Will D. Desmond

Science can reveal or conceal the breathtaking wonders of creation. On one hand, knowledge of the natural world can open us up to greater love for the Creator, give us the means of more neighborly care, and fill us with ever-deepening astonishment. On the other hand, knowledge feeding an insatiable hunger for epistemic mastery can become a means of idolatry, hubris, and damage. Crucial to world-respecting science is the role of wonder: curiosity, perplexity, and astonishment. In this volume, philosopher William Desmond explores the relation of the different modes of wonder to modern science. Responding to his thought are twelve thinkers across the domains of science, theology, philosophy, law, poetry, medicine, sociology, and art restoration.

Generally, where scientistic attitudes towards the order of creation tend towards the reductive, postmodern attitudes tend towards the deconstructive. The given order of beauty tends to be made problematic. The surface of things is often invested with an equivocity that, whether reductively or deconstructively, we can only approach with epistemic-ontological suspicion. In the following reflections I focus on the connection between given beauty and the order of creation in light of issues connected to this. Beauty itself is inseparable from some sense of formed wholeness. Is there is a givenness to beauty in nature which belies the claim that order is just an imposition of power on flux? The notion of creation is inseparable from the origination of order, but the order comes to be, arises from originating sources that allow forms of beauty to be that are more than our determination or self-determination. Something marvelously original comes to be, comes to shine. There is a shine on things. But what shines on things when we come to appreciate their given beauty? Is it just our shine on things, as if we were the sole source of light? Is it the shine of things, as if the things were luminescent in their own being there? Is it a shine on things, such that the source of the light was not just ours, nor confined to the thing of beauty? These questions will be explored.

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.

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.

The central conflicts of the world today are closely related to cultural, traditional, and religious differences between nations. As we move to a globalized world, these differences often become magnified, entrenched, and the cause of bloody conflict. Growing out of a conference of distinguished scholars from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, this volume is a singular contribution to mutual understanding and cooperative efforts on behalf of peace. The term paideia, drawn from Greek philosophy, has to do with responsible education for citizenship as a necessary precondition for effective democracy.

Rather than abstracting Augustine’s exploration of time from the whole of the Confessions, as philosophers have been tempted to do, I take up his exploration in terms of what I call a ‘companioning relation’ between philosophy and theology. There is a porosity between religion/theology and philosophy in Augustine that need not be taken as a philosophical or theological deficiency. This reflection speaks of Augustine’s intentions and intuitions in terms of the theme: Wording Time. How might one word this wording, and how might Augustine’s approach to time be thus illuminated? I approach the question in different stages, dealing first with theological, ontological, and psychological considerations. Then I follow the breadth of Augustine’s concerns to a sense of sacred heterogeneities that yet are deeply intimate, and to a sense of time that is in communication with what is above time. In keeping with the musical motif that runs through this reflection, I offer some thoughts on agapē as not only an agapē sonans but an agapē personans. I will sometimes be transcribing Augustine’s themes, sometimes offering variations on them, and sometimes composing improvisations in tune with Augustinian themes.

ZusammenfassungEs ist eine gängige Praxis ethischer Reflexion, zwischen verschiedenen Systemen moralischer Werte zu unterscheiden und dann die einen gegen die anderen auszuspielen. Im Text wird eine Reflexionsform vorgestellt, die gewissermaßen einen ‚Schritt zurück‘ von derartigen vordergründigen Wertsystemen tritt und stattdessen die Quellen des Ethischen betrachtet, Quellen, die wir in unserer alltäglichen ethischen Praxis oft genug nicht beachten oder für selbstverständlich halten. Zu diesen Quellen oder Potentialen des Ethischen zähle ich das, was ich als das Idiotische, das Ästhetische, das Dianoetische, das Eudaimonische, das Transzendentale, das Transzendierende und das Transzendente bezeichne. Ethische ‚Systeme‘ manifestieren diese Potentiale in der einen oder anderen, je eigenen Ausformung. Die ethischen Potentiale gehen auf mancherlei Wegen in ethische Systeme ein, ohne je ganz in einem einzigen System aufzugehen. Der ‚Schritt zurück‘ ist ein Rückgang auf die vielfältigen Quellen des Ethischen in den Potentialen. Er kann uns auch dabei helfen, etwas über die Zukunft der Ethik zu sagen.

Introduction. Why did Cynicism emerge throughout the Greek world when it did? Survey of relevant literature; criticism of previous suggestions and assumptions. Cynic individualism represents a radical internalization of widespread ideals of individual excellence. Cynic asceticism is a paradoxical response to the perceived problems of wealth and poverty in the fourth century B.C.E.: to escape poverty one must embrace it. Outline of chapters. ;Chapter one: Praise of poverty and work. Popular attitudes to work and wealth precede the Cynic praise of po&d12;nov and the paradoxical claim that the Cynic beggar is "rich." Work is morally beneficial as well as economically necessary. Praise of the Greek poor in various authors: the poor are honest, just, and do the most productive work; the rich are often hubristic and exploitative. The critique of wealth from a variety of perspectives: wealth is the "mother-city of all evils," particularly class-struggle; in a democracy, wealth is dangerous given the power of the people; the limited nature of Greek production ensured that the rich could spend their money only on public services or invidious luxuries---benefits possibly dubious to some. The Cynics appear in cities with democratic traditions during times of heightened class-tension, as strident critics of wealth and the wealthy. ;Chapter two: Praise of poverty and war. Poverty trains individuals and nations to martial excellence---strength, courage, temperance, patriotism; therefore, the poor are the best soldiers, as many wars seem to demonstrate. Political theorists of the fourth century recommend that the fighting nobility embrace a voluntary poverty to maintain their preeminence. The Cynics' claim to "kingship" and their boast that asceticism makes them "invincible" vis-a vis Fortune exaggerates the traditional and more recent philosophical link between poverty and the ideal soldier's virtues. ;Chapter three: Praise of poverty and philosophical wisdom. The dichotomy between absolute and contingent Being introduced into philosophical discourse by Parmenides tends to isolate the Greek thinker as an unconventional, even solitary creature whose knowledge and goals are somehow superior to the norm. The ethical implications of this split between the philosopher and the external world become most apparent in two fourth-century versions of philosophic poverty, the Platonic and the Cynic. For both, the temporal and external cannot be really known or possessed and therefore should not be desired. As a result, the ideal sage eschews material wealth as a hindrance from the higher "wealth" of wisdom, which consists in contemplation of timeless Forms or immersion in the present moment.

© 2016 by Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses. All rights reserved. I want to reflect on the nature of revelation by means of the idea of the "godsend". While seeming to be ordinary this word carries communication of what is beyond the ordinary. A godsend suggests something like a chink or crack through which something is revealed - a kind of gap, or permeability, a porosity to a light that comes from a source beyond. In that gifted porosity is there an opening to revelation? Does the godsend say something about the surprise of revelation? In response I follow three steps: from word, to idea, to story. I begin by looking at the word and its etymology and consider what this implies. Then I look at the idea of revelation in connection with the claims of philosophical reason. Here my concern is to illuminate some theoretical considerations concerning reason and revelation, from the more reflective conceptual point of view, especially in relation to the modern sense of reason. Third, I turn to story as true to the godsend, and I pay particular attention to a story that witnesses to a kind of fidelity to singularity, the story entitled "Revelation" of Flannery O'Connor.