Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy

Description

Reiner Schürmann's brilliant deconstructionist analysis provides a comprehensive interpretation of Heidegger's thinking from the perspective of the question, What is to be done at the end of metaphysics? Focusing on the relationship between theory and practice m an era in which metaphysical rationality has come to an end, Schürmann examines what happens when "thinking" no longer secures a rational foundation for knowledge and "acting" no longer means conforming one's daily enterprises, public and private, to that foundation. In a retrospective reading of history, Schürmann, following Heidegger, finds that modern technology fulfills and completes a history begun with the ancient Greeks and shows that ours is the age in which epochal principles wither away Schürmann explicates an economy of presencing in which thinking can no longer be called upon to legitimize praxis by measuring it against some enduring principle or arche. Thinking and acting, he concludes, can then become an-archic. From reviews of the original French edition: "This important book on Heidegger is the most rigorous and systematic reading of his thought that has been produced to date. In addition, it draws out the consequences for practical philosophy of Heidegger's deconstruction of the history of metaphysics." -The Review of Metaphysics "A sum on the entirety of Heidegger's thinking, whose speculative and pedagogical value makes it a highly welcome publication" -Emmanuel Levinas "This book not only opens a new era in the reading of Heidegger, it inaugurates perhaps a new age in both thinking and acting." -Esprit "The most monumental effort to date to­wards an exhaustive reading of Heidegger, this book constitutes without doubt a decisive contribution in attempting to seize what is at issue in Heidegger's thinking." -Revue philosophique de Loumin