In three major hegemonic fantasies (the Greek One, Latin Nature, modern self-consciousness), the actual tragic condition is denied: the necessity of obeying an originally dual arrangement, a double bind, the conflict between birth and mortality. Reiner Schürmann's unique endeavor is to meticulously identify the contradictions that are always already present in the establishment as those cracks along which every legal and truth order ultimately breaks apart. It is therefore – also in the interest of a topology – only logical to historically start at those points that represent the beginning and endpoint of a hegemony: from Parmenides to Plotinus, from Cicero and Augustine to Meister Eckhart, and from Kant with Luther to Heidegger. An opus magnum finally available in German from the outside.