Two Links

To two extraordinarily enjoyable conversations

Coriandre (Primidi), 11 Messidor, CCXXXIV

In honor of coriander, which I love and which lends its name to this day on the French Republican Calendar, I thought I would provide links to two recorded conversations in which I recently participated, in the first case as the interviewee, in the second as the, um, inquisitor.

1. Perhaps a month ago, I joined what I think of now as the “Shoji Troika” to discuss the metaphysics of morality and the presence of love within the structure of reality, as well as many matters literary and cultural. I was a guest, for the second but I hope not the last time, of the program Solomon and Smith, whose hosts are actually named Jack and Milo. There is some mystery in this, almost certainly of a dark and distressing nature, but I refuse to allow it to worry me. Whoever they are hiding from will in the end probably run them to earth, but until then I am always available to talk to them. For whatever reason, I find my conversations with these two elfin ironists among the most enjoyable I have ever had a part in. This one was a delight, especially when we got to the issue of animated films. Here is the description of the exchange from Solomon and Smith’s YouTube page:

   In this conversation, David Bentley Hart joins Jack and Milo to discuss among the most dangerous and controversial of all questions: where does morality come from? Is morality an evolutionary strategy for accruing power, or are love and compassion woven into the structure of being?
   

   In philosophical, theological, literary, and evolutionary terms, Hart discusses the origins of moral instincts in humans and animals, the role of altruism and compassion in nature, and why he believes reductive accounts of morality ultimately fail to explain human experience. We talk about Nietzsche, Darwin, Dawkins, cooperation in nature, and the limits of evolutionary psychology.
   

   Hart also reflects on Christianity’s moral revolution and argues that Christ represented a profound interruption in the moral imagination of the ancient world—placing the poor, the rejected, and the vulnerable at the center of ethical life. The discussion also touches on the Resurrection accounts, the Gospels, the Fall, late antiquity, slavery, philanthropy, and the relationship between love, truth, and spiritual transformation.
   
   In the second half of the discussion we discuss literature, and where we put to Hart various author duels: Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, Chesterton or Wilde, Eliot or Dickens, Mann or Hesse.
   
   Expect reflections on:
   
   The metaphysical origins of morality
   
   Whether animals and nature exhibit genuine moral behavior
   
   Nietzsche, power, and the “discourse of suspicion”
   
   Evolutionary psychology and The Selfish Gene
   
   Christ’s challenge to ancient morality
   
   Love, compassion, and the structure of reality
   
   Cooperation, altruism, and the natural world
   
   Otters, dolphins, crocodiles… and why philosophy should take them seriously
   
   Plus: in the second half of the interview, Hart turns to literature, The Simpsons, baseball as beauty, and debates some of history’s greatest writers.

2. Over at Sesame and Lilies, Eugene McCarraher and I have posted our most recent monthly interview, which we conducted with the infinitely amiable China Miéville. It is, I admit, behind a paywall (Gene is terrifically avaricious), but the subscription costs little and gives so much. Honestly. Anyway, here is the description of the conversation that appears on the site:

   We had a long conversation with China Miéville—novelist, ailurophile, essayist, historian, editor at the journal Salvage, political thinker, and extraordinarily affable soul—that was a thorough delight for us from start to finish. We began with a discussion of China’s latest novel, The Rouse, which officially arrives on 15 September and which he has characterized as his White Whale, pursued around the Horn, and around the Norway maelstrom, and around perdition’s flames. It is a book whose initial impulse came to its author two decades ago, and now, after so long a gestation, it has at last been born among us. Not only is it something of a magnum opus; weighing in at 1244 pages, it is in all likelihood China’s maximum opus.

   From there our talk moved naturally on to the experience known to many writers of producing a book that, in some mysterious matter, seems to dictate itself to the author and carry him or her in unexpected directions.

   We turned thereafter to many other topics: those listed in the subtitle of this post, but also such related matters as why everyone should be able to enjoy champagne, the ways of city-folk and country-folk, the machine of late capitalist culture, the deep friendship bonobos can form with dogs and dogs with bonobos, the yearning for a lost paradise or for an as yet unglimpsed peaceable city, the “swerve” of Epicurus, historical contingency and rational necessity, the difference between historical and metaphysical materialism, the difference between hope and optimism, the difference between wise lamentation and corrosive despair, Kant and the possibility of “radical evil”, Augustine and the stolen pears, forthright psychopathy, covert selfishness, which of the three of us would be the best pope, the moral example of animals, Hegel, the Frankfurt School, and much, much more.