In the first two sections of this reply article, I provide a brief introduction to the topic of ineffability and a summary of Ineffability and Religious Experience. This is followed, in section 3, by some reflections in reply to the response articles by Professors Metz and Cooper. Section 4 presents some concluding remarks on the future of philosophy of religion in the light of the most recent philosophical work on ineffability.

Abstract: This article considers how the formal structure of metaphysical thought is displayed in Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest . One frequent aim of metaphysics is to understand the world as a whole. We cannot gain such a global vantage point without separating ourselves from all the particular meanings things have for us within the world. But we start within the world, and so can only proceed on the basis of those particular meanings. Consequently we can only separate ourselves (...) from them if they work to cancel themselves in favor of the global understanding. When the separate range of meanings is established, however, it and the world it aims to understand no longer have any meaning for each other. Metaphysics therefore succeeds by establishing and canceling its relevant meaning, all at once. This self-canceling moment or process of thought constitutes a grasp of the world as a whole. It also allows different understandings of reality as a whole to recognize and so enter into dialogue with each other. The climactic moments of The Importance of Being Earnest are structured as a map of this insight-granting process of the self-cancellation of a global range of meanings. That is, they express the formal structure of metaphysical thought. (shrink)

This article argues that there is ultimately a very close convergence between prominent conceptions of being in mainstream Anglo‐American philosophy and mainstream postmodern Continental philosophy. One characteristic idea in Anglo‐American or analytic philosophy is that we establish what is meaningful and so what we can say about what is, by making evident the limits of sense or what simply cannot be meant. A characteristic idea in Continental philosophy of being is that being emerges through contrast and interplay with what it (...) is not, with what has no being at all and so is beyond sense. The two traditions consequently conceive being in significantly related ways. As a result, what the Continental tradition gets at with “the meaning of being as such and in general,” and how it gets at it, has much in common with what the Anglo‐American tradition gets at, and how it gets at it, by establishing “what can be meaningfully said.”. (shrink)

Philosophy often at least implicitly includes and depends on a logical structure which is also that of jokes. This is the case when philosophy involves questioning or establishing concepts in their own right, and when it involves the kinds of metaphysics which ask about reality and the world as a whole or as such. Taking this humour-like structure into account in presenting philosophy helps, among other things, to lay open part of the character of philosophy itself, to underscore the radical (...) self-perspective that is constitutive of philosophy, and to contextualise the often confusing experience of coming to grips with an unfamiliar philosophical framework. (shrink)

This research is about altruism. In our first chapter, our quest to find whether we are essentially altruistic starts with questioning particular ways of inquiry and proposes a philosophy of unbracketing. In our second chapter, we realise that our proposal starts with an imperative – a prescription. We begin by meditating on the phenomenon of prescription which seems to precede all ways of inquiry. Our analysis of prescription reveals that altruism is to prescribe oneself towards an Other. This type of (...) prescription is to promise a future for an Other. To promise is to give one’s word and to undertake to realising it. In our third chapter, we explore the act of “giving one’s word.” To give one’s word is beyond a speech act. In fact, it is to give one’s logos. An altruistic attempt is carried out in this chapter to liberate ‘logos’ from particular conceptions and allow for its universal meaning to emerge. Logos is traced back to its inceptual conception as existence or will to power – a will to future. This philosophical excavation leads us to our fourth chapter where we re-encounter our original paradox. That is, while human reality starts with a promise of helping someone to make sense – to understand – we have been trying to understand understanding, or how we make sense, by removing the Other and by focusing only on subjective conditions. In this chapter, we reveal how to understand an Other is an altruistic act. In our final chapter, we carefully observe that human existence is a gift from the Other. We describe this gift as a metaphysical passage from being to existence – an altruistic act. A passage which is created by an Other who promises to give us the means to be able to create meaning, that is to say, to exist. (shrink)