Abstract

Desmond’s ambitious effort to re-conceive the problem of dialectic and otherness is both timely and provocative. Moving beyond the “generous hermeneutic” of Hegel exemplified in Art and the Absolute, Desmond develops more fully a discussion about the alleged “closure” of dialectical philosophies generally and Hegel’s philosophy specifically. Whereas Art and the Absolute tended to defend Hegel’s insights and achievements — at least in aesthetic theory — against a wide variety of critical approaches, the work under review attempts to engage seriously the persistent charge of “closure” made against Hegelian speculative philosophy. Repeated by critics as various as Habermas, Heidegger, Lonergan, and Derrida, the charge is too widespread and too frequently levelled to ignore. At issue seems to be the very possibility of an “absolute” knowing. How is it possible to know absolutely without trimming up the edges of the knowable, dotting all i’s and crossing all t’s, and leaving nothing for future philosophers but the relationships of disciple, exegete, or rebel angel? It is of course arguable that the self-developing categorial criticism in terms of which Hegel develops his doctrine of absolute knowing renders such objections irrelevant, but Desmond does not opt for this strategy. Rather, in the development of his own original metaphysics of origin, Desmond attempts to “sublate” the Hegelian philosophy.