Is there a David Bentley Hart work that does not exist on hard drive in a slightly longer form? I’m looking forward to the 700 page reissue of You Are Gods with dedicatory poems and epistles a la Don Quixote.
I tend to keep copies of the original draft. Usually one has to make a few cuts for length when writing for print magazines. Then too I sometimes add after the fact.
“What we are doing, it seems to me, is struggling to resist a way of being in the world that is already ours.” I think this has been true of Christianity from its very origin. For what it’s worth, I agree with many of your points -- which makes jt all the more important to be wary of a kind of Minniver Cheevy theology that seeks to resuscitate a past that never actually existed. And even if it did exist, it cannot, as you say, ever really live again.
'That this post-philosophical language would prove difficult to write was inevitable; that it would prove quite so difficult to read probably was not.'
Indeed.
I have not studied the history of philosophy and I found this essay very helpful.
Given your, how can one say, 'vast' erudition, have you ever bothered to read any of Francois Laruelle's books? His 'non-philosophy' (or 'philofiction') and now rebranded as 'non-standard philosophy'?
I attempted but found it more or less unreadable - altho perhaps some of the later 'phases' in his thinking might conceivably be worth a glance.
His one-time collaborator Serge Valdinoci seems to also have achieved a remarkable obscurity - altho he does have admirers too!
As a passing aside, although I've never made much progress into Laruelle's writings, his former student Gilles Grelet has written an admittedly-at-times-difficult but very rewarding short book called Theory of the Solitary Sailor, which I heartily recommend.
Very enjoyable piece, Prof. Hart, as usual. It’s no surprise that I find Heidegger difficult to understand — difficult to *try* to understand, I should say — but you certainly made him interesting here.
There was one point, however, I found confusing. You mentioned Heidegger’s atheism. Yet when you touched on his talk about Being-vs-beings, it seemed to me that Heidegger was (at least implicitly) recognizing the classic distinction between God and the world — i.e., Being Itself as opposed to beings, etc. Surely Heidegger was aware of that classical formulation. Did he interpret it differently than, say, you do?
Either Heidegger is confused or I am — any chance it’s Heidegger?
For Heidegger, Being and beings alike can be described only as finite, and as an immanent economy rather than a structure of the transcendent and the immanent. For him, Being is not a name for divine plenitude.
"it was the inexpungible stain of his involvement in absolute evil that forced him to contemplate the nihilism of his age with such untiring persistence. After all, if he could show nihilism to be a destiny woven into the very fabric of the West by a long history of intellectual error, as he came to believe it was, then perhaps he could convince himself and others that he was not so much a moral idiot as a victim of fate."
This makes me shudder (Heidegger now?) as absolute evil seems to walk the earth again and seems to drag in its wake more than one could have imagined. (And will we judge ourselves as victims rather than idiots?)
When an atheist/materialist says there couldn’t have been nothing rather than something (because any sina que non would be impossible in that case anyway) are they unwittingly acknowledging that Being is absolute (even if their analytic habit prevents them from realizing it)? Since obviously when we pose the question of “why is there something rather than nothing” it is only towards one who would hold that all that is is contingent, given that Absolute Being is logically necessary? Or have I misunderstood TEOG?
Happy new year by the way, wishing you health and joy.
Yes, that’s all fair. Most analytic philosophy tends to ignore the question of being altogether. It does this principally by thinking of existence as merely a second-order predicate affirming the real instantiation of a first-order predicate. Thus the existence of x is simply the proposition that “there is one x such that x is [?].” That is, for example, “There is one x such that x is an elephant.” That’s it. What being is is simply never addressed.
I think the only potential logical flaw in the contingency argument (at least in the formulation of the classical traditions) would be that if God is the source and fullness of all being, the actuality of being, and creation is not the result of a deliberation ion the part of God, but simply the act by which God is God, oozing out being, does that mean the existence of the contingent/finite is necessary?
Not logically necessary, only metaphysically inevitable. But oozing is the wrong image--as if creation were an efflux of dome God-thing into some not-God reality.
