Laurence Hemming's Postmodernity's Transcending is a highly intelligent, original and provocative study, and will stimulate considerable discussion in postmodernism and, in particular, in philosophical and theological discussions of the sublime and transcendence: two areas that are central to contemporary intellectual work. Hemming's mastery of Aristotle and Aquinas as well as Heidegger and Zizek is very impressive, and he conducts his case with an appealing quiet ease. The work is densely thought and nicely written: it makes significant demands of the reader, but the reader it engages is precisely the sort of person who will rise to its challenges.
A major concern of the book is the way that in postmodernity sight and looking is accorded priority over speaking: the claim that it's possible to see certain things sometimes which one cannot even bring to speech. The whole force of Postmodernity’s Transcending, however, is to argue that even seeing is a kind of speaking: it is not that one sees, but how, that really matters. 'Speaking' taken in the widest possible sense, and so really 'thinking', tells us what we see and how we think.
Postmodernity's Transcending challenges the way in which many theologians, philosophers, and those concerned with aesthetics are all currently articulating questions of God, value and the supposed 'nihilism' of the postmodern situation. Hemming's breathtaking canter through a genealogy of the visual, beginning with the Presocratics and ending in the current day, leads him to quite startling conclusions that will change the character of the current debate.
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