Volume 32, Issue 1/2, 2020
Terence Sweeney
Pages 149-172
https://doi.org/10.5840/philtheol2021728143
Ways to God
William Desmond¡¯s Recapitulation of Thomas Aquinas¡¯s Five Ways
In this article, I explore how William Desmond recovers Thomas Aquinas's Five Ways by offering a new way for considering the relation of God to being. I do so in the context of Charles Taylor¡¯s reflections on the immanent frame and the possibility of thinking towards God in the secular age. Desmond renews Aquinas proofs by seeing in them a hermeneutic openness to God. Considering each of Aquinas¡¯s five ways through the lens of Desmond¡¯s philosophy, I argue that each proof reveals God¡¯s ways of being within being as a path to recovering an awareness of God¡¯s presence in the world.