Would that mean that what is logically necessary is still so, even if it is not needed to explain any contingent reality? Or is it necessary only because it explains a reality that doesn’t need to exist at all?
I think I may have confused propositional truth/sufficient reason with ontological causality, what you’re saying is that the question is not “is it a necessary or a contingent truth that contingent truths exist” but that, regardless of this question, contingent *being*/existence cannot have being at all without absolute being?
I alway appriacte additions. To your earlier works.I think theres a real irony in speaking of plato as the start of forgetting. Primordial Agnosis and remberence beyond words is about as platonic(and dharmic) as it gets. It was intresting to see his note about him making room for a god beyond concepts there because I recall him also having a line about thoughts that are non things iirc. His notes on the pre socratics seem intresting enough I'll have to check them out. What philosophers dont say can often be even more intresting then what they do. Letting Go and detachment and emmersion in all things is one of my favorite Motifs of Eckhartd that I see quite often in Shankra and Zen and some of the more idealist Buddists. Alot of the more modern writers that try to avoid the trancdented ontology always seem to substitute it with something else anyway. In artists and creatives in general theres always a immense limirance for the beauty of the trancdent. The same goes for the innocence of the wanderlust woodland wayfarer. Any way I haven't read much of Heddiger but the way you speak of him always intrests me and I make sure to keep him on my list thanks.
I'd love to send you a book we've just completed work on—James D. Madden's "Thinking about Thinking: Mind and Meaning in the Era of Techno-Nihilism" (Veritas Series, Cascade Books, 2023). If you'd like a free copy, we could confirm shipping address via email: charlie@wipfandstock.com.
Is there a David Bentley Hart work that does not exist on hard drive in a slightly longer form? I’m looking forward to the 700 page reissue of You Are Gods with dedicatory poems and epistles a la Don Quixote.
I tend to keep copies of the original draft. Usually one has to make a few cuts for length when writing for print magazines. Then too I sometimes add after the fact.
This is one of my favorite pieces, by the way. I’m glad to have those extra words.
“What we are doing, it seems to me, is struggling to resist a way of being in the world that is already ours.” I think this has been true of Christianity from its very origin. For what it’s worth, I agree with many of your points -- which makes jt all the more important to be wary of a kind of Minniver Cheevy theology that seeks to resuscitate a past that never actually existed. And even if it did exist, it cannot, as you say, ever really live again.
(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44978/miniver-cheevy)
I think I can now remove 90% of Heidegger from my Library
This is one of my absolutely favorite articles. I have reread it several times.
'That this post-philosophical language would prove difficult to write was inevitable; that it would prove quite so difficult to read probably was not.'
Indeed.
I have not studied the history of philosophy and I found this essay very helpful.
Given your, how can one say, 'vast' erudition, have you ever bothered to read any of Francois Laruelle's books? His 'non-philosophy' (or 'philofiction') and now rebranded as 'non-standard philosophy'?
I attempted but found it more or less unreadable - altho perhaps some of the later 'phases' in his thinking might conceivably be worth a glance.
His one-time collaborator Serge Valdinoci seems to also have achieved a remarkable obscurity - altho he does have admirers too!
Laruelle is a bit more smoke than fire, but he’s more interesting than many of his contemporaries.
As a passing aside, although I've never made much progress into Laruelle's writings, his former student Gilles Grelet has written an admittedly-at-times-difficult but very rewarding short book called Theory of the Solitary Sailor, which I heartily recommend.
Thank you for this Dr. Hart. I am eagerly looking forward to your forthcoming book on consciousness.
Very enjoyable piece, Prof. Hart, as usual. It’s no surprise that I find Heidegger difficult to understand — difficult to *try* to understand, I should say — but you certainly made him interesting here.
There was one point, however, I found confusing. You mentioned Heidegger’s atheism. Yet when you touched on his talk about Being-vs-beings, it seemed to me that Heidegger was (at least implicitly) recognizing the classic distinction between God and the world — i.e., Being Itself as opposed to beings, etc. Surely Heidegger was aware of that classical formulation. Did he interpret it differently than, say, you do?
