Abstract
To think of being inclines metaxological philosophy to ponder the goodness of being. In his chapter, Cyril O’Regan engages the various notes on evil throughout metaxological philosophy. His argument is that Desmond’s view of evil comes close to Ricoeur in The Symbolism of Evil, where symbols of evil give philosophy to think about the excessive nature of evil.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The locution of ‘equiprimordial’ (gleichursprünglich) is a key term of Heidegger’s existential analysis of Dasein in Sein und Zeit (1927).
- 3.
See O’Regan (2002) in which I articulate the relationship between the highly situated and enfleshed Platonism of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch and the particular configuration to be found in Desmond’s Ethics and the Between.
- 4.
Here I recall Isaiah Berlin’s famous distinction in his essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty,’ originally published as a pamphlet by Clarendon Press in 1958 and included in Berlin (1969).
- 5.
For convenient English access to Bataille’s reflection on sovereignty, see Bataille (1993).
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
While Desmond has profound sympathies with the classical philosophical tradition, given the phenomenological register of his metaphysical thought, he does not automatically buy into received notions in Catholic philosophy such as analogy or for that matter evil as the privation of being. These notions have to pass the phenomenological test. In Being and the Between, Desmond worried about the abstractness of the traditional doctrine of analogy and wondered whether in the last instance it sufficiently emphasized difference. In this sense metaxology is the counter. One could, however, see his recent work as evincing a greater hospitality to analogy. Similarly, although Desmond is shy about adopting a privatio boni view of evil for fear that the seriousness of evil is diluted, this does not mean that he would not be open to it as long as the metaphysics would not uncouple from the experience of evil in which the phenomenon is all too real.
- 9.
Desmond is in line with much of modern philosophy and theology in rejecting theodicy as a properly philosophical aspiration. While this rejection most certainly applies to Leibniz’s Theodicy (1710), which has commonly come to be regarded as theodicy’s laughable limit, this does not apply to Leibniz’s metaphysics. Desmond’s articulation of conatus essendi and passio essendi certainly recalls the metaphysics elaborated in Leibniz’s Monadology (1714) and his earlier Discourse on Metaphysics (1686).
- 10.
Schelling’s famous Freiheit essay (1809) is illustrative here. For a recent translation, see Schelling (2007).
- 11.
- 12.
Adorno and Derrida are advocates of the postmodern sublime which radicalizes Kant’s reflection. One can also certainly add Jean-Luc Nancy to the list. Among other things the sublime both establishes and is signaled by a separation between sign and signified. After Edward Jabès Derrida can associate this disconnection with Judaism and counterpose Judaism to the Western philosophical tradition with which Christianity is broadly and deeply imbricated. See Derrida (1978, 64–78, 1990). Originally published in French in 1974 this text is a takedown of Hegel’s speculative system. See O’Regan (2013, 383–425). Looking for tropes that expose both the ontotheological and logocentric nature of the Western tradition, Derrida also types the sublime as Egyptian. See his famous essay—again directed at Hegel—Derrida (1982, 69–108).
- 13.
In addition to narrating the history of transgression and using his novels as explorations of transgression that uncover sovereign subjectivity, Bataille was a relentless critic of Hegelian dialectic which not only issued in the closed circuit of self-knowledge, but also justified itself in that all negation yielded a profit. With respect to the former, see Bataille (2001). With respect to the economy (of sacrifice), see Bataille (1989).
- 14.
The generalization of the image of digestion from its local site in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature to characterize dialectic as such is prominent in Glas.
- 15.
For Derrida’s avowal of the inescapability of Hegel, see Derrida (1981, 43–44).
- 16.
I have discussed this particular chapter which is explicitly on ancient Gnosticism as well as modern candidates for Gnostic ascription in O’Regan (2017, 239–268).
- 17.
The Symbolism of Evil is basically divided into two parts. The first deals with the different forms of experience indicated in the symbols of ‘defilement,’ ‘sin,’ and ‘guilt.’ The second deals with the four main narratives or myths of evil, in order (a) the drama of creation (theogonic account); (b) the myth of the jealous God; (c) Genesis Adamic myth; (d) myth of the fall of the soul; they are the focus of the second part of the text.
- 18.
When contrasted with Hegel’s reductive account of the Fall of Adam, Ricoeur’s account in 1969, 232–278 tarries with the text. A particular result of this is an analysis of temptation of Adam by the serpent (252–260), which is a detailing of the phenomenon which centrally involves incentives for transgression coming at once from inside and outside the self. Of course, unlike Hegel, Ricoeur thinks that the temptation is destructive to the self.
- 19.
It should be noted that while in The Symbolism of Evil Ricoeur generally keeps philosophers and theologians out of the picture, when it comes to the fall or what he calls the ‘ethical view’ of evil, he does not fail to notice, on the one hand, Saint Paul (1969, 332–335), and Augustine (83, 84, 89, 90, 91), on the other.
