David Bentley Hart: Being, Consciousness, Bliss: Beauty as Knowledge of God - Art Symposium 2013

Violence & Peace in Contemporary Art: Biola Art Symposium 2013. March 2, 2013.
David Bentley Hart, is an Orthodox theologian, philosopher, and cultural commentator, whose specialties include philosophical theology, patristics, and aesthetics. 
Hart has been published in various periodicals including, Pro Ecclesia, The Scottish Journal of Theology, First Things, and The New Criterion. He has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of St. Thomas, Duke Divinity School, and Loyola College in Baltimore. Hart is the author of seven books including Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdmans, 2004), which has been lauded by The Christian Century as "one of the most brilliant works by an American theologian in the past ten years." His two most recent books are The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (Eerdmans, 2011), and The Devil and Pierre Gernet: Stories, his first work of fiction (Eerdmans, 2012).

[@scottcarter1689]

Within this symphony of Hart's sentience is the coalescence of hope in me for the renewal of the mind in him. Rarely do I part his company with such a sense of the inherence of Spirit in his immediate experience. There always seems to be a presence of cynicism that is the very antithesis of Hope in the Spirit. Such is the inspiration of faith that is the gift of the Spirit of God. It is the substance of the hope for Hart in the work of the Holy Spirit alone. Soli Deo Gloria

[@koffeeblack5717]

My impression is very different. I think he speaks directly from Communion but this inner joy is veiled by a external sorrow for the fallenness of the world. He did not reach his conclusions merely by speculation. Indeed his work focuses on the mystical union of the phenomenological and ontological insights that would be necessary to even articulate meaning as he does.

[@BehaviorModification]

"... the ontological poverty of everything physical." What a remarkable way to put it.

[@gfujigo]

There is much more of that in his book: The Experience of God. A masterpiece.

[@manlikeJoe1010]

@@gfujigo totally agree. A brilliant book and a must read for theists and atheists alike

[@davidbeam6974]

​@@gfujigo😊😊😅😅😅😅the

[@davidbeam6974]

Portland

[@davidbeam6974]

😊.k

[@whoami8434]

5:10 produces a bottle of water ex nihilo.

[@clavilenoelaligero579]

[@cerebralnutsac]

The worse the professor dresses...the deeper his knowldege, lol

[@ontologicallysteve7765]

Close your eyes and listen: DBH enunciates his words exactly like James Spader. If Orson Welles and James Spader had a baby...DBH would be it. What an odd but wonderful combination. BTW: None of the above was meant as an insult. I'm an avid student of DBH and a huge fan of Orson Welles and James Spader. I hope you can rightly process the profundity of the above observations.

[@akroatis]

This is really good (as we've come to expect from DBH), but why don't you post the entire lecture?

[@stvbrsn]

What a totally awesome talk!

[@whoami8434]

17:41 That time stamp is just where he makes a “logical point” about how the physical is inexplicable solely in its own terms.

[@sebastianmelmoth685]

Thank you.

[@ruckboger]

Outstanding

[@Bobbyhiddn]

This man sounds like Ultron.

[@Robb3348]

I love this kind of thinking, and I think that the loss of classical ontology,/epistemology/theology is a serious and largely unacknowledged loss for modern, postmodern, and now postpostmodern philosophy. BUT I'm acutely aware that no atheist will be convinced by this lecture. Indeed no one not *already* inculturated with Hart's premises, will be convinced or even microscopically nudged off their position by Hart's thinking. Indeed they will turn off the talk after a few minutes because they don't think in the same manner as Hart. The way of proceeding which hart takes for granted because of his classical education is not familiar to contemporary people. IOW he is preaching to the choir (he's only going to reach people who can understand a platonic or aristotelian style of argument, a very sparsely populated set), and therefore isn't doing a lot of good for his cause. He'll just give complacency to those already sympathetic to him ("he sure showed those scientific materialists, didn't he??"), but all he showed is, not that the scientific materialists are wrong, but only that they don't live up to his classical philosophical criteria for what constitutes a compelling argument. Therefore, there's a problem of *translation* between someone like Hart and those "new atheists" and similar with whom he is intending to dialogue. We need to find a common vocabulary and a more substantial core of common premises and intellectual methodology, in order to make progress in talking to each other. In default of that, we just have the usual acrimonious debate between atheists and believers who both tend to assume bad faith and even stupidity on the part of their interlocutors. For example, a traditionalist like Hart will find cogent an argument from the idea of (platonic) "participation", or equally, an Aristotelian-Thomistic argument that an infinite regress of causation is untenable, while an atheistic scientist of today will find those arguments unintelligible (not merely "false"). They will find those arguments unintelligible not because of bad faith but because of simple unfamiliarity, and because science doesn't use those kind of intellectual-intuitive arguments. Science moves rather by induction from "hard" observable facts, and by the interplay between theory and observation. Personally, I am friendly to both the classical and the empirical ways of thinking, and I suggest we need to be thus bi-friendly in order to make progress. Again, I am in favor of arguing in these quasi-platonic ways; but I'm aware that they are invoking the faculty of Intuition, and not merely a scientific intellect. Classically, the intellect was considered not just what's measured by a high IQ, but also the intuitive faculty, and Hart's thinking is a good example of this (for example, in his speaking of the Infinite). Personally, I would also want to explore further, beyond Hart's invocation of the Absolute, into the apophatic tradition as well, where it's recognized that at some point, the discursive intellect has to actually "shut up", and mystical apprehension can find its rightful place at the table. I love the level where one speaks of the Infinite, and I also love the level where one realizes on can't speak of the infinite at all, precisely because it is in- (not) finite, and therefore beyond words, since words are basically predications and determinations and therefore limitations. Since Hart is an Orthodox theologian, I'm sure he's familiar with apophaticism, and more specifically pseudo-Dionysius and the neo-Platonists from which pseudo-Dionysius drew his thinking, and moreover, the fact that all Christian mysticism flows from pseudo-Dionysius, directly or indirectly. It's interesting that the Platonic academy became Skeptical after the lifetime of Plato, and while that's not strictly synonymous with our current "skepticism," it's not unrelated either, in temper and method. Where I'm going with all of this is that, ***if classical sensibility can be fast-forwarded beyond Plato and Aristotle to the Neo-platonists and their apophatic sensibility, and to Skepticism both Academic and Pyrrhonian, THERE's where there's a more fruitful nexus for dialogue with contemporary science and naturalism could be located.*** Dialogue is welcome!

