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Philosophia Reformata 75 (2010) 00–00

TOWARDS A PHILOSOPHY OF GOD.


A STUDY IN WILLIAM DESMOND’S THOUGHT*

SANDER GRIFFIOEN

1. Introduction

William Desmond is professor of philosophy at the Hoger Instituut of the


Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, a position he has held since 1994. Before this
he held several positions in the US. Until 2009 he was President of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association, and has formerly served as
President of the Hegel Society of America and the Metaphysical Society of
America. He was born in Ireland. God and the Between (2008) completes the
trilogy on the ‘philosophy of the between’. The first volume was Being and the
Between (1995); the second one Ethics and the Between (2001).
Desmond is a prolific author with a distinctive style that avoids insider’s
language as much as possible. The formulations are succinct and crisp, often
interspersed with a tongue-in-cheek kind of humor. Although the tone is
mostly informal, it may change in one paragraph from the colloquial to the
lyric. A special feature of God and the Between is that each chapter opens with a
poem composed for this purpose. The relation of these poems to the specific
themes of the chapters may not always be obvious, yet they are highly expres-
sive and rich in philosophical content.1
Although Desmond’s vocabulary is mostly not technical, yet on the whole his
works do not make for easy reads. The succinctness of formulations and the
versatility of style are such that every page requires close reading. Moreover, it
may take considerable time for the reader to familiarize himself with the philo-
sophical concepts serving as nodal points of these texts. It is not even easy to
pin down what is meant by ‘the between’, the linchpin of the trilogy.
However, I have come to think that these difficulties are not so much
accidental as part of the design. These books demand much of the reader. It
may be because the author is not content to transmit the results of his philo-
sophical efforts, but also wants the reader to enter ‘into a dynamic unfolding of
thoughts’2 and test the argumentation for himself. In accordance with the best
traditions of philosophy the invitation comes without strictures. These texts do
not address a particular group of readers specifically: the trilogy has not been
written specifically for fellow Catholics, nor for fellow Christians in general.

* This study partly builds on a paper read at the symposium dedicated to God and the
Between, Leuven: Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte, 28 April 2009. I gratefully acknowledge
Christine Aay’s helpful corrections of my English, and William Desmond’s invaluable com-
ments on an earlier draft. Both have greatly enriched my text.
1 Desmond would prefer to speak of ‘prayer/poems’ (private comment). At the Leuven
symposium McRegan’s contribution focused on these poems: Cyrill McRegan, ‘Philosophy and
the Pressure of the Poetic: Desmond and Heidegger’.
2 Personal comment by the author.
2 sander griffioen

The invitation goes to all those willing to think along. God and the Between is no
exception: it is clearly motivated by the wish that even the most deeply
entrenched rationalists may become convinced that religion cannot simply be
ignored. Desmond is hopeful that the intellectual climate is now more open
than it was in a not too distant past. As he relates in Is there a Sabbath for
Thought ?:
I remember a time when to mention God or religion in the company of ad-
vanced intellectuals was like mentioning sex in a prudish Victorian drawing
room. An icy silence would descend, and the silence communicated more than
the argument possibly could: we do not now talk of these things.” (Desmond
2005, xi)

Another point — and there I sense a difficulty — is the author’s reticence to


inform us about the basic convictions with which he himself enters the field.
His philosophy does insert itself into a tradition of Catholic thought, but not by
way of a worldviewish allegiance to a specific tradition. If it claims distinctive-
ness it is only by being open to the ‘between’. To quote from the cover of God
and the Between: this book ‘explores the space between religion and philosophy,
as the religious person cannot escape philosophical perplexity and the philoso-
pher of religion by nature occupies this middle space.’ What this ‘between’
entails will concern us later on. My purpose now is to indicate that Desmond’s
philosophy defies labeling. Therefore, joining him on his journey means to
leave the well-trodden paths — which for the uninitiated reader adds consider-
ably to the difficulties listed above.
I trust this study will succeed in showing that all these difficulties are far out-
weighed by the benefit of becoming familiar with texts that are astonishingly
rich. Desmond’s philosophy deserves more attention than it has received thus
far. Although in North America and in Ireland he is counted among the noted
philosophers,3 in our part of the world (where he has held an important posi-
tion for more than fifteen years) the response to his work is disappointing if we
restrict ourselves to monographs and special issues of journals. It is entirely
fitting for Philosophia Reformata to publish this article because the tradition it re-
presents has a long record of engaging with contemporary Catholic thought, to
wit studies by H. Dooyeweerd, S.U. Zuidema, M.C. Smit, and H.G. Geertsema.
To conclude this introduction I briefly indicate how this study proceeds.
Although the focus will be on God and the Between, we must nevertheless start
with the two first volumes of the trilogy.4 As for Being and the Between, we first
turn to the opening sentences about ‘the between’. Also, our interest will be
the introduction of two series of basic categories. The first set ranges from the
‘univocal’ to the ‘metaxological’, the second one from the ‘idiotic’ to the ‘aga-
peic’. The first series represents a succession of modes of understanding (and
correlative modes of being), whereas the second one follows the development
of subjectivity — or as Desmond puts it: modes of ‘selving’ (and correlative

3 See Simpson (2009). See also Desmond (2008b) on his relation to Irish thought.
4 Other publications of Desmond will be used along side.
towards a philosophy of god 3

communities). We will restrict ourselves to a brief characterization of each of


these categories.
With respect to Ethics and the Between we turn to the notion of ‘the gift’. This
notion not only helps to understand what is meant by ‘givenness’ in onto-
logical and ethical respects, it also sheds light on how the Creator-creation
relation is understood.
The last volume, God and the Between, will be at the center of our investi-
gations. Here my exposition will take the form of a reconstruction of three
controversies. The first one concerns the basic assumption that being implies
goodness; the second and the third controversy regard the possibility of a
‘philosophy of God’. In connection with the first controversy the notion of the
‘between’ will be highlighted once more. The second controversy will take us
to the heartland of metaphysics — a land situated beyond the domain of ‘the
between’. It is fascinating to see how Desmond pushes reason into the nearness
of faith. At this juncture, by way of contrast some basic ideas of D. H. Th.
Vollenhoven will be brought into play. I know, of course, that to introduce a
controversy by drawing on the thoughts of someone else is frowned upon by a
sophisticated philosophical public. My reason for taking this shortcut never-
theless, is that Vollenhoven’s thought cannot be matched for clarity and
succinctness, and therefore takes us much quicker to the issues at stake than a
prolonged dialog would do. The final controversy concerns the status of the
philosophical subject. These are some of the questions to be raised: who/what
can serve as ‘subject’ of a philosophy of God? Does Desmond succeed in dis-
pelling the specter of a Hegel’s deification of thinking (although one would be
hard-pressed to find a more vocal critic of Hegel)?