Either Heidegger is confused or I am — any chance it’s Heidegger?
Thanks again for an illuminating read.
For Heidegger, Being and beings alike can be described only as finite, and as an immanent economy rather than a structure of the transcendent and the immanent. For him, Being is not a name for divine plenitude.
"it was the inexpungible stain of his involvement in absolute evil that forced him to contemplate the nihilism of his age with such untiring persistence. After all, if he could show nihilism to be a destiny woven into the very fabric of the West by a long history of intellectual error, as he came to believe it was, then perhaps he could convince himself and others that he was not so much a moral idiot as a victim of fate."
This makes me shudder (Heidegger now?) as absolute evil seems to walk the earth again and seems to drag in its wake more than one could have imagined. (And will we judge ourselves as victims rather than idiots?)
Thanks David, that ties together many ‘loose’ ends!
When an atheist/materialist says there couldn’t have been nothing rather than something (because any sina que non would be impossible in that case anyway) are they unwittingly acknowledging that Being is absolute (even if their analytic habit prevents them from realizing it)? Since obviously when we pose the question of “why is there something rather than nothing” it is only towards one who would hold that all that is is contingent, given that Absolute Being is logically necessary? Or have I misunderstood TEOG?
Happy new year by the way, wishing you health and joy.
Yes, that’s all fair. Most analytic philosophy tends to ignore the question of being altogether. It does this principally by thinking of existence as merely a second-order predicate affirming the real instantiation of a first-order predicate. Thus the existence of x is simply the proposition that “there is one x such that x is [?].” That is, for example, “There is one x such that x is an elephant.” That’s it. What being is is simply never addressed.
I think the only potential logical flaw in the contingency argument (at least in the formulation of the classical traditions) would be that if God is the source and fullness of all being, the actuality of being, and creation is not the result of a deliberation ion the part of God, but simply the act by which God is God, oozing out being, does that mean the existence of the contingent/finite is necessary?
Not logically necessary, only metaphysically inevitable. But oozing is the wrong image--as if creation were an efflux of dome God-thing into some not-God reality.
Would that mean that what is logically necessary is still so, even if it is not needed to explain any contingent reality? Or is it necessary only because it explains a reality that doesn’t need to exist at all?
I mean intrinsic logical necessity. God does not need to create. It is inevitable—not necessary—that God creates.
I think I may have confused propositional truth/sufficient reason with ontological causality, what you’re saying is that the question is not “is it a necessary or a contingent truth that contingent truths exist” but that, regardless of this question, contingent *being*/existence cannot have being at all without absolute being?
Is there an introduction to the Presocratic Philosophers that you can recommend?
GS Kirk’s critical history with selecyions and Jonathan Barnes’s book
Thank you. I hope you feel better soon.
I alway appriacte additions. To your earlier works.I think theres a real irony in speaking of plato as the start of forgetting. Primordial Agnosis and remberence beyond words is about as platonic(and dharmic) as it gets. It was intresting to see his note about him making room for a god beyond concepts there because I recall him also having a line about thoughts that are non things iirc. His notes on the pre socratics seem intresting enough I'll have to check them out. What philosophers dont say can often be even more intresting then what they do. Letting Go and detachment and emmersion in all things is one of my favorite Motifs of Eckhartd that I see quite often in Shankra and Zen and some of the more idealist Buddists. Alot of the more modern writers that try to avoid the trancdented ontology always seem to substitute it with something else anyway. In artists and creatives in general theres always a immense limirance for the beauty of the trancdent. The same goes for the innocence of the wanderlust woodland wayfarer. Any way I haven't read much of Heddiger but the way you speak of him always intrests me and I make sure to keep him on my list thanks.
I'd love to send you a book we've just completed work on—James D. Madden's "Thinking about Thinking: Mind and Meaning in the Era of Techno-Nihilism" (Veritas Series, Cascade Books, 2023). If you'd like a free copy, we could confirm shipping address via email: charlie@wipfandstock.com.
You'll be hearing from me. Madden is very good, even if he is a little more Thomist than I am.