[@Sepazuzu]

Robb Feldhaus Post-modernism has nothing to with it. Postmodernism is just a reaction against modernity

[@emmashalliker6862]

He's talked about the apophatic tradition loads.

[@Robb3348]

@@Sepazuzu How disheartening that this is your response to my post. A glib, basically content-free assertion, apparently aimed at fighting me or correcting me, with no respect for, or even advertence to, my thoughts.

[@Robb3348]

@@emmashalliker6862 "Talking loads" about apophaticism is at least a little bit paradoxical, wouldn't you say? :)

[@koffeeblack5717]

I agree that this talk will not convinced the uninitiated, but that's not what it's for. I'm sure Hart's presentation and content would differ if he were debating an atheist- sadly the only such debate that almost happened didn't happen because of Christopher Hitchen's passing.

[@vampireducks1622]

Re Ibn Arabi's ternary , it's actually , wujud, *wijdan,* and wajd - not "wajid", which doesn't mean anything.

[@TheGuiltsOfUs]

Then he never understood rabbi Yeshua in the first place, radical Torah observance not its abandonment - that was his teaching!

[@AeonsOfFrost]

14:30 Ooh, breaking with the Thomists who stake their position in the immateriality of the *intellect*? Who deny that the "Hard Problem" is hard if one takes the extended Aristotelian conception of "matter?" That's ... surprising.

[@desertportal353]

@2:50 ... Hello Shiva !

[@MrTorontoRob]

"Naïve" is a rather imprecise term, and seems to me to be a rather offhanded comment that has little relevance to the point of his lecture. In fact, it seems to me that his comment is that the atheist project is often (certainly not always) working under that "naïve" assumption that if a sufficiently coherent "natural" explanation can be given of the cosmos, then God is, by this method, "explained" away. This may be indeed true for Craig, but not for Hart.

[@kimiraikkonen8618]

29:00

[@whoami8434]

The more one reduces the subjective quality of experience to the world of objective physical events, the more one loses the sense of the data to be explained; namely, subjective experience. If one cannot find the explanation within the physical order, then one simply shifts their gaze to the immaterial. I wonder why that shift is so difficult for some to make.

[@RMT192]

I don't know who you are but your all over DBH videos. I would suggest to you that physicality can dominate a mind so much that the immaterial becomes invisible to the point of an impossibility. The subjective can also be so unpleasant and reduced for some that there is complete contempt for the experience itself.

[@DarkMoonDroid]

Today's academic theology lecture is brought to you by the word: "Squingingly" 🤓

[@elel2608]

23:00

[@dantekierkegaard9763]

11:25

[@whoami8434]

30:42

[@johnstewart7025]

"There cannot be a physical cause of existence." The debate shouldn't be about Nature vs. Supernature, but about whether there was a cause at all. As far as we know, there has never not been SOMETHING. (I'm not going to attempt to discuss the Big Bang.) A cause of existence presupposes that existence is not infinite in both directions in time. Explanations are needed only if we claim that there was a BEGINNING. Creation myths may be just that: myths. Obviously, we desire to know more and we desire divinity (perfect power, control and happiness). These are in short supply, however, they are available by living according to spiritual principles, which one could call Supernatural or purely natural. See Sam Harris on meditation, for instance.

[@a.sobolewski1646]

"As far as we know, there has never not been SOMETHING. (I'm not going to attempt to discuss the Big Bang.) A cause of existence presupposes that existence is not infinite in both directions in time." This cannot be true in principle. Even the eternal universe will need something that is the existence itself to actualize it and maintain it in contingent existence. 1 Change is the real feature of the world 2 Change is the actualization of a potential 3 So, the actualization of potential is a real feature of the world 4. No potential can be actualized unless something already actual actualizes it (the principle of causality) 5. So, any chance is caused by something already actual 6. The occurrence of any change C presupposes some thing or substance S which changes. 7. The existence of S at any given moment itself presupposes the concurrent actualization of S’s potential for existence. 8. So, any substance S has at any moment some actualizer A of its existence 9. A’s own existence at the moment it actualizes S itself presupposes either (a) the concurrent actualization of its own potential for existence or (b) A’s being purely actual. 10. If A’s existence at the moment it actualizes S presupposes the concurrent actualization of its own potential for existence, then there exists a regress of concurrent actualizers that it either infinite or terminates in a purely actual actualizer. 11. But such a regress of cincurrent actualizers would constitute a hierarchal causal series, and such series cannot regress infinitely. 12. So, either A itself is a purely actual actualizer or there is a purely actual actualizer which terminates the regress that begins with the actualization of A. 13. So, the occurrence of C and thus the existence of S at any given moment presupposes the existence of a purely actual actualizer. 14. So, there is a purely actual actualizer. 15. In order for there to be more than one purely actual actualizer, there would have to be some differentiating feature that one such actualizer has that the others lack. 16. But there could be such a differentiating feature only if a purely actual actualizer had some unactualized potential, which, being purely actual, it does not have. 17. So, there can be no such differentiating feature, and thus no way for there to be more than one purely actual actualizer. 18. So, there is only one purely actual actualizer. 19. In order for this purely actual actualizer to be capable of change, it would have to have potential capable of actualization 20. But being purely actual, it lack any such potentials. 21. So, it is immutable or incapable of change. 22. If this purely actual actualizer existed in time, then it would be capable of change, which it is not. 23. So, this purely actual actualizer is eternal, existing outside of time. 24. If the purely actual actualizer were material, then it would be changeable and exist in time, which it does not. 25. So, the purely actual actualizer is immaterial. 26. If the purely actual were corporeal, then it would be material, which it is not. 27. So, the purely actual actualizer is incorporeal. 28. If the purely actual actualizer were imperfect in any way, it would have some unactualized potential, which, being purely actual, it does not have. 29. So, the purely actual actualizer is perfect. 30. For something to be less than fully good is for it to have a privation - that is, to fail to actualize some feature proper to it. 31. A purely actual actualizer, being purely actual, can have no such privation. 32. SO, the purely actual actualizer is fully good. 33. To have power entails being able to actualize potentials. 34. Any potential that is actualized is either actualized by the purely actual actualizer or by a series of actualizers which terminated in the purely actual actualizer. 35. So, all power derives from the purely actual actualizer. 36. But to be that from which all power derives is to be omnipotent. 37. So, the purely actual actualizer is omnipotent. 38. Whatever is in an effect is in its cause in some way, whether formally, virtually, or eminently (the principle of proportionate causality) 39. The purely actual actualizer is the cause of all things 40. So, the forms or patterns manifest in all the things it causes must in some way be in the purely actual actualizer. 41. The forms or patterns can exist either in the concrete way in which they exist in individual particular things, or in the abstract way in which they exist in the thoughts of an intellect. 42. They cannot exist in the purely actual actualizer in the same way they exist in individual particular things. 43. So, they must exist in the purely actual actualizer in the abstract way in which they exist in the thoughts of an intellect. 44. So, the purely actual actualizer has intellect or intelligence. 45. Since it is the forms or patterns of all things that are in the thoughts of this intellect, there’s nothing that is outside the range of those thoughts. 46. For there to be nothing outside the range of thoughts is for that thing to be omniscient. 47. So, the purely actual actualizer is omniscient. 48. So, there exists a purely actual casue of the existence of things, which is one, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, fully good, omnipotenet, intelligent, and omniscient. 49. But for there to be such a cause of things is just what it is for God to exists. 50. So, God exists. Btw, there's a reason why none of the New Atheists would ever debate David Bentley Hart or Ed Feser: they would be intellectually destroyed. Take a look at correspondence between Feser and Jerry Coyne. The best the New Atheists can do is the "debunking" of Aquinas in Dawkins' "God Delusion" which was as intellectual as farting in public.

[@johnstewart7025]

@@a.sobolewski1646 I would take out the word hierarchical and that let's the series be infinite. Another idea. It seems that everything is paired. There is no simple substance.

[@a.sobolewski1646]

John Stewart You cannot coherently take out “hierarchical”. That’s the point

[@johnstewart7025]

@@a.sobolewski1646 One meaning of hiearchy would be just an order. Another would be that each level has a decreasing value compared to the one that comes later. It is only the second one that makes a difference, and I don't' see any reason to assume that.

[@a.sobolewski1646]

@@johnstewart7025 "One meaning of hierarchy would be just an order." Infinite hierarchical order is synonymous with non-existence. To get the existence you inevitably need one self-existing cause on top of hierarchy even if you have eternal multi-universes. "Another would be that each level has a decreasing value compared to the one that comes later." I don't see how it is related to this argument. Can you elaborate a bit, if you don't mind? It is only the second one that makes a difference, and I don't' see any reason to assume that. Well, the hierarchical sequence of causes will derive the contingent existence from the one self-existing cause.

[@desertportal353]

The suchness of things is the I am ness of God.

[@koffeeblack5717]

And we have three such suchnesses! This is the basis of the Trinity. There is the inner suchness (Holy Spirit) that animates the soul. The immanent suchness of nature (Logos) that shines out as natural beauty. And then Suchness such as it is (The Father/The Transcendent). The three creative modalities of Suchness are also participated in by human creativity (our transcendent muse, our inner call to expression, and the creative production: co-equal parts of creativity).

[@TheGuiltsOfUs]

drivel

[@mypublicchannel3884]

"Absolute value?" Is that not an oxymoron? What you are aiming at is a theory of everything, but as such a thing is not known or knowable, you fill in the gap with the term god, not being able to locate nor to observe such a thing. You need to listen to parts 1 and 2 of Dr. John Hagelin's short talks on consciousness and the Unified Field. You are lacking a unified theory or explanation that connects the unmanifest with the manifest.

[@koffeeblack5717]

"Theory of everything" is the oxymoron. The Absolute cannot be encapsulated by theory but only indicated as the Ultimate horizon of meaning and value and encountered by Revelation. By pretending you understand God with your Unified Field you in fact immanentize the transcendent and thereby confuse the unmanifest and manifest. God is always already beyond our grasp and is for that reason the hidden purpose and value in all our acts. Perhaps you experience I AM and superimpose your egoism onto its Glorious Presence, but in doing so you've made an idol. You then take this idol and juxtapose it to an isomorphic mathematical model and call it a "theory of everything". This is not salvation but a dead end for the soul.

[@koffeeblack5717]

But to answer your question, no, Absolute value is not an oxymoron and its coherency as a concept can be easily explicated. A relative value is that which has something else as its end. Food is a value for the end of survival and not in itself valuable (ergo a relative value). Thus an absolute value is simply that which is an end in itself. While you can deny that such a value exists and is anything more than a postulated asymptote of reason (ala Kant), you cannot declare that it is incoherent.

[@mypublicchannel3884]

@@koffeeblack5717 Boy are you entirely full of shit. People must scurry away from you at cocktail parties. Anyone who uses the term "god" is completely lost. Albert Einstein and I see eye to eye when he said "The word god, for me, in nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness."

[@TheWorldsStage]

He's Jordan Peterson if Jordan Peterson was intelligent and had a beard

[@TxRiverElf]

Speaking of 'absolutes'... GLUTTONY is one of the declared 'sins' of the all powerful god that Hart presumes to know and 'defend'.... a sin that a truly 'faithful sort' should REPENT and OVERCOME... but he apparently hasn't or doesn't want to... so not a very credible example of the supernatural powers... of gods, or the entreating thereof... to guide those in conscious pursuit, to reflect such a 'deity's will'... Hart likes to talk circles... and 'qualitatively' never proves a darn thing... except his presumption of philosophical 'greatness'.... while being 'anchored in a gluttonous physical form'... seeking to profit in the physical world, 'educating others' on the 'spiritual realms'.

[@Mrm1985100]

Yes, you're right, there is a problem with overeating in a lot of Christianity.

[@TxRiverElf]

@@piquant7103 do tell. I have had 'complicated health issues'... and they did not result in me being fat. So, what EXACTLY was the condition that made him fat, other than increased wealth and gluttony?

[@koffeeblack5717]

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

[@franciscafazzo3460]

uses no scripture

[@mrloski2915]

He does in other places, this is a philosophical lecture at an art symposium. Beauty is in the public domain, even children can view it there. This speech doesn't require the Bible as beauty emanates from God in ways that are beyond and inclusive of scripture.

[@threestars2164]

@@mrloski2915 Gibberish. I might as well say beauty emanates from the ass of a metaphysical unicorn. Either provide proof for the God of the bible (which he is supposedly a believer of) or don't bother.

[@kimiraikkonen8618]

24:00