Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age? William Desmond's Theological Achievement

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Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age? William Desmond's Theological Achievement Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age? William Desmond's Theological Achievement Author: Ryan Gerard Duns Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108206 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2018 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age? William Desmond’s Theological Achievement Ryan G. Duns, SJ A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the department of Theology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Boston College Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences Graduate School March 2018 © Copyright 2018 Ryan G. Duns, SJ Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age? William Desmond’s Theological Achievement Ryan G. Duns, SJ Advisor: Brian Robinette, Ph.D This project attempts to respond to Charles Taylor’s invitation, made in A Secular Age, for “new and unprecedented itineraries” capable of guiding seekers toward an encounter with God. Today, many Westerners find belief in God difficult if not impossible. This essay begins with an overview of Taylor’s secularization narrative and explores the causes and pressures that have made belief in the Transcendent problematic. To respond to Taylor’s summons for new itineraries, I turn in Chapters 2-4 to the work of philosopher William Desmond. After introducing readers to Desmond and locating him on a landscape dominated by phenomenologists, I introduce Desmond’s metaphysical philosophy and argue that this his thought can be approached as a form of spiritual exercise capable of reawakening a sense of the Transcendent. In Chapters 3 and 4 I engage the work of Pierre Hadot to show how Desmond’s philosophy can work to transform the way one perceives the world. Read within this framework, I believe Desmond’s metaxological metaphysics provides a series of spiritual exercises needed in an increasingly secular age. Read within the framework, metaxology becomes less a philosophy about which one must be informed than a philosophy capable of forming readers to perceive reality anew. In Chapter 5, I draw out some of the theological implications for this interpretation of Desmond’s work. In the conclusion, I survey the project and indicate what I consider to be the theological achievement of Desmond’s project and indicate opportunities for future engagement between metaxology and theology. Table of Contents Table of Contents iv Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age? William Desmond’s Theological Achievement Chapter One Beating the Bounds of A Secular Age 12 1.1 Taylor’s Argumentative Strategy: “Reasoning Through Transitions” 17 1.1.1 Apodictic Reasoning 19 1.1.2 Ad Hominem Reasoning 25 1.1.3 A Post-Modern Socrates? 30 1.2 Transitioning to a Secular Age 31 1.2.1 The Moral Corral 33 1.2.1.1 The Moral Corral: Encapsulated History 35 1.2.1.2 The Moral Corral: Function 45 1.2.2 The Ethical Field 47 1.2.2.1 The Ethical Field: Encapsulated History 49 1.2.2.2 The Ethical Field: Function 56 1.2.3 Untracked Forest 58 1.2.3.1 The Untracked Forest: Encapsulated History 60 1.2.3.2 The Untracked Forest: Function 65 1.3 Taylor’s Map: How a Road from Quebec Leads to Cork 67 1.3.1 Text as Performance 67 1.3.2 A Taylor-made Map 70 1.3.3 From Quebec to Cork 74 Chapter Two A Crack in Everything: Introducing William Desmond’s Metaphysics 76 2.1 Contesting Metaphysics: Between Knockers and Boosters 81 2.1.1 Martin Heidegger 82 2.1.2 John Caputo 85 2.1.3 Richard Kearney 88 2.1.4 Merold Westphal 92 2.1.5 Capacitating Metaphysics 95 2.2 Speaking of Metaphysics: Approaching Desmond’s Philosophy 95 2.2.1 Metaphysics Defined 96 2.2.2 The Ethos of Being: the Metaxu 101 2.2.3 The Fourfold Sense of Being 108 2.2.3.1 Univocity and its Limits 111 iv 2.2.3.2 Equivocity and the Restless 114 Search for Wholeness 2.2.3.3 The Dialectical Sense of Being 122 2.2.3.4 The Metaxological Sense of Being 131 2.2.4 Transcendence: Exterior, Interior, Superior 136 2.2.4.1 Exterior Transcendence (T1) 137 2.2.4.2 Interior Transcendence (T2) 140 2.2.4.3 Superior Transcendence (T3) 142 2.3 Minding the Between: The Furrowing Brow of Immanence 146 2.3.1 Wide-Eyed Astonishment: Porosity of Being 147 and Passio Essendi 2.3.2 Perplexity’s Squint 157 2.3.3 Curiosity’s Furrowed Brow 162 2.4 Conclusion: Discovering the “Crack” in Everything 167 Chapter 3 The Poetics of the Between: Metaxological