Through Kant, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, this seminar traces the
development of the relation between the will and the
law as self-given.
Topic areas include: the ontological turn in philosophy of the will; from
obligation to self-overcoming, to “decision;” the will's
playful character and the problem of teleology; the will as principle of
morality (Kant), of lifeforms (Nietzsche), and of technology
(Heidegger); the formal identity of legislation and transgression of the
law.
The seminar traces three “strategies” in the development of the philosophy
of will from Kant to Heidegger, viz. rationality and irrationality of the
will, the ontological turn, and law.
Reiner Schürmann (1941–1993) was a German
philosopher. He was born in Amsterdam and lived in Germany, Israel, and France before immigrating to the United States in the 1970s, where he was professor and director of the Department of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is the author of three books on philosophy:
Heidegger on Being and Acting,
Wandering Joy, and
Broken Hegemonies.
Origins is his only work of fiction. He never wrote nor published in his native German.
