The Voiding of Being: The Doing and Undoing of Metaphysics in Modernity(Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy)

In contemporary philosophy the status, indeed the very viability of metaphysics is a much contested issue. The reflections offered here ex­plore diverse aspects of this contested status and offer a defense of meta­physics. In other works, perhaps most fully in Being and the Between, William Desmond has tried to develop what he calls a metaxological metaphysics in response to different skeptical, if not hostile approach­es to metaphysics quite common in our time. The Voiding of Being com­plements the systematic dimensions of this metaxological metaphys­ics outlined in Being and the Between. It presents a set of studies which amplify important themes in the unfolding of modern metaphysics, in relation to major earlier and contemporary thinkers, while adding nu­ance to what is involved in the more systematic articulation of a metax­ological metaphysics. There is what the author calls a voiding of being in modernity, expressed in diverse developments of thought. “The Voiding of Being,” might seems to conjure up negative associations but the aim of the thoughts gathered here is not at all negative. While attempting to understand the voiding of being in modern thought, our appreciation of the promise of metaphysical thinking can also be renewed and indeed extended—extended beyond skepticism and hostility to metaphysics. Desmond engages many interlocutors along the way, from the long tra­dition, such as Heraclitus, Aquinas and Hegel, as well as more contem­porary thinkers like Heidegger and Marion. As the book’s subtitle sug­gests, it is concerned with the continued doing of metaphysics and not only the contemporary undoing of it.

About the Author :
William Desmond is David Cook Chair in Philosophy, Villanova University, Thomas A. F. Kelly Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium.

Review :
"William Desmond is a meticulous, subtle, and convincing scholar, and his original creative philosophy shows this careful scholarship. He has few peers."--Robert C. Neville, Boston University"In this volume William Desmond continues to broaden and deepen his metaxological metaphysics, and counter both the modern erasure of metaphysics and its postmodern overcoming. He does so by exposing the inherent possibilities of a form of metaphysics responsive to phenomena, consonant with mystery, and faithful to what is best in the philosophical tradition while articulating it in a new more dynamic and experiential key, and showing how it can be fruitfully supplemented. As one has come to expect of Desmond the volume is epic in its scope and lyrical in its mood. William Desmond is simply the most creative and systematic exponent of metaphysics in the world of continental philosophy writing today."--Cyril J. O'Regan, University of Notre Dame