William Desmond – författare

William Desmond sees religion, art, philosophy, and politics as essential and distinctive modes of human practice, manifestations of an intimate universality that illuminates individual and social being. They are also surprisingly permeable phenomena, and by observing their relations, Desmond captures notes of a clandestine conversation that transforms ontology.

William Desmond, taking issue with typical assessments of the ancient Cynics, contends that figures such as Antisthenes and Diogenes were not cultural outcasts or marginal voices in the classical culture of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Rather, the Cynic movement had deep and significant roots in what Desmond calls "the Greek praise of poverty." Desmond demonstrates that classical attitudes toward wealth were complex and ambivalent, and allowed for an implicit praise of poverty and the virtues it could inspire. From an economic and political point of view, the poor majority at Athens and elsewhere were natural democrats who distrusted great concentrations of wealth as potentially oligarchical or tyrannical. Hence, the poor could be praised in contemporary literature for their industry, honesty, frugality, and temperance. The rich, on the other hand, were often criticized as idle, unjust, arrogant, and profligate. These perspectives were reinforced by typical Greek experiences of war, and the belief that poverty fostered the virtues of courage and endurance. Finally, from an early date, Greek philosophers associated wisdom with the transcendence of sense experience and of such worldly values as wealth and honor. The Cynics, Desmond asserts, assimilated all of these ideas in creating their distinctive and radical brand of asceticism. Theirs was a startling and paradoxical outlook, but it had broad appeal and would persist to exert a manifold influence in the Hellenistic period and beyond.

William Desmond, taking issue with typical assessments of the ancient Cynics, contends that figures such as Antisthenes and Diogenes were not cultural outcasts or marginal voices in the classical culture of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. Rather, the Cynic movement had deep and significant roots in what Desmond calls "the Greek praise of poverty." Desmond demonstrates that classical attitudes toward wealth were complex and ambivalent, and allowed for an implicit praise of poverty and the virtues it could inspire. From an economic and political point of view, the poor majority at Athens and elsewhere were natural democrats who distrusted great concentrations of wealth as potentially oligarchical or tyrannical. Hence, the poor could be praised in contemporary literature for their industry, honesty, frugality, and temperance. The rich, on the other hand, were often criticized as idle, unjust, arrogant, and profligate. These perspectives were reinforced by typical Greek experiences of war, and the belief that poverty fostered the virtues of courage and endurance. Finally, from an early date, Greek philosophers associated wisdom with the transcendence of sense experience and of such worldly values as wealth and honor. The Cynics, Desmond asserts, assimilated all of these ideas in creating their distinctive and radical brand of asceticism. Theirs was a startling and paradoxical outlook, but it had broad appeal and would persist to exert a manifold influence in the Hellenistic period and beyond.

Godsends is William Desmond's newest addition to his masterwork on the borderlines between philosophy and theology.For many years, William Desmond has been patiently constructing a philosophical project—replete with its own terminology, idiom, grammar, dialectic, and its metaxological transformation—in an attempt to reopen certain boundaries: between metaphysics and phenomenology, between philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, between the apocalyptic and the speculative, and between religious passion and systematic reasoning. In Godsends, Desmond's newest addition to his ambitious masterwork, he presents an original reflection on what he calls the "companioning" of philosophy and religion. Throughout the book, he follows an itinerary that has something of an Augustinian likeness: from the exterior to the interior, from the inferior to the superior. The stations along the way include a grappling with the default atheism prevalent in contemporary intellectual culture; an exploration of the middle space, the metaxu between the finite and the infinite; a dwelling with solitudes as thresholds between selving and the sacred; a meditation on idiot wisdom and transcendence in an East-West perspective; an exploration of the different stresses in the mysticisms of Aurobindo and the Arnhem Mystical Sermons; a dream monologue of autonomy, a suite of Kantian and post-Kantian variations on the story of the prodigal son; a meditation on the beatitudes as exceeding virtue, in light of Aquinas's understanding; and culminating in an exploration of Godsends as telling us something significant about the surprise of revelation in word, idea, and story. Godsends is written for thoughtful persons and scholars perplexed about the place of religion in our time and hopeful for some illuminating companionship from relevant philosophers. It will also interest students of philosophy and religion, especially philosophical theology and philosophical metaphysics.

