or sociological nor his economic thinking, but his philosophical axis, Schürmann shows that Marx conceives being as polyvalent praxis. With patient rigor, Schürmann delineates this notion of praxis from the interpretations proposed by Louis Althusser and the Frankfurt School, as he traces Marx's move beyond the dualism that has governed ontology since Descartes. Stepping out of this dualism, however, Marx does not espouse a monism either-be it an immobile one as Parmenides', or a dynamic one as Hegel's. On the problem of universals, Marx's transcendental materialism is nominalistic: being as action is irreducibly manifold. Extending his highly original engagement with the history of philosophy, Schürmann in the course of these lectures draws out the philosophical axis in Marx's work, which determines and localizes his theories of history, of social relations and of economy. On this view, Marx's unique place in philosophy stems from the fact that the grounding of phenomena is seen by him not as a relation that produces cognition, as in Kant; nor as a relation of material sensitivity, as in Feuerbach; but the grounding occurs in labor, in praxis, in the satisfaction of needs. Whereas the Marxist readings of Marx conceive history, classes and social relations as primary realities, Schürmann brings out a radically immanent understanding of praxis in Marx that introduces multiplicity into being. Following Schürmann's own suggestion, this edition is complemented by a reprinting of his Anti-Humanism essay, in which he reads Marx alongside Nietzsche and Heidegger as spelling out the dissociation of being and action. This rupture puts an end to the epochal economy of presence and returns principles to their own precariousness. As a whole, this volume brings out one of the less appreciated 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.

This volume of Reiner Schurmann's lectures unpacks Nietzsche's ambivalence towards Kant, in particular positioning Nietzsche's claim to have brought an end to German idealism against the backdrop of the Kantian transcendental-critical tradition.

Reinterprets the history of Western philosophy from Greece to modern times.