Metaphysics as Spiritual Exercise 174 3.1 Pierre Hadot: Philosophy as a Way of Life 178 3.1.1 Learning to Live 182 3.1.2 Learning to Die 187 3.1.3 Learning to Read 190 3.2 Metaphysics as Askesis: “Return to Zero” and Posthumous Mind 195 3.2.1 Composition of Place: The Reconfigured Metaxu 197 3.2.2 Exercising Nihilism? The “Return to Zero” 203 3.2.3 Posthumous Mind 210 3.3 Mindfulness Reborn: Idiotic, Aesthetic, Erotic, Agapeic 215 3.3.1 The Idiocy of Being 217 3.3.2 The Aesthetics of Happening 220 3.3.3 The Erotics of Selving 223 3.3.4 The Agapeics of Community 227 3.3.5 Perceiving Hyperbolically 233 3.4 A Subtler Exercise: The Poetics of the Between 234 Chapter 4 Exercising Transcendence: Indirect Ways to God 239 4.1 No Univocal Way to God: The Subtler Language of Indirection 241 4.2 A First Indirection: The Idiocy of Being 248 4.3 A Second Indirection: The Aesthetics of Happening 258 4.4 A Third Indirection: The Erotics of Selving 268 4.5 A Fourth Indirection: The Agapeics of Community 277 4.6 Exercising Transcendence: Hurrahing in the Metaxu 289 Chapter 5 Epiphanic Attunement 298 5.1 Orthoaesthesis: From Status Quo to Salutary Breakdown 301 5.2 Orthoaesthesis as Epiphanic Attunement 310 v 5.2.2 Panting With Secret Life: Epiphanies in “Revelation” 321 5.2.3 My Lord and My God: Beholding Christ’s Graced Porosity 329 5.3 Discerning Patterns of Perception on the Road to Emmaus 334 5.4 A “Crack” Between Metaphysics and Theology 346 5.5 Conclusion 355 (In)Conclusion 358 Bibliography 368 vi Acknowledgements I suffer no illusion: there is no way to express fully my gratitude to those who have made this project possible. I hesitate to name names for fear of missing someone. But, as I look back in a sort of Examen of my education, there are certain constellations of persons who simply must be named. My love of theology began at Saint Ignatius High School in Cleveland, Ohio. Six teachers in particular helped me to find my voice as a student and as a man: Tom Pasko, Joe Buzzelli, Kay Goebel, Jim Brennan, Jim Skerl, and Michael Pennock. As an undergraduate at Canisius College, Dan Liderbach, SJ and Ben Fiore, SJ were my go-to mentors. During my first stint of graduate studies at John Carroll University, Joan Nuth and Howard Gray, SJ were stalwart guides both of my head and my heart. At Fordham University, I had the pleasure of studying with a number of brilliant minds. Brian Davies, OP introduced me to the study of Thomas Aquinas and Terry Klein gave me an appetite for Wittgenstein. Jane Dryden was a frequent coffee companion and guide in those early years of philosophy studies. Vinnie Sullivan, my rector, schooled my heart and Matt Malone…well, you gave my liver a workout (along with Dennis Baker, Jim Keane, and Drew Marquard). At Boston College’s School of Theology and Ministry I was blessed to study with wonderful Jesuit scholars and exemplars of the type of priest and scholar I desire to become: Mark Massa, Jim Keenan, Tom Stegman, Jim Gartland, Randy Sachs, Dick Clifford, Jim Bretzke, Joe Weiss, Don MacMillan, John Baldovin, Arthur Madigan, Jim Bernauer, Oliver Rafferty, Joe O’Keefe, Bob Daly, James Conn, Frank Herman, and Dan Harrington. The friendship of men I lived and studied with – John Nugent, Paul Shelton, Cathal Doherty – has been one of the great joys in my life. Benjamin Dahlke, Bernhard Knorn, and Niall Coll: I will forever remember with great fondness our many long, cold, walks through the snowy streets of Chestnut Hill. My most formative years as a Jesuit were surely the years I taught at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy. To the students and families I met, I say thank you for allowing me to learn how to be a teacher. My head may always be in the university but my heart will always belong to the high school. You taught me the meaning of “To give and not to count the cost.”To my Jesuit brothers – Brian Lehane, Karl Kiser, Jim Boynton, and Matt Wooters – I say thank you for your friendship. I want to thank in a special way Patrick Peppard, SJ for giving me hours of entertainment and teaching me more about hyperbole than he could EVER know. To the John Carroll University Jesuit community, especially the rector Martin Connell, I am indebted for providing the ideal situation to write a dissertation. To my provincials Tim Kesicki and Brian Paulson: thank you for entrusting me with the mission to study. To my friends in Irish music and dancing: you have helped to keep me grounded over these years. I love few things more than playing and praying for you as a community.
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