On Heidegger's Being and Time is an outstanding exploration of Heidegger's most important work by two major philosophers. Simon Critchley argues that we must see Being and Time as a radicalization of Husserl's phenomenology, particularly his theories of intentionality, categorial intuition, and the phenomenological concept of the a priori. This leads to a reappraisal and defense of Heidegger's conception of phenomenology. In contrast, Reiner Schurmann urges us to read Heidegger 'backward', arguing that his later work is the key to unravelling Being and Time. Through a close reading of Being and Time Schurmann demonstrates that this work is ultimately aporetic because the notion of Being elaborated in his later work is already at play within it. This is the first time that Schurmann's renowned lectures on Heidegger have been published. The book concludes with Critchley's reinterpretation of the importance of authenticity in Being and Time. Arguing for what he calls an 'originary inauthenticity', Critchley proposes a relational understanding of the key concepts of the second part of Being and Time: death, conscience and temporality.

On Heidegger's Being and Time is an outstanding exploration of Heidegger's most important work by two major philosophers. Simon Critchley argues that we must see Being and Time as a radicalization of Husserl's phenomenology, particularly his theories of intentionality, categorial intuition, and the phenomenological concept of the a priori. This leads to a reappraisal and defense of Heidegger's conception of phenomenology. In contrast, Reiner Schurmann urges us to read Heidegger 'backward', arguing that his later work is the key to unravelling Being and Time. Through a close reading of Being and Time Schurmann demonstrates that this work is ultimately aporetic because the notion of Being elaborated in his later work is already at play within it. This is the first time that Schurmann's renowned lectures on Heidegger have been published. The book concludes with Critchley's reinterpretation of the importance of authenticity in Being and Time. Arguing for what he calls an 'originary inauthenticity', Critchley proposes a relational understanding of the key concepts of the second part of Being and Time: death, conscience and temporality.

This remarkable book shows the seminal Western mystic Meister Eckhart as the great teacher of the birth of God in the soul. It is at once an exposition of Eckhart's mysticism -- perhaps the best in English -- and also an exemplary work of contemporary philosophy.

Schurmann shows us that Eckhart is our contemporary. Writing from experience, he describes the threefold movement of detachment, releasement, and "dehiscence" (splitting open) that leads to the experience of "living without a why" in which all things are in God and which is sheer joy. Going beyond that, he describes the transformational force of approaching the Godhead, the God beyond God.

Nietzsche praised Kant for having "annihilated Socratism," for exhibiting all ideals as essentially unattainable, and for having exposed himself to the despair of truth--all essential traits Nietzsche claimed for his own thinking. At the same time, the existentialist philosopher remained highly critical of Kant. 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. Rather than simply compare the two philosophers, Schurmann's lectures help us to understand the consequences Nietzsche derived from Kantian concepts, as well as the wider horizon within which Nietzsche's ideas arose and can best be shown to apply. According to Schurmann's trenchant reading: if Nietzsche was indeed "fatal" to Western philosophy, as he claimed, he was so in large part because of the Kantian transcendental thinking from which he inherited the very elements and tools of his criticism.

This volume tracks the crucial role of Reiner Schurmann's engagement with the work of Michel Foucault between 1983 and 1991. Drawing on Foucault's highly original reading of the philosophical tradition, Schurmann traces the status of identity and difference in Foucault's conception of history to develop a radical phenomenological understanding of anarchy. He examines the fate of philosophy after the critique of the subject and the collapse of the divide between theory and praxis, philosophy and politics. Taken together, these pivotal essays introduce the reader to Schurmann's most urgent concerns and assemble the conceptual tools that go on to lay the groundwork for his final work, Broken Hegemonies, which offers a subversive re-reading of the history of Western metaphysics outside of Foucault's genealogical approach. To the reader unfamiliar with Schurmann's work, these texts establish him as one of the most radical thinkers of the late 20th century, whose work might eventually become legible in our present.

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 life forms 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.

In this lecture course, Reiner Schurmann develops the idea that, in between the spiritual Carolingian Renaissance and the secular humanist Renaissance, there was a distinctive medieval Renaissance connected with the rediscovery of Aristotle. Focusing on Thomas Aquinas's ontology and epistemology, William of Ockham's conceptualism, and Meister Eckhart's speculative mysticism, Schurmann shows how thought began to break free from religion and the hierarchies of the feudal, neo-Platonic order and devote its attention to otherness and singularity. A crucial supplement to Schurmann's magnum opus Broken Hegemonies, Neo-Aristotelianism and the Medieval Renaissance will be essential reading for anyone interested in the rise and fall of Western principles, and thus in how to think and act today.

"Born too late to see the war and too early to forget it." So writes Reiner Schurmann in Origins, a startlingly personal account of life as a young man from postwar Germany in the 1960s. Schurmann'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 Academie Francaise. In close collaboration with the author, this meticulously crafted translation was created in the early 1990s, but Schurmann'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.

In this book, Reiner Schurmann argues that what is most original about Marx is his philosophical axis. Extending his highly original engagement with the history of philosophy, Schurmann 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, Schurmann brings out a radically immanent understanding of praxis that introduces multiplicity. This edition is complemented by a reprinting of Schurmann'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 Schurmann's work and offers an interpretation of Marx that resonates with the readings of Jacques Derrida, Michel Henry, Antonio Negri, and Francois Laruelle.

..". elegant and provocative... Exhibit[s] a subtle mastery ofHeidegger's works." -- Review of Metaphysics

..". splendidlyprecise study of Heidegger... to be recommended not only to Heidegger scholars butalso to those interested in the question of what philosophical thinking has as itstask in the modern technological world." -- Religious StudiesReview

..". indispensable to understanding the later Heidegger."-- Choice

..". a book of striking originality and depth, a brilliant and quite new interpretation of the nature and history of philosophy." John Sallis

In Broken Hegemonies, the late distinguished philosopher Reiner Schurmann offers a radical rethinking of the history of Western philosophy from the Greeks through Heidegger. Schurmann interprets the history of Western thought and action as a series of eras governed by the rise and fall of certain dominating philosophical ideas that contained the seeds of their own destruction. These eras coincided with their dominant languages: Greek, Latin, and vernacular tongues. Analyzing philosophical texts from Parmenides, Plotinus, and Cicero, through Augustine, Meister Eckhardt, and Kant, to Heidegger, Schurmann traces the arguments by which these ideas gained hegemony and by which their credibility was ultimately demolished. Recognizing the failure of ultimate norms, Broken Hegemonies questions how humanity today is to think and act in the absence of principles."