The William Desmond Reader

William Desmond, Christopher Ben Simpson

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781438442921, 9781438442914
• eBook ISBN: 9781438442938
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

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.

Part I

METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY

THE FOURFOLD WAY

From “Being, Determination, and Dialectic”

I suggest a fourfold way to rethink the perplexities of metaphysics. This fourfold way is not at all indefinite but complexly defined by the univocal, the equivocal, the dialectical, and the metaxological understandings of being.

Our understanding of what it means to be comes to definition in a complex interplay between indetermination and determination, transcendence and immanence, otherness and sameness, difference and identity. Very broadly and first, the univocal sense of being stresses the notion of sameness, or unity, sometimes even immediate sameness, of mind and being. Correlative to the univocal sense of being is the search for determinate solutions to determinate problems, impelled by specific curiosity. Second, the equivocal sense accentuates diversity, the unmediated difference of being and mind, sometimes to the point of setting them into oppositional otherness. Perplexity in its restless encounter with troubling ambiguities can be correlated with this sense of the equivocal. Third, the dialectical sense emphasizes the mediation of the different, the reintegration of the diverse, the mediated conjunction of mind and being. Its mediation is primarily self-mediation, hence the side of the same is privileged in this conjunction. In the above we have seen how this leads to a strong stress on self-determination. Fourth, the metaxological sense gives a logos of the metaxu, the between. It puts stress on the mediated community of mind and being, but not in terms of the self-mediation of the same. It calls attention to a pluralized mediation, beyond closed self-mediation from the side of the same, and hospitable to the mediation of the other, or transcendent, out of its own otherness. It puts the emphasis on an intermediation, not a self-mediation, however dialectically qualified. Moreover, the inter is shaped plurally by different mediations of mind and being, same and other, mediations not subsumable into one total self-mediation. The metaxological sense keeps open the spaces of otherness in the between, and it does not domesticate the ruptures that shake the complacencies of our mediations of being. Moreover, it tries to deal with the limitations of dialectical determination, especially so with respect to the excess of the overdetermined givenness of being.

There is an immediacy to the metaxological, in the sense that it is at work before we articulate it reflectively in our categories. It is shown in what we might call the preobjective community of mindfulness and being that is inarticulately given in the original astonishment. It is at work in the univocal, the equivocal, the dialectical, but not known explicitly as such, and when stated exclusively in their terms it is distorted, because it is truncated. The metaxological is the truth of the univocal, the equivocal, and the dialectical. When we try to articulate it, we are trying to find the right words for what is given in the overdeterminacy of the original astonishment. The other three senses help to articulate the truth of the metaxological, but we risk error when they are absolutized and claimed to cover the entire milieu of being. Our sense of metaphysical thinking must try to be true to the being of the between. Also, it must not falsely claim to have the categories that finally determine what itself is not exhausted by any determination.

Does this fourfold sense of being mean we conceive of metaphysics simply as a science of categories? There is a categorial side to this fourfold, but this side does not exhaust the matter. While we require systematic categorial thinking, we also require a dynamic hermeneutics of being; and, as I have suggested, there are perplexities at the edge of systematic categorial determination. They trouble the self-confidence of systematic categorial thinking and call for a different ruminative mindfulness. Metaphysics must find room for the thought of such limit perplexities, as well as the originating sources of astonishment that, in the first instance, precede yet precipitate determinate mindfulness through which we become provisionally at home with the more familiar world. The fourfold sense of being offers an interlocking set of articulations of transcendence—both the transcending of mind and the transcendence of being, and without the closure of either to ultimate transcendence.

What I call metaxological metaphysics offers itself as an unfolding interpretation, both systematic and hermeneutic, of the many sides of the plenitude of the happening of being, as manifest to mindfulness in the between. It is all but impossible for us to be absolutely true to the plenitude of this happening. Failure of some sort is inevitable. This impossible truthfulness is asked of us, however, even if inevitable failure brings us back to the truth of our finitude. This failure may itself become another success of sorts, if it renews metaphysical astonishment before the enigma of being that was, and is, and always will be too much for us, in excess of our best efforts at conceptualization.