2. Being and the Between: basic distinctions


The meaning of the ‘Between’
It is proper to start our journey with a reflection on the meaning of the ‘be-
tween’. More will be added once we have moved to God and the Between, but our
present interest is in how Being and the Between introduces this subject (BB xi):
Long, long ago, Plato told us that the human being is neither a god nor a beast,
but someone in between. Philosophy too is in between, neither completely wise
nor entirely ignorant. What then would it mean to philosophize in between?
What is the being of the between? This book seeks to answer the question in
terms that are as comprehensive as possible.
Note that nowhere in Being and the Between does the ‘between’ attain the status
of a technical concept. Nowhere is it singled out for detailed treatment. This
does not mean that it functions only as a catch-all phrase. Quite the opposite is
the case. The ‘between’ indicates a choice of position the implications of which
are explicated in many ways. There cannot be doubt about its centrality.
However, it is far from easy to unpack even the most important implications.
In the first place the ‘between’ marks a mode of inter-esse (the Platonic
metaxu), a primal togetherness, and as such a situation in which being and
4 sander griffioen

goodness have not yet parted company. This picture is much in line with how
Phenomenology understands the life-world (and with ‘naive experience’ in my
own philosophical milieu).
Secondly, the ‘between’ is marked by ambiguity — or as Desmond prefers
‘equivocity’. As such, ‘equivocal’ has no negative connotations. It is rather the
sciences and ‘scientific’ philosophy that are being criticized for all too readily
abstracting from equivocity in their pursuit of the univocal.
Thirdly, the ‘between’ is supposed to be philosophy’s proper domain. How-
ever, it cannot be the ultimate horizon for a philosophy who knows that God is
‘beyond the between’ (GB chapter 7). Therefore this philosophy has to ven-
ture into what lies beyond, but even then the ‘between’ is to remain its home
base. Further explanation will have to wait till the final sections of this essay.
Lastly, the ‘between’ connotes an ordering along a vertical axis. In the
previous points we did not take into account possible hierarchies, and only
drew a picture of a manifold of things enclosed by a common horizon. But of
course Plato’s metaxu with which this section opened does refer to a vertical
ordering with the human person placed halfway between god and beast (or
‘angel and beast’ as Hans Jonas has it5). What the metaxu brings to expression
is that to be human means transcending animals and inanimate things when it
comes to understanding, while sharing their finitude. Elsewhere Desmond
(2007, 13) explains this position as follows:
The eros of thinking might be said, pace Plato, to mingle poros and penia. Stress
the penia only and there is no movement of transcending. Stress only the poros
and the plenty overflows into perhaps thinking’s exultation in itself as if it were a
God, and not a finite participation in something divine.

The combination of ‘finite’ and ‘participation’ is a theme we will have to


attend to carefully in the final round of our explorations. At this stage it
suffices to mention two implications of the positioning of philosophy in ‘the
between’. First, it implies parting company with Hegel’s attempt to ascertain
absolute knowledge. Quite likely it is Hegel’s philosophy the author had in
mind when stating: ‘stress only the poros and the plenty overflows into perhaps
thinking’s exultation in itself as if it were a God’. Second, there is more than
‘penia’ only: so we cannot expect Desmond to be content with a philosophy of
the finite. He does not join those postmodern thinkers who look back in anger
at philosophy’s metaphysical past. His own philosophy participates in a meta-
physical pursuit: it is no exaggeration to state that the ‘philosophy of God’ at
which his trilogy aims stands and falls with the possibility of metaphysics.
A full discussion of how Desmond wants to avoid both the Scylla of a
philosophy of finiteness and the Charybdis of ‘absolute thought’ will have to
wait till we have entered the domain of God and the Between. The next section
will lay out the basic categories as unfolded in Being and the Between. Then

5 ‘Von alters wird in den Bildern vom Sein das “Zwischen” des Menschen betont: zwischen
Tier und Engel, zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft, zwischen Verdammnis und Erlösung ...
Plato sah das Werden als ein Mittleres zwischen Nichtsein und Sein, teilhabend an beiden ...’
(Jonas 1987, 3).
towards a philosophy of god 5

follows a section dedicated to the category of the gift as developed in Ethics and
the Between.

Two series

Being and the Between starts with outlining two groups of basic categories: the
first one comprises the univocal, the equivocal, the dialectical, and the metaxo-
logical. Later on a second group is introduced consisting of the idiotic, the
aesthetic, the erotic, and the agapeic. To grasp the role they play one must
consult the table of contents of the three volumes. In all cases the order of
exposition follows the sequence of each of the two series, first the one from the
equivocal to the metaxological, and then the other one. However, one does
not find an extensive methodological account of why these categories have
been chosen.6
The ‘univocal’ connotes a mode of knowing which is the corollary of the
immediate, undifferentiated and as yet unquestioned ‘sameness’ of things (see
BB xii). At this level words are taken to designate stable identities. Also it is
naturally assumed that concepts are coterminous with names.7 As such the
univocal has a legitimate place, if only it is not adopted as the exclusive
standard of scientific knowledge.
‘Equivocity’ (literally: allowing for more voices) is the antonym of ‘univocal’.
The equivocal is a mode of understanding which correlates with a process of
differentiation in reality. Characteristically, it registers diversity as yet without
regard for integration, and hence leaves ample room for ambiguity (BB xii,
21).
The ‘dialectical’: this mode of knowledge is attuned to how things develop
interdependently. As Desmond is keen to show, dialectical philosophy views
the subject in its various shapes (knowing subject, social self, Geist) as the factor
that keeps reality together, with ‘self-mediation’ as its instrument (BB xii,
147,153,175). More about this later on.
‘Metaxological’ refers to Plato’s concept of metaxu, and is central to under-
standing what Desmond means by ‘the between’. ‘Metaxological’ gained cur-
rency in twentieth century philosophy thanks to Simone Weil (1952) who used
it to express her conviction that ‘every separation is a link’. This interconnec-
tedness is also central to Desmond’s thought. Metaxological knowledge re-
quires that the knowing subject participates in the life of what it wants to know.
As such it presents a break with dialectical thought in as far as it takes as its
point of departure the self-positing subject, epitomized by the opening sen-
tence of Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre: “Das Ich setzt sich selbst, und es ist, vermöge
dieses bloßen Setzens durch sich selbst.” I would agree with Desmond that
Hegel’s thought does not present a radical break with this subject-centrism.

6 Desmond records in a footnote the question as to how the categories relate to the
traditional transcendentalia (beauty, truth, goodness), adding: ‘A good question. I could write a
book on that.’ (GB 141)
7 Historians of philosophy attribute this view to Duns Scotus. An illustration of the univocity
of concepts would be the assumption that predicates such as ‘loving’ , ‘having anger’, and
‘showing remorse’ apply equally and in the same way to creatures as to God.
6 sander griffioen

James Marsh (2007, 96) neatly sums up what the movement from the
univocal to the metaxological entails:
In his thought there is a movement from the univocal, as basic identity, to the
equivocal, as fundamental difference, to dialectic, as a mediation of identity and
difference, to the metaxological, a intermediation between identity and diffe-
rence, self and other...

As for the second sequence of basic categories, its exact relation to the first one
remains difficult to grasp. I think we stay closest to Desmond’s intentions by
considering it as a grouping of modes of ‘selving’, i.e. of successive stages in the
growth of personhood (and correlative communities) that are linked to the
modes of understanding of the first series. As such an assumed correlation
between anthropological and epistemological distinctions is not new in philo-
sophy. This aspect of Desmond’s philosophy reminds me of Hegel’s blending
of the growth of knowledge and the ‘Bildung’ of the individual (although
Hegel neither leaves place for agapeic love nor for metaxological under-
standing).
The ‘idiotic’ designates a stage of sheer particularity. At this level the self
exists on and for itself, unencumbered by interdependence with other beings.
Here, ‘idiotic’ is void of negative meanings and is even used to refer to God’s
intimacy of being.
‘Aesthetic’: a distinction is in order here between the perfectly legitimate
wonder about the beauty of things on the one hand and a cult of the equivocal
on the other. In the last its negative overtones become prominent — as is the
concern of Kierkegaard’s critique of the aesthetic ethos.
The ‘erotic’. Of course, the erotic also has as a legitimate place as such.
However, often Desmond employs this term negatively to refer to strains of self-
centeredness in Western thought. I also hear resonances in his critique of what
Augustine (and Luther) meant by characterizing human sinfulness as being
‘incurvatus in se’.8
Finally, the ‘agapeic’ connotes kenotic, self-giving love. One extrapolation will
be explored in the next section: that it is akin to the agapeic not to seek
dominance over everything else, but rather that it lets go of what is other than
itself.

