William Desmond (philosopher)

William Desmond
Born	1951 (age 72–73) Cork, Ireland
Awards	Cardinal Mercier Prize (1995) J.N. Findlay Award of the Metaphysical Society of America (1997, 2019)
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy Revival of German idealism
Institutions	Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Villanova University National University of Ireland Maynooth
Main interests	Metaphysics philosophy of art ethics religion history of philosophy
Notable ideas	Metaxology Intimate strangeness of Being Intimate universal Ethos

William James Desmond (born January 7, 1951)^[1] is an Irish philosopher who has written on ontology, metaphysics, ethics, and religion.

Desmond earned his B.A. and M.A. from University College, Cork, in 1972 and 1974; Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1978.

Former president of the Hegel Society of America (1990–1992) and the Metaphysical Society of America (1995),^[2] Desmond is professor of philosophy at the Higher Institute of Philosophy^[3] at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and also at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. He is a past president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.^[4] In his trilogy, Being and The Between, Ethics and The Between, and God and The Between, Desmond works out an entirely new and complete metaphysical/ontological philosophical system based on what he calls the potencies of being and the senses of being.^[5] His most original contribution in his metaphysics is the notion of the "metaxological", which will be explained below. Desmond's program consists mainly in exploring the senses in which he claims that modernity has devalued being and what "to be" and "the good" might mean.