This article explores and critically assesses the metaxological account of a philosophy of God professed by William Desmond. Postmodern reflection on the philosophy of God has a tendency to focus on the 'signs' of God and urges for a passive acceptance of these signs. Desmond argues, contrary to this tendency, for a mindful togetherness of philosophical activity and religious passivity. After exploring Desmond's thought on this topic, I move to assess his 'metaxological yes' to God as the agapeic (...) origin from an existential point of view. Initially it seems that his 'yes' is somewhat strained as it burdens itself with an excessive task of having faith into something that is beyond determination. I illustrate this insight by referring to Friedrich Nietzsche’s 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra.' Nietzsche's existential 'No' toward transcendence is a consequence of a mindful confrontation with the excesses as play. (shrink)

Hegel is perhaps the modern philosopher par excellence of mediation, and his criticisms of doctrines of immediacy are worthy of consideration. I see his mediation as following a logic of self-determination, and this, even when his views are clearly open to an acknowledgement of the other to self. By contrast to Hegel’s self-determining dialectic, I offer an account of immediacy and mediation, and their interrelation, in light of a metaxological conception of being. This concept ion asks for the invocation (...) of a surplus givenness that is not the opposite of mediation, but rather than a mere indeterminacy, a set of determinations, or an inclusive process of self- determination. I draw on the account I have offered in Being and the Between. I also offer some reflections on how this approach overlaps with, and diverges from some phenomenological treatments of the matter. (shrink)

The themes of this book are very fitting for the preoccupations that have perplexed Desmond. The interplay between art, religion and philosophy has been at issue in all of his work. These three, in addition to our being ethical, are of significance for themselves and for philosophical reflection. Desmond holds that there is a metaxological intermediation among art, religion and philosophy rather than a dialectical sublation, as Hegel held. The metaxological intermediations of the spaces between art, ethics, religion (...) and philosophy are plurivocal rather than univocal, or even dialectical. The plurivocity of these intermediations is richly evident in the diverse contributions of the different writers in this volume. Desmond responds metaxologically to their main concerns. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Four Ways: God and the Metaxological The Indirections of Transcending in the Between God and the Between: First Hyperbole—The Idiocy of Being God and the Between: Second Hyperbole—The Aesthetics of Happening God and the Between: Third Hyperbole—The Erotics of Selving God and the Between: Fourth Hyperbole—The Agapeics of Communication.

D.C. Schindler reminds us that the motto of Villanova consists of three terms: Unitas, Caritas and Veritas. Postmodern philosophy is keen to malign good Veritas as an exercise in oppression, something which must be avoided if we truly want to reach universal care and unity. In opposition to this trend, Schindler illustrates how Desmond’s philosophy is capable of giving truth its dues against the assaults of Vattimo and others, but also and more importantly that truth serves as foundational for unity (...) and care. Building from Desmond’s Intimate Universal, Schindler illustrates how care and unity need an ontological grounding in truth in order to be more than merely superficial. (shrink)

Human life is defined between diverse extremes: birth and death, nothing and infinity. Theater tries to stage something of this between-being and bring it out of its recess in everyday life. What can be called a metaxological philosophy can illuminate this between-condition. “ Metaxu ” is the Greek word for “between,” while “ logos ” can mean an accounting, or reasoning, or wording. A metaxological philosophy of the theatre would look on it as staging the between . Can (...) we say that the theatrical stage, as an intermedium of human communication, is a distinctive wording of the between? Can a metaxological philosophy throw light on what is staged on it, in and through it? In light of this philosophy of the metaxu, reflections are offered on essential themes such as: the space of the stage, the intermediation of inter-action, the shaping of plot, the openness of endings, the tragic and the comic, the sacred and the profane. (shrink)

