The anarchic life and the political problem of ways of life in Reiner Schürmann

Abstract

This article questions the “natural” link between politics and ways of life through a critical analysis of Reiner Schürmann’s work. The first part discusses the problem of ways of life, particularly the connection between life, form, and politics in three interpretive models designed to guide the discussion of a political theory of ways of life. The second part problematizes Schürmann’s conception of the self-constitution of the practical subject, drawing on his anarchist interpretation of the concept of way of life in the later work of Foucault. The final part posits, based on certain elements of Schürmann’s theory, the notion of principle-less life as a case of an anarchic, ungovernable way of life.