TRANSCENDENCES

From God and the Between

We can better find our bearings if we distinguish the following senses of transcendence. In broad strokes, they correspond to the other-being of nature, of the self-being of the human, and the difference of the divine. It is not only their character but their interrelations that are important. How we understand them is rooted in our attunement to the primal ethos and reflected in the reconfigured ethos.

First transcendence (T¹): The transcendence of beings as other in exteriority. The transcendence of such beings consists in their not being the product of our process of thinking; their otherness to us resists complete reduction to our categories, especially insofar as they simply are at all. Their otherness as being at all gives rise to the question, what makes possible both their possibility, as well as their actuality? What makes possible the possibility of their being at all? This is a metaphysical question not about the “what” of their being but the “that” of their being there at all: why beings and not nothing? The possibility of a further transcendence as other to their transcendence is opened by such questions.

Second transcendence (T²): The transcendence of self-being, self-transcendence. The meaning of possibility is here realized in interiority rather than determined externally. Human self-transcendence is of special moment here. There is possibility as freedom, as the promise of self-determination. We are impelled to the further question, is this self-transcendence, in relation to the first transcendence (T¹), an anomalous overreaching into emptiness, or a genuine self-surpassing toward an even further transcendence as other? Is our self-surpassing driven by a lack to fulfill only itself, or to seeking fulfillment in what is other to itself? Is it more than lacking and seeking what is infinitely more than itself, whether lacking or not? An important question here: does our understanding of our own self-transcending rely too much on the conatus essendi and not enough on the passio essendi?

Third transcendence (T³): original transcendence as still other—transcendence itself, not as the exterior, not as the interior, but as the superior. This would be a hyperbolic sense of transcendence, bringing to mind the question of God beyond the immanence of transcendence in nature and human being. If we were to call this third hyperbolic form “Transcendence itself,” it would be in excess of determinate beings, as their original ground; it would be beyond human self-transcendence, as its most ultimate possibilizing source. It would also be beyond the ordinary doublet of possibility/reality, as their most ultimate possibilizing source. It would not be just a possibility, nor indeed a determinate realization of possibility. It would have to be “real” possibilizing power, in a manner more original and other than immanent possibility and realization. It would have to be original, creative possibilizing beyond determinate possibility, and “real” beyond all determinate realization, beyond all self-determining self-realization.

If such third transcendence were in excess of determinacy and our self-determining, would it be but a merely indefinite beyond to finite being? If so, would not its participation in the happening of the between be feeble? Is there rather a third transcendence that is not such an empty indefinite but excessive: overdetermined in a surplus sense, hyperbolic, not indefinite? If so, it would not be comprehended under any finite category of the possible or real. It would be above, huper, über them, and yet most intimate to finite being as enabling it to be at all, and to be free. What must this possibilizing power be, such as to give rise to finite being as other to itself, and hence as possibilizing the finite space, or middle, for first and second transcendence? Such a third transcendence could not be identified with any projection onto some ultimate other of the first two senses. There could be no objectification (T¹) or subjectification (T²) of third transcendence (T³). Rather it would seem that second transcendence (T²), in its ineradicable recalcitrance to complete objectification, is pointed beyond both objectness and subjectness to transobjective and transsubjective transcendence (T³). And perhaps first transcendence (T¹) is not also devoid of its own ambiguous signs of this hyperbolic transcendence.

