God and the Between

William Desmond is Professor of Philosophy at the Higher Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.

• List of Abbreviations. Preface.Introduction.Breaking Silence about God.God and the Ethos of Being.Passing in the Ethos: Between the Given and the Good.God, Ethos, and the Fourfold Sense of Being.God, Philosophical Systematics, Religious Poetics.Exceeding System, Hyperboles, Unclogging Ways.Structure of the Work.Part I: Godlessness:.1. Godlessness and the Ethos of Being.Godlessness.Devalued Being: The Stripping of the Signs.Idolized Autonomy: Eclipse of Transcendence as Other Transcendences.The Antinomy of Autonomy and Transcendence.Dark Origins and Transcendence as Other.Will to Power and the Counterfeit Double of “Yes”.Return to Zero: Coming to Nothing.2. Beyond Godlessness.The Angel of Death, Being as Gift.God and Posthumous Mind.Out of Nothing: Porosity and the Urgency of Ultimacy.Redoubled Beginning: Elemental Yes.Idiotic Rebirth.Aesthetic Recharging.Erotic Outreaching.Agapeic Resurrection.Part II: Ways to God:.3. God and the Univocal Way.Ways to God.The Way of Univocity.Pantheistic Univocity: Immediate Sacrality.Equivocal Transience and Univocalizing God.Beyond Doubleness to the Absorbing One: The Parmenidean Way.Between the One and the Double: The Platonic Way.The One beyond the Double: The Plotinian Way.Reversing the One and the Double: Or How the Dualistic Defense of Transcendence Effects its Eclipse.The Immanent Doubling: Or How the Shadow of Modern Monotheism is Atheism.Gods of Geometry.The One and the Double in Immanence: Kant’s Transcendental One and its Humanistic Dissolution.4. God and the Equivocal Way.The Way of Equivocity.Nature’s Equivocity.God’s Equivocity.Equivocity and Evil.Deus sive Ego? On the Equivocities of Religious Inwardness.Gethsemene Thoughts: Between Curse and Blessing.Deus sive Nihil? The Equivocal Way and Purgatorial Difference.5. God and the Dialectical Way.God beyond Opposition.Kant’s Virtual Dialectic: Finding Direction by Unknowing Indirection.A Parable: Fishing for God.Dialectic beyond Dualism: Determining Origin beyond Determination.Dialectic and the Self-determining God: On Some Hegelian Ways.Dialectic, Coming to be, Becoming.God beyond Dialectic: On Avoiding a Counterfeit Double of God.6. God and the Metaxological Way.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.7. God beyond the Between.The Hyperbole of the Agapeic Origin.Reversing the Hyperboles and the Reserves of God.First “reversed” movement.Bringing the Hyperboles Back to the Between.The infinite value of self and ethical-religious community.Part III: Gods:.8. Gods Many and One: On Polytheism and Monotheism.Gods.Religious Imagination and Porosity to Archaic Manifestation.Sacred Namings and the Hyperboles of Being.From Polytheism to Monotheism.Metaxological Monotheism.The Praise of Paganism.9. God(s) Personal and Transpersonal: On the Masks of the Divine.Personal God(s) and Plurivocal Manifestation.Monotheistic and Polytheistic Personalizations.Beyond Person, beyond Mask.The Gods of Philosophers: Masks of the Impersonal or Transpersonal?.10. God(s) Gnostic: On Passing Through the Counterfeit Doubles of the Divine.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.11. God(s) of the Whole: On Pantheism and Panentheism.Holistic Immanence and the God of the Whole.Pantheism Contra the Worthless World.Affirming the World and the Immanent God.God and the Whole.Holistic Emanation and Pluralistic Creation.God beyond the Whole?.The Holistic God and Evil.12. God beyond the Whole: On the Theistic God of Creation.What has Philosophy to do with Creation?.Creation beyond Univocal Intelligibility.Creation beyond Holism.Creation, Coming to be and Becoming.Creation and Nothing.Creation and Agapeic Origination: Dualism and the “Not”.Creation, Hypertranscendence and Divine Intimacy.Continuing Creation, Agapeic Self-reserving.Creation and Arbitrary (Will to) Power.Creation, Hyperbolic Evil and Trust.13. God(s) Mystic: On the Idiocy of the Divine.The Idiotics of the Mystic God.The Aesthetics of the Mystic God.The Erotics of the Mystic God.The Agapeics of the Mystic God.Part IV: God:.14. God: Ten Metaphysical Cantos.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.Eight Metaphysical Canto: God Being (Over)All-Power.Ninth Metaphysical Canto: God Being True – Agapeic (Over-all) Minding.Tenth Metaphysical Canto: God Being (Too)Good.Index

“This is a very difficult book on very important, indeed pressing, topics in the philosophy of religion” (Review of Metaphysics)