How did the will come to dominate the self-understanding of the modern subject? What lies at the root of the megalomania of desire that defines human experience in the age of global technology? In Modern Philosophies of the Will, Reiner Schürmann traces a philosophical archeology of the willing subject from Ancient Greece into the 20th century.

Through a series of original readings of Kant, Schelling, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, Schürmann uncovers the strategic interplay of submission and command that sets the stage for the will’s epochal “triumph,” while hinting at possibilities of subverting its mastery over both the self and the world. With an appendix offering a polemical critique of Hannah Arendt’s The Life of the Mind, as well as an editorial afterword contextualizing these lectures in Schürmann’s broader work, this volume will be of value to specialist and student alike.