Much more must be said, but for now this is the relevant point. Third transcendence (T³) has been made problematic in modernity, both by a univocalizing objectification of first transcendence (T¹) and by developments of second transcendence (T²), especially when this last defines itself hugely in terms of its own autonomy. Then a logic of self-determination stands guard over all our thinking and the thinking of what is other to our self-determination. Inevitably, third transcendence (T³) becomes endowed with an equivocal position. There is a tension, indeed an antinomy, between autonomy and transcendence. This is not just a mere contradiction, but a tension wherein different possibilities for human thought and life take shape. In this equivocal space the traditional respect accorded to third transcendence (T³) from an essentially religious point of view comes under onslaught. Into that space of equivocality, our “creativity,” our “poetry,” so to speak, inserts itself, as somehow answering the tension of autonomy and transcendence. Human “art” comes to assume roles previously accorded to religion. Is the antinomy resolved? Or does third transcendence still remain mockingly “beyond”—or welcoming?

THE TRUTH OF METAPHYSICS

From Being and the Between

Long, long ago, Plato told us that the human being is neither a god nor a beast, but someone in between. Philosophy too is in between, neither completely wise nor entirely ignorant. What then would it mean to philosophize in between? What is the being of the between?

Metaphysics will not be the deduction of a system of categories from an irrefrangible logical principle. As both systematic and hermeneutic, it offers itself as an unfolding interpretation of the many sides of the plenitude of the happening of being, as manifest to mindfulness in the between. To be absolutely true to the plenitude of this happening is all but impossible for us, and indeed failure of some sort is inevitable. But this impossible truthfulness is asked of us, even if inevitable failure brings us back to the truth of our finitude. This failure may itself be a success of sorts, in renewing metaphysical astonishment before the enigma of being that was, and is, and always will be too much for us, in excess of our groping efforts.

I do not subscribe to the view, fashionable in some quarters, that philosophy does not deal with truth, or that it must give up this, its ancient and noble calling. I want to state some considerations that bear on the truth of the following. These remarks make most sense after the fact, that is, subsequent to the effort to understand the meaning of this work as a whole. First, since we are in the middle, the truth of metaphysics is not deductive from some abstract first principle, more geometrico. Nor is it a matter of inductive generalization. Inductive generalization takes its sights from the particularities of determinate beings and processes; but our consideration is not only on the level of determinations, but also on the happening of determinate being, the coming to be of determination. Being is manifesting itself; we require an interpretive fidelity to this happening of manifestation in the middle. The meaning of that manifestness is not itself initially manifest. We have to become mindful of its full riches, of its overt concretions, its secret latencies, its potential for deformation and dissimulation.

Second, if we cannot renege on the systematic side of philosophy, we can rightly ask: What are the essential relations between mind and being, between self and other, same and different, identity and difference? What do we make of the perennial perplexities about origin, creation, things, intelligibilities, selves, communities, truth and the good? My claim is that the fourfold sense of being offers a flexible systematic framework that allows us complexly and very comprehensively to interpret the variety of possible relations, and the very ontological richness of what is at stake in each of the perplexities.

Third, does this mean that we could calculate all the possibilities? I reject this way of putting the issue, since some of the essential possibilities are open. They are defined relative to the creative coming to be of beings, out of an overdetermined source of origination; or they define the very opening of freedom in the beings in relation. Our understanding of being in the between calls for the acknowledgment of indeterminacy—and this not in the sense of the merely indefinite. The point about systematic categories is not to impose a skeletal structure on being, and so to bind it up in conceptual domestication. It is to think through the happening of being to the utmost extent of its intelligibility, but not in this to claim to have mastered conceptually its still overdetermined otherness. We might say that categorial understanding is most genuine when it opens beyond categorial immanence, participating in the very transcending of mindfulness towards the dynamic happening of being in the between.

Fourth, this means that the truth of what is at stake has a certain openness to it. If we seek to be true to the concrete manifestness of the happening of being, and if there is a certain latent promise in this happening, the very openness of our “being true” is implied. I will more fully address the notion of “being true” in a later chapter. But I am here saying that there is no absolute certitude, no master category, no absolute knowing in the Hegelian manner. Why? Because all these sacrifice the otherness of the happening of being to the immanence of categorial rationality at home in its own conceptual immanence.

