William Desmond’s Philosophy between Metaphysics, Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics: Thinking Metaxologically

344 Pages·2018·3.07 MB·English

by  Dennis Vanden Auweele

Edited by Dennis Vanden Auweele
Th inking Metaxologically
William Desmond’s
Philosophy between
Metaphysics, Religion,
Ethics, and Aesthetics
William Desmond’s Philosophy between
Metaphysics, Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics
Dennis Vanden Auweele
Editor
William Desmond’s
Philosophy between
Metaphysics, Religion,
Ethics, and Aesthetics
Thinking Metaxologically
Editor
Dennis Vanden Auweele
KU Leuven (University of Leuven)
Leuven, Belgium
ISBN 978-3-319-98991-4 ISBN 978-3-319-98992-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98992-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958416
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There is simple gratitude for the sweetness of being that no one merits
and that no act of thanks can ever repay.
William Desmond
To William
Teacher, friend and inspiration
P
reface
William Desmond held an appointment at the Institute of Philosophy at
KU Leuven (University of Leuven) from December 1994 until his retire-
ment in 2016. In the spring of 2017 (April 19–20), an international con-
ference was organized in honor and recognition of his philosophical
achievement. The turnout was—both for speakers and for attendees—far
beyond expectation, and the subsequent quality of keynote and split ses-
sions presentations was impressive. After the conference ended on a high
with a round table including John Milbank, Cyril O’Regan, Sander
Griffioen and William himself, the organizer—yours truly—thought it
more than appropriate to collect some of these excellent contributions,
adding some essays commissioned especially for this volume, in order to
give life to the present volume.
Why such an undertaking is of philosophical importance, now more
than ever, will be discussed in the introduction and the chapters to come.
There are, however, also reasons of a more personal nature why I think
that this book, both critical and honorific, had to appear. When I had
become a master’s student at KU Leuven, I had my fill of German idealism
and hoped to work on Nietzsche. Only two courses in the curriculum
promised discussion of Nietzsche, both of which were by William
Desmond, but to my regret they also promised ample discussion of Kant
and Hegel. Grudgingly I decided to weather those discussions of ‘tran-
scendental critique’ and ‘absolute spirit’ once again in the hopes of hear-
ing the sweet rhetoric of Nietzsche. To my surprise, I was taken in by a
new way of thinking about German idealism, one not merely expository
and reconstructive, but critical and engaging, serious and playful. I was
ix
x PREFACE
excited about this class many weeks before Nietzsche was even mentioned.
This explains the image on the cover of this book: the serious playfulness
of a child, on the beach, running after birds.
I mention this anecdote because it might give readers a first impression
into what makes Desmond’s philosophy unique: it allows new discussion,
new thoughts, and new engagements, with topics and authors that are, by
some, assigned to the dustbin of philosophical history. Many colleagues
have told me that they similarly felt revitalized by the metaxological
approach to philosophy. While I had no plans to continue philosophy after
my master’s, I was to finish my studies in law, William’s classes inspired me
onward, toward a research master and even a doctorate. To this day, I am
still engrossed in philosophy, which would not have been the case without
William—whether this is for better or for worse, I have no clue. Throughout
these years, he was my gentle doctoral supervisor (as they say in German:
Doktorvater) and we slowly became friends. Much like William’s teaching,
our conversations mix the high and the low, the critical and the apprecia-
tive, the metaphysical and the profane. Years later, I learned that William
adapted his style to the needs of his students. One colleague of mine once
described William as a gardener, tending to the garden with insight and
finesse. Some of us needed confidence, others needed constraint; some
needed a firm hand, others needed to be let free. Most appreciated
William’s style, which is evident from the good number of former students
who flocked from all over the world to William’s retirement conference.
I hope that this volume would get his gentle approval. Ironic. When I
write, there is always music playing on my computer. The songs ‘shuffle’
randomly, which sometimes works well, sometimes not. When I came to
this paragraph and was looking for a way to close this preface, the song
‘Life Is Good’ by the Irish-American folk-punk band Flogging Molly
started playing, and that seems appropriate. The song is itself expressive
of a desire for someone who would bring peace, but the search for that
someone tends to be a gamble. The chorus repeats ‘life is good’, even
though the advances toward the other are not always successful and life
will come to an end someday. The song is bittersweet, but it truthfully
expresses intimacy and displacement, love and estrangement—similar
sensations emerge when reading through metaxology. Flogging Molly
comes to the bridge now, and the chorus will soon repeat: “But I could
walk across the ocean / Find ourselves a little peace / Where all our
troubles are forgotten / And wars will someday cease / Life is good, life
PREFACE xi
is good / Life is fine, life is fine / Life is everything we loathe and so
unkind / They say death is cruel, / But death unwinds / It comes natu-
rally to all us here alive”.1
I feel confident to say that this volume is good as well, which is to some
extent the case because it came to be under fortunate circumstances: many
had written excellent papers on the topics of metaxology. There was an
abundance of good work to select from, and I express my heartfelt grati-
tude for the commitment and diligence of all contributors to this volume.
Although some negotiations with regard to deadlines were in order at
times, the process ran fairly smoothly. When I contacted the editorial staff
of Palgrave Macmillan, I was happy to find that Amy Invernizzi was enthu-
siastic about the project. The book proposal passed a favorable review, and
I am very grateful to the anonymous reviewer for his or her comments and
suggestions, most of which I have incorporated in this volume. The edito-
rial staff at Palgrave Macmillan works very efficiently, and I do want to
voice gratitude toward all of them.
Leuven, Belgium Dennis Vanden Auweele
1 Flogging Molly, ‘Life Is Good’. From the album Life Is Good (2017), released by
Vanguard, Spinefarm.
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Dennis Vanden Auweele
Part I Being, Knowing and Intimacy 13
2 Number and the Between 15
John Milbank
3 True Being and Being True: Metaxology and the Retrieval
of Metaphysics 45
D. C. Schindler
4 Hermeneutical Selving as Metaxological Selving: Bridging
the Perceived Gap Between Theological Hermeneutics
and Metaphysics 59
Daniel Minch
5 Metaxology and New Realist Philosophy 77
Sandra Lehmann
xiii