Religion, Metaphysics, and the Postmodern

William Desmond's original and creative work in metaphysics is attracting more and more attention from philosophers of religion. Putting Desmond in conversation with John D. Caputo, an important philosopher of religion from the Continental tradition, Christopher Ben Simpson casts new light on Desmond's complex, multifaceted, and nuanced thought. The comparative approach allows Simpson to get at the core of recent debates in the philosophy of religion. He develops a rich understanding of how ethics and religion are informed by metaphysics, and contrasts this approach to the decidedly anti-metaphysical stance in Continental philosophy. Religion, Metaphysics, and the Postmodern presents a systematic analysis of Desmond's thought as it advances work on Caputo's thinking and on the philosophy of religion. In this book Simpson presents with bewitching simplicity and elegance two of theology's valuable philosophical interlocutors as it goes forward, the metaphysics of 'between' of William Desmond and the post-metaphysical thought of Jack Caputo. If Simpson resolutely chooses Desmond, he never fails to specify the virtues of Caputo. --Cyril O'Regan, Huisking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame Simpson has provided an indispensable resource not only for the thought of Caputo and Desmond, but for the postmodern debate about the status of metaphysics in general and its significance for religious thought. With a remarkable degree of clarity, as well as a treatment of Caputo that is as generous as it is critical, Simpson's analysis demonstrates not only that declarations of the death of metaphysics are profoundly naive, but that in the thought of William Desmond, metaphysics remains the most appropriate discourse for the many challenges facing contemporary religious thought. --Brendan Sammon, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology, St. Joseph's University The more-than-fair run that Simpson gives Caputo for his money only serves the more to show that it is Desmond who offers us the real postmodern (because also postsecular) gold which permits us all to run the race to the real infinite end. Let us hope that the second edition of this fine book finally puts to rest the theologically silly season of supposedly 'postmetaphysical' difference, immanence and hypostasised absence, and further opens up the new metaphysically realist harvesting of dynamic mediation and participated transcendence. --John Milbank, Professor in Religion, Politics, and Ethics, University of Nottingham Christopher Ben Simpson is Professor of Philosophical Theology at Lincoln Christian University. He is the author of Modern Christian Theology (2016), Merleau-Ponty and Theology (2014), Deleuze and Theology (2012), and The Truth is the Way: Kierkegaard's Theologia Viatorum (2010).