Born in Amsterdam in 1941 of German parents, Reiner Schürmann studied philosophy and theology with the Dominicans of Le Centre d'études du Saulchoir near Paris, between 1962 and 1969, and received a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Sorbonne in Paris in 1981.

In 1975, he left the priesthood and began teaching philosophy at the New School for Social Research as a protégé of Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas.

He "died of complications caused by AIDS on August 20, 1993 in New York City",[1] three years after his partner, Québécois painter Louis Comtois.

One of Schürmann's best-known works is Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy (1990 reprint ISBN 0-253-20602-2).

In his only literary work, Les Origines, which was awarded the Prix Broquette-Gonin by the Académie Française in 1977, he provides an autobiographical account of a pilgrimage of errancy, a search for redemption from the inauthentic thrownness of a past filled with memories of guilt and despair, of being born German during World War II, "too late to see the war, too early to forget it."