Immediacy and Meaning J. K. Huysmans and the Immemorial Origin of Metaphysics [Paperback]

Immediacy and Meaningseeks to approach the odd uneasiness at root in all metaphysical meaning; that the human knower attempts to mediate what cannot be mediated; that there is a pre-cognitive immemorial immediacy to Being that renders its participants irreducible, incommunicable and personal. The dilemma of metaphysics rests on the relationship between the spectator and the player, both as essential responses to the immediacy of Being.Immediacy and Meaningis an attempt to pause, but without retreat, to be a spectator within the game, to gain access into this immediate Presence, for a moment only perhaps, before the signatory failure into metaphysical language returns us to the mediated. J. K. Huysman's semi-autobiographical tetralogy anchors this book as a meditation, neither purely poetic nor only philosophical; it claims a unique territory when attempting to speak what cannot be spoken. The unnerving merits of nominalism, the difficulties of an honest appraisal of efficacious prayer, the mad sanity of the muse, the relationship between the uncreated and the created, and an originary ethics of antagonism, each serves to clarify the formation of a new epistemology.Caitlin Smith Gilsonis Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of the Holy Cross, New Orleans, USA. She is the author ofMetaphysical Presuppositions of Being-in-the-World(2010) andThe Philosophical Question of Christ(2014), both published by Bloomsbury.

The title does not do justice to this books rich, eclectic contents; it manages to contain at once an analysis of J. K. Huysmanss Durtal tetralogy, a philosophical inquiry into the nature of human knowledge and freedom, a theological exploration of prayer and suffering, and a florilegium of passages from various poets, mystics, and philosophers in and outside the Catholic tradition. Review of Metaphysics

Smith Gilson is an emerging Catholic intellectual working at the intersection of philosophylSå