Hegel is widely regarded as one of the major thinkers of the modern era, if not the entire tradition of philosophy. Hegel, like many philosophers, took seriously traditional philosophical perplexities about God, but unlike many modern philosophers he claimed to take the specific characteristic of Christianity into account in his philosophizing. This book presents a new examination, interpretation and critical engagement with Hegel's philosophy of religion, and with his concept of God in particular. William Desmond explores the distinctive stresses of Hegel's approach to God, the influence it has exerted, and the fundamental problems that his approach exhibits.

Hegel is widely regarded as one of the major thinkers of the modern era, if not the entire tradition of philosophy. Hegel, like many philosophers, took seriously traditional philosophical perplexities about God, but unlike many modern philosophers he claimed to take the specific characteristic of Christianity into account in his philosophizing. This book presents a new examination, interpretation and critical engagement with Hegel's philosophy of religion, and with his concept of God in particular. William Desmond explores the distinctive stresses of Hegel's approach to God, the influence it has exerted, and the fundamental problems that his approach exhibits.

Philosophy and its Others responds to the widespread sense that philosophy must renew its intellectual community with other significant ways of being and mind. The author articulates philosophy's community of mind with the aesthetic, the religious, and the ethical, without losing any of its own distinctive voice. He develops an original and constructive position between these extremes: the Hegelian extreme which reduces the plurality of others to a dialectical totality and the Wittgensteinian and deconstructive options that celebrate plurality, but without a proper sense of the connectedness of philosophy and its others.

The culmination of a systematic metaphysics written by a world-class philosopher, demonstrating the need for a renewal of metaphysicsAs Plato told us long ago, the human being is neither a god nor a beast, but someone in between. Philosophy too is in between. How do we philosophize in between? W hat is the being of the between? This book answers the question in the most comprehensive terms possible. It offers an original understanding of metaphysical thinking and the fundamental senses of being, namely, the univocal, equivocal, dialectical, and metaxological senses.Part I of Being and the Between focuses on the nature of metaphysics, the question of being, in terms of the above fourfold sense. Part II develops a metaphysics of being as between, relative to our basic perplexities, concerning origin, creation, things, intelligibilities, selves, communities, being true, being good. The book calls for a generous hermeneutical rethinking of the philosophical tradition. Major figures and positions are reinterpreted. Desmond addresses the issue, common since Hegel, endemic since Heidegger, concerning the end of metaphysics. Granting a proper understanding of the between, Desmond believes that we need a resurrection of metaphysics, where the old perplexities, ever new, stand before us again.

Addresses the end of art and the task of metaphysics.Though our time is often said to be post-religious and post-metaphysical, many continue to seek some encounter with otherness and transcendence in art. This book deals diversely with the issues of art, origins, and otherness, both in themselves and in philosophical engagements with the works of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Addressing themes such as eros and mania, genius and the sublime, transcendence and the saving power of art, William Desmond tries to make sense of the paradox that too much has been asked of art that now almost nothing is asked of it. He argues that there is more to be said philosophically of art, and claims that art has the power to open up mindfulness beyond objectifying knowledge, as well as beyond thinking that claims to be entirely self-determining.

In contemporary philosophy the status, indeed the very viability of metaphysics is a much contested issue. The reflections offered here ex­plore diverse aspects of this contested status and offer a defense of meta­physics. In other works, perhaps most fully in Being and the Between, William Desmond has tried to develop what he calls a metaxological metaphysics in response to different skeptical, if not hostile approach­es to metaphysics quite common in our time. The Voiding of Being com­plements the systematic dimensions of this metaxological metaphys­ics outlined in Being and the Between. It presents a set of studies which amplify important themes in the unfolding of modern metaphysics, in relation to major earlier and contemporary thinkers, while adding nu­ance to what is involved in the more systematic articulation of a metax­ological metaphysics. There is what the author calls a voiding of being in modernity, expressed in diverse developments of thought. “The Voiding of Being,” might seems to conjure up negative associations but the aim of the thoughts gathered here is not at all negative. While attempting to understand the voiding of being in modern thought, our appreciation of the promise of metaphysical thinking can also be renewed and indeed extended—extended beyond skepticism and hostility to metaphysics. Desmond engages many interlocutors along the way, from the long tra­dition, such as Heraclitus, Aquinas and Hegel, as well as more contem­porary thinkers like Heidegger and Marion. As the book’s subtitle sug­gests, it is concerned with the continued doing of metaphysics and not only the contemporary undoing of it.

In contemporary philosophy the status, indeed the very viability of metaphysics is a much contested issue. The reflections offered here explore diverse aspects of this contested status and offer a defence of metaphysics. In other works, perhaps most fully in Being and the Between, William Desmond has tried to develop what he calls a metaxological metaphysics in response to different skeptical, if not hostile approaches to metaphysics quite common in our time. The Voiding of Being complements the systematic dimensions of this metaxological metaphysics outlined in Being and the Between. It presents a set of studies which amplify important themes in the unfolding of modern metaphysics, in relation to major earlier and contemporary thinkers, while adding nuance to what is involved in the more systematic articulation of a metaxological metaphysics. There is what the author calls a voiding of being in modernity, expressed in diverse developments of thought. "The Voiding of Being," might seem to conjure up too negative associations but the aim of the thoughts gathered here is not at all negative. While attempting to understand the voiding of being in modern thought, our appreciation of the promise of metaphysical thinking can also be renewed and indeed extended – extended beyond skepticism and hostility to metaphysics. Desmond engages many interlocutors along the way, from the long tradition, such as Heraclitus, Aquinas and Hegel, as well as more contemporary thinkers like Heidegger and Marion. As the book’s subtitle suggests, it is concerned with the continued doing of metaphysics and not only the contemporary undoing of it.

Seeking to renew an ancient companionship between the philosophical and the religious, this book's meditative chapters dwell on certain elemental experiences or happenings that keep the soul alive to the enigma of the divine. William Desmond engages the philosophical work of Pascal, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Shestov, and Soloviev, among others, and pursues with a philosophical mindfulness what is most intimate in us, yet most universal: sleep, poverty, imagination, courage and witness, reverence, hatred and love, peace and war. Being religious has to do with that intimate universal, beyond arbitrary subjectivism and reductionist objectivism. In this book, he attempts to look at religion with a fresh and open mind, asking how philosophy might itself stand up to some of the questions posed to it by religion, not just how religion might stand up to the questions posed to it by philosophy. Desmond tries to pursue a new and different policy, one faithful to the light of this dialogue.

One of the most celebrated of Plato's ideas was that if human society was ever to function successfully then philosophers would need to become kings, or kings philosophers. In a perfect state, therefore, philosophic wisdom should be wedded to political power. In antiquity, who were or aspired to be philosopher-kings? What was their understanding of wisdom and the limits of knowledge? What influence have they had on periods beyond antiquity? This volume focuses on Plato and his contemporaries; Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors; Marcus Aurelius and the 'good emperors'; Moses, Solomon and early Hebrew leaders; and Julian the Apostate, the last of the pagans. In conclusion it looks at the re-emergence of the Platonic ideal in important moments of European history, such as the Enlightenment. The theme of the philosopher-king is significant for Greco-Roman antiquity as a whole, and this work is unique in detailing the development of an idea through major periods of Greek and Roman history, and beyond.

Art and the Absolute restores Hegel's aesthetics to a place of central importance in the Hegelian system. In so doing, it brings Hegel into direct relation with the central thrust of contemporary philosophy.The book draws on the astonishing scope and depths of Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, exploring the multifaceted issue of art and the absolute. Why does Hegel ascribe absoluteness to art? What can such absoluteness mean? How does it relate to religion and philosophy? How does Hegel's view of art illuminate the contemporary absence of the absolute? Art and the Absolute argues that these aesthetic questions are not mere theoretical conundrums for abstract analysis. It argues that Hegel's understanding of art can provide an indispensable hermeneutic relevant to current controversies.Art and the Absolute explores the intricacies of Hegel's aesthetic thought, communicating its contemporary relevance. It shows how for Hegel art illuminates the other areas of significant human experience such as history, religion, politics, literature. Against traditional, closed views, the result is a challenge to re-read Hegel's aesthetic philosophy.

This volume comprises studies written by prominent scholars working in the field of German Idealism. These scholars come from the English speaking philosophical world and Continental Europe. They treat major aspects of the place of religion in Idealism, Romanticism and other schools of thought and culture. They also discuss the tensions and relations between religion and philosophy in terms of the specific form they take in German Idealism, and in terms of the effect they still have on contemporary culture. The authors consider figures such as Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Jacobi. The book will prove very informative to researchers and teachers working in the fields of philosophy, philosophy of religion, and classical German philosophy.

