William Desmond and John Vervaeke: Why Transcendence Still Matters

Why It Matters

By re‑introducing a robust, ontologically grounded notion of transcendence, the dialogue offers a philosophical antidote to modern nihilism and a new framework for meaning‑centered inquiry across academia and public life.

Key Takeaways

• Strong transcendence offers epistemic truths beyond psychological improvement
• Reviving Platonic tradition challenges modern flat, reductive ontology
• Participatory epistemology links mind and reality through mutual indwelling
• The 'between' concept bridges systematic philosophy and poetic experience
• Addressing the meaning crisis requires transcendent, ontologically grounded practices

Summary

John Vervaeke and William Desmond explore why transcendence remains vital, arguing that a revived Platonic tradition can counter the contemporary meaning crisis. Their dialogue builds on prior conversations about relevance realization, positioning Desmond’s phenomenological notion of the "metaxu" – the between – as a bridge between systematic philosophy and poetic insight.

The core argument distinguishes "strong" transcendence, rooted in ancient metaphysics, from modern, merely psychological notions of self‑improvement. Strong transcendence carries epistemic weight, claiming that certain truths become disclosed only through a genuine ontological shift, challenging the flat, reductive ontology of modernity that reduces reality to a single, bottom‑level substrate.

Desmond cites three kinds of transcendence – interior, exterior, and superior – and invokes Plato’s anagoge and Neoplatonic ideas of the imaginal as a participatory mode of knowing. Vervaeke links these ideas to contemporary cognitive science, noting emerging evidence for vertical, layered ontologies and a move toward a contact epistemology where mind and world co‑indwell.

If embraced, this framework could reshape philosophical discourse, inform therapeutic practices, and offer a robust response to the pervasive sense of nihilism and default atheism that arise from a purely subjective valuation of reality. It suggests a path toward a richer, ontologically grounded sense of meaning and purpose.

Original Description

Can Platonism become a living tradition again without recovering a strong sense of transcendence?

In this Lectern conversation, John Vervaeke is joined by philosopher William Desmond for a deep exploration of Platonism, transcendence, the metaxu, and the crisis of modernity. Building on an earlier conversation about relevance realization and Desmond's philosophy of "the between," John proposes that a revived Platonism must recover transcendence not merely as psychological uplift, but as something with epistemological force and ontological significance.

Desmond responds by drawing from his work on Plato, art, originality, mimesis, eros, mania, and the dialogical form of philosophy. The conversation moves through strong transcendence, the collapse of modern dichotomies, participatory knowing, the Sophist, Socratic dialogos, deep memory, imagination, eternity, possibility, God, Daoism, pilgrimage, and the life-world.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome and episode frame

01:00 Relevance realization and Desmond's philosophy of the between

02:00 Platonism as a living tradition

02:40 Why revived Platonism needs strong transcendence

03:50 Does transcendence make sense after modernity?

04:40 William Desmond introduces his work

05:00 Between system and poetics

06:00 The Western tradition as conversation partner

08:00 John's argument for strong transcendence

09:20 Modern psychological accounts of transcendence

10:00 Transcendence with epistemological and ontological force

11:00 Challenging flat ontology

12:30 The buffered self and representational cognition

14:00 Default atheism, default nihilism, and the fact-value split

15:10 Porosity, contact epistemology, and participatory knowing

17:20 Plotinus, Plato, and being realized as you realize

18:20 Anagoge and the turning of the soul

18:40 Interior, exterior, and superior transcendence

20:10 Autonomy, heteronomy, theonomy, and theosis

21:30 Desmond responds to John's paper

22:00 Plato's philosophical art and the Sophist

22:30 Art, Origins, Otherness and Platonic originals

23:40 Modern originality and the creative self

25:20 Mimesis, image, original, and otherness

28:20 Plato as philosopher of the metaxu

29:00 Eros and self-transcendence

30:00 Mania, divine madness, and inspiration

31:30 The magnet image and inspired transmission

33:20 Metaxology and the limits of Hegelian mediation

34:40 The Sophist and participatory knowing

36:40 The who, not just the what, of the sophist

38:10 Periagoge and philosophical education

39:40 Philosophy as a way of life

40:30 Getting outside modernity's dominant frame

43:20 The drama of Plato's dialogues

45:30 Socrates as an image of courage

46:20 Dialogos rather than mere dialogue

47:20 Plato's philosophical art

48:00 Diaphanous logos and the porous between

49:00 Singular incarnation and witness

51:10 Theoria as contemplation and pilgrimage

52:00 John's dialectic-in-dialogos practice

53:20 Anamnesis in modern dialogical practice

54:20 The logos as more than the participants

55:20 Deep memory and the sources of imagination

57:00 Muses, memory, and hidden springs

58:20 AI, memory sticks, and the loss of deep memory

59:00 Memory as an ontological depth

01:00:30 Eternity and the other to time

01:01:00 Beyond a merely logical eternity

01:02:40 Internal otherness and ultimate otherness

01:04:50 Plato's sun, the good, and enabling light

01:06:20 The performative problem of talking porosity from the buffered self

01:07:00 Possibility, eternity, and living potency

01:09:00 Possibility, transcendence, and God

01:10:40 What makes intelligibility intelligible?

01:11:40 Possibility in Eastern and Western thought

01:13:30 Coming to be, becoming, and God

01:15:40 Nicholas of Cusa and the coincidence of opposites

01:17:00 Wu wei and the origin that gives way

01:18:20 Daoist practice, Socratic midwifery, and philosophy as enacted

01:20:20 The philosophical Silk Road

01:21:00 Freeing ourselves from Western presuppositions

01:22:10 The intimate universal and intercultural philosophy

01:23:20 The danger of philosophical tourism

01:25:30 Elemental porosity across cultures

01:26:00 Pilgrimage versus tourism

01:27:40 Desmond's recent work on being underway

01:29:30 Theoria, pilgrimage, and metanoetic passage

01:30:10 Desmond's symphonic use of language

01:32:20 Dialogical language beyond Hegelian resolution

01:34:00 Final theme: the life-world

01:35:40 Rejecting the view from nowhere

01:36:20 Closing

About Lectern

Lectern is a space for deep conversations at the intersection of cognitive science, philosophy, wisdom, spirituality, and the meaning crisis.

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