Between Thought, Religion, and Contemporaneity: the hyperboles of being and the equivocal communication of the sacred (Entre o Pensamento, a Religião e a Contemporaneidade: as hipérboles do ser e a comunicação equívoca do sagrado).The contemporary philosophical thought regards itself as postmetaphysical, post-religious, postmodern, and post-philosophical. It advocates for metaphysics without metaphysics, ethics without ethics, and religion without religion. This paper aims at exploring the possibilities of thinking through the place and role of God, religion, and mystique in the philosophical discourse (...) of contemporaneity, having William Desmond’s thought as a reference. According to Desmond’s thought, there’s an intimate, idiotic, porosity in the call to truth. Thought is communication openness for its own originating source. This means that thought is situated at the knowledge threshold, and it may open up to a reverence attitude in the face of the mystery of being. Through metaphysical metaphors, intermediate names going beyond the univocal determination of metaphysical constructs from the past, Desmond aims at thinking through something which is present amidst finitude, indicating a foremost transcendence going beyond our experience: an upper transcendence essentially asymmetrical to our own transcendence. Such metaphors or hyperboles safeguard the enigma involved in the issue of God and the religious being. This enigma or mystery isn’t something negative, but openness for a fuller and overdetermined agapic origin. Keywords: Metaxology. Religion. Postmodern. Agape. Mystique. Resumo O pensamento filosófico contemporâneo se compreende como pós-metafisico, pós-religioso, pós-moderno e pós-filosófico. Ele advoga uma metafisica sem metafisica, uma ética sem ética e uma religião sem religião. O objetivo deste artigo é explorar as possibilidades de refletir sobre o lugar e o papel de Deus, da religião e da mística no discurso filosófico da contemporaneidade, tendo como referência o pensamento de William Desmond. Para o pensamento desmondiano, existe uma porosidade íntima, idiótica, no chamado à verdade. O pensamento é uma abertura comunicativa para a sua própria fonte originadora. Isso significa que o pensamento se encontra no limiar do saber, podendo abrir-se para uma posição de reverência diante do mistério do ser. Através de metáforas metafisicas, nomes intermediários para além da determinação unívoca das construções metafisicas do passado, Desmond busca refletir sobre algo presente em meio à finitude, que indica uma transcendência primeira que vai além da nossa experiência: uma transcendência superior essencialmente assimétrica à nossa própria transcendência. Tais metáforas ou hipérboles asseguram o enigma envolvido na questão de Deus e do ser religioso. Tal enigma ou mistério não é algo negativo, mas uma abertura para uma origem agápica mais plena e supradeterminada. Palavras-chave: Metaxologia. Religião. Pós-moderno. Ágape. Mística. (shrink)

Recently, William Desmond’s metaxological philosophy has been gaining popularity since it proposes a powerful counterweight to the dominance of deconstruction in certain areas of contemporary philosophy of religion. This paper serves to introduce Desmond’s philosophy and confront it with one specific form of Postmodern theology, namely John Caputo’s “weak theology.” Since Desmond’s philosophy is—while thought-provoking and refreshing—not well known, a substantial part of this paper is devoted to fleshing out its central concepts: perplexity, metaxology, and hyperbolic indirection. Afterwards, I (...) argue for the advantages of a metaphysical (Desmond) over a deconstructive (Caputo) approach to philosophy of religion/God. (shrink)

Recently, William Desmond’s metaxological philosophy has been gaining popularity since it proposes a powerful counterweight to the dominance of deconstruction in certain areas of contemporary philosophy of religion. This paper serves to introduce Desmond’s philosophy and confront it with one specific form of Postmodern theology, namely John Caputo’s “weak theology.” Since Desmond’s philosophy is—while thought-provoking and refreshing—not well known, a substantial part of this paper is devoted to fleshing out its central concepts: perplexity, metaxology, and hyperbolic indirection. Afterwards, I (...) argue for the advantages of a metaphysical (Desmond) over a deconstructive (Caputo) approach to philosophy of religion/God. (shrink)

This book brings together the work of two significant figures in contemporary philosophy. By considering the work of Tanabe Hajime, the Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto School, and William Desmond, the contemporary Irish philosopher, Takeshi Morisato offers a clear presentation of contemporary comparative solutions to the problems of the philosophy of religion. Importantly, this is the first book-length English-language study of Tanabe Hajime's philosophy of religion that consults the original Japanese texts. Considering the examples of Christianity and Buddhism, Faith and (...) Reason in Continental and Japanese Philosophy focuses on finding the solution to the problem of philosophy of religion through comparative examinations of Tanabe's metanoetics and Desmond's metaxology. It aims to conclude that these contemporary thinkers -- while they draw their inspiration from the different religious traditions of Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism -- successfully reconfigure the relation of faith and reason. Faith and Reason in Continental and Japanese Philosophy marks an important intervention into comparative philosophy by bringing into dialogue these thinkers, both major figures within their respective traditions yet rarely discussed in tandem. (shrink)

Along 19th and 20th centuries, art became a sort of new religion, sometimes coexisting peacefully with the institutional one, sometimes trying to provide what the institutional religion was not able to provide any more. Nowadays, art has adopted many of the solutions, topics and theories that theology has handled since it was born. Arthur C. Danto treats art as a reality whose history is over (and so, a escathological reality) and also as a metaxological (metaxy=between) reality dwelling between two (...) realms. Thus, we cannot decide by pure perceptive means whether something is art or not. This consideration has important consequences for art theory. (shrink)

This article examines Dostoevsky's "fantastic realism," which challenges the explanation of rationalism or empiricism in the need for determinate categories fixed in nature. His use of paintings by Hans Holbein, Claude Lorrain, and Raphael in terms of the sublime and beautiful exemplify an understanding of Holy Saturday and its status between death and resurrection. Julia Kristeva's reading of Dostoevsky's melancholy as exemplifying a religious ideal and William Desmond's metaxological philosophy allows us to propose a terminology that rhymes with Dostoevskian (...) between-ness, a conclusion that does not resolve the space between the beautiful and the sublime but remains open to the confessional enigmatic liminality that is Holy Saturday. (shrink)

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 Sermons; 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; 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. (shrink)

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.

William Desmond’s ongoing contribution to metaphysics encompasses both an innovative construction of a metaphysical perspective (“metaxological metaphysics”) and a thorough criticism of prior metaphysics. Consideration of seven distinct but related criticisms of other metaphysical theories reveals much of Desmond’s own view. What seems to be missing in Desmond’s works is thorough-going use of Neoplatonic thinkers. This absence is telling insofar as classical Neoplatonists not only avoid many of the criticisms that Desmond directs against “forgetful” metaphysicians but actually articulate a (...) metaphysics that would often confirm Desmond’s own. A clear example of this is found in Plotinus’s view of determination and excess in the individual, a metaphysical topic of great importance for Desmond himself. From this, one may conclude that Desmond’s already rich metaphysical thinking may be further enriched through closer consideration of Neoplatonism. (shrink)

The final set of chapters discuss the contribution of metaxology to philosophizing about embodied, aesthetic being. Continuing his long-term voyage with Desmond, Richard Kearney takes up a number of paragraphs from Desmond’s work so as to show how creation can be thought of in more dynamic, embodied and lively terms than as mere abstraction.

Contemporary philosopher William Desmond has many companions in thought, and one of the most important of these is Augustine. In lucid prose that draws on the riches of a vibrant philosophical-theological tradition, Renée Kӧhler-Ryan explores Desmond’s metaxological philosophy. She elaborates on how Desmond’s philosophical work in discovering how humans are constantly “between” remains in conversation with a tradition of thinkers that includes Plato, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Shakespeare. This book concentrates especially on how Desmond both draws upon and develops (...) some of the central insights in Augustine. At the same time, it brings together philosophy, theology, and literature into a rich engagement of ideas that impact the way humans think and live. Whether considering how our elemental wonder at creation brings us closer to God, or how our most intimate revelations about being human happen in the interior space of prayer, reading Desmond with Augustine illuminates a porous and interdisciplinary space of inquiry. Companions in the Between is a unique contribution to the growing body of scholarship on William Desmond’s thought. It opens with a foreword from Desmond. Its pages will entice any reader who wants to know more about how contemporary philosophy can contest a space where philosophers are formulaically expected to shy away from divine transcendence. (shrink)

With its focus on the pathos of permanence versus temporality as human aporia and on the function — the Werksein — of the work of art genuinely encountered, John Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn is a particularly compelling subject for philosophical analysis. The major explications of this most contentiously debated ode in the language have largely focused, however, on various combinations of the poem’s stylistic, structural, linguistic, psychological, aesthetic, historical, symbolic, and intellectual-biographical elements. My paper articulates a bona fide (...) philosophical approach to the ode’s famously controversial fifth stanza. I demonstrate how William Desmond’s metaphysics of Being-specifically his analysis of the univocal, equivocal, dialectical, and metaxological senses of being-affords the groundwork for a "hermeneutics of the between" that elucidates the ode’s culminating stanza with all of the cogency and nuance that one would expect to derive from a systematic ontology. (shrink)

It is postulated from different philosophical traditions, and explicitly in recent literature, that there is no further need for doing philosophy of religion – it has become an impossible task. I argue, however, that there remains a philosophical space for this practice and that this space determines greatly how philosophy of religion can be done. The starting point of my argument is the current discussion in the SAJP between De Wet and Giddy and the significance of my article is that (...) it puts this debate within the broader international philosophical context by engaging the work of Trakakis and Desmond to resolve some of the apparently intractable issues raised. Trakakis discusses the divide between the analytic and continental philosophical traditions in which De Wet and Giddy’s work is further contextualized and clarified. Desmond’s work is seminal in its search for a metaxology wherein he advocates a new ‘in between’ position for doing philosophy of religion. I take this view of Desmond further by applying it to the current debate in South Africa and also using it to indicate some possibilities of speaking about the impossible. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there are seven stages, or orientations, of thought about divine madness (initially understood by Plato as eros) with each stage offering claims, or critiques of claims, about its nature. Moreover, each orientation offers a claim, or a critique of a claim, about a relation to the Good that comes through divine madness. My account of the stages is greatly indebted to, but divergent from, the work of William Desmond. Hence, my thought is metaxological (...) and the discussion of the stages takes its bearings from the "between" of eros and agape. I make reference to Desmond's work in order to develop and contrast my own view of the Good as both agapeic and erotic. I argue that the agapeic activity of the Good has an erotic aspect. This aspect of the Good is not an incompleteness or need; rather, it is an absence that "contains" the Good's agapeic activity of creation. Further, this aspect serves not to realize the Good but to ground the becoming in creation (including the movement of our eros through the seven stages of divine madness). I develop how in the seventh stage our eros dynamically images the erotic aspect of the Good's activity by consciously intermediating its relations to the other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Faith and Reason in Continental and Japanese Philosophy: Reading Tanabe Hajime and William Desmond by Takeshi MorisatoLance H. Gracy (bio)Faith and Reason in Continental and Japanese Philosophy: Reading Tanabe Hajime and William Desmond. By Takeshi Morisato. England: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. Pp. viii + 269. Hardcover $116.00, isbn 978-1-350-09251-8.Faith and Reason in Continental and Japanese Philosophy: Reading Tanabe Hajime and William Desmond by Takeshi Morisato is an informative and (...) insightful read on metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and relevant areas of interest. Morisato's stated objective in the introduction is (a) to investigate the possibility of comparative philosophy through William Desmond's metaxological way of thinking, and (b) to examine how the "absolute dialectic" in Tanabe Hajime's metanoesis can help us understand the relationship between one framework of thinking and another (p. 16). Morisato's book proceeds in five parts. Part One orients the reader to the scope of the project through an overview of comparative philosophy and its methodological frameworks--namely, the metaxological methodology of William Desmond, which deals importantly with the (modern) predicament of religion as expressed in the "transcendental univocity" of the Kantian system; and the metanoetic methodology of Tanabe Hajime, which deals importantly with the issue of "rational progress" in Hegelian dialectic. Yet each intellectual framework deals with both Kant's and Hegel's systems. Part Two addresses what the problem of religion in Kantian and Hegelian philosophy is in more detail. Part Three, "Metaxology and the Problems of the Philosophy of Religion," and Part Four, "Metanoetics and the Problems of the Philosophy of Religion," offer a more detailed account concerning how Desmond's and Tanabe's philosophies tackle conceptual problems in modern philosophy of religion. Morisato's conclusion follows from these along with an endnotes section, bibliography, and index.According to Morisato, overcoming the problem of comparative philosophy--i.e., the "philosophical problem of comparing two systems of thinking rooted in different cultural and intellectual contexts" (p. 22)--means, at least in part, clarifying the extent to which philosophers of different culturalintellectual contexts and backgrounds share, as "kindred spirits" or as "intellectual companions," a consonance of thought regarding their philosophical perspectives. Desmond and Tanabe represent just such a pair, whose consonance of thought, expressed by Morisato en passant and expressed more definitively in the conclusion, is unified in a struggle against hegemonic structures in the [End Page 1] philosophy of religion, specifically those of Kant's and Hegel's philosophies of religion. William Desmond (1951–present) is a Catholic philosopher who currently holds the David R. Cook Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University. He has worked extensively on metaphysics, ontology, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and German idealism. Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) was a Japanese philosopher of the Kyoto school and is perhaps most well-known for his Philosophy as Metanoetics. Morisato does a commendable job elucidating issues in modern systems of religion, which have undoubtedly been influenced by Kant's and Hegel's systems. As it concerns Kant, contemporary philosophy of religion still struggles with the claims of transcendental idealism, particularly its reduction of religious belief to mere postulates of practical reason. And as it concerns Hegel, what seems to be an unending, "progressive" self-return of dialectical monism has deeply influenced the way, and manner, in which religious adherents deal with societal views of the individual and individuals' views of society. By this token, Morisato's attempt to get beyond the so-called "extirpation" of the source of religious truth as the "creative power behind our understanding of reality and our existence" is refreshing, to say the least (p. 46). In what follows, I offer a relatively brief overview of Morisato's book and conclude with a reflection on the text.Morisato's critique of the Kantian and Hegelian systems begins with the argument that Kantian transcendental univocity implies that reason's autonomy, as dictates of the moral law as absolute duties, not only precedes divine legislation, but becomes one with it or else is reduced to it. In other words, for Kant, the rational-moral universal is divine law. However, reason's autonomy fails to comprehend the divine origination of finite particulars due to... (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The articles in the present issue are the result of a study day on William Desmond’s recent book, Ethics and the Between, held at the K.U.Leuven's Institute of Philosophy. This important book certainly deserves a thorough discussion and for many reasons. It is the manifestation of an ambition that reminds us of past periods in the history of philosophy. These days not so many philosophers venture to set up a body of work — three volumes — in the tradition of (...) the great philosophical systems that once tried to cover and understand the whole of reality. When reading Ethics and the Between, Hegel’s system comes to mind not only because we know that William Desmond is a Hegel scholar but also because of its ambition to give everything a place within an encompassing system.Of course Desmond takes care to explain where the difference lies between his metaxological approach and an insufficiently open and pluralist dialectics. His is an attempt to rethink the notion of system so that it is more hospitable to otherness as other, to the rich inexhaustibility of being. He wants to be true to the equivocities of our being and not to give in to the seduction of mediated univocity, as some forms of dialectics do. What is at stake in his work is not forgetting the surplus, the excess, the otherness of the good which suggests a transcendence of each dialectical completion in terms of self-determination.Desmond’s oeuvre is not only unusual today because of its systematic ambition. A second characteristic marks off more specifically his book on ethics: the attempt to write an ethics dominated by the idea of the good, raising the question of the relation between metaphysics and ethics, between being and being good. Desmond seems to tell us that something has been forgotten: the good which continues to be there incognito, present even in philosophies that forget it. This seems to be Desmond’s way of situating himself in an age characterized by the subtle ethos of valuelessness, the perplexity about the inherent value of being, of being as good; an age oscillating between foundationalist unity and postmodern plurality.If it were my task to give an introduction to Desmond’s thought I would have to pay attention to the richness of the concept of metaxu, the between, the way it seems to encompass the whole and keep it together, while at the same time being excessive. I would have to speak about the fourfold meaning of being and the way it shapes different ways of being ethical that dwell more and more intensively with what is at play in the ethos, that is to say in the metaxu.But it is not my task to do this; others have made the attempt more extensively in the papers reproduced here. I doubt whether they will be sufficient to bring to light all the rich dimensions of this book that is written at the same tempo as William speaks when discussing and, I suppose, when he goes running in the morning. (shrink)