3. Ethics and the Between: a special kind of ethics


The first two parts of this book offer a picture that is quite different from the
average treatise on this subject. Parts I and II do not focus on how to choose a
course of action on moral grounds, nor do they dwell extensively on theories of
justification of moral action. Instead, the first chapter deals with topics such as
the ‘worth of being’ and the ‘modern sense of being as worthless’. The other

8 “To my best ability I tried not to have a simple dualism of eros and agape — I think my
chief concern is the distortion that occurs when the erotic is absolutized and the promise of
the agapeic is betrayed.” (from William Desmond’s commentary on an earlier draft of this
essay).
towards a philosophy of god 7

chapters follow the distinctions that were previously introduced, starting with
the univocal — here representing the level of first moral awakening in a
situation in which givenness of life is accepted unquestioning — and ending
with agapeic love.
Halfway between start and finish of the ascendancy there are those levels at
which moral autonomy seems to be the overriding norm. Desmond’s approach
is again remarkably evenhanded. As such he has no quarrel with the concern
to retain control amidst the vicissitudes of life. But what on his view needs to be
overcome is a hypostatization that blocks the way to further development. One
such blockade would be the bourgeois ideal of the well-rounded person smugly
at peace with himself and with the world; another is the will-to-power of the
‘erotic sovereignty’ which he contrasts to ‘agapeic service’ (EB 165, compare
446).
To demonstrate the relevance of such an approach I turn briefly to the
notions of ‘the good life’ and ‘human flourishing’ that frequently function as
norms to measure moral progress. With respect to the first it is all important to
know whether ‘good’ is stuffed with content derived from some ideal of auto-
nomy or is geared to agapeic giving. Similarly, with respect to human flourish-
ing the first thing to know is whether or not human self-fulfillment functions as
the finis. For Desmond the litmus test is whether or not there is any connection
between ‘growth’ and ‘suffering’. Only where there is a connection the
progress to self-transcendence is not blocked.
In the next section we see that even a rapturous affirmation of life as a gift is
not without a shadow of suffering. That shadow becomes more prominent the
closer one gets to the agapeic, and the echo of John 12: 24 becomes stronger:
“‘until a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single
seed...” The transition from an ethos of autonomy to that of agapeic love is
described in terms that indeed connote sufferings. The text speaks of a
‘breakdown of wholeness’, a ‘breach’ with the past, a ‘breaking down of all
held stable and constant’; and even of the ‘terror of the gift’ (EB 111-2).9
Here I was reminded of Charles Taylor’s critique of philosophies that take
‘human flourishing’ as the meaning and end of religion. Taylor (2007, 17)
points out that this is to miss the core of biblical faith: “The injunction “Thy
will be done” isn’t equivalent to “Let humans flourish”, even though we know
that God wills human flourishing.” Great! Yet, of the two Desmond is the more
radical critic, as he would point out that ‘human flourishing’, as it is normally
taken, is not just religiously (or sharper: ‘pistically’) deficient, but even fails to
do justice to an ethic of ‘the between’.
Although such an approach to ethics and morals may be rare, it has not
stayed unnoticed. The volume Between System and Poetics to which a number of
commentators contributed, bears witness to the fact that his voice is being
heard (Kelly 2007).

9 The relation between holiness and suffering is easier to grasp for literature than for
philosophy. I am thinking of Georges Bernanos, François Mauriac, C.S. Lewis, and not to
forget Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead revisited (1945).
8 sander griffioen

The gift

Of special interest for our project is what Ethics and the Between has to say about
‘gift’, ‘givenness’, etcetera. This theme is pursued at various levels. Let us listen
for a moment to the description of a primal experience of life as a gift. Note
that ‘being given’ is viewed as constitutive for our being human:
This idiocy of suffering concerns the fact that we do not first choose our being
or freedom, both are first given to us; and being given, we begin to give our-
selves to ourselves. Rapport with “all is a gift” is perhaps most vital when we are
young, or when overtaken by a joy that surprises us in fresh astonishment at
being at all. (EB 368).

In keeping with the primacy of the given Desmond substitutes what he calls the
passio essendi for Spinoza’s conatus essendi: whereas the latter understood the
conviviality (co-natus) as a common effort to be, Desmond wants to start with
human receptivity. His argument is that achieving is always a response to what
comes first. It is this primacy of the given that is willfully ignored in Spinoza’s
conatus essendi, as it is in Goethe’s Im Anfang war die Tat,10 as well as in much of
modern philosophy.
Note that Desmond takes ‘passio’ in the sense of ‘patience’ and connects
patience with (a possibility of) suffering (EB 368-9). This explains the refer-
ence to ‘the idiocy of suffering’ in the previous quote, which at first sight
seemed to be out of place. Apparently, even a spontaneous sense that ‘all is a
gift!’ requires a receptive attitude that first has to overcome some ingrained
resistance against admitting an essential porosity . However, the context does
not bear out whether such a resistance is indeed to be considered as inevitably
present at this level.11
The connection between gift and suffering becomes most apparent (as well
as most mysterious) at the agapeic level — a connection we touched on before
— as it becomes clear now that ‘the glory of self-surpassing’ comes at a price,
since only by abandoning self-interest and conquering self-love may one
proceed towards blessedness and holiness.
Another point to consider is ‘otherness’ as a correlate of gift. Again, the idea
of agapeic love offers a clue. A salient feature attributed to this kind of love is
that, instead of seeking dominance, it can ‘let be’, granting (or acknowledg-
ing) a right to exist of what is other than itself, even sheer (‘idiotic’)
particularity; it “gives the particular its being for itself; this being is its own,
irreplaceable, singular in an absolute sense; its for-itself is its own and no one’s
else.” (EB 379-380).
Here we discover that Desmond interprets ‘creation’ in the light of this
‘letting be’. Note the combination of ‘singularity’ and ‘agapeic creation’ in the
following formulation: a “radical singularity that is consistent with agapeic
creation as given for the otherness of the creature.” (EB 379) ‘Agapeic

10Faust, book 1, ‘Studierkammer’.


11To do justice to the author’s intention I add his personal comment passed on to me:
“The “fall” comes “after” our already being given to be — I think it has much to do with our
free refusal of the ultimate porosity to God …”
towards a philosophy of god 9

creation’ means that the emphasis is on ‘letting be’, rather than on creatio ex
nihilo. How should we understand this? ‘Letting be’ may raise a red flag over
a possible relation to Schelling’s notion of a contractio Dei, with its gnostic over-
tones. At least one commentator has signaled a relationship.12 Yet what should
not be missed is this great difference vis-à-vis Schelling: whereas in his view God
has to withdraw (‘contract’) in order not to stand in the way of the free
development of finite life, Desmond on the other hand assumes a trust rela-
tionship. Whereas the former conception assumes a potential conflict between
God and man when it comes to freedom — an extreme form of which is Sar-
tre’s dilemma: “either God is free or I am free”, Desmond (2007, 33) stresses
the mystery of self-giving love “confiding freedom to the mortal creature.”
Although free of Schellingian overtones the linking of ‘creation’ to an
ethical understanding of the ‘gift’ has major consequences. If pressed I would
have to say that it marks the foremost difference from the philosophy that this
journal represents. This connection causes a shift of emphasis from creature-
liness as constitutive for the structure of things to a letting-be of radical other-
ness. More about this difference in the last stages of our investigations. First we
turn to a point where I see convergence rather than difference, i.e. Desmond’s
version of the age-old conviction that being implies normativity.

