Metaxy

{{Short description|Definition and usage of the Greek word Metaxy}}

Metaxy ({{langx|el|μεταξύ}}, also used as metaxú, 'between') is a concept originating in Platonic philosophy, developed by Neoplatonic philosophers such as Plotinus. Several philosophers in the twentieth-century repurposed the concept, such as Eric Voegelin, Simone Weil, and William Desmond.

Neoplatonists like Plotinus used the concept to express an ontological placement of Man between the Gods and animals.Rise and Decline of the Roman World By Hildegard Temporini, Wolfgang Haase pg 706 [https://books.google.com/books?id=Q0SynnxdVlYC&dq=plotinus+and+the+metaxy&pg=PA705 Text] Enneads 3, Verse 8 line 4 "But humanity, in reality, is poised midway between gods and beasts, and inclines now to the one order, now to the other; some men grow like to the divine, others to the brute, the greater number stand neutral."

Metaxy as used by Voegelin refers to the permanent place where man is in-between two poles of existence. One example is the infinite (apeiron) and the finite (the divine mind or nous) reality of existence. Another example is between the beginning of existence (apeiron) and the beyond existence (epekeina). Voegelin defined metaxy as the connection of the mind or nous to the material world and the reverse of the material world's connection to the mind as "consciousness of being". Under Voegelin's definition it can also mean a form of perception in contrast to consciousness; a template of the mind (or nous) in contrast to the dynamic and unordered flow of experiential consciousness; or as a form of reflectiveness in-between two poles of experience (the finite and the infinite, or immanent and transcendent). Metaxy is man's connection to the material world as the ground of being.Eric Voegelin, “Reason: The Classic Experience,” in Voegelin, Published Essays, 1966-1985, vol. 12 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 289-90; Order and History, Volume IV: The Ecumenic Age, vol. 17 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Michael Franz (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 408.{{additional citations needed|date=November 2022}}

The concept is also used by Simone Weil, who argued that compassion must act in the area of metaxy.Athanasios Moulakis, Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-denial, University of Missouri Press, 1998, p. 141.

Metaxy is also a central concept in the thought of the contemporary Irish philosopher William Desmond. Desmond's trilogy of books on 'the between' in relation to ontology, ethics, and philosophy of religion develops what he calls 'metaxological' thought which places the in-between state of the human subject at the heart of metaphysical thinking.

The "meta" in metamodernism, a proposed term for a post-postmodernist paradigm, comes from "metaxy."{{Cite journal |last1=Vermeulen |first1=Timotheus |last2=van den Akker |first2=Robin |date=2010 |title=Notes on metamodernism |journal=Journal of Aesthetics & Culture |language=en |volume=2 |issue=1 |article-number=5677 |doi=10.3402/jac.v2i0.5677 |issn=2000-4214 |s2cid=164789817 |doi-access=free}}