SINCE at least his Beauty of the Infinite (2003), David Bentley Hart has been regarded as among the most productive and gifted American theologians. Originally from an Episcopalian family, he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in his early twenties. Now embarking on his seventh decade, he is perhaps better characterised as too radical to be that narrowly circumscribed.
In particular, thanks to influence from Neo-Platonism and Hinduism, he is perhaps more appropriately identified as a monist. It is a position already developed in earlier Yale books such as The Experience of God: Being, consciousness and bliss (2013) and You are Gods: Nature and supernature (2022). The present book under review ends with a very similar perspective, a vision of the divine working through human minds as in familiar Hindu formulae such as tat tvam asi or Atman as Brahman, where some kind of essential overlap is accepted between human soul and divine identity.
This book’s predominant theme, however, is the inadequacy of any physical or material account of human consciousness. In its course, an ingenious device is deployed to help readers through what is a long book (more than 500 pages). It is given the structure of a typical Platonic dialogue, with the exchanges pursued over several days and with even the typical irrelevant little details that Plato commonly added, such as occasional comments on the weather or scenery.
The discussion, though, is moved to a more heavenly plane as three ancient gods (Eros, Hermes, and Psyche) challenge the various arguments in favour of physicalism proposed by Hephaestus, the obvious choice from the Greek pantheon. Heavily involved with his own workshop and forge, he had become patron of professional blacksmiths and carpenters.
The numerous attempts that have been made to link the physical and the mental in modern times are all surveyed, only to be dismissed by the other three participants. In theory, all the major figures in such approaches have their ideas and arguments fully represented, in a way that allows readers to distinguish various possibilities and significant figures.
Nevertheless, two main limitations may be observed. The first is that, while the philosophers and neuroscientists associated with a particular version are usually named, there is seldom mention of where more details could be pursued, as endnotes are few and there is no bibliography.
Second, no doubt to add to the fun, Hephaestus is patronisingly addressed as “Phaesty”, and is presented as even prepared to admit his own physical lameness as a general symbol for the weakness of the physicalists’ arguments. But, were that not bad enough, their actual arguments are repeatedly dismissed in uncomplimentary terms, effectively guiding readers to only one conclusion. Indeed, the book opens with a tirade against analytic philosophy, seen as amounting to no more than a pretence to clarity.
Such comments are in no way intended to imply that this is a bad book. On the contrary, it would be an ideal present for anyone inclined to think human consciousness and its capacities easily reducible to emergent properties of the physical world. As Hart observes again and again, not only are mental features such as the intentional character of language incapable of translation into similarly meaningful physical terms: equally, there is no way of establishing material conditions for some definite particular thought.
Yet, although that is so, Hart moves too quickly to his own mentalist conclusions, which seem equally insecure, especially in their now unqualified monist direction. Indeed, his description of the divine thinking through us, or us through the divine, remains irritatingly vague.
To my mind, the sensible Christian conclusion is, rather, to live with an element of uncertainty. Perhaps some version of physicalism will prove true; perhaps Hart’s monism. But, either way, in the mean time we need to keep our options open. That way, accommodating Christian belief to what the latest science or metaphysics throws up is unlikely to prove too sore a test for Christian belief.
The Revd Dr David Brown is Emeritus Wardlaw Professor of Theology, Aesthetics and Culture at the University of St Andrews.
All Things Are Full of Gods: The mysteries of mind and life
David Bentley Hart
Yale £25
(978-0-300-25472-3)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50
