Wonder Strikes

Steven E. Knepper

Description

William Desmond argues that philosophy, religion, and art begin in wonder. Desmond is widely recognized for his original metaphysics and his provocative philosophy of religion. Desmond's extensive writings on aesthetics, art, and literature, however, have received much less attention. Wonder Strikes is the first book-length examination of these dimensions of Desmond's thought. It offers nuanced commentary on his treatment of beauty and the sublime; his accounts of tragedy and comedy; and his argument that, having asked "too much" of art in modernity, we now ask "too little." Desmond claims that art, philosophy, and religion must recover their ancient kinship and their shared roots in wonder if they are to counter the destructive instrumentalism of our time.
Foreword by William Desmond
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Incarnate Wonder

1. Aesthetics in Flesh, Image, and Word
Receptivity
Abundance
Affirmation
Wonder

2. The Call of Beauty
Call and Response
Between Beauty and the Sublime
Will Beauty Save the World?

3. The Artist and the Between
Between Imitation and Creation
Between Inspiration and Skill
Between Tradition and the Individual Talent

4. Sacred Aesthetics
Hierophany
The Sacred in a Time of Serviceable Disposability
God's Grandeur
Poetry, Prayer, and the Unsayable
Asking Too Much, Asking Too Little

Part II: Reading in the Between

5. Epiphanic Encounters
Criticism in the Metaxu
From Recognition to Epiphany
Epiphanic Things
The Poetry of Place

6. Tragic Howls and Being at a Loss
Macbeth, the Sleepless Tyrant
Lear, the Sleepwalking Sovereign
Philosophy at a Loss

7. Redemptive Laughs and Festive Rebirth
Laughter and Affirmation
Ahab's Absent Laugh
Can Philosophy Laugh at Itself?
The Festive in a Time of Need
Scrooge and Festive Anamnesis

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Name Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Esthétique et philosophie de l'art
• Philosophie de la religion
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• General
• Aesthetics
• Psychology
• Philosophy of religion
• Literary criticism
• General officer
• Modern history
• Philosophy
• Religión
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religious
• Modern
• Individual Philosophers
• Psychology of Religion

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438489575
• Langue: English

Extrait

Wonder Strikes
Wonder Strikes
Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond
STEVEN E. KNEPPER
Foreword by
WILLIAM DESMOND
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2022 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Knepper, Steven E., author. | Desmond, William, 1951– writer of foreword.
Title: Wonder strikes : approaching aesthetics and literature with William Desmond / Steven E. Knepper, William Desmond.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022005571 | ISBN 9781438489551 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438489575 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Desmond, William, 1951– | Aesthetics.
Classification: LCC B1626.D474 K59 2022 | DDC 111/.85—dc23/eng/20220218
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005571
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Catherine and Clare, who continually strike me with wonder
Contents
Foreword by William Desmond
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: Incarnate Wonder
1. Aesthetics in Flesh, Image, and Word
Receptivity
Abundance
Affirmation
Wonder
2. The Call of Beauty
Call and Response
Between Beauty and the Sublime
Will Beauty Save the World?
3. The Artist and the Between
Between Imitation and Creation
Between Inspiration and Skill
Between Tradition and the Individual Talent
4. Sacred Aesthetics
Hierophany
The Sacred in a Time of Serviceable Disposability
God’s Grandeur
Poetry, Prayer, and the Unsayable
Asking Too Much, Asking Too Little
Part 2: Reading in the Between
5. Epiphanic Encounters
Criticism in the Metaxu
From Recognition to Epiphany
Epiphanic Things
The Poetry of Place
6. Tragic Howls and Being at a Loss
Macbeth, the Sleepless Tyrant
Lear, the Sleepwalking Sovereign
Philosophy at a Loss
7. Redemptive Laughs and Festive Rebirth
Laughter and Affirmation
Ahab’s Absent Laugh
Can Philosophy Laugh at Itself?
The Festive in a Time of Need
Scrooge and Festive Anamnesis
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Name Index
Great art has always drawn its admirers by its power to renew our astonishment before the mysterious happening of being, not of course in such a seemingly generalized way, but by an aesthetic fidelity to the inexhaustible singularities of the world, human and nonhuman. In its being true to these singularities, it recharges our sense of the otherness of being, and so it offers a gift and challenge to philosophy. The gift: here something of replete moment is opened or released. The challenge: now think that!
—William Desmond, Art, Origins, Otherness , 2
Foreword
W ILLIAM D ESMOND
Reading Steven Knepper’s Wonder Strikes , I am reminded of a long love affair between the poetic and the philosophic. I am taken back to earlier days of love and am struck that the love persisted, and indeed that I have been faithful to it, in my own way, in the many intervening years. Between poetics and system: that might be one name for it. Being brought back to my earliest intellectual love, I am also reminded that from the time I was taken with philosophy, the intimate relation with the poetic and the religious could not be divorced from the venture of thinking.
Art, religion, philosophy: this is the triad that composes Hegel’s philosophy of absolute spirit, and I have found myself in agreement with Hegel’s placement of these in positions of ultimacy. I have tried to participate in a dialogue between these three, not exactly in the same spirit of Hegel’s dialectical orientation, and more metaxologically. In Hegel’s dialectical orientation, there is a hierarchy of ultimacy in which philosophy finally sublates what is of essential significance in art and religion into its own self-determining concept. By contrast, by participating metaxologically in their conversation, there is a companioning relation between the three that allows plurivocal dialogues between them: between art and philosophy; between art and religion; between religion and philosophy; between art, religion, and philosophy. The companions in conversations are in a betweening space that cannot rightfully be described in terms of the system of concepts that closes the circle on itself in claimed self-comprehension. Wonder is at the origin, companions the middle, and is there at the end, indeed outlives every finite completion.
Art, religion, philosophy: each of these three is subtended by what I call the overdeterminacy of being, the too muchness of given being. They address, explore, and give expression to that overdeterminacy in a variety of different modalities. They are exceeded by that overdeterminacy, even when they have attempted their most ambitious ventures, and even when in the process they have achieved a kind of qualified wholeness. The too muchness, the overdeterminacy is communicated from the outset, accompanies our middle journey and sojourn, and outlives all our efforts to make the best sense possible of beings and ourselves in the midst of things. There is a different logos of the metaxu that exceeds the terms of Hegel’s speculative dialectic.
These considerations are at work in Steven Knepper’s book, a work that itself is an admirable companioning venture in that middle space between the poetic and systematic. It formulates the issue in ways that do not bog down in the ancient quarrel between the poets and the philosophers, and that yet do not encourage a rationalistic supersessionism relative to the often-enigmatic communications that the poetic and the artistic offer us, and the religious too. I seem to be talking of a twosome here, but given the subtending, accompanying, and outliving between, all three are each participant in what allows them each their distinctness and shows them to witness a togetherness more fundamental than differences that they might assert over against each other. There is a porosity between art, religion, and philosophy that is testament to this.
It seems to me that this work itself embodies something of that porosity. While talking ostensibly about the aesthetic and the artistic in relation to the philosophical, the sense of the sacred is never absent in the writing. Equally, when talking about the sense of the sacred, the poetic communication of that, as well as the conceptual wrestling with it, are never siloed. The work as a whole offers a kind of worded enactment of that porosity. For reasons such as this, Wonder Strikes is itself a genuine metaxological engagement with a metaxological mindfulness of its own in relation to the particular words that I have tried to find for just that metaxological sense of being.
I find the spirit of the companioning relation in it. Sometimes this is evident in echoes of my words, sometimes in amplification of them, sometimes in the introduction of voices that are not in agreement with ways in which I have formulated matters, sometimes in the raising of perplexities that perhaps have not had enough of an innings. All that is in order, if indeed there is a companioning relation. Companions can be themselves and be other to each other, while yet being in significant relation. There is something of agapeic mindfulness in the work, if I am not mistaken. This to me is not just high achievement but witness to alert receptivity, intelligent openness, and mindfully responsive words that speak in return to original words offered.
It is a pleasure to read and to be illuminated, in relation to the full range of my thoughts, especially as seen through the more focused lenses of the aesthetic and the artistic. It strikes me that Wonder Strikes would serve very well as an overall introduction to my work, as well as a particular illumination of its aesthetic concerns, and all through the elegant writing of a thinker whose attentive mind and searching grasp add to the exploration their own eloquent thoughtfulness. I would recommend the work as an excellent introduction in those terms, and yet it has its own singular register, which comes across through its special focus on aesthetic concerns.
The diverse explorations are never self-enclosed but are always in conversations with others, both overlapping and diverging, sometimes adding new lines of opening to connecting possibilities, possibilities as much new as already tried. The writing moves with crisp energy and is studded with cameos of well-articulated mindfulness. It engages me as a reader, and I am confident it will engage other readers, both those familiar with my work and those new to it. Yet this is a work to be savored.
One sees its virtues in the way the work is laid out. I am an admirer of authors who can offer titles to sections that are compact, precise, and suggestive all at once. What might look like a bare table of contents is redolent of thought that carries poetic power, indeed carries that power into the porosity with the sense of the sacred and with the call of urgency of philosophical perplexity itself. The whole comes across to me as itself possessing something of poised aesthetic form—surely a sign that the writer has worked to excellent effect. There is an artistic hand at work in this.
I appreciate the sorties in bringing metaxological thoughts to bear on some rich samplings of literary texts, especially in the second part: reading in the between. This book is marked by a plurivocal attention to my work as well as