This volume collects seventeen new essays by well-established and junior scholars on the philosophical relevance of metaxological philosophy and its main proponent, William Desmond. The volume mines metaxological thought for its salience in contemporary discussions in Continental philosophy, specifically in the fields of metaphysics, philosophy of religion, ethics, and aesthetics. Among others, topics under discussion include the goodness of being, the existence and nature of God, and the aesthetic dimensions of human becoming. Interest in metaxological philosophy has (...) been on the rise in recent years, and this volume provides both a practical introduction and thorough engagements with it by experts in the field. The volume concludes with a series of responses by William Desmond on the issues raised by the contributors. (shrink)

The key word in the title is 'otherness', since this book aims to show how even Hegel, the master of dialectic, fails to adequately explain the phenomenon of otherness. Desmond claims that the common experience of difference can be thought of from four basic perspectives of which dialectic is one. Dialectic has advantages over two of them, yet the last category, the metaxological, is best able to account for the intentional infinity that human beings have paradoxically within the finite (...) boundaries of the self. The problem is to maintain the self while allowing its driving force, infinite desire, to be open to the world. At the same time, this desire for wholeness must not negate or consume the other. (shrink)

This paper offers two related refl ections on the questions of metaphysics after critique. The first is an analysis of the project of critique since Kant and its influence on the disputed status of metaphysics. It explores the theoretical and practical aspects of this by claiming that an understanding of thinking as negativity, whether in Hegelian form as determinate negation or in more radical deconstructive forms, lies at the heart of this disputed status. Not least, the relation of philosophy to (...) religion and to previous practices of metaphysics is at stake. The paper argues that there is more at work in critique than critique can account for through itself. In a second reflection, the arguments bearing on this “more” are explored in a more constructive spirit. On the basis of an account of the sources of metaphysical thinking beyond the resources of critique alone, the lineaments of what is needed for a metaxological metaphysics after critique are sketched. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Gnosticism and Religious Plurivocity Divinities Doubled Below and Above Gnostic Equivocity and the Fourfold Naming The Equivocal World as a Counterfeit Double? Passing Beyond the Counterfeit Doubles Agonistics: Divine and Human Doubling Back, Backing Out— Reversing Release Gnosticism and Metaxology: On Saving Knowing in the Equivocal Matrix.

This chapter contains section titled: Gods Religious Imagination and Porosity to Archaic Manifestation Sacred Namings and the Hyperboles of Being Naming the Agapeic God From Polytheism to Monotheism Metaxological Monotheism The Praise of Paganism.

This is a response to issues raised by Stephen Houlgate in his article “Hegel, Desmond, and the Problem of God’s Transcendence,” dealing with Hegel’s God: A Counterfeit Double? The response focuses especially on the hermeneutical finesse we need in reading Hegel on religion, on the nature of “release” in Hegel, on the need for an agapeic God, and on the differences between Hegel’s speculative philosophy and Desmond’s metaxological approach to the practice of philosophy.

ABSTRACTCommentators have commonly noted the metaphysical role of participation in Richard Hooker’s Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity: participation both describes how creation is suspended from God and also how believers share in Christ through grace. Yet, the role in Hooker’s thought of the attendant Platonic language of ‘between’ and ‘desire’ has not received sustained attention. Metaxu describes the ‘in-between’ quality of participation: the participant and the participated remain distinct but are dynamically related as the former originates from and returns (...) to the perfection of the latter. Within this metaxological dynamic, desire acts as the physical and psychic motor driving the move between potentiality and perfect actuality, that is to say from multiplicity to divine unity: desire aims at goodness and so ultimately tends towards that which is goodness itself, namely God’s nature. For Hooker, desire becomes couched in amorous affectivity and has an erotic register. This essay explores, then, how Hooker appeals to a language of ‘between’ and ‘desire’ within his accounts of participation. First, it examines how human beings exist between the footstool and throne of God in Hooker’s legal ontology. Here, angelic desire acts as a hierarchical pattern of and spur to erotic participation in the divine nature. Second, this essay examines how theurgy transforms desire in Hooker’s account of liturgical participation as a redemptive commerce between heaven and earth. Here, angels still act as invisible, hierarchical intermediaries within earthly worship, but soon give way to immediate grace through participation in Christ within the sacraments. (shrink)

The prelims comprise: Half Title Title Copyright Contents Preface List of Abbreviations.

This is William Desmond's fourth book on Hegel and topics Hegelian. In the aftermath of this impressive scholarly productivity, one can easily see why Desmond might be interested, as the title of this work suggests, in getting "beyond Hegel and dialectic." Other scholars, similarly smitten, have suffered comparable afflictions. Hence the most obvious task initially confronting the reader of this impressive book has to do with determining precisely what Desmond means by the metaxological and whether such a notion can (...) convincingly lead one beyond Hegel and dialectic, presuming one feels compelled by the need to do so, and where one finds oneself on arrival. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: God First Metaphysical Canto: God Being Over—Being Second Metaphysical Canto: God Being (Over)One Third Metaphysical Canto: God Being Eternal—Surplus to Coming to be Fourth Metaphysical Canto: God Being Incorruptible—Agapeic Constancy Fifth Metaphysical Canto: God Being Impassable—Asymmetrical Agapeics Sixth Metaphysical Canto: God Being Absolute—Absolved Agapeics Seventh Metaphysical Canto: God Being Infinite Eighth Metaphysical Canto: God Being (Over)All—Power Ninth Metaphysical Canto: God Being True—Agapeic (Over)All‐Minding Tenth Metaphysical Canto: God Being (too)Good.