Cette leçon propose une réévaluation de l'œuvre de Karl Marx à partir de sa dimension philosophique. Reiner Schürmann offre une relecture radicale de la pensée de Marx en la rattachant au matérialisme transcendantal.
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.
Philosophe allemand, Reiner Schürmann (1941-1993) est né à Amsterdam et a vécu en Allemagne, en Israël et en France avant d'immigrer aux États-Unis dans les années 1970, où il a été professeur et directeur du Département de philosophie à la New School for Social Research de New York. Il est l'auteur de trois livres sur la philosophie, tous écrits en langue française : Maître Eckhart et la joie errante, Le principe d'anarchie : Heidegger et la question de l'agir et Des hégémonies brisées. Les Origines est son seul travail de fiction. Il n'a jamais écrit ni publié dans son allemand natal.
Académiquement peu visible, la pensée de Reiner Schürmann est aujourd'hui reconnue
par Jacques Derrida, Dominique Janicaud, Gérard Granel, Giorgio Agamben ou Mehdi Belhaj Kacem, lequel
la situe « véritablement à la hauteur de celle de Alain Badiou ».