4. Three controversies

The discussion of the last volume of the trilogy will be structured by mapping
out three controversies. To introduce the first controversy: At the Leuven
symposium of April 2009 dedicated to God and the Between, more than once
doubts surfaced whether the Catholic philosophical traditions can be rejuvena-
ted without sacrificing the time honored doctrine that ‘being’ always already
implies ‘goodness’ (ens et bonum convertuntur). What position does Desmond
take on this issue?
To understand his position we will have to travel a relatively long trajectory.
The first stage will be an extension of our earlier exploration of ‘the between’.
Next comes a clarification of the relation between philosophy and the ‘primal
ethos’. Only then will the groundwork be laid for determining in what sense
Desmond endorses the ens et bonum principle.
The second controversy is about the question whether a ‘philosophy of God’
is at all possible. As announced in the introduction, to make the issue as clear
as possible we turn to Vollenhoven’s view on the limits of philosophy.
The third controversy raises an issue that is at the background of the second
controversy. It is about the thinking subject of a philosophy of God. Would it
not require little less than a god to be able to adequately ‘think God’? Hegel
famously answered this question to the affirmative, and then also took the next

12 Kearny (2007, 198) refers to the idea of zimzum (tzimtzum) in Jewish kabbalistic
thought. I think this reference takes us closer to (for instance) Levinas than to Desmond. To
pursue this link, see Dalton (2006). For parallel influences, see the ‘theology’ of the Frankfurt
School: contractio Dei was the topic of Habermas’s doctoral dissertation; the theme is also very
much present in Hans Jonas’s theology: see Valk (2009).
10 sander griffioen

logical step by connecting philosophical thought and Divine self-reflection.


Desmond has argued (convincingly I think) that Hegel’s God is a ‘counterfeit
double’, an imitation of the agapeic God that fails to break out of the circles of
erotic love (see especially Desmond 2003). In God and the Between agapeic love
is to bridge the distance between God and world. Yet, I will argue that Hegel’s
shadow is not dispelled.

5. First controversy

Being and goodness

As said, ‘the between’ may best be understood as a close analogy to ‘Life-world’


in the tradition of phenomenological thought.13 ‘Being’ in the life-world is
conceived as co-existence, as a form of primordial togetherness. At this level
the boundary between subject and world is still porous, and outside reality does
not yet appear as an object for a subject placing itself as a neutral manipulating
and valuing instance over against it. To convey something of what ‘given’
means in the present context I quote a stanza of one of the chapter-opening
poems: “Things offer themselves/ In words /They consecrate themselves/
They do nothing /To merit it/ I ask for nothing / I have already received/
Everything.” (GB 116)
Although God and the Between does not have many overt references to
phenomenology, yet the way the theme of the between is developed does bear
a resemblance to specific strands in phenomenological thought. I already
mentioned the idea of a life-world. Merleau Ponty’s appeal to the expérience
vécue offers a related example. In the background is a perceived danger of
standardized scientific thinking spilling over into the life-world. Therefore
Merleau Ponty calls for a rehabilitation of the richly contextual and historically
embedded experience that characterizes the life-world. Similarly, Desmond
opposes the raising of the univocal as standard for what is to count as
knowledge. This explains his frequent use of terms such as ‘equivocal’ and
‘overdeterminate’. It is to drive home that the Cartesian ‘claire et distincte’ as
norm for knowledge is unable to do justice to the interplay of forces within
‘the between’. But note that the ‘univocal’ is also applied to the scholastic
pursuit of knowledge about God: Desmond informs his readers in the opening
pages of God and the Between that he will not offer anything like ‘proofs’ of God
because to his mind “there is no absolutely univocal way to God.” (GB 4).

Yes!

To further illustrate this point I want to draw a parallel between affirmation


originaire in the early works of Ricoeur and Desmond’s notion of a ‘primal
ethos’, i.e. the primal receptivity we encountered in the context of Ethics and the

13 From hereon ‘between’ and ‘life-world’ will be used as synonyms.


towards a philosophy of god 11

Between.14 ‘Affirmation’ in this connection reminds one of what Nietzsche


called ‘Bejahung’: though in the last case not a hesitant primordial response,
but a resounding ‘yes, it is good to be here’, loud as everything is in his
philosophy. In Ricoeur the affirmation is a ‘yes’ to the ground of being; the
obvious parallel is with Desmond’s use of ‘primal ethos’ as an existential
response to the condition of ‘being given’. Nietzsche, in contrast, is not inte-
rested in honoring a constitutive openness, as his ‘Yes’ is marked by what Being
and the Between criticized as erotic self-centeredness; this Bejahung is the reverse
side of a ‘no’ to any acceptance of life as a gift.
It is important to spell out one major implication the primal ethos has for
philosophy. Once philosophy has become mindful of this original ethos, and
has taken upon itself to bring it to articulation, it cannot but itself become
affirmative towards the originally given. I regard this conclusion as significant.
Let us not forget how much of modern (and postmodern) philosophy prides
itself on negative characteristics: be it by cultivating ‘critique’, ‘suspicion’, or
‘deconstruction’. For Desmond to prioritize negativity is to betray the original
ethos; it is to grant reality to something of philosophy’s own making and to
substitute this for the primacy of the given. If unchecked, this substitution will
produce its own ‘counterfeits’ of what is eminently beautiful, good and true.
Desmond’s critique is at its sharpest where he diagnoses Hegel’s God as ‘a
counterfeit double’ — this critique acted as a stone thrown into the pond of
Hegel-studies, as I have had opportunity to observe.15 Elsewhere he summa-
rized this criticism in terms we are already familiar with, viz. the passio essendi
and the porosity of being:
We are ourselves a way in that sense, since our porosity to being makes us
receivers before we are actors, creatures of the passio essendi before we are
agents of the conatus essendi. As developed by Hegel, speculative dialectics lacks
sufficient finesse for the porosity of being. (Desmond 2006, 123)
It must seem now that Hegel along with the so-called ‘masters of suspicion’
(Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) are busy chasing the wind and only succeed in
creating counterfeit doubles of what really would merit qualifications such as
good and holy. However, this is not the case. ‘The between’ so much teems
with equivocal and overdetermined phenomena that Hegel’s ‘labor of the
negative’ as well as Nietzsche’s unbelief cannot but hit a nerve. In Desmond’s
words: “....[Y]ou might say “Surely these thinkers are behind us?” Yet Nietzsche
brings something to a head that has not yet had its adequate response.” (GB 24
footnote). The bottom line is that neither Nietzsche’s skepticism, nor Hegel’s
prioritizing of criticism are allowed to gain unassailable status and to block our
access to the primordial given.
To grasp the relevance of what is going on here, we should pause and briefly
consider Ricoeur’s further development. When earlier I drew a parallel