If there is no Hegelian master category, I do not deny that the metaxological seeks the best understanding possible. How is this measured? There are notions of truth consonant with univocity, equivocity, and dialectic, and this too will occupy us more fully. I now call notice to a double unfolding that causes us to move from one sense to the next, as a more adequate effort to think through the truth of the happening of being. The double unfolding has to do, first with the self-coherence of the specific mode of being and mind, and second with its truthfulness to what is other to thought. Let me say something on this.

Thus univocity tries to fix the truth determinately. But the more it is consistent with itself, the more the appearance of something other to univocity makes its demand. The thinking of this other causes us to think in terms of the equivocity of being. In turn, the coherent thinking of this equivocity drives us beyond equivocity to dialectic. Equivocity absolutized subverts itself, and calls for a more positive mediating mindfulness, in order to be true, not only to the transcending of thinking, but also to the truth of being as other to thinking. Further again, dialectic itself, while dealing with the limitations of univocity and equivocity, is tempted to absolutize itself and its characteristic forms of mediation, especially self-mediation. And yet this seeming completion of dialectic is actually its undoing. Dialectic absolutized reveals its failure to take seriously enough the other that is other to thought thinking itself. It absolutizes the self-coherence of thought at home with itself. And yet the end result is a new homelessness of thinking.

It is this new homelessness that impels thinking to the metaxological level. Dialectic cannot be fully accounted for dialectically. We require a thinking that is less willing to domesticate the ruptures of the immanence of thinking by the transcendent other. This is a thinking more open to what transcends thinking, a thinking more patient to transcendence, just in the highest exceeding of its self-transcending towards the other as other. But this last possibility is not a master category. The language of master categories is simply not appropriate, for this mode of thinking demands a divestment of mind's will to master the otherness of the happening of being. There is a transformation of the energy of self-transcending thinking to which the language of appropriating and overcoming the other is not at all appropriate. What is “overcome” is the will to overcome the other. There arises a new willingness to let the happening of being offer the truth of itself to mindfulness.

Fifth, a necessary requirement of philosophical understanding is its capacity to illuminate the matter itself, what the Germans call die Sache selbst. There are contemporary philosophers who scoff at the notion, but that is their problem, generated by a threadbare understanding of die Sache selbst. We philosophers ask for bread, and what stones are we handed? Commentaries on commentaries on commentaries … What is the matter itself? If one could answer this question in a preface, there would be no need for the book. The book as a whole answers this question: the matter itself is the meaning of being between. As it will turn out, this meaning in the end cannot be completely confined to the between we inhabit, but must extend to the originary ground of that between, and this is not the finite between once again. In our passage through the between, philosophy demands a kind of phenomenological fidelity to the matter itself. Along the way, the fourfold understanding of being will illuminate many key constituents of our habitation of the between—creation, things, intelligibilities, selves, communities.

Sixth, an important consideration is the ability of a philosophy to illuminate the essential metaphysical positions. I give counsel to myself: Do not smash the wheel and proclaim the glorious liberation of human creativity; you, or someone else, years hence, will find it necessary to reinvent the same despised wheel—decked out perhaps with a new name to assuage the pretense to glorious creativity. I think we have to be able to interpret the rationale, the strengths, and the limits of the basic philosophical possibilities, as diversely expressed in the history of philosophy. This requires a thinking about them that refuses to stay on the surface of the packaged positions that easily get regurgitated in standard histories of philosophy. We must go deeper, approach the originary sources of perplexity and astonishment, out of which the surfaces of the pos...

Table of contents

• Title page
• Foreword by John D. Caputo
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• List of William Desmond's Works
• PART I: METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY
• PART II: ETHICS AND ETHOS
• PART III: RELIGION AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF GOD
• PART IV: AESTHETICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF ART
• PART V: RETROSPECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS