William Desmond sees religion, art, philosophy, and politics as essential and distinctive modes of human practice, manifestations of an intimate universality that illuminates individual and social being. They are also surprisingly permeable phenomena, and by observing their relations, Desmond captures notes of a clandestine conversation that transforms ontology.

The intimate and long-awaited autobiography of a legend. In 1967 in San Francisco, just a few weeks after the Summer of Love, a young Mexican guitarist took the stage at the Fillmore Auditorium and played a blistering solo that announced the arrival of a prodigious musical talent. Two years later -- after he played a historic set at Woodstock -- the world came to know the name Carlos Santana, his sensual and instantly recognizable guitar sound, and the legendary band that blended electric blues, psychedelic rock, Latin rhythms, and modern jazz, and that still bears his name. Carlos Santana's unforgettable memoir offers a page-turning tale of musical self-determination and inner self-discovery, with personal stories filled with colorful detail and life-affirming lessons. The Universal Tone traces his journey from his earliest days playing the strip bars in Tijuana while barely in his teens and brings to light the establishment of his signature guitar sound; his roles as husband, father, recording legend, and rock guitar star; his indebtedness to musical and spiritual influences -- from John Coltrane and John Lee Hooker to Miles Davis and Harry Belafonte; and his deep, lifelong dedication to a spiritual path that he developed from his Catholic upbringing, Eastern philosophies, and other mystical sources. It includes his recording some of the most popular and influential rock albums of all time, up to and beyond the 1999 sensation Supernatural, which garnered nine Grammy Awards and stands as arguably the most amazing career comeback in popular music history. It's a profoundly inspiring tale of divine inspiration and musical fearlessness that does not balk at finding the humor in the world of high-flying fame, or at speaking plainly of Santana's personal revelations and the infinite possibility he sees in each person he meets. "Love is the light that is inside of all of us, everyone," he writes. "I salute the light that you are and that is inside your heart."

Since ascending onto the world stage in the 1990s as one of the premier bassists and composers of his generation, William Parker has perpetually toured around the world and released over forty albums as a leader. He is one of the most influential jazz artists alive today. In Universal Tonality historian and critic Cisco Bradley tells the story of Parker’s life and music. Drawing on interviews with Parker and his collaborators, Bradley traces Parker’s ancestral roots in West Africa via the Carolinas to his childhood in the South Bronx, and illustrates his rise from the 1970s jazz lofts and extended work with pianist Cecil Taylor to the present day. He outlines how Parker’s early influences—Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and writers of the Black Arts Movement—grounded Parker’s aesthetic and musical practice in a commitment to community and the struggle for justice and freedom. Throughout, Bradley foregrounds Parker’s understanding of music, the role of the artist, and the relationship between art, politics, and social transformation. Intimate and capacious, Universal Tonality is the definitive work on Parker’s life and music.

The Irish philosopher William Desmond is one of the most compelling and adventurous Christian thinkers of our time. The essays gathered here undertake a journey through the Bible with Desmond that ranges across biblical theology, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, political theory, and literary studies. Some of the essays examine the place of the Bible in Desmond's thought, considering his readings of the creation, the Abraham cycle, and the Beatitudes. Other essays bring Desmond's ideas to bear on broad questions that emerge from the Bible about philosophy and revelation, exegesis, theopoetics, eschatology, and tyranny. Still others bring Desmond into conversation with influential philosophers who engage (or conspicuously do not engage) the Bible, such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Tillich. Together, these essays show the rich possibilities of approaching the Bible with Desmond. All take their bearings from Desmond's "metaxological" approach, which does not seek to claim the final word, which attends to the text rather than simply imposing on it, and which allows for an ongoing dialogue. / Contributors: Ryan G. Duns, SJ / Caitlin Smith Gilson / Joseph K. Gordon / William Christian Hackett / Steven E. Knepper / Renee Kohler-Ryan / Andrew Kuiper / Brendan Thomas Sammon / Terence Sweeney / Ethan Vanderleek / Erik van Versendaal / Robert Wyllie

Long past the time when philosophers from different perspectives had joined the funeral procession that declared the death of God, a renewed interest has arisen in regard to the questions of God and religion in philosophy. This book brings some of these philosophical views together to present an overview of the philosophical scene in its dealings with religion, but also to move beyond the outsider's perspective. Reflecting on these philosophical interpretations from a fundamental theological perspective, the authors discover in what way these interpretations can challenge an understanding of today's faith.

Godsends is William Desmond’s newest addition to his masterwork on the borderlines between philosophy and theology. For many years, William Desmond has been patiently constructing a philosophical project—replete with its own terminology, idiom, grammar, dialectic, and its metaxological transformation—in an attempt to reopen certain boundaries: between metaphysics and phenomenology, between philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, between the apocalyptic and the speculative, and between religious passion and systematic reasoning. In Godsends, Desmond’s newest addition to his ambitious masterwork, he presents an original reflection on what he calls the “companioning” of philosophy and religion. Throughout the book, he follows an itinerary that has something of an Augustinian likeness: from the exterior to the interior, from the inferior to the superior. The stations along the way include a grappling with the default atheism prevalent in contemporary intellectual culture; an exploration of the middle space, the metaxu between the finite and the infinite; a dwelling with solitudes as thresholds between selving and the sacred; a meditation on idiot wisdom and transcendence in an East-West perspective; an exploration of the different stresses in the mysticisms of Aurobindo and the Arnhem Mystical Sermons; a dream monologue of autonomy, a suite of Kantian and post-Kantian variations on the story of the prodigal son; a meditation on the beatitudes as exceeding virtue, in light of Aquinas’s understanding; and culminating in an exploration of Godsends as telling us something significant about the surprise of revelation in word, idea, and story. Godsends is written for thoughtful persons and scholars perplexed about the place of religion in our time and hopeful for some illuminating companionship from relevant philosophers. It will also interest students of philosophy and religion, especially philosophical theology and philosophical metaphysics.

Who among us hasn't eavesdropped on a stranger's conversation in a theater or restaurant? Indeed, scientists have found that even animals eavesdrop on the calls and cries of others. In Eavesdropping, John L. Locke provides the first serious look at this virtually universal phenomenon. Locke's entertaining and disturbing account explores everything from sixteenth-century voyeurism to Hitchcock's "Rear Window"; from chimpanzee behavior to Parisian cafe society; from private eyes to Facebook and Twitter. He uncovers the biological drive behind the behavior and highlights its consequences across history and cultures. Eavesdropping can be a good thing--an attempt to understand what goes on in the lives of others so as to know better how to live one's own. Even birds who listen in on the calls of distant animals tend to survive longer. But Locke also concedes that eavesdropping has a bad name. It can encompass cheating to get unfair advantage, espionage to uncover secrets, and secretly monitoring emails to maintain power over employees. In the age of CCTV, phone tapping, and computer hacking, this is eye-opening reading. "