William Desmond

This is the culmination of a systematic metaphysics written by a world-class philosopher, demonstrating the need for a renewal of metaphysics.

Being and the Between

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.

Speculation, Cult, and Comedy

Beyond Hegel and Dialectic

Intimate Universal - the Hidden Porosity among Religion, Art, Philosophy, and Politics

William Desmond's misgivings regarding Hegel's take on God leads the reader through Hegel's writings to reveal a path that leads anywhere but to God. The author believes that an idol is no less an idol constructed from thought as constructed from gold.

A Counterfeit Double?

Hegel's God

William Desmond dwells on elemental experiences that keep the soul alive to the enigma of the divine. He pursues what is intimate yet universal: sleep, reverence, hatred and love, peace and war.

Between Religion and Philosophy

Is There a Sabbath for Thought?

Desmond explores perplexity regarding ultimacy--the metaphysical perplexity that precedes and exceeds scientific and commonsense curiosity.

Metaphysical Thoughts from the Middle

Perplexity and Ultimacy

Articulates the necessity for a comprehensive reconstructive thinking about the meaning of being good.

Ethics and the Between

Stephen King

"... celui qui mène le bal - Dieu, ou tu l'appelleras comme tu voudras - doit adorer s'amuser. [...] Mais cela ne peut se faire que dans des circonstances bien précises. Comme ce soir. Toi, tout seul dans la nature... ta mère malade... besoin d'un moyen de transport... Dans moins de dix kilomètres, on va commencer à voir les premières maisons. Dans moins de quinze, on atteindra les limites de la ville. Ce qui signifie qu'il faut que tu te décides tout de suite. - Que je décide quoi ? - Qui monte dans le Bolid' et qui reste à terre. Toi ou ta mère. " Une nouvelle diabolique, la première diffusée, en anglais, sur le Net, et qui est reprise dans Tout est fatal.

Un tour sur le bolide

Addresses the end of art and the task of metaphysics.

Between Philosophy and Art

Art, Origins, Otherness

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 religion Suggests 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 dialogue Includes discussion of a wide range of significant thinkers, both traditional and contemporary, such as Plotinus, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche and his successors Completes a trilogy of works by William Desmond, complementing its companion volumes, Being and the Between and Ethics and the Between.

God and the Between

This book gathers a set of reflections on the gift of beauty and the passion of being. There is something surprising about beauty that we receive and that moves the passion of being in us. The book takes issue with an ambiguous attitude to beauty among some who proclaim their advanced aesthetic authenticity. Beauty seems bland and lacks the more visceral thrill of the ugly, indeed the excremental. We crave what disrupts and provokes us, not what gives delight or even consoles. By contrast, attention is given to how beauty arouses enigmatic joy in us, and we enjoy an elemental rapport with it as other. Surprised by beauty, our breath is taken away, but we are more truly there with the beautiful when we are taken outside of ourselves. We are first receivers of the gift of surprise and only then perceivers and conceivers. My attention to the passion of being stresses a patience, a receptivity to what is other. What happens is not first our construction. There is something given, something awakening, something delighting, something energizing, something of invitation to transcendence. The theme is amplified in diverse reflections: on life and its transient beauty; on soul music and its relation to self; on the shine on things given in creation; on beauty and Schopenhauer’s dark origin; on creativity and the dynamis in Paul Weiss’s creative ventures; on redemption in Romanticism in the thought of Stanley Cavell; on theater as a between or metaxu; on redeeming laughter and its connection with the passion of being.

On the Threshold between the Aesthetic and the Religious

The Gift of Beauty and the Passion of Being

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.

A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics

Art and the Absolute

This book deals with fundamental problems in Hegel and with Hegel in relation to Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Russell, Heidegger, Husserl, Derrida, and Bataille. It reveals Hegel's power to provoke both critical and creative thought across the complete spectrum of philosophical questions.

Philosophy in the Aftermath of Hegel

Hegel and His Critics

John Steffen

Koen Decoster

While much attention has been devoted to the conflicts between religion and science in the modern age, less rarely has sufficient attention been devoted to the complex interplay between religion, science and philosophy. This book offers a set of wide-ranging essays in which the interplay between all these three is the explicit focus of attention. The essays reflect a desire to think of this interplay in terms other than conflict and reduction. The book also represents a pluralism of approaches to reflection on this interplay. Part I represents a more idealistic orientation in which religion, philosophy and science are seen to enjoy a complementarity. Part II formulates the interplay more from the standpoint of process philosophy. Part III explores the issue with primary emphasis on the contributions of science. In Part IV the essays reflect a desire to take the religious on its own terms, and explore the interplay with philosophy and science with the proper seriousness solicited by these terms.

Beyond Conflict and Reduction Between Philosophy, Science, and Religion

Political Theory in the American Academy

"The author amplifies important themes in the unfolding of modern metaphysics, exploring diverse aspects of current skepticism and offering a defense in terms of his metaxological metaphysics. Along the way he engages both the long tradition and more modern writers, such as Heidegger and Marion"--

The Doing and Undoing of Metaphysics in Modernity

The Voiding of Being

Paul Cruysberghs

Ernst-Otto Onnasch

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.

William Desmond

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