An original work which rethinks the question of God in a constructive spirit, drawing its conclusions by considering ideas received from both philosophy and religion. Makes an important new contribution to the ongoing scholarly debates surrounding the intersection of philosophy and religionSuggests that this junction is not just dictated by religion having to prove its credentials to rational philosophy, but that it is also a matter of philosophy wondering if religion is the ultimate partner in dialogueIncludes discussion of a wide range of significant thinkers, both traditional and contemporary, such as Plotinus, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche and his successorsCompletes a trilogy of works by William Desmond, complementing its companion volumes, Being and the Between and Ethics and the Between.

An original work which rethinks the question of God in a constructive spirit, drawing its conclusions by considering ideas received from both philosophy and religion. Makes an important new contribution to the ongoing scholarly debates surrounding the intersection of philosophy and religionSuggests that this junction is not just dictated by religion having to prove its credentials to rational philosophy, but that it is also a matter of philosophy wondering if religion is the ultimate partner in dialogueIncludes discussion of a wide range of significant thinkers, both traditional and contemporary, such as Plotinus, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche and his successorsCompletes a trilogy of works by William Desmond, complementing its companion volumes, Being and the Between and Ethics and the Between.

Career-spanning selections from the writings of William Desmond.Known especially for his original system of metaphysics in a trilogy of books published between 1995 and 2008, and for his scholarship on Hegel, William Desmond has left his mark on the philosophy of religion, ethics, and aesthetics. The William Desmond Reader provides for the first time in a single book a point of entry into his original and constructive philosophy, including carefully chosen selections of his works that introduce the key ideas, perspectives, and contributions of his philosophy as a whole. Also featured is an original essay by Desmond himself reflecting synthetically on the topics covered, as well as an interview by Richard Kearney.

One of the most celebrated of Plato's ideas was that if human society was ever to function successfully then philosophers would need to become kings, or kings philosophers. In a perfect state, therefore, philosophic wisdom should be wedded to political power.In antiquity, who were or aspired to be philosopher-kings? What was their understanding of wisdom and the limits of knowledge? What influence have they had on periods beyond antiquity? This volume focuses on Plato and his contemporaries; Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic successors; Marcus Aurelius and the ‘good emperors'; Moses, Solomon and early Hebrew leaders; and Julian the Apostate, the last of the pagans. In conclusion it looks at the re-emergence of the Platonic ideal in important moments of European history, such as the Enlightenment. The theme of the philosopher-king is significant for Greco-Roman antiquity as a whole, and this work is unique in detailing the development of an idea through major periods of Greek and Roman history, and beyond.

This volume comprises studies written by prominent scholars working in the field of German Idealism. These scholars come from the English speaking philosophical world and Continental Europe. They treat major aspects of the place of religion in Idealism, Romanticism and other schools of thought and culture. They also discuss the tensions and relations between religion and philosophy in terms of the specific form they take in German Idealism, and in terms of the effect they still have on contemporary culture. The authors consider figures such as Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Jacobi. The book will prove very informative to researchers and teachers working in the fields of philosophy, philosophy of religion, and classical German philosophy.

Offers an expansion of Desmond's explorations in the philosophy of the between by considering in a fresh way the distinctive features of Irish thought, with reference to religion, culture, and poetry.In Wayward and Homebound, William Desmond explores the philosophy of the between in connection with traditions of Irish thought and culture, especially poetry, drawing upon the metaxological philosophy developed most systematically in the award-winning Being and the Between, Ethics and the Between, and God and the Between. It begins with a broad overview of this notion in connection with Irish thinking and culture by contrast with French, German, and Greek variations of the notion. It touches on figures like John Scotus Eriugena, John Toland, George Berkeley, and Edmund Burke as well as major poets and writers like Swift, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett. The paradoxical twinning of being at home and not being at home and the relation of thought and exile, in an Irish as well as more cosmopolitan setting, are explored. Desmond presents a synopsis of metaxological philosophy and how it contributes to aesthetics, ethics, religion, and metaphysics. In an extended exploration of Irish betweenings, reflections are offered that move from nature to culture, with four sequences of reflections on islanding, naturing, homing, and wording. Additional concerns come to light such as insular thinking, the ecology of land and sea, religion, postcolonialsm, and the dialogue of poet and philosopher.

