Many philosophers since Hegel have been disturbed by the thought that philosophy inevitably favors sameness over otherness or identity over difference. Originally published at a time when the issue was not so widely discussed in the English-speaking world, William Desmond here offers a constructive and positive approach to the problem of difference and otherness. He systematically explores the question of dialectic and otherness by analyzing how human desire inevitably seeks immanent wholeness in a manner that opens it to irreducible otherness. He faces the difficulties bequeathed to Continental thought by Hegelian dialectic and its tendency to subordinate difference to identity, whether appropriately or not. Unlike many recent critics of Hegel, he argues that we must preserve what is genuine in dialectic. Granting the positive power of dialectic, Desmond offers his first articulation of a further philosophical possibility--what he terms the Metaxological--a discourse of the "between,"a discourse doing justice to desire's search for wholeness without any truncating of its radical openness to otherness. In a wide-ranging yet unified discussion, Desmond tackles such issues as the nature of the self, the ambiguous restlessness and inherent power of being revealed by human desire, desire's relation to transcendence, its openness to otherness in agapeic good will and in relation to the sublime as an aesthetic infinitude. Finally, Desmond brings this metaxological understanding to bear on the metaphysical question of the ultimate origin. This book is a remarkable introduction to Desmond's metaxological philosophy, prefiguring many of the ideas with which his later thought is associated. This second edition contains a substantial new preface and an afterword to each chapter in which Desmond reflects on the material from the standpoint of his current thinking.

ウィリアム・デズモンドが提示する「メタクソロジカル（間の学）」は、近代思想が陥った自己と他者の二項対立を鮮やかに超克します。ヘーゲル的弁証法がすべてを同一性へと回収する危うさに対し、本作は他者性という還元不能な輝きを救い出します。欲望が抱く「全体性への憧憬」と「他者への開放性」という矛盾した美しさを、これほど情熱的に描き出した思索は他にありません。 欲望を単なる欠乏ではなく、超越性やアガペー的な善意へと繋がる創造的な律動として捉え直す視点は圧巻です。自己の深淵から崇高な美学、存在の根源へと至る緻密な旅は、読者の魂を激しく揺さぶるでしょう。言葉の間に宿る他者への敬意と世界の充溢を言祝ぐ彼の筆致は、混迷の時代に「他者と共にある」希望を照らし出す真の知性と言えます。