14 Actually the term ‘affirmation originaire’ stems from Jean Nabert (1881-1960), one of
Ricoeur’s philosophical mentors. See Griffioen (1976, 42, 54).
15 Desmond (2003). Apart from reactions among fellow Hegel-students at the Vrije Univer-
siteit, I also remember a bewildered reaction following his lecture at a meeting of the Korean
Hegel Society in Seoul 2003.
12 sander griffioen

between themes in Desmond and in Ricoeur, this only took into account the
latter’s publications until about 1960. From thereon a noticeable change
occurs as the Enlightenment and its Nietzschean apotheosis do obtain a sort of
normative status. Now we learn from Ricoeur that there is no bypassing of the
Enlightenment, not even in its outspoken atheistic shape. Thus with him the
affirmation of Transcendence is henceforth never without shades of skepti-
cism. Similarly, the maturity of faith is now measured as to how well it inte-
grates the critiques of the Enlightenment, of Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche.
What I find immensely refreshing in God and the Between is that it frees one
from the burden of having to appear before the tribunal of Reason before
openly affirming the given, the good, God. This unclogging re-opens the way
to what was always there. As the opening line of one of his poems has it: “It will
come again/For it has never left.” (GB 173). It is as if the weary Untergang des
Abendlandes atmosphere, hanging around so much of European philosophy, is
dispelled by a reflection on the fundamental goodness of being.

Pull without push?

There is much in Desmond’s work to suggest an ascendancy from lower to


higher levels of understanding and personal growth (‘selving’). A complicating
factor is that earlier stages are not annulled once the ascendancy proceeds but
somehow return: think of the recovery of the initial openness of life at the
metaxological-agapeic level. Another complication is that with respect to the
notion of the ‘between’ one finds references to both a vertical ordering (‘be-
tween god and beast’) and a ‘togetherness’ without a suggestion of ‘higher’
and ‘lower’. So, the picture is certainly not one of an exclusively hierarchical
structuring. Yet, what counts most is that in all three volumes the exposition
follows the two series introduced before, each of which chart out an inner
development. Therefore, the overall impression is one of an ascendancy along
a staircase of knowing and being.16
What I want to know is what ‘causes’ this progress. Is it the divine Logos
pushing history to its consummation? Or is it a ‘lack of being’ seeking compen-
sation? Or may it be caused by a discrepancy between man’s essential being
and his self-consciousness, as in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit? Or is it neces-
sary to think of a providential ‘hidden hand’ such as in Adam Smith as well as
(in a even more secularized version) in Marx? It is not easy to find answers to
these questions. As far as I could tell the texts are silent about ‘push’ factors.
Of course, I am pushing towards something that is not the author’s prime
concern. His first concern is to rediscover an essential openness (‘porosity’),
and not to trace some march of mind.17 However, the problem is that the

16 The suggestion of a progressive movement is not problematic as it is Desmond’s stated


intention to give at least equal weight to the descend into the ‘darkness of the interior’.
17 Speaking about GB Desmond pointed out to me: “I would say the texts are hugely in
favor of an archeology that makes us porous again to the (divine) at work in the most intimate
and forgotten recesses of “selving” — that is one reason I am unhappy with teleologies that
somehow want to construct the good out of a movement to the end — while the beginning is a
merely indeterminate lack.”
towards a philosophy of god 13

schemes employed (the ‘two series’) strongly suggest an ascent. Therefore, the
interpreter’s task is to keep prodding the author to come up with a fuller
account.
But we do find intimations of a ‘pull’ exerted by the good. One passage
speaks of ‘the incontrovertible call of the good’ (GB 144). This raises the
question whether perhaps the relation between being and goodness is not an
intrinsic one at all, but rather one of convergence towards a distant point
located well outside the ‘between’. The following statement indicates that this
may the case: “[I]n the aesthetic equivocality of our own transient being, this
presentment of the agape of the good begins to wake up in us.” (GB 144).
Apparently, the more the excess of being comes into sight the more this
presentment evolves into a ‘proleptic ecstasis’ (GB 42).
The use of ‘prolepsis’ is significant for now it seems that the goodness of
being can only be anticipated. Do we have to conclude that the bonum et esse
convertuntur has taken on an eschatological quality? If this were true, any
philosophical statement as to the goodness of life would have no foundational
status, but instead be only of a posteriori and retrospective character, i.e. looking
backwards on life from that (anticipated) convergence point.
Returning to Ricoeur: he does give philosophy a task in recapturing (and so
to raise to a higher standard of intelligibility) the original ‘yes’ to life. But note
that in the process the perspective changes from a trusting “come what may it
will be good” to the resigned wisdom of “it was good after all.” After quoting
Goethe’s dictum wie es auch sei das Leben, es ist gut, Ricoeur (1949, 477) goes on
to explain: “Je ne dis donc pas: ce monde est le meilleur des mondes possibles,
mais: ce monde, unique, pour moi sans degré, d’un bonté qui est le oui de
l’être. Sa bonté, c’est qu’il soit. Ens et bonum convertuntur.” Undoubtedly, his
view of affirming the goodness of creation as point of departure (instead as
retrospective wisdom) would already mean to subscribe to a version of “this is
indeed the best possible world.”
As Richard Kearny (2007, 199 footnote) points out, Desmond certainly does
not want to oppose eschatology and ontology. So the picture sketched thus far
cannot be complete. Agapeic love cannot be expected to be real only in some
faraway point towards which ‘esse’ and ‘bonum’ converge. Desmond indeed
(also) conceives of the agapeic as origin, and holds that to be a creature means
to participate in it. I think this gives his philosophy a different flavor than
Ricoeur’s retrospective and rather resigned ‘yes’ to life as the primal ethos of
being is being affirmed philosophically as indeed primal.
To understand how ontology and eschatology are kept together it is helpful
to distinguish between the order of knowledge and the order of being. If we
render Desmond’s position in these terms we get something like this: while in
the ordo cognoscendi ‘goodness’ is indeed eschatologically interchangeable with
‘being’, it is held to be constitutive for being in the ordo essendi. In this last
sense he may affirm a ‘creatio ex nihilo’ as well as a ‘good creation’. However,
with respect to this ontological order one important restriction is in order: the
foundational significance of the good cannot be articulated in a philosophy
that were to restrict itself to realm of ‘the between’. It takes a metaphysics that
14 sander griffioen

is only spelled out in the last part of God and the Between — where the ascen-
dancy has reached a border zone of ‘the between’. Within the life world,
however, there cannot be more than a promise, a presentment, or at most an
ecstatic anticipation of an eschatological reign of the good.