Offers an expansion of Desmond's explorations in the philosophy of the between by considering in a fresh way the distinctive features of Irish thought, with reference to religion, culture, and poetry.In Wayward and Homebound, William Desmond explores the philosophy of the between in connection with traditions of Irish thought and culture, especially poetry, drawing upon the metaxological philosophy developed most systematically in the award-winning Being and the Between, Ethics and the Between, and God and the Between. It begins with a broad overview of this notion in connection with Irish thinking and culture by contrast with French, German, and Greek variations of the notion. It touches on figures like John Scotus Eriugena, John Toland, George Berkeley, and Edmund Burke as well as major poets and writers like Swift, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett. The paradoxical twinning of being at home and not being at home and the relation of thought and exile, in an Irish as well as more cosmopolitan setting, are explored. Desmond presents a synopsis of metaxological philosophy and how it contributes to aesthetics, ethics, religion, and metaphysics. In an extended exploration of Irish betweenings, reflections are offered that move from nature to culture, with four sequences of reflections on islanding, naturing, homing, and wording. Additional concerns come to light such as insular thinking, the ecology of land and sea, religion, postcolonialsm, and the dialogue of poet and philosopher.

Philosophy and its Others responds to the widespread sense that philosophy must renew its intellectual community with other significant ways of being and mind. The author articulates philosophy's community of mind with the aesthetic, the religious, and the ethical, without losing any of its own distinctive voice. He develops an original and constructive position between these extremes: the Hegelian extreme which reduces the plurality of others to a dialectical totality and the Wittgensteinian and deconstructive options that celebrate plurality, but without a proper sense of the connectedness of philosophy and its others.

This book is a defense of speculative philosophy in the wake of Hegel. In a number of wide-ranging, meditative essays, Desmond deals with the criticism of speculative thought in post-Hegelian thinking. He covers the interpretation of Hegelian speculation in terms of the metataxological notion of being and the concept of philosophy that Desmond has developed in two previous works, Philosophy and Its Others, and Desire, Dialectic and Otherness. Though Hegel is Desmond's primary interlocuter, there are references to Aristophanes, Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida. Desmond is concerned with the limits of philosophy. The themes of the essays include speculation and historicism, speculation and cult, speculation and representation, evil and dialectic, logos and the comedy of failure.

Desmond explores perplexity regarding ultimacy—the metaphysical perplexity that precedes and exceeds scientific and commonsense curiosity.Desmond writes about the metaphysical perplexity that cannot be identified with scientific or commonsense curiosity. This perplexity is in another dimension of thought, asking questions about what precedes and exceeds the determinate intelligibilities of science and common sense. Desmond explores what this perplexity is, especially in so far as it is shadowed by the question of ultimacy.This work complements Desmond's Being and the Between.

Diverse voices explore the possibility of doing metaphysics in light of contemporary critiques.Philosophy without metaphysics is unthinkable, yet there has been much discussion of this-the end of metaphysics, or post-metaphysical thinking. This book takes issue with this proclamation of the end of metaphysics. It offers diverse arguments that metaphysics cannot be put behind us and has its own continuing contribution to the life of human culture. The contributors are a diverse group of thinkers whose work obviates the divide between analytic and continental philosophy. Here they explore the relations to metaphysics and dialectic, with regard to sources, to major themes, to individual thinkers, and to dialectic seen in cross-cultural perspective.Contributors to this book include George Allan, Vincent Colapietro, William Desmond, David L. Hall, Kevin Kennedy, Brian Martine, Robert Cummings Neville, Carl Page, Giacomo Rinaldi, Stephen David Ross, and David Weissman.

Articulates the necessity for a comprehensive reconstructive thinking about the meaning of being good.In Ethics and the Between William Desmond addresses our current perplexities regarding the devaluation of being in modernity and the shadow of ethical nihilism. He rethinks the sources of value, the diverse ethical ways, the nature of ethical selving and communities, and articulates the necessity for a comprehensive reconstructive thinking about the meaning of being good, consonant with the response to the question of being in Being and the Between, the first book of a planned trilogy.