david bentley hart substack david bentley hart substack

Kenogaia Next. Novel is not really the right word for the book. Professor Hart was a Directors Fellow and a Templeton Fellow in residence at the NDIAS. Its fundamental argumentthat the traditional concept of tradition as a metaphysical force in all surviving post-Christendom Christianities, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the various Protestant communities is incoherent, that a workable concept of tradition is however necessary for Christianity to be what Christians claim it to be, and that the only possible such concept will be one that is oriented primarily towards the futureis one that I already believed, but could not have put as well and would not have thought to put a contrario but also in succession to John Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel. James Dominic Rooney regarding the necessity of all being saved", "Universal Salvation? Ep. It builds off a series of columns Hart began to write during the middle of the previous decade, in which he has a long series of conversationsabout cognition, about the Beatles, about the ontological primacy of spiritwith his dog, Roland. [82], Hart is married and has one grown son with whom he co-wrote the children's book The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla (2019). Because David Bentley Hart freely admits to not having a "pastoral bone in his body," I'm curious to see whether he reflects upon the ways in which Christian tradition, at least when well-curated and held with an open hand, can bring incredible blessing and richness to people's lives. DAVID BENTLEY HART: Well, I definitely don't believe in an eternal hell, no. -52:26. Although grounded primarily in arguments from Christian metaphysics and moral philosophy, the book also considers biblical exegesis, systematic theology, and historical theology (with extensive references to universalist ideas among Christian patristic figures such as Gregory of Nyssa). Will these books interest readers who arent otherwise concerned with Harts worldview? Socrates will always surpass Gorgias in the long run. As literary influences, Hart and others have noted Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame. Hart is the rare writer whose nonfiction works feature rhetorical artistry and poetic prose that I would not want to deprive the ordinary reader the joy of discovering for the first time on their own. Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief. In response to outcries from former fans, Hart insists that he is a basically consistent writer who has merely shifted his emphasis on certain points. David Hart Aug 3, 2022 07. "[42][43], In 2022, the Catholic Media Association awarded a first place prize to Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale) in the category of Escapism for authors from other traditions. Bhakti, Mahyna Buddhism, Vishishtadvaita Vedanta, and Sikhism), Kabbalah, Sufi Islam, and Taoic religions. might be asked less admiringly. [56][57], Although there are accusations of heterodoxy from some of Hart's Christian critics, especially after his 2019 publication of That All Shall Be Saved, a variety of prominent Christian scholars with strong commitments to traditional Christianity praised the book. Anyway, I also do not want to spoil the argument too much. What follows is my own open letter in response. A young boy, Michael, living on a world called Kenogaia, is entrusted by his father with a secret: there is a new object in the sky, headed to earth. Ep. Next. Clause follows clause like the folds in a voluminous garment, every noun set off by beguiling and unusual modifiers (plus some of his old favorites, like beguiling). Webdavidbentleyhart .substack .com. Launched 2 years ago Biblical scholarship, classics, theology, philosophy, popular culture, poetry, short stories, and gardening. taylormertins.substack.com. Yet even Harrys excessive and grotesque embodiment seems the gift of a good God. 62 Dr. David Bentley Hart on his Substack newsletter "Leaves in the Wind" and, of course, Frank Robinson. Ep. He exposes his opponents errors of fact or logic with ruthless precision.[40], Oliver Burkeman, writing in The Guardian in January 2014, praised Hart's book The Experience of God as "the one theology book all atheists really should read". Ep. 3 2 3 likes Community Ep. Please email comments to [emailprotected] and join the conversation on our Facebook page. 3 2 3 likes Community WebFoliis tantum ne carmina manda, ne turba volent rapidis ludibria ventis Click to read Leaves in the Wind, by David Bentley Hart, a Substack publication with thousands of readers. A metaxological view of tradition may well be what Hart is pressing, even as his rhetoric sometimes suggests a liquifying of the Christian tradition to the extent that it risks liquidating it. This just distracts from examining the serious consequences of his own views. Not long after this, his father is arrested by a pack of lycanthropic civil servants. Email. Departing from the spiritual elitism of some Gnostic writers, Hart makes it clear that none of his characters are merely physical: everyone we have met throughout the novel, it turns out, is a spark of the divine, including several distinctly dislikable characters. But I suspect I will die before that day comes. [50][51] Edward Feser claimed in April 2022 that Hart's book You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature advocates pantheism. FREE PREVIEW. To do so, Oriens must, with Michael and Lauras help, find his sister, who has been kidnapped by a demiurgic sorcerer and forced to dream Kenogaia into existence. [30], Hart added two books to his fiction works in 2021: Roland in Moonlight and Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale). In 2017-2018, he served as the NDIAS's Assistant Director of Undergraduate Research Assistants. The religious system of Kenogaia resembles those varieties of orthodox Christianity that Hart rejects. Ep. What is the purpose of human existence? David Artman August 4, 2021. This is, if Ive understood it correctly, one of several arguments he makes in The Beauty of the Infinite. Hart is the rare writer whose nonfiction works feature rhetorical artistry and poetic prose that I would not want to deprive the ordinary reader the joy of discovering for the first time on their own. His short stories have been described as "Borgesian" and are elaborate metaphysical fables, full of wordplay, allusion, and structural puzzles. Wilson described this "dialogue with the author's dog Roland, who turns out to be a philosopher of mind, with a particular bee in his bonnet about the inadequacy of materialist explanations for 'consciousness'" as "probably the dottiest book of the year" while noting that "I KEEP returning to it. In 2017-2018, he served as the NDIAS's Assistant Director of Undergraduate Research Assistants. Harts case against fideism (the term that appears late in the book as something of a replacement for Blondels extrinsicism to denote those who believe for beliefs sake, or who submit to the authority of institutions uncritically on the grounds of some perceived antiquity or self-referential continuity; to some extent, this might be the ideological equivalent for this book to what infernalism was in That All Shall Be Saved) is one that the reader should follow by reading it and can only really internalize by doing so; summarizing it here would both rob the reader of the experience as well as cheapen the argument itself. Also by this author Say What You Mean His essays often mix humor and critical commentary. In The Beauty of the Infinite (2003), his first book, he respectfully critiques them; in The Doors of the Sea (2005) he politely rejects them; these days he mostly insults them. control, salvation, recapitulation, the crucified Christ, David Bentley Hart, and eschatological tension. Aurelian is a political science prof at Indiana University in Bloomington. I prefer to think of myself more as a scholar of religious studies, by the way, than a theologianand there are a lot of people who would prefer I call myself that, as well. 60 Dr. Thomas Senor - Christian Philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arkansas, and editor of the academic journal Faith and Philosophy. WebWe would like to show you a description here but the site wont allow us. WebSelf As Lab | David Hart | Substack About Self As Lab I have always been curious. in Theology from the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia. If Harts corpus were to be compared with that of Origens, then Tradition and Apocalypse is easily his Book IV of the De Principiis: the articulation of a comprehensive exegetical method not simply for reading Christian texts but the fact of Christianity itself. [37], On May 27, 2011, Hart's book Atheist Delusions was awarded the Michael Ramsey Prize in Theology by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. David Artman August 4, 2021. David Bentley Harts 2022 You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature shows that the debate is alive and by no means merely academic and inconsequentialpantheism, tradition, orthodoxy, and heterodoxy are all very much at stake in the argument. I long for the day, however, when I can return to my posture of airily insouciant disdain for the whole system and can again cast votes only for hopeless third party candidates with a clear conscience. At first I thought that this was another one of his provocations. Facebook. 13. Launched 2 years ago Biblical scholarship, classics, theology, philosophy, popular culture, poetry, short stories, and gardening. -52:26. The picture here is of a perhaps permanently stalled Christianization of the world, turned back by the Promethean arrogance of modernity. Reading his nonfiction alongside his fictionwhich includes The Devil and Pierre Gernet: Stories (2012), The Mystery of Castle MacGorilla (2019), and the two books considered here, Roland in Moonlight and Kenogaia (both 2021)has made it clear to me that he wasnt kidding. (It even anticipates his reading of the Garden of Eden story as one in which an insecure God tries to stifle the growth of his creatures.) With a few more specifics, Hart wrote on April 3, 2022: In my heart of hearts, I want to vote for someone whose entire political philosophy is derived from John Ruskin by way of Kenneth Grahame, with lashings of William Cobbett, Gilbert White, and William Morris; failing that, I want to enjoy the luxury of writing in Wendell Berry on every ballot. WebA reader of David Bentley Hart's Substack informed me of a post where he engages in his usual bilious attacks and misrepresentations. Both booksindeed all of Harts fictionsare overlong. Devouring everything I can trying to "level up", to understand myself and this world better, to edge an advantage, to try and shine a light slightly further down the tunnel of where life might go. Among his signal contributions to the popular understanding of these matters is the clear distinction he insists upon between the easy and the hard problems of consciousness, the former being those of the psychological and physiological structures and processes associated with mental events, the latter being that of the phenomenal character In his nonfiction writing, is he, perhaps, sometimes just a little hasty in his generalizations, a bit lavish with his use of the No serious scholar of X would ever think of denying Y formula? But the imminent collapse of the civil order of the entire world doth make pragmatists of us all. in Interdisciplinary Study from the University of Maryland, a M.Phil. David Artman August 4, 2021. Launched 2 years ago Biblical scholarship, classics, theology, philosophy, popular culture, poetry, short stories, and gardening. Hart also maintains a subscription newsletter called Leaves in the Wind that features original essays and conversations with other writers such as Rainn Wilson, China Miville, Tariq Goddard, and Salley Vickers. Oct 21, 2021 On Christian Freedom and Capitalism - David Bentley Hart The employment of the will, if it's truly to be free, can never be severed from intellect as a knowledge of what it is you're seeking. Aurelian is a political science prof at Indiana University in Bloomington. He said in a 17 November 2020 interview about a pre-release reading of his book You Are Gods: At the end of the day, Im a monist as any sane person is. Facebook 0 David Artman September 15, 2021. Perhaps, here, Sophie's World meets Alice through the Looking-Glass, or Don Quixote meets The Wind in the Willows. davidbentleyhart.substack.com. FREE PREVIEW. I prefer to think of myself more as a scholar of religious studies, by the way, than a theologianand there are a lot of people who would prefer I call myself that, as well. WebA reader of David Bentley Hart's Substack informed me of a post where he engages in his usual bilious attacks and misrepresentations. One asks the question in awe. On days where I do not think very much of myselfso, most daysthose voices are profound to me; on days where I struggle, in the third year of a pandemic that has seen several changes in religious community for me and my family and that has witnessed the decline of regular attendance at liturgy for me and that is now beginning to witness a real loss of desire and energy for prayer between vocational and domestic work and the rat race of trying to sketch out a decent future for my child in the hellscape of the contemporary world, those voices are practically all that I can hear blaring in my ears when I dare to call myself a Christian. We cannot search it out within the closed totality of the damaged world because it belongs to another frame of time, another kind of time, one more real than the time of death. In an essay titled "A Person You Flee at Parties: Donald and the Devil" (about Donald Trump from May 6, 2011, for First Things), Hart concluded: Cold, grasping, bleak, graceless, and dull; unctuous, sleek, pitiless, and crass; a pallid vulgarian floating through life on clouds of acrid cologne and trailed by a vanguard of fawning divorce lawyers, the devil is probably eerily similar to Donald Trumpthough perhaps just a little nicer. My copy of this book just arrived, and I'm eager to read it. Personally, I would like as many walls of citations standing between us and hell as possible. But yeah, the book is about Christian universalismabout not only its history, but its logic. Tradition and Apocalypse, published earlier this year, insists that there is no single deposit of tradition that Christians should strive to recover; we are faithful to something far beyond us, not behind us. Or, to put the matter differently, its roots go back that far and even to a few years before that. [16] His primary academic interests have been philosophical theology, systematics, patristics, classical and continental philosophy, and South and East Asian religion with recent focus on the genealogy of classical and Christian metaphysics, ontology, the metaphysics of the soul, and the philosophy of mind. I have picked at the book and may end up reading it, but Hart seems to be off-balance of late. We'll recommend top publications based on the topics you select. Book: The Bitcoin Standard - Saifedean Ammous (Part 3/3) Listen now (37 min) | The invention of digital scarcity. But my hunch is that those same people, stoked into compassion by their own lives as strangers and exiles, may generally be who is left at the end of this centurys promised tumult to keep the apocalyptic dream alive. 62 Dr. David Bentley Hart on his Substack newsletter "Leaves in the Wind" and, of course, Frank Robinson. I found it entertaining and clever in many places, and illuminating in the way that it fits so many of Harts spiritual and intellectual concerns into a single framework. [28], In 2012, The Devil and Pierre Gernet, a collection of his fiction, was released by Eerdmans. (As far back as 2005, a character asks a Hart stand-in, Do you really believe anything, other than that God is a very appealing idea, and that youd like to live forever in some shady deer park above the clouds?) He has always shown affinity for Gnosticism: his moving 2009 story A Voice from the Emerald World was written in part to show his students the explanatory power of the Gnostic cosmos. So the writer may as well use whatever comes to hand. Hart has always oscillated between writing about Christianity from inside and writing about it from outside, as it were. [89][90][91] On August 8, 2020, Hart wrote: Im basically an anarchist and communalist. Among his signal contributions to the popular understanding of these matters is the clear distinction he insists upon between the easy and the hard problems of consciousness, the former being those of the psychological and physiological structures and processes associated with mental events, the latter being that of the phenomenal character David Hart Aug 3, 2022 See all David Bentley Hart Angelico Press $24.95 | 386 pp. -52:26. I am starting a subscription newsletter on Substack, dedicated to all the topics that fascinate me, in all the genres in which I typically write. [48][49] Peter Leithart wrote a critical response to Hart's book That All Shall Be Saved called "Good God?" A Reply to David Bentley Hart", "Ep. David Bentley Hart Design by. Hart's book That All Shall Be Saved was published on September 24, 2019, and makes the case that universalism is the only coherent version of the Christian faith. Near the end, Roland enjoins Hart to continue to believe all of it, and Hart agrees that he cannot relinquish any dimension of anything that I find appealing or admirable from all the worlds religions. Near the conclusion of Atheist Delusions (2010), he lamented the end of the Christian revolution in world history: I am apprehensive, I confess, regarding a certain reactive, even counter-revolutionary, movement in late modern thinking, back toward the severer spiritual economies of pagan society and away from the high (and admittedly unrealistic) personalism or humanism with which the ancient Christian revolution coloredthough did not succeed in wholly formingour cultural conscience. It seems to me quite reasonable to imagine that, increasingly, the religion of the God-man, who summons human beings to become created gods through charity, will be replaced once again by the more ancient religion of the man-god, who wrests his divinity from the intractable material of his humanity, and solely through the exertions of his will. Facebook. He charges at everybody as though that person were an old friend brought back from the dead. Ornateness is just Harts mode, anyway; one might as well fault Kraftwerk for using computers. He has two brothers: Addison Hodges Hart (also an author)[83][84] and Fr. Its fundamental argumentthat the traditional concept of tradition as a metaphysical force in all surviving post-Christendom Christianities, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the various Protestant communities is incoherent, that a workable concept of tradition is however necessary for Christianity to be what Christians claim it to be, and that the only possible such concept will be one that is oriented primarily towards the futureis one that I already believed, but could not have put as well and would not have thought to put, but also in succession to John Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel. Its possible to measure that trajectory by comparing two statements about the possibilities of Christian renewal. This just distracts from examining the serious consequences of his own views. You have to ask yourself, "Whose more free, the person who knows what it is that he's seeking or the person who doesn't?" Read in the Substack app. [93], For the religious historian specializing in Presbyterianism, see, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, "Review: David Bentley Hart's 'Splendid Wickedness', "A Mind-Bending Translation of the New Testament", "Martyn Wendell Jones Essay on Two New David Bentley Hart Books", "A DECLARATION ON THE 'RUSSIAN WORLD' (RUSSKII MIR) TEACHING", "David Bentley Hart To Lead Colloquium On "Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness In Nature", "Description of The New Testament: A Translation", "David Bentley Hart's New Testament Translation", "What's New About David Bentley Hart's Translation of the New Testament; Assessing its Translation Effectiveness and Affectiveness", "The 'Ideal Version of the Text': A Text-Critical Review of the Greek Text Behind David Bentley Hart's New Testament", "Description of The New Testament: A Translation (Second Edition)", "David Bentley Hart to Speak at Benedictine College", "David Bentley Hart: Commentary on the Liberal Arts, Civilization, and the Future of Christianity", "A Person You Flee at Parties: Donald and the Devil", "The Devil and Pierre Gernet - David Bentley Hart", "DBH's the Devil and Pierre Gernet: A Pendulation of Spirit", "Roland in Moonlight by David Bentley Hart", "Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale) by David Bentley Hart", "Roland in Moonlight, by David Bentley Hart: John Saxbee learns from man's best friend", "The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth", "Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest", "Winner of 10,000 Theology Prize Announced", "David B. Hart wins the 2011 Michael Ramsay prize", "The one theology book all atheists really should read", "Roland Receives His First Book of the Year Notice", "Catholic Media Association 2022 Book Awards", "The New Testament in the strange words of David Bentley Hart", "Translating the N. T. Wright and David Bentley Hart Tussle", "The Spiritual Was More Substantial Than the Material for the Ancients", "Whose pantheism? $24.95 | 386 pp. This steady output of often provocative essays have appeared in First Things (2003 to 2020),[23] The New Atlantis,[24] Commonweal, Aeon, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many other periodicals. If Harts corpus were to be compared with that of Origens, then Tradition and Apocalypse is easily his Book IV of the De Principiis: the articulation of a comprehensive exegetical method not simply for reading Christian texts but the fact of Christianity itself. Harts case against fideism (the term that appears late in the book as something of a replacement for Blondels extrinsicism to denote those who believe for beliefs sake, or who submit to the authority of institutions uncritically on the grounds of some perceived antiquity or self-referential continuity; to some extent, this might be the ideological equivalent for this book to what infernalism was in, ) is one that the reader should follow by reading it and can only really internalize by doing so; summarizing it here would both rob the reader of the experience as well as cheapen the argument itself. If Harts corpus were to be compared with that of Origens, then. Let's hope David's new book serves to further that blessed conversation. David Hart Aug 3, 2022 07. I wanted to discuss the matter with Harry, our bulldog. And that, however much Harts belief (like anyones) may fluctuate, Christ still rushes at him with the same canine enthusiasm. Some readers will dislike the books whimsicality and excesses, but Rolands digressions on the mind-cosmos relationship make these a small price to pay. DBH might doubt the intellectual pedigree of such tradition, but at the very least, the lives of the faithful testify to an experiential coherence within Christianity that is both real and life-giving. Kenogaia (A Gnostic Tale) David Bentley Hart Angelico Press $22.95 | 434 pp. Share this post. Published in the October 2022 issue: View Contents Tags Books Theology Fiction Phil Christman is a lecturer at the University of Michigan and the author of Midwest Futures. 13. The New Testament: A Translation was published in 2017 with Yale University Press (and a 2nd edition in 2023). WebDavid Bentley Hart may be reached at dhart4@nd.edu. (Something of the sort worked well enough in the empire of Graeco-Roman late antiquity or the empire of Kublai Khan.) So I understand both the difficulty of explaining it and the impossibility of forgetting it, at once, and how it can change your life. Wilson as his November 2021 Book of the Year for the Times Literary Supplement. Over at Substack, David Bentley Hart has written an open letter in reply to my recent review, at Public Discourse, of his book You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature . Webdavidbentleyhart .substack .com. I show his arguments are fallacious. David Bentley Hart (born 1965) is an American writer, philosopher, religious studies scholar, critic, and theologian noted for his distinctive, humorous, pyrotechnic and often combative prose style. There are various ambigua or aporiai the work raises for mean earlier draft of this review had, for example, a rather extended section on the historical Jesus and the question of how, given what we can reasonably say about who Jesus was on the basis of what data we have about his life, a futurist orientation towards the apocalyptic meaning of tradition affects not only our delayed sense of eschatology but even more basic concepts like what it is for Jesus to be messiah, a category that was a live one in his own day but, in the 21st century, has theological purchase with an absolute minority of world Jews; I had also intended some comments about the ecclesiological virtues of Christian communions like, say, Anglicanism which are committed to the idea of eventually disappearing as discrete structures into a supervening ecumenical unity in the future, and the possibility Hart treats towards the end that Christianity itself might find its inner rational coherence better explained by contextualization in another religious tradition altogether, or minimally with other religious traditionsbut they are possibilities that proceed from this basic sympathy with its argument and probably distractions on the whole from the real crux of the matter, which is that you should read the book. He has always been at least as concerned with the re-enchantment of the world, by any spiritual means necessary, as with Christian theology itself. B. Eerdmans, 2003), The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale, 2013), The Hidden and the Manifest: Essays in Theology and Metaphysics (Eerdmans, 2017), That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (Yale, 2019), Theological Territories: A David Bentley Hart Digest (Notre Dame Press. Roland in Moonlight is too strange, entertains too many important questions, and is written with too palpable a love for Harts family and his dog not to command the attention of philosophically inclined readers. This is only the first posting, and yet this Substack page is about forty years old. David Bentley Harts prodigious mind and imagination has given us just such a book. by david bentley hart baker academic, 208 pages, $24.99 David Bentley Hart was once the darling of postliberal theologians for his brilliant books on divine beauty and the illogic of atheism. David Bentley Hart Angelico Press $24.95 | 386 pp. [18][19][20][21][22], Since the late 1990s, Hart has published hundreds of essays on varied subjects including Don Juan, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Segalen, Leon Bloy, William Empson, David Jones, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1893), and baseball. WebWe would like to show you a description here but the site wont allow us. Thousands of paid subscribers Leaves in the Wind It becomes an extended argument against philosophical materialism, prosecuted, successfully, by Roland, who must often pause to explain his more startling apothegms to his slower-witted companion. Published in the October 2022 issue: View Contents Tags Books Theology Fiction Phil Christman is a lecturer at the University of Michigan and the author of Midwest Futures. [78][79][80] This grounding in Christian metaphysics, insistence on universalism being the only true articulation of the Christian gospel, and use of combative rhetoric all combine to make Hart's case for universalism more uncompromising than most previous Christian arguments, and this has led to the use of the term "hard universalism" to describe Hart's position.[81]. Webdavidbentleyhart .substack .com. 3 2 3 likes Community taylormertins.substack.com. Twitter. WebDavid Bentley Hart may be reached at dhart4@nd.edu. Describing Roland in Moonlight for a review in Church Times, John Saxbee (former Bishop of Lincoln) wrote: "Sometimes, a book defies description or, rather, refuses to settle into a conventional genre. David Bentley Hart (born 1965) is an American writer, philosopher, religious studies scholar, critic, and theologian noted for his distinctive, humorous, pyrotechnic and often combative prose style. Facebook 0 David Artman September 15, 2021. An Anglican convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, Hart has praised Orthodox thinkers such as Kallistos Ware, Alexander Schmemann, John Meyendorff, and Olivier Clment. David Hart Aug 3, 2022 See all Support our work today!]. Ep. Obsessed with learning. Is it important to hire Catholic intellectuals at Catholic universities? He writes with clarity and force, and he drives his points home again and again. [61], Hart has cited a wide variety of inspirations and influences in his writing as well as across his various areas of scholarship in religious studies, philosophy of mind, and Christian metaphysics. Jacks problems are the opposite of Harts; he knows his niche too well. David Artman August 4, 2021. ", This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Ep. Sign up to discover, read, and support great writing. WebDavid Bentley Hart | Substack David Bentley Hart Author of books and shorter works in a variety of genres--treatises, essay collections, fiction, children's fiction, vignettes, verse--on a variety of topics--religion, philosophy, literature, the arts, politics, culture, baseball, and so forth. Tradition and Apocalypse was no doubt prompted by Cyril O'Regan's response to Hart's contribution in the festschrift, "Exorcising Philosophical Modernity," edited by Philip John Paul Gonzales and published two years prior to Hart's book. Author of books and shorter works in a variety of genres--treatises, essay collections, fiction, children's fiction, vignettes, verse--on a variety of topics--religion, philosophy, literature, the arts, politics, culture, baseball, and so forth.