What has been the specifically modern function of self-consciousness? Why speak of rise or origin? It would obviously be absurd to claim that before Luther, Descartes or Kant, people had no self-consciousness. Yet in pre-modern cultures self-consciousness has not fulfilled the systematic role that it has come to play since then. In this lecture Schuermann traces its rise of in its modern form and function, i.e. as the subjective reference point before which every object must appear to qualify as a phenomenon. As opposed to earlier conceptions, self-consciousness in its modern version rules over its contents, it imposes a regime on being. This transcendental turn is studied in Luther whose Copernican reversal in the way of thinking is less well known than the foundational character of both the Cartesian cogito and Kantian apperception. First of 29 volumes of Reiner Schuermanns so far unpublished lecture notes. Starting with Parmenides (Vol. 1) up to Contemporary French Philosophy (Vol. 29) Schuermann offers a unique reading of the history of western thought and action as a series of eras governed by the rise and fall of certain dominating concepts that contained the seeds of their own destruction.

Reiner Schürmann wurde 1941 in Amsterdam geboren und verbrachte seine Kindheit und Jugend in Krefeld. Ab 1960 studierte er Philosophie in München, unterbrochen durch einen Aufenthalt in einem israelischen Kibbuz. 1961 trat er als Novize bei den Dominikanern in Frankreich ein und studierte von 1962-69 Theologie im Saulchoir, Essonne, bei Paris, unterbrochen durch einen Studienaufenthalt in Freiburg i. Br. bei Heidegger. 1970 wurde er zum Dominikanerpriester ordiniert, verließ den Orden 1975 jedoch wieder. Seit den frühen siebziger Jahren lebte Schürmann in den USA und wurde 1975 von Hannah Arendt und Hans Jonas an die New School for Social Research in New York berufen. 1993 starb Reiner Schürmann an Aids. Sein umfangreiches philosophisches Werk verfasste Schürmann in französischer Sprache.