The Intimate Universal: The Hidden Porosity Among Religion, Art, Philosophy, and Politics

by William Desmond

Overview

William Desmond sees religion, art, philosophy, and politics as essential and distinctive modes of human practice, manifestations of an intimate universality that illuminates individual and social being. They are also surprisingly permeable phenomena, and by observing their relations, Desmond captures notes of a clandestine conversation that transforms ontology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231178761
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/29/2016
Series:	Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Pages:	520
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

William Desmond is professor of philosophy, Higher Institute of Philosophy, KatholŽižeke Universiteit Leuven, and David R. Cook Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: For and Against the Universal—Doing Justice
Part I: The Intimate Universal—Exoteric Reflections: Religion
1. Religion and the Intimate Universal: Neither Cosmopolis nor Ghetto
2. Art and the Intimate Universal: Neither Imitation nor Self-Creation
3. Philosophy and the Intimate Universal: Neither Theory nor Practice
4. Politics and the Intimate Universal: Neither Servility nor Sovereignty
Part II: The Intimate Universal—Systematic Thoughts: From the Idiotic to the Agapeic
5. The Idiotics of the Intimate Universal
6. The Aesthetics of the Intimate Universal
7. The Erotics of the Intimate Universal
8. The Agapeics of the Intimate Universal
Glossary
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

There is today no more important philosophical project being undertaken than that of William Desmond's poetic, unshirkingly apposite and yet unpretentious attempt to rethink a metaphysics of analogy and mediation. This book represents another chapter in its unfolding.

John Milbank

Desmond combines the virtues of scope, systematic rigor, and highly individual manner of perception and expression.

Cyril O'Regan

A marvelously articulated work with a consummately refined language of its own for conceiving the perennial issues of philosophy in fresh and compelling terms.

William Franke

Profound and insightful, The Intimate Universal provides us a path to think about religion, art, philosophy, and politics in a unique way that is both arresting and moving.

VoegelinView

Overall, this new volume provides a helpful point of entry for readers new to
Desmond’s work (assisted by the glossary of terms at the end), while sacrificing little of its depth.

Springer Science+Business - Richard J. Colledge

In this excellent and interesting work, Desmond is expanding and refining his already considerable contribution to contemporary continental philosophy in a metaphysical register.

Christopher Ben Simpson

How can something singular, in all the depths of its singularity, communicate with the universal, with the result that the singular is not contracted to itself and the universal is not a free floating abstraction? William Desmond explores this basic question in all its dimensions in the steady, systematic and meticulous manner we have come to expect from him in this not to be missed new volume.

John D. Caputo

?There is today no more important philosophical project being undertaken than that of William Desmond's poetic, unshirkingly apposite and yet unpretentious attempt to rethink a metaphysics of analogy and mediation. This book represents another chapter in its unfolding.

?John Milbank