Emanation
The texts do not always keep the two orders apart. Where such a distinction is
lacking formulations tend to become paradoxical. The designation ‘hyperbole
of the agapeic origin’ (GB 159) is a case in point: a hyperbole is an inference
from finite givens to their metaphysical analogies. These figure in what are
called ‘ways to God’ (Part II). To treat the origin as a hyperbole: is that not
paradoxical? To speak of “our movement toward the agapeic origin” as Renée
Ryan (2007, 130) does in rendering Desmond’s position: does that not stretch
the normal use of language too far? Ryan’s formulation is in line with the texts,
but she does not diagnose this kind of stretched language. Instead, she draws a
line back to Augustine, and claims that he already anticipated this “paradoxical
and non-linear sense of origin.” I wonder whether this is right. Regarding the
concept of time I see one major difference between these two philosophers.
With Augustine time is a creature.18 As M.C. Smit, one of my mentors, used to
stress, this conviction checked the influence of Neo-Platonic thought (al-
though it went largely unchecked in other domains of his thought). Time as
creature means it has a beginning and will also come to an end. This
conception of time running from a primeval beginning to an eschatological
consummation provided him with a framework for the development of a
genuine philosophy of history.
I do not see a similar check operative in Desmond’s conception. His view of
time and creation is indebted to Plotinus’s doctrine of emanation — although
it be added immediately that ‘emanation’ is starkly colored here by a Christian
understanding of kenotic love. This subject would deserve a more thorough
analysis than I am capable of giving. May it suffices now to demonstrate Des-
mond’s openness to Neo-Platonism by singling out how at one particular place
he speaks about the Trinity: “the agapeic trinity that proceeds from fullness to
fullness, from the overfull to the overfull, ..., surplus of generosity that is willing
to give even with no anticipation of any return to itself.” (GB 291).
So much for the first controversy. We have found that the endorsement of
the traditional bonum et esse convertuntur position should not be taken as an
unqualified endorsement of a metaphysical legacy. However, as just became
apparent, God and the Between does end with a return to metaphysics. To pursue
this matter we turn to the second controversy.

18 Klapwijk (2008, 32-36) has a programmatic section on ‘Augustine: Time is a Creature of


God’.
towards a philosophy of god 15

6. Second controversy

How do you get from being to God?

I would visit the philosopher Paul Weiss in his old age, and coming in the door
he would ask me, almost shouting: “How do you get from being to God?” A very
good question, not an easy question, not one to be directly answered, as if there
were a univocal path from one to the other. (GB 283)

There is one philosopher (at least) who would have answered Paul Weiss’s
question in the negative, denying any thoroughfare between being and God. I
mean D.H.Th. Vollenhoven (1892-1978), one of the founders of what is now
known as ‘Reformational philosophy’ (and earlier as ‘Calvinist Philosophy’).
There would be much literature to draw on; I prefer his recently translated
Isagôgè Philosophiae, an introduction dating back to the 1940’s, with obvious
limitations yet unmatched in clarity.
Although Vollenhoven would reject the very possibility of metaphysics as a
‘philosophy of God’,19 he does relate philosophy and God. However, he is keen
to avoid any suggestion that this relation depends on the philosopher’s
initiative. His argument is that philosophy is part of the world (‘cosmos’), and
therefore relates to God the way all things do, i.e. as creatures. Philosophy is a
‘creature’ and thus is dependent on the Creator: “.... the archè, in other words,
the dominating beginning, of philosophy as well, is God.” (Vollenhoven 2005,
16) Note that the quote mentions ‘philosophy’ only in a subordinate clause —
“philosophy as well” —, thus emphasizing that it does not have a privileged
relation to God.
Although, as we just saw, God is the origin (also) of philosophy, and
philosophy would do well to acknowledge this, it cannot turn the origin into an
object of reflection. Why is this so? Vollenhoven responds that philosophical
(and broader: scientific) knowledge is restricted to things that are subject to
divine laws, and further that these laws are constitutive for the very possibility
of conceptual knowledge, and hence set a limit to theoretical thought —
philosophy not excluded: “And the limit that it will never transcend is the law
of God.” (Vollenhoven 2005, 23) A further assumption is that these laws,
although divine, do not apply to God. Here Vollenhoven joins hands with
Calvin who formulated this point as Deus legibus solutus est. This is not to
subscribe to a voluntaristic position; therefore Calvin added in the same breath
that God is not outside the law either: Deus non exlex est: “God is not without the
law.” (Vollenhoven 2005, 15).
Undoubtedly, there is agreement in Desmond on more than one score:
If God is God and nothing but God is God, we are dealing with an absolute
singularity about which, in a sense, we can say nothing. Its own terms alone
would allow saying something of it, but its own terms are its alone, and hence
only the divine singularity could speak (about) itself. It must bespeak itself for us
to be able to speak of it; communicate itself for us to be able to divine any sense
of it. (GB 281)

19 ‘...our concern throughout is a philosophy of God.’ (GB 207)


16 sander griffioen

Here the emphasis is not on God’s law as constitutive of and setting a limit for
theoretical thought. The point is rather that thinking has to be transformed
from a self-propelled activity, following its own agenda, into a participatory
(‘metaxological’) mode. The project of a philosophy of God is definitely not
abandoned. How then does it proceed? The title of the final chapter contains a
hint: ‘Ten metaphysical Cantos’. Evidently, the required mode of thought
presupposes a transition in which conceptualizing gives way to praising. This
mode, as Desmond says,
[will] lessen the danger that a new idol of theory will overtake our awe at this last
stage. Cantos can also be laudations. If the undertaking is a philosophy of God,
God is God not philosophy. Philosophy is not God. Only God is God. (GB 282)

On the other hand, philosophy is to remain philosophy, which implies that the
laudations are not sung with biblical texts. What are the texts that are being
used? Desmond points to the function of ‘hyperboles’. After having conceded
(as we just quoted) that the ‘absolute singularity’ “must bespeak itself for us to
be able to speak of it; communicate itself for us to be able to divine any sense
of it”, he continues: “Here again the hyperboles of being offer us some aid. In
finitude they communicate of what is hyperbolic to finitude.” (GB 281) Does
this mean that these hyperboles answer Paul Weiss’s question?

Hyperboles

Hyperboles function by charting ‘ways to God’ (GB part II). Viewed from the
cognitional angle their function is similar to that of analogical arguments in
scholastic thought, i.e. they are meant to move from the human to the divine
by imaginative ideation. As could be expected, the exposition once more
follows the sequence of the idiotic, the aesthetic, the erotic, and the agapeic.
Thus four different types of hyperboles emerge.
The pages dedicated to this subject are rich in content. There is much food
for thought, especially about the idiotic and aesthetic. I can only skim the
surface. The idiotic hyperbole has to do with a transition from what human
identity entails towards the ‘absolute singularity’ attributed to God — note that
this combination of ‘absolute’ and ‘singular’ was already present in the passage
quoted a while ago: “If God is God and nothing but God is God, we are dealing
with an absolute singularity about which, in a sense, we can say nothing .....”
(GB 281) The second hyperbole is called ‘the aesthetics of happening’ (GB
134-141); it is meant to connect the aesthetic aspect of things in general and
works of art specifically with the glory of divine creation. The third hyperbole,
‘the erotics of selving’, is treated mainly in tandem with the agapeic hyperbole
— probably because it is unclear what clue ‘erotic selving’ by itself might offer
to the understanding of what ‘a personal God’ means.
Undoubtedly, the theory of the hyperboles is the mainstay of a Desmondian
metaphysics. As such its importance can hardly be underrated, On the one
hand, we should not overlook that the hyperboles serve to trace human ‘ways
to God’. On the other hand, they do have a fundamentum in re and thus are
more than merely subjective projections. The texts speak of ‘hyperboles of
towards a philosophy of god 17

being’, thus indicating that there are objective clues — traces of divine presence
— to follow up on. When, for instance, we read about a promise ‘within
creation’ of a ‘community exceeding the measure of self-returning eros’ (GB
180, similarly 191), the qualification ‘within creation’ is critical: for the hyper-
boles would not reach beyond ‘erotic self-infinitizing’ (GB 312) if there were
no objective side to them, and if, perforce, the whole exercise would depend
on the mobilization of human Einbildungskraft.
Meanwhile, did we learn how to get from being to God? Yes, we heard about
traces and promises. Apparently there are bridges. However, it is hard to tell
how much — if any — traffic is passing, for in the meantime it also became
clear that metaphysics takes the form of ‘cantos’: so that means that for
discursive, conceptual thought there is no passing over the bridge. But then,
what about the singing? What kind of crossing does it imply?