- 20.
Augustine and Pascal are two major exemplars of the existential rather than ontological duality of the self that Ricoeur thinks is phenomenologically verifiable and at the same time the properly biblical view. While this contrast was not a theme in The Symbolism of Evil, it is implied in the contrast between the Adamic myth and Orphic myth of the fall of the soul. If Plato is the second-order philosophical reflector of the latter, Augustine is the second-order reflector of the former.
- 21.
This phrase is nothing less than the guiding principle of Ricoeur’s interpretation of evil in The Symbolism of Evil.
- 22.
For explicit connections between the Orphic myth of the fall of the soul and subsequent Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy , see Ricoeur (1969, 279–281, 286 and 289).
- 23.
Despite reservations, Ricoeur does think that historically Augustine contributed significantly to the ‘ethical’ or freedom view of the origin of evil. He makes this clear in his essay on ‘Original Sin’ but also provides the basis of a cure from a literalization of symbols in Ricoeur (1979b, 287–314).
- 24.
On the basis of his own reading rather than a thorough grounding in the secondary literature, Ricoeur suggests that in his anti-Pelagian texts Augustine tends to construct or reconstruct a form of the Manichaean dualism that he had repented of almost 30 years earlier. This is not an uncommon accusation against Augustine made in the secondary literature and first made by his Pelagian opponent, Julian of Eclanum.
- 25.
For the phenomenological analysis of the tempting of Adam, see Ricoeur (1969, 252–260).
- 26.
For a good English translation of this text, see Kant (1996, 41–215).
- 27.
Ricoeur makes an appeal to Job as a block against complete explanation of evil as early as The Symbolism of Evil (Ricoeur 1969, 314 ff.). Before Ricoeur Kant had used the figure of Job as a refutation not only of all actual but all possible theodicies . See his famous essay ‘On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy,’ in Kant (1996, 19–31). For Ricoeur , see Ricoeur (1995, 249–261).
- 28.
Georges Bernanos and André Gide come at good and evil from very different points of view. Gide tends to think that ‘good’ is a mere conventional descriptor and that true human development demands flouting convention. Transgression of value norms is a good that completes the self and refines the consciousness. One may consider L’Immoraliste (1902) as both an example and a manifesto of this attitude in which the innocent are merely ignorant. In contrast, Bernanos’ world, whether it is the country priest Joan of Arc or other heroines under the charge of a delinquent cleric or lay, ratifies innocence and shows the depths of malice in the attempt to corrupt it.
- 29.
Whereas as in The Painted Bird one can track the construction of a young sociopath from the horrors experienced in the Shoah, in the case of Blind Date, the tone and style of the novel conspire to make it difficult to determine whether the protagonist who perpetrated rape in the beginning is being condemned or applauded because he avoids special pleading in his own case.
- 30.
This is McCarthy’s masterpiece in which he excavates the violence and counter-violence that is the expression of the wounded psyches of both whites and Indians in the West and thereby indelibly written into the American psyche as such. The evening redness of the Western desert sky recalls bloodletting but also a kind of nihilistic overcoming. Interestingly, one of the epigraphs is from the German apocalyptic mystic, Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), although Boehme spoke of Aurora or ‘morning redness’.
- 31.
- 32.
This post-apocalyptic book might be regarded as something of an answer to the apocalyptic of Blood Meridian, which concerns violence in the form of proctology as this text concerns violence in the form of eschatology. The ferocious love of a father for his son is the counterpoint to this violence and the sign of hope or hope against hope in a world in which violence is an essential part of the fabric of things. Counters to violence and the nihilism which is its source and its consequence can be found also in No Country for Old Men and in All the Pretty Horses.
- 33.
The German theosophical mystic (1575–1624), whose thought recalls both the Kabbalah and alchemy, in Aurora (1611), finds evil everywhere. Later in the texts of 1619–1624, however, it is not just the ubiquity of evil but its structural connection to the divine that is to the fore. For a focus yet comprehensive account of evil in the thought of Boehme, see the dissertation by Defoort (2012).
- 34.
See Marion (2001) in which the idol is as the limit of the human gaze the projection of human desire. In contrast, the icon as the limit of the human gaze is coming to be seen rather than seeing. Although Cusanus is not mentioned in this text, the reversal of flow from seeing to being seen finds its classical expression in De Visione Dei in which through the monks looking at an icon of Christ in a semi-circle each judges Christ’s gaze to be uniquely on them. This receives full recognition in Marion (2016, 305–331).
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O’Regan, C. (2018). Evil: From Phenomenology to Thought. In: Vanden Auweele, D. (eds) William Desmond’s Philosophy between Metaphysics, Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98992-1_9
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