[...]... face, and come to suspect we are our own cages But then does not the sense of our own otherness return with 10 Art, Origins, Otherness renewed force and the face of our own claims to originality assume a new enigmatic character? The sustainable significance of this migration to art of our concern with origin is our worry Art seems to stand forth with unprecedented autonomy, but is it, how is it, standing... has Platonic origins referring us back to the notion of the metaxu in the Symposium, where eros is called a metaxu or a between A metaxological philosophy sees philosophy as seeking a logos of the metaxu, an intelligible account of what it means to be between or intermediate It is a philosophy of “mediation,” but not just of self-mediation, more a 22 Art, Origins, Otherness philosophy of plurivocal... justice to some of these claims requires drawing on the resources of the metaxological philosophy I have tried to develop, most extensively in books like Being and the Between and Ethics and the Between The present studies engage the thinking of important philosophers, and in a manner that reflects some of these systematic considerations These studies are explorations of art, origins, otherness in dialogue... neutral universal, and there we feel more at home What if philosophical thought were to renew its community with art and what art communicates? To say the least, it would have to rethink what singularity and universality mean And what of origins? The theme of “originality” is one of the major preoccupations of Romantic and post-Romantic culture, and in an exemplary form with reference to art Yet this preoccupation... first honored, and we honor ourselves the more truly in granting that the honor first is granted from sources that are not determined by us Shaftesbury also spoke of the artist as a “just Prometheus under Jove.”2 We have thrilled 2 For Shaftesbury’s remarks, see Philosophies of Art and Beauty, ed A Hofstadter and R Kuhns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 252, 240 8 Art, Origins, Otherness too... before that otherness, and act as if we believed, we may even believe we believe, but the robustness of otherness and transcendence are gone They are lost in being so found Or perhaps betrayed? This is my question Does Hegel’s version of philosophy s conatus essendi so win out over the passio essendi of art and religion, indeed of philosophy itself, that the original porosity of our being in the between. .. other and dark, and tragic wisdom, not dialectical philosophy, he holds, is both more honest about that dark otherness, and more full of the promise of redemption The promise of redemption: what I find here noteworthy is the promiscuity of art and myth in Nietzsche, that is, the equivocal ferment of religious promise, meaning here pagan possibilities, in his Dionysian origin It is the saving power of art. .. elemental perplexity And of course, the birth of philosophy was itself in a displacement from origins figured in religious myth to origins reconfigured as the fundaments of being, approachable now in terms of the power to give a logos—logon didonai Philosophy arises as a development, displacement and refiguring of the religious imagination of origins, itself answering in mythic story and practice to the... religion, and ethics (in an ontological sense pointing to the goodness or worthiness of what has come to form) Nietzsche says that only as a work of art is the world justified, and he sets himself against Plato But Plato offers a kind of aesthetic metaphysics in the myth of the demiurge; and indeed an affirmation of the ontological good and beauty of this cosmos, not any nihilistic depreciation The idea of. .. intimation of an even more ultimate origin Even in a time of abundant kitsch, the sustaining power of art to offer more is not yet dead What are we to make of this situation? What are some of the philosophical considerations arising in connection with art, origins, otherness? The studies in this book deal diversely with such questions, and with how some major philosophers might shed light on them Art, origins, . alt="" Art, Origins, Otherness This page intentionally left blank. Art, Origins, Otherness Between Philosophy and Art William Desmond State University of New York Press Published by State University. State University of New York Press, 2001),abbreviation EB; Philosophy and Its Others: Ways of Being and Mind (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), abbreviation, PO. 2. A version of. Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel’s Aesthetics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986),abbreviation, AA; Desire,Dialectic and Otherness: An Essay on Origins (New Haven: Yale University