William Desmond and the Philosophy of the Between

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. Follow John Vervaeke: Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke/videos X: https://x.com/DrJohnVervaeke Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke