The intimate strangeness of being: metaphysics after dialectic

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii Metaphysics after “Metaphysics” xiii Outlining Metaphysics to Come xxi Part 1. Metaphysics and the Equivocities of Dialectic 1. Being, Determination, and Dialectic: On the Sources of Metaphysical Thinking 3 Hegel and the Completion of Metaphysics 3 Original Wonder 5 Astonishment, Perplexity, Curiosity 8 Dialectic and Determination 13 Metaphysics in the Wake of Hegel 21 Reason’s Perplexity about Itself 24 Dialectic and the Other of Reason 26 The Death of Perplexity and the End of Metaphysics 32 Metaphysics, Plurivocity, Metaxology 34 Metaphysics and the Overdeterminate 38 2. Thinking on the Double: The Equivocities of Dialectic 44 Dialectic as Plurivocal 44 Thinking on the Double 46 Hegelian Dialectic and Doubles 49 Doublespeak and Socratic Irony 51 Thinking beyond the Equivocal Double 57 Thinking between Three: Art, Religion, Philosophy 60 3. Surplus Immediacy, Metaphysical Thinking, and the Defect(ion) of Hegel’s Concept 64 Surplus Immediacy and the Matrix of Thought 64 Given Happening and Thinking 68 Aesthetic Happening and Hegel 69 Surplus Immediacy and Nocturnal Happening 72 Art and Surplus Immediacy 77 Being Religious and Surplus Immediacy 81 viii  Contents Part 2: Metaphysics in the Wake of Dialectic 4. Is There Metaphysics after Critique? 89 On the Ethos of Modern Critique: From Skepticism to Negation 90 Kantian Critique 90 Critique, Suspicion, Skepticism 94 Post-Hegelian Critique and Human Emancipation 97 Skepticism, Negation, Terror 101 Finessing Critique, Finessing Metaphysics 103 Discerning beyond Negativity 103 Awakening beyond Critique 108 Nihilism Again 110 Promise beyond Promissory Notes 114 5. Metaphysics and the Intimate Strangeness of Being: Neither Deconstruction nor Reconstruction 120 Confessing Equivocity 122 Dissolving the Sedimented 126 Deconstructive Unsettling 129 Dissolving Dualism, Transcendence beyond Autonomy 134 Being Emptied Out 142 Intimate Strangeness, Metaphysical Constancy 147 Part 3: Metaphysics beyond Dialectic 6. Metaxological Metaphysics and the Equivocity of the Everyday: Between Everydayness and the Edge of Eschatology 155 Metaphysics and the Equivocity of the Everyday 155 Metaphysics as Metaxological 160 Univocalizing the Equivocal: Common Sense, Science, and Philosophy 162 Wording the Equivocal: Art and Religion 168 Philosophical Responses to Equivocity: Dialectical Complications 174 Metaxological Metaphysics and Equivocity: Intermediation without Reduction 177 7. Pluralism, Truthfulness, and the Patience of Being 185 Truth and Construction 185 Between Absolute Truth and Truthfulness 188 Truth and Truthfulness: Our Intermediate Being 189 Truthfulness and the Patience of Being 193 Being Truthful and Patience 197 Being Patient and Being Incarnate 198 The Patience of Being, Health, and Sickness 200 The Patience of Being and Religious Porosity 201 Contents  ix 8. The Confidence of Thought: Between Belief and Metaphysics 202 Between Metaphysics and Believing 202 Believing: What to Credit 205 Believing and Determinate Knowing: From Epistemic Deficiency   to Revolutionary Ardor 207 Critique, Self-Determining Thinking, Believing 211 Thinking and Trusting 214 The Confidence of Thinking 217 In Confidence: Metaphysics and the Intimate Universal 224 9. Analogy, Dialectic, and Divine Transcendence: Between St. Thomas and Hegel 231 By Way of Introduction 231 Being as Plurivocal 233 Hegelian Dialectic and the Plurivocity of Being 237 Protocols, Plurivocity, and Divine Mystery 241 The “Is” and the “As” 247 Metaxology, Analogy, and Hyperbolic Transcendence 251 10. Ways of Wondering: Beyond the Barbarism of Reflection 260 Wonder and the Barbarism of Reflection 260 Wonder as Astonishment 263 Wonder as Perplexity 273 Wonder as Curiosity 281 Posthumous Wonder: Restoring the World 293 Bibliography 301 Index 307 ...