7. Third controversy
Modesty

In the same context where we found allusions to cantos as laudations, we also


find an interesting statement about a double attitudinal requirement: “The
granted hyperbolic stress of what is to follow is inseparable from a consenting
humility that still asks of us a considered audacity.” (GB 281) Those who know
the author will agree that this combination of humility and audacity characte-
rizes his philosophical style in general. I agree with Catherine Pickstock that
this combination presents a rare quality in contemporary philosophy.20 At the
same time I am concerned that it is indicative of an unresolved ambiguity at
the heart of the metaphysical cantos. What I mean is that ‘modesty’ and
‘audacity’ form a janus-faced unity rather then blending into one quality.
The first impression the cantos give is certainly one of modesty: singing
(while thinking) instead of trusting in the powers of speculative thought: is that
not modesty? Moreover, the singing seems to be sotto voce, mindful of the
qualitative difference between God and creatures. And even where it shifts to a
higher pitch the sense of asymmetry is pervasive, as is borne out by the
laudation with which Being and the Between ends. Note the emphasis on mystery,
perplexity, and also note the contrast between the heavenly music and human
deafness:
The mystery is always there, seldom named, never dispelled. In ethical, religious,
and philosophical service, beyond all determinate cognition, we live from aga-
peic astonishment, live in metaphysical perplexity before this mystery. In a mind-
fulness beyond determinate knowing, the Unequal comes towards us, offering
over and again, the unearned gift of the agape of being, singing to our deafness
the unbearable music of the ultimate amen. (BB 546)

20 “The work of William Desmond is remarkable and epoch-making. It is characterized at


once by an extraordinary humility and an extraordinary daring. To read Desmond is akin to
reading Dostoievski ...”(Pickstock 2007, 107)
18 sander griffioen

Indeed, the modesty is impossible to overlook. Compare the passage just


quoted with the conclusion of Hegel’s Encyclopedia (1830): now the asymmetry,
the mystery and the perplexity have made room for Thought celebrating its
self-sufficiency. We learn that the Idea is laying itself out in various manifesta-
tions and simultaneously returns to itself in the process of knowledge. The very
last words of this laudation should not be missed: the combination of ‘erzeugt’
(engendered) and ‘geniesst’ (enjoyed).21 This is no juxtaposition of antonyms
(such as is characteristic of a ‘philosophy of the between’) but signifies a causal
relation, the enjoyment being the causative complement of the engendering —
this in keeping with the adagio that thought can ultimately be only at peace
with what it (re-)produces itself. In this universe of discourse any remaining
asymmetry would indicate a problem to be discarded!
It would be too easy to dismiss this idolization of self-sufficient thought as
something of the past. In 1998 at the conference of the Internationale Hegel-
Gesellschaft, hosted by the University of Utrecht, I read a paper on the Hegel-
reception among Neo-Kantians. A passage from Rickert’s commemorative essay
on Max Weber instantly awoke the audience. Here was Rickert (not exactly a
light-footed philosopher) speaking of a Logosfreudigkeit bordering on mania,
occasioned by the discovery of theoretical insights.22 Thus Rickert wanted to
distance himself from Weber’s association of ‘science as a vocation’ with an
ascetic attitude. Immediately after the session several philosophers came over to
me to ask for the references. This small incident illustrates that also after Hegel
the laudations of theoria are still being sung.
Granted: briefly after Hegel’s death the trust in absolute Mind already star-
ted to wane. Consequently, the relation between ‘erzeugt’ and ‘geniesst’ could
no longer be maintained as strictly as it was for Hegel, and gradually a measure
of ‘porosity’ had to be accounted for. Yet up to the present day it is exceptional
to find a free acknowledgment of a porosity between thought and faith such as
Desmond offers. He wants to keep metaphysics and faith apart, but without
placing them in watertight compartments. “Metaphysics belongs to a different
kind of intelligibility than the discourse of religion.” (Desmond 2007, 6). But
then later he says about religion that it needs to “open a porous dialogue
between it and the adventure of thought.” (idem,24)
This porosity may even be more important than can be surmised from the
last statement. Earlier I wondered what script would be used in the metaphysi-
cal laudations. If it were not porous with respect to Revelation, what would this
metaphysics know about Divine compassion? What resources would it have to
move beyond the Greek adagio that only what is not susceptible to pain can be
called eternal? (Griffioen 1976, 103) Listen how Desmond approaches the
scholastic doctrine of impassibility. The question he raises is whether to be
impassable would mean to be indifferent to human suffering. The answer
comes in the concluding part of a canto: “It does nothing/ It is patient to all/
21 “‘... Bewegung ebensosehr die Tätigkeit des Erkennens ist, die ewige an und für sich seiende Idee sich
ewig als absoluter Geist betätigt, erzeugt und genießt”, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften
(1830), § 577.
22 “... die Freude, oder selbst mania, des Entdeckens neuer Einsichten.” Rickert (1926)
Compare Griffioen (2000, 240, 243) and, more extensively, Griffioen (1998, 70).
towards a philosophy of god 19

Above all passion/ It is below/ With all/ In constant compassion.” (GB 300).
And what about the Greek adagio? This may provide the answer: “Death
knocks on the door of eternity, but the door is already open and death has
been taken in.” (GB 303).

Hegel’s shadow
For all the modesty we found, the project of a Philosophy of God is not aban-
doned. Think of the hyperboles: everything said before about their function
remains presupposed in the metaphysical cantos; it is with their help that the
land beyond the horizon is reconnoitered. And there are further claims. Con-
comitant with the use of hyperboles comes the trust that these indeed provide
(or at least show) a passage and not just project our desires into empty space.
Moreover, it is assumed that this passing itself is not just a pushing forward led
by a Faustian drive for knowledge, but is responsive to a call from the other
side. And further, that this is the call of the Good, and not the mocking echo
of our own voice (as in Robert Frost’s poem ‘ The Most of It’ 23).
I am tempted to draw the line even further. Does not this philosophy need
to claim access to the ‘order of being’ or some sort of Archimedean point
which would allow it to survey the realm of finite beings? Desmond speaks of a
participation in divine life: is the ‘philosophy of God’ he envisages itself con-
ceived as a form of participation? Or is its home in ‘the between’, and can it
only raise its spirits in a border zone? Put differently: where does philosophy
stand?
Most probably there is no straightforward answer. It seems that a certain
ambiguity is maintained intentionally. We do come across a formulation that
(puzzling though it is) could be read as supporting my suggestion: somewhere
Desmond speaks of “a finite participation in something divine.” (Desmond
2007, 13). If my reading is correct, ‘finite participation’ does not denote some
solid state, this or that identifiable mode of being, but rather designates an
unstable coincidentia oppositorum. In this case the opposing elements brought
together are finiteness and participation.
A disambiguation of ‘finite participation’, I am afraid, will reveal a disparity
between philosophy on the one hand and the philosopher on the other. More
is claimed on behalf of philosophy than could be accounted for from the point
where the philosopher is at. With laudable honesty Desmond admits: “What
credentials have I to speak of these things? I have no credentials. No philoso-
pher has unimpeachable credentials — beyond creditworthy thought that is
strained in fidelity to metaxological being.”(BB 338)24 But credentials or not,
his philosophy follows the hyperbolic tracks beyond the domain of ‘the
between’!
Hegel, with whom we seemed to have parted company when moving from
the dialectic to the metaxological, now returns with the nagging question
23 “He thought he kept the universe alone;/ For all the voice in answer he could wake/ Was
but the mocking echo of his own/ From some tree–hidden cliff across the lake.”, the first
stanza of Robert Frost, ‘The Most of It’.
24 The context is a discussion of a possible ‘darkness of time’ and ‘darkness of God’.
20 sander griffioen

whether a philosophy of God does not require (access to) a divine self-
consciousness in order to be thought? His point seems valid: I would agree that
such a philosophy, if possible at all, could not be developed from a finite
standpoint. Desmond, of course, knows the argument, but could not possibly
take the road Hegel would take from here, i.e. by postulating an integration of
the finite into the absolute. This would turn the finite into a (recurrent) stage
of the self-development of the absolute — or put in religious terms: the finite
would be represented by the second person of the Trinity. The ominous
implication is that the finite is brought into such a close communion with
intra-trinitarian life as to destroy all asymmetry between God and world. Des-
mond wants to retain an essential asymmetry, as can be seen from his rejection
of Whitehead’s process-theory with the argument that it places God and world
in one continuum (GB 245). To complete the picture, let me add that he is not
less adamant in opposing contemporary Heideggerians, such as Marion, who
are so eager to avoid any form of ‘theo-ontology’ that they end up with
severing all ties between God and world (GB 242).

Creation regained

It is worthwhile to take a closer look at the asymmetry between God and world.
The acceptance can take quite different shapes: maybe the asymmetry is
accepted grudgingly as a fact of life, but is a deficiency nonetheless. Quite like-
ly, in this case God, religion and metaphysics will be approached as comple-
ments of human finitude. Feuerbach had a point here: in this view ‘God and
religion’ are being reduced to ‘what I am not’ (was ich nicht bin). I think Feuer-
bach is right for most of contemporary ‘spirituality’. However, the asymmetry
can also be viewed as a constituent of human existence. In this case (which is
Desmond’s) we do not start with a deficiency to be complemented, but the
other way around with God making finite life possible. Thus the asymmetry
turns into a defining feature of what it is to be human.
This last interpretation resonates well with our earlier finds about the
meaning of ‘the between’. Of the four aspects considered in our brief survey of
Being and the Between the final one was that of the human person holding the
middle between ‘beast’ and ‘god’. Already at that stage we surmised that the
‘metaxu’ stressed by Desmond would not imply that the qualitative difference
between God and man (or ‘world’) was to be annulled. Indeed, this now turns
out to be the case, as with respect to the creature all emphasis is on its
‘otherness’.
Moreover, it is not only ‘otherness’ that resonates in ‘gift’. It connotes also
an order in which the Giver comes first, and the receiver last. It is true that the
human person is being placed at the very center of the universe, which is cer-
tain to offend postmodern sensitivities, but this center is being ‘defined’ from
the divine pole. The center position is instituted by divine initiative, instead of
being the pivot around which everything else turns. Desmond would certainly
towards a philosophy of god 21

not go as far as Vollenhoven, who postulated a complete dependence,25 yet if


autonomy can be attributed at all to the human person, it is in the sense of a
gift. Accordingly, the primal ethos is not one of suffering because of some
primordial loss, but “a thankfulness for the gift of mortal life.” (GB 300)
Furthermore, creation is a gift that is for keeps. On this topic Desmond’s
and Hegel’s philosophies are divided by a gulf. Sure enough, Hegel also insists
on the difference between God and creation, and rejects the neo-Platonic
doctrine of emanation for failing to take the finiteness of the world seriously..
But note that the upshot is a divide within the finite. Finiteness finds its true
place only as a stage (a ‘moment’) of intra-trinitarian life (or put philoso-
phically: as a moment of the absolute idea). Mundane finiteness, on the other
hand, is understood as less-than-proper, as deficient, and thus under pressure
to ‘return’ to its true form. In Desmond, however, the finite obtains an inde-
pendent form of existence, and is no longer under the exigency of having to
return to the divine origin. He speaks of “allowing a free giving of the finite
other “outside” the divine immanence.” (GB 291).
But what does ‘outside’ tell about what the gift entails positively? The
formulations used in God and the Between are about the same as those found
before in Ethics and the Between. Some examples: ‘letting to be’ (GB 164); ‘let(s)
being be’ (GB 253); ‘let another be as other’ (GB 257). The problem is that
taken by itself ‘otherness’ is an indeterminate designation. If there were not
more to it, then the goodness of creation would be at stake. Therefore, the
emphasis on otherness enforces our concern expressed before whether
‘goodness’ has or has not a Sitz im Leben in created reality.
This is an issue certainly to be raised when the conversation with Reforma-
tional philosophy continues. The latter does not only insist on the total depen-
dence of creatures, as we learned before from Vollenhoven, but is also
adamant in defending the intrinsic goodness of creation. Strange, because one
would be inclined to think that the assumed total dependence allows only a
shadowy existence to mundane beings. In fact, the ‘intrinsic goodness’ of
creaturely existence is a major theme here! Vollenhoven’s successor to the
chair of modern philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit, S.U. Zuidema, concluded
his study on Ricoeur with exactly this point. The assessment stretching out over
the entire course of his lengthy essay, is thus summed up: “The “goodness of
Being” is a goodness which does not intrinsically concern creaturely reality,
including the reality of man.’ (Zuidema 1971, 305-6)
Now Desmond is not Ricoeur. We do come across formulations emphatically
positing a positive quality, such as ‘the good of the creation’ (GB 164), and
‘the good of the creature’ (GB 303). These indications are important but still
leave questions open about the status of creation. There is evidence that crea-
turely life although being inherently good, nevertheless has to be surpassed in
the human quest for meaning. To illustrate this point I turn to the table of
contents. The chapter on ‘creation’ belongs to Part III which is entitled ‘Gods’.
The next chapter, concluding Part III, is about ‘God(s) Mystic: On the Idiocy

25 “That which is created is completely dependent on the Creator, that is to say, wholly
subjected to his sovereign law, Word revelation, and guidance.” (Vollenhoven 2005, 14).
22 sander griffioen

of God’. Then comes Part IV which is entitled: ‘God’; it is the only chapter
reserved for … ‘God: Ten Metaphysical Cantos.’ This order strongly suggests
that mystical and metaphysical knowledge surpass creatureliness. Apparently,
to know God as creator leaves out knowledge of God’s ‘idiocy’; and it is this
knowledge the mystic is after. It seems to me that the use of the plural ‘Gods’
not only indicates that in Part III we are still at a preliminary stage of explora-
tion, but also that a certain ambiguity with respect to God cannot be discarded
as long as divine uniqueness still escapes our knowledge. It suggests that the
mystic would arrive at a point where the plural ‘Gods’ is left behind — the
point where the mystic joins hands with the Christian metaphysician.26

8. Conclusion
We have now reached the end of our journey. ‘Finite participation’ seems the
best way to characterize this (project towards a) ‘philosophy of God’. It is a
daring project venturing into a domain about which no conceptual knowledge
could be obtained. However, this venturing proceeds very cautiously, and sur-
rounds its claims with subtle qualifications, so as to make it hard for a critique
of metaphysics — Vollenhoven’s variety not excluded — to stay on target. Both
‘parties’ , William Desmond and Reformational philosophers, may gain much
by future interaction. I trust that with this study we are off to a good start.

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