Will D. Desmond

This is a special edition of Ethical Perspectives devoted to the issue of autonomy. While the issue of autonomy has its own particular form in Anglo- American discussion, the essays in this issue focus, in the main, on questions arising in the more continental tradition. The essay by William Desmond examines certain dialectical equivocities in the notion of self-determination. These are related to an underlying sense of valuelessness marking modernity’s feeling for the ethos, to a propensity to privilege self over other in the process of self-determination, and to a temptation to evade the question of transcendence as other to human self-transcendence. These dialectical equivocities are explored especially with reference to such major thinkers as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche.

Richard Kearney's Dialogues attempts to speak across the divide between Anglo-American philosophy and recent Continental thought. The book does not sound any fashionable fanfares regarding rapprochement between these two traditions. More soberly, it tries to introduce to Anglo-American philosophers certain European thinkers who have recently exerted significant influence. Unlike a more conventional approach that would anthologize some representative writings of these thinkers, Richard Kearney here takes a different, more direct approach. He tries to let these thinkers introduce themselves through dialogue. The result is a very interesting introduction that preserves something of the human voice of the conversational occasion. In some cases also, given the directness of the questions put by Richard Kearney, we are offered a revelation of the authors not always vouchsafed by their written, hence more controllable, works. A further benefit to those already initiated into the written works of these thinkers is an additional perspective on the written works themselves. Hence the work will be of interest to those familiar with the thinkers interviewed and to those coming to recent European thought for the first time.

The current issue of Ethical Perspectives is a double issue reflecting significant discussions of ethical issues that occurred in Leuven in the very recent past. The volume is composed in the main of two seminars, one led by Michael Walzer, the other by Bernard Williams. These well-known and highly respected thinkers were guests at Leuven in the past year. Michael Walzer was the holder of the Multatuli Chair, while Bernard Williams was the holder of the Mercier Chair at the Institute of Philosophy. In addition to the responsibilities of offering a public lecture or lectures, both were generous with their time, and open to critical discussion of their work. The results are to be found in the intellectually stimulating seminars published here.Michael Walzer's contribution is threefold. First, we publish here the lecture he delivered to a wide public, as the holder of the Multatuli Chair. This was entitled: International Society: What is the Best We Can Do? The lecture was delivered on May 1, at a time when the whole issue of the international community and its moral and political responsibilities was widely discussed, with reference to the war in Kosovo. That war, and other considerations, might suggest something too optimistic about such discussions of the international community. Walzer is no stranger to the topic of war, as those familiar with an earlier work, Just and Unjust Wars, will know. Walzer's title, on the present occasion, indicates the modesty of his proposal: what is the best we can do? With a theme that might seem to include too much, his discussion offers a sober and ordered approach, which works towards its goal by strategic steps from the left and right extremes of a continuum of possibilities. Second, in addition to this Multatuli lecture, a workshop was convened on the theme of The Power and Impotence of Multilateral Organizations. Marc Hooghe and Bart Pattyn had prepared in advance papers bearing on the work of Walzer. Marc Hooghe wrote of: “The Notion of Complex Equality and the Beauty of Alcibiades”. Bart Pattyn offered: “Two Questions about the Meaning of Meaning.”Subsequent to his response to these, the discussion was again wide-ranging, touching on the themes of the Multatuli lecture, as well as Walzer's other works. This seminar was held at the Institute of Philosophy, but Walzer's third contribution was a further seminar on the themes of his work, this time in the Faculty of Theology, and among the participants were students and teachers who had just spent time carefully studying his work. Among other things, the issues discussed here reflected Walzer's own interest in biblical themes, with repercussions in religion, but also beyond.The seminar with Williams was ordered around the questions of a number of participants who had prepared some questions on the basis of their study of his work. Williams responded impromptu, and as the reader will see the terrain covered is extensive. Williams has been an influential philosopher in the Anglo-American world, notably with reference to his explorations in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.The seminar reflected some of the themes of that work. Williams raises questions about the obsession with theory in ethics, and seeks to explore a domain more ecumenical, so to say, than morality, understood in a more restricted sense, such as we find in forms of utilitarianism and Kantianism. The neutral universal is not enough. Or as he says pithily here: “I'm not living my life in order to exemplify a mathematical theory.” Ethics points to something more inclusive, and moreattentive to the nuances of concrete details and situations.This is not entirely unlike forms of thinking we find in Greek culture, whether among the philosophers, such as Aristotle, or among the poets and tragedians. Something of the latter is explored in Williams's Shame and Necessity. Among the many issues touched on in this discussion was the issue of universality, and as the reader will notice the seminar closed with an exchange with Jaap van Brakel over the nature of the `we.' The reader will find an extensive discussion of `we' in the paper that follows, indicating perhaps also that the `we' of the seminar itself had a post-seminar life.All in all, these different contributions provide us with lively and thought-provoking dialogue, from a diversity of ethical perspectives.

This book was originally published by Harper and Row in 1975, translated from the German version of 1971, and is now being reissued in paperback by the University of Chicago Press. It is worthy of reissue, for it offers an excellent introduction to Hegel's Phenomenology. Though widely acknowledged as a philosophical classic, one of the great difficulties with the Phenomenology is that one easily gets lost in the multifarious details of the text. It is not always easy to find a way through the labyrinth of its seemingly heterogeneous material, but Marx gives us an introduction which provides crucial keys to the work as a whole, an introduction that is not philosophically reductive but taxing.

This is one of the best books on Hegel recently to have appeared in the English-speaking philosophical world. Its virtues include a commitment to intelligible argumentation and lucid exposition. In addition, it gets to the heart of some of the fundamental issues in Hegel's systematic thought. Overall, the book is written with exceptional clarity. This is especially to be noted, since treatments which focus predominantly on Hegel's logic frequently end up leaving the obscure more obscure. Moreover, White's aim is not just to write for a coterie of Hegel scholars, and one can hope that the measured development of philosophical ideas he provides will open Hegel to the newcomer.

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.

This article reflects on Nietzsche's striking phrase: “A Roman Caesar with the soul of Christ.” It outlines different senses of will to power. It argues that, given Nietzsche's understanding of will to power, there is something impossible about his coupling of Caesar and Christ. Christ would have to cease to be Christ to conform to Nietzsche'sideal. Nietzsche's views are related to what the author calls erotic sovereignty and agapeic service. The significances of gift, love of neighbour, the issue of spiritual superiority are outlined. Nietzsche's assumption of the name Anti-Christ is connected withthe third temptation of Christ in the desert. The way Nietzsche resolves, in his own favor, the issue of spiritual superiority shows his spiritual inferiority.

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.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Theory of Self-Conscious Life by Guido SeddoneWill DesmondSEDDONE, Guido. Hegel’s Theory of Self-Conscious Life. Leiden: Brill, 2023. 155 pp. Cloth, $138.00Guido Seddone’s monograph explores an ensemble of issues centering on what he terms Hegelian “naturalism.” He argues that “Hegel’s philosophy represents a novel version of naturalism since it stresses the mutual dependence between nature and spirit, rather than just conceiving of spirit as a substance emerging and separating from bodily natural requisites.” Seddone avoids scholarly exegeses to address instead “theoretical and systematic aspects of the Hegelian philosophy.” He focusses on “life” and “self-consciousness” as the conceptual keys to those parts of Hegel that remain compelling for relevant contemporary debates. “This book is, therefore, based on the dialogue between Hegel [End Page 361] and contemporary thinkers and strives to enhance our understanding of theoretical and practical issues and to widen the grammar of the philosophical thought.” The book’s chapters proceed from the more abstract to the more concrete—essentially from issues of logic, epistemology, and psychology to morality, society, and history.Chapter 1 (“Science of Logic: The Logical Premises of Hegel’s Naturalism”) argues that the categories of “Teleology” and “Life” in Hegel’s Science of Logic mark the critical transition in his naturalism from the sciences of physics (“Mechanism”) and chemistry (“Chemism”) to biology, as well as from external nature to inner self-consciousness and cognition. Seddone helpfully points to Hegel’s revisions of Kant’s subordination of teleological language (merely heuristic) to mechanical explanation. Most promising is the comparison of the “self-referring negativity” of Hegelian “life” to discussions by Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela of the cell—whose permeable membrane enables it to be more than its merely chemical environment.Chapter 2 (“Self-Consciousness”) takes a rather bird’s-eye approach to the Phenomenology of Spirit, offering a basic reading of Hegelian self-consciousness and Geist in relation to the Cartesian cogito and Kantian unity of apperception. Scattered remarks about animal desire and the master–slave relation could be clarified to better explore a naturalistic basis of the Hegelian conception of mind. One is struck by the dearth of specific texts from the section “Self-Consciousness”: Seddone seems content with some well-known quotations (for example, Geist as an “I that is We and We that is I”) punctuating large generalizations.Chapter 3 does not quite live up to its title (“The Hegelian Theory about the (Human) Biological Organism”) in that it focuses primarily on Hegel’s “treatise about habits” in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Here habit is construed as a second nature, and hence a further step toward self-conscious, relational mind: Habits are “universal ways of the soul, i.e. ways in which individual soul [sic] incorporates feelings by evolving general rules and practices.”The last section of chapter 4 (“Extended and Embodied Mind”) reverts to habits as moments of the feeling soul but dissociates Hegel’s notion of Verleiblichung from contemporary discussions of embodied mind. By contrast, Seddone argues for retranslating Hegelian Geist as “common mind” and juxtaposes this with the related concept of mind (in, for example, Philip Pettit) as “extended” through social entities, with the result that Hegel’s approach is praised as “the state-of-the-art of this topic.”Chapter 5 (“Natural and Self-conscious Agency”) is perhaps the clearest chapter as it presents the dialectic of the abstractly universal will in the initial sections of Philosophy of Right, links this and the Hegelian conception of free agency to his logical category of “actuality,” and proceeds to an illuminating contrast of the Hobbesian and Hegelian visions of society and state. [End Page 362]In tackling attempts to reconcile “Normativity and Freedom,” chapter 6 spends over six pages rehearsing the basics of Kantian autonomy before turning to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, specifically the master–slave dialectic (again) as the critical moment in the evolution of social norms. “My thesis is that self-conscious life needs recognition in order to achieve the higher form of independence created by social acknowledgement and justification, what [sic] fosters the condition for an authoritative reason that can be socially...

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._.

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.

Seeking to renew an ancient companionship between the philosophical andthe religious, this book’s meditative chapters dwell on certain elementalexperiences 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 philosophicalmindfulness 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 arbitrarysubjectivism 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 toit by religion, not just how religion might stand up to the questions posed to it byphilosophy. Desmond tries to pursue a new and different policy, one faithfulto the light of this dialogue.