William Desmond and John Vervaeke: Strong Transcendence, Plato, and the Between

Can transcendence still make philosophical sense after modernity?

John Vervaeke speaks with philosopher William Desmond about Platonism as a living tradition, the meaning of strong transcendence, and Desmond's philosophy of the metaxu: the between. The conversation builds from John's proposal that relevance realization and transjectivity are philosophically grounded in Desmond's ontological account of the between.

John begins by distinguishing modern psychological accounts of transcendence from the ancient and Platonic sense of strong transcendence. In this stronger sense, transcendence is not merely a better state of mind. It discloses truths that are otherwise unavailable and changes the knower's relation to reality. That claim challenges modern assumptions about flat ontology, the buffered self, representational cognition, and the fact-value split.

Desmond responds through Plato. He presents Plato not as a dry theorist of two worlds, but as a philosophical artist of the between: a thinker of mimesis, eros, mania, dialogue, singularity, and participatory transformation. Plato's dialogues are not ornamental containers for arguments; their drama, characters, and dialogical movement are part of the philosophy itself.

The later conversation opens into deep memory, imagination, eternity, possibility, God, Daoism, intercultural philosophy, pilgrimage, and the life-world. Desmond and Vervaeke converge on the need to move beyond the view from nowhere and return philosophy to transformative practice, embodied dwelling, and a richer contact with the sources of intelligibility.

Key Insights

• Strong transcendence has epistemological and ontological significance, not only psychological benefit.
• The metaxu, or between, names a porous relation before, beneath, between, and beyond modern dichotomies.
• Modernity's fact-value split risks producing default atheism or default nihilism.
• Participatory knowing offers an alternative to treating cognition as internal representation of an external world.
• Plato's dialogical form is integral to his philosophy; the drama cannot simply be stripped away to extract arguments.
• Mimesis involves relation between image and original without collapsing their difference.
• Eros and mania point to two directions of transcendence: from below upward and from above downward.
• Deep memory is a source of imagination and ontological depth, not merely storage of past facts.
• Possibility should not be reduced to logical possibility; living possibility points toward enabling power.
• Pilgrimage and theoria are linked: philosophical transformation requires being on the way, not merely observing from nowhere.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and setup
01:00 Relevance realization and the philosophy of the between
02:00 Platonism as living tradition
02:40 The need for strong transcendence
03:50 Transcendence 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 paper on strong transcendence
09:20 Psychological transcendence in modern thought
10:00 Truths disclosed through transcendence
11:00 Flat ontology and layered reality
12:30 The buffered self
14:00 Fact-value dichotomy and default atheism
15:10 Contact epistemology and participatory relation
17:20 Being realized as you realize
18:20 Anagoge and the cave
18:40 Interior, exterior, and superior transcendence
20:10 Autonomy, heteronomy, theonomy, and theosis
21:30 Desmond responds
22:00 Plato's philosophical art and the Sophist
22:30 Art, origins, and otherness
23:40 Originality, creativity, and modern art
25:20 Mimesis and the difference between image and original
28:20 Plato as thinker of the metaxu
29:00 Eros and self-transcendence
30:00 Mania and divine inspiration
31:30 Inspiration as transmission
33:20 Metaxology and Hegel
34:40 The Sophist and participatory knowing
36:40 The who of the sophist
38:10 Periagoge and the turning of the soul
39:40 Philosophy as a way of life
40:30 Exiting modernity's frame
43:20 The dialogue form is not ornamental
45:30 Socrates as an image of courage
46:20 Dialogos and method
48:00 Diaphanous logos
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 practice
54:20 The logos beyond the participants
55:20 Deep memory and imagination
57:00 Muses, memory, and hidden springs
58:20 AI and outsourced memory
59:00 Memory as ontological depth
01:00:30 Eternity and the other to time
01:02:40 Inward otherness and ultimate otherness
01:04:50 Plato's sun and enabling light
01:06:20 Porosity and the buffered self
01:07:00 Living possibility
01:09:00 Possibility, transcendence, and God
01:10:40 What makes intelligibility intelligible?
01:11:40 Eastern and Western approaches to possibility
01:13:30 Coming to be and becoming
01:15:40 Nicholas of Cusa
01:17:00 Wu wei and giving way
01:18:20 Daoist practice and Socratic midwifery
01:20:20 Philosophical Silk Road
01:22:10 The intimate universal
01:23:20 Against philosophical tourism
01:25:30 Elemental porosity
01:26:00 Pilgrimage and practice
01:27:40 Being underway
01:29:30 Theoria as metanoetic passage
01:30:10 Symphonic language
01:34:00 The life-world
01:35:40 Rejecting the view from nowhere
01:36:20 Closing

Resources

• William Desmond, Being and the Between
• William Desmond, Ethics and the Between
• William Desmond, God and the Between
• William Desmond, Art, Origins, Otherness: Between Philosophy and Art
• Plato, Symposium, Ion, Sophist, Republic, and Laches
• Plotinus and Proclus
• Hegel
• Charles Taylor
• Catherine Pickstock, Aspects of Truth
• Paul Tillich
• Thomas Aquinas
• Nicholas of Cusa
• Pierre Hadot
• Henry Corbin
• Frank, Gleiser, and Thompson, The Blind Spot

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