A Wandering Conversation https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

A desultory exchange between two elderly man wearied by the interesting times they live in... https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

The Moment We Are In https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

The young man interviewing me is named Gabriel Ellison-Scowcroft, a journalist for the CBC in Montreal (though on Anglophone radio). Our conversation began with a consideration of the changes the smartphone has made in our lives, personal and social, but soon expanded into any number of related topics, including philosophy of mind, information theory, the progressive dissolution of human experience in the solvent of virtual space, the ubiquity of the algorithm, and (of course) dogs and otters.

...and ever so many other things beginning with M - with Eugene McCarraher, PhD., and Tara Isabella Burton, PhD.

https://genemccarraher.substack.com/p...

Eugene McCarraher, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity.

Tara Isabella Burton, PhD., is a novelist, cultural critic. She writes on religion, secular spirituality, identity, ritual, aesthetics and finding meaning in the modern age. She holds a doctorate in theology from Oxford University.

This is the record of what for me was an altogether delightful encounter. It was, I suppose, an interview, with me in the place of the interviewee. Bryn Morris is a reader of my works who lives in Sunshine Coast, Australia: A husband, father to a nine month old baby, a musician, and a friend of humpback whales and their young. He has taken assorted masters degrees in education and theology, even studying for a time under John Behr. He also studied geology at some juncture, being a lover of the sciences. And he writes a Substack publication of his own called A Leisurely Stroll.

The occasion of the conversation was that he thought I should have discussed my book Prisms, Veils in public a bit more than I have been able to do to this point, and offered to play the part of an interviewer on the topic. It was not hard to convince me, since the book is especially close to my heart. I expected a short conversation, but that was not to be, principally because Bryn turned out to be just about the most perceptive reader of the text I could have hoped for. In the course of the interview, we talked about any number of topics in the arts, philosophy, theology, the natural sciences, and so forth, all of which was rich and illuminating for me. More to the point, though, when Bryn questioned me directly about both the book as a whole and various of the stories in particular, his insights were to my mind extraordinarily penetrating. It made me think that the book actually succeeds at what I wanted it to do. I am extremely grateful to him.

One incidental note: At the end of the recording, the conversation turned to baseball (which is a game actually played by some Australians) and we paused to rhapsodize on the talents of Shohei Ohtani. As soon as the recording was finished, I went to watch the final NLCS game between LA and Milwaukee—a game in which Ohtani had possibly the single greatest performance on the field in the history of the sport. Six shut-out innings with ten strikeouts from the mound, his fastball reaching triple digits, his other pitches darting like dragonflies over a marsh, and three home runs at the plate. In fact, he started the first inning with three Ks in the top of the frame and then led off the bottom with the first of his homers. The second he hit left the stadium, so it is hard to say whether the estimate of 469 feet was accurate or not; it seemed to go that high before descending beyond the pavilions of Chavez Ravine. Anyway, what a remarkable moment of synchronicity. And can anyone doubt that Ohtani is not only the greatest baseball player of our time, but possibly the greatest there has ever been?

Though my brother Robert is an Anglican rector down in the Research Triangle down in North Carolina, he was a musician will before he ever considered ordination. Our conversation here, consequently, is on matters strictly musical. You can see he dressed for the occasion. The exchange took an unexpected turn. We began by discussing aspects of the performer's art and some of his own compositions, then shifted to Chopin (who was supposed to be the principal topic), only to veer off onto an extended discussion of The Beatles.

And, at last, the final chapter in the sprawling epic that was this year's Stanton Lectures. That infernal machine the "Owl" seems to me to have done an especially bad job of separating voices from the ambient sound in the lecture theatre, but that's what makes technological progress so exciting: it's as likely to make things worse as it is to make them better. In fact, the audio in the live recording is sufficiently bad in this case that I have recorded an alternative version, which I have used for this podcast here and over at the Substack page for Leaves in the Wind (https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com).

If one wants to follow the lecture easily, it might be better simply better to listen to this recording. If then wants to try to listen in to the final question and answer session of the lectures, one could start the original video at about the 47-minute mark and try to make out the exchanges recorded there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDYXOsEtURE.

In time, the lectures will be published, in considerably longer forms than the versions delivered live.

The penultimate chapter in this year's Stanton Lectures, again recorded--with questionable success--by the diabolical contraption known as the "Owl."

This is the third of this year's Stanton Lectures, once again captured by that unpleasant little automaton the "Owl." How well that device dealt with the acoustics of the lecture theatre is something of an open question; much depended upon how it was placed on any given day.

Here is the second of this year's Stanton Lectures, delivered at the University of Cambridge earlier this month. In this case, the lecture was recorded at the time of its public delivery. The device that captured the "performance" was something called an "Owl," a rather macabre little object that tracked movement and sound and then created a (to my mind) annoying composite image. I would have preferred a simple single-aspect camera, even one of relatively low resolution, as well as a dedicated microphone; but omnia mutantur and all that.

Since I have been asked by two friends, I should note that the object under the back panel of my jacket was an elastic padded brace for a muscle I pulled in my lower back. I was not smuggling contraband or concealing a phonograph (like the one Harpo uses to impersonate Maurice Chevalier in Monkey Business) or sporting an obi makuro. Honest.

This is the first of the Stanton Lectures that I delivered at the University of Cambridge at the end of April and through the first week and a half of May this year. It is not, however, a recording of the lecture as delivered on the first night of the series. Due to some errors of planning, which led to technical issues of an irresoluble nature, that recording was never made. The rest of the lectures were properly recorded, however, and will be posted in due time.

I apologize for my somewhat torpid performance here. In part, it is the result of having no one to react to whenever I turned my eyes up from the page, but in larger part it is because I am still in a very melancholy frame of mind.

[I am DBH’s temporary guest-editor while he and his family take time to themselves to continue to adjust to the loss of someone they love.]

This conversation was recorded on the evening of 10 May, at the London home of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake and his wife Jill Purce. Dr. Hart and his son (Patrick) were visiting for dinner, at which A. N. Wilson and his wife Ruth Guilding were allso guests; but, before everyone had gathered, there was time for Rupert Sheldrake and David Bentley Hart to slip upstairs to the study for this quick conversation.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist, biochemist, parapsychologist, philosopher and historian of science. He secured his doctorate in biochemistry at Cambridge for his work on plant hormones and development.

The topic of the piece is eclipses and it is directly related to the book "Eclipse and Revelation: Total Solar Eclipses in Science, History, Literature, and the Arts", edited by Tom McLeish and Henrike Lange (to which I contributed an essay). More specifically, her story principally concerns Native American beliefs, practices, and traditions. I found it a delightful conversation. Her piece appeared today (28 March), and it incorporates some material from the interview; but here is the interview in its entirety.

I spoke recently with Philip Ball, the prolific and extremely gifted writer on the sciences, principally about his recent Book How Life Works, but with occasional oblique references to other of his books, such as The Book of Minds and Beyond Weird. We discussed many things: a possible shift of paradigms in the life-sciences, the Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy, cognitive systems in organisms, xenobots, batrachian epithelial cells, medicine--and even a little metaphysics.

Philip Ball holds a degree in Chemistry and a PhD., in Physics from Oxford.

I recently had a conversation with the poet and literary essayist Norman Finkelstein. The conversation touched on his work and mine, as well as on poetry, prose, dreams, gnosticism, psychotherapy, consciousness, thin places, dogs, cats, and a number of other things. I will say only that I found it all immensely enjoyable.

The philosopher and essayist James Mumford (and yes, for those who have heard the rumor, he is the brother of Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons fame) recently interviewed me for an article he was writing. The chief topic was the second edition of my translation of the New Testament, and the conversation ranged over a broad variety of topics: the absence of any opposition between grace and nature in the Apostle Paul's thought, as of any opposition between nature and supernature; the social teachings of Jesus in the synoptics, and how thoroughly obscured they can become in traditional translations; the myth of a fallen archangel called Lucifer; the nature of the Logos in the fourth gospel; the meaning of "koinōnia" in the New Testament; the "new perspective" on Paul; the eschatology of the synoptics; universalism; allegorical exegesis; Thomists and fundamentalists; the nature of inspiration in "inspired" texts; and so forth and so on.

On nature and supernature, grace, traditionalist Thomism, resurrection bodies, socialism, mystic dogs, talking dogs...dogs...

I was interviewed many, many months back by Ross Allen for The Christian Century (which I know is quite evident from the title above, but I have to say something here), and the conversation ranged widely. A condensed version of the interview appeared recently in print in the magazine, and naturally that condensation has the effect of altering my voice (a it were); so here is the recording of the complete version.

We discussed Paul’s metaphysics, the invention of the opposition between “grace” and “nature,” the late invention of the category of “the supernatural,” the logic of deification, New Testament eschatology, the eschatological terminus of doctrinal definition, metaphysical monism, the encounters with the risen Christ in the New Testament, the social teachings and provocations of Jesus of Nazareth, Christian socialism, “National Conservatism” and Christianity, Roland’s vocabulary, whether traditional manualist Thomism is a psychopathy (yes), Roland’s mystical bent, postal deliveries, patristic allegory, allegorical readings of scripture in light of historical-critical method, my New Testament translation’s second edition, exogenous gentile olive trees, Roland’s ability to pronounce the consonant “y,” and ever so much more.

I recently conducted a conversation with the spry and sprightly Eugene McCarraher, Associate Professor of Humanities at Villanova and author of The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity. We ranged widely but not erratically over a number of topics (enchantment and disenchantment, Mammon, "Thomism," capitalism, Christian socialism, Ruskin and Morris and Tawney, Marxism, transhumanism, Romanticism, universalism--inter alia), and on the whole a good time was had by all.

Excuse the raspiness of my voice. As has been documented with tedious frequency, since 2014 I have suffered from an inflammatory pulmonary condition, and the smoke from the Canadian wildfires had been aggravating the condition for three days when this was recorded.

davidbentleyhart@substack.com.

On the mind, the structure of the brain, the structure of life, the arts, perceptions of reality, the pervasiveness of consciousness...

Scientist, physician, psychiatrist, writer, literary scholar, and philosopher Iain McGilchrist (PhD.,) is as genial as his work is fascinating. As anyone familiar with his books could attest, this conversation no more than grazes the surface of his thought; but it was, to my mind, a rich and absorbing conversation nevertheless. He is, moreover, almost aggressively sane.

https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com

Dr. Iain McGilchrist is best known for his groundbreaking brain hemisphere research, integrating this with epistemology, sociology, and metaphysics. His central claim is that the brain’s hemispheres don't merely perform different tasks, but disclose reality in fundamentally different ways.

The Master and His Emissary argues Western culture privileges reductive left-hemisphere cognition over holistic right-hemisphere perception.

The Matter with Things develops this into a metaphysical critique of materialism, defending consciousness, embodiment, and relational reality. McGilchrist’s work reframes hemispheric specialization, psychiatry, cognition, and phenomenological metaphysics.

When the novelist, essayist, and political theorist China Miéville and I last spoke, we left a few topics hanging, and so we resolved to return and address them later. This time we were joined by China’s fellow editor at the journal Salvage, Richard Seymour, essayist, cultural critic, political philosopher—et cetera. It was a great pleasure for me, I have to say, to waste time with two interlocutors at once so intelligent and so deeply humane.

On Gnosticism, visionary poetry, cats, dragons, Gnosticism, green children, green men, the Kalevala, Finnish culture....

I recently recorded a conversation with the effervescent poet Peter O’Leary. I chiefly wanted to talk to him about his fascination with Gnostic imagery, but of course these exchanges take on a life of their own. We did in fact spend a good deal of time discussing Gnosticism, ancient and modern, but a number of other topics came up as well, many of which are listed above, and many of which (Herbert Read, Yeats, the correct pronunciation of Greek, whether Greek and Latin stems should ever be combined in English words, Ronald Johnson, and so forth) are listed in parentheses just there ←. A good time was had by all: the two of us, the cat, the dragon…. Roland, unfortunately, was unable to attend, as he was delivering a paper at a conference in Kyoto.

This is my favorite among the topics we discussed, I have to say.

David Armstrong writes a delightful Substack newsletter called "A Perennial Digression," for which he also recorded several interviews. He has kindly provided me copies of the four interviews he recorded with me.

One shameful confession: at one point, where I meant to say Walter de la Mare, I for some reason said John Masefield. I cannot even imagine how that happened, but it took a week in sackcloth and ashes for me to feel pure again.

A dilatory exchange on prose style, hating Strunk & White, religion and literature, the numinous within the arts, atheists new and old, French bulldogs and their elfin origins, Harold Bloom, and so much more...

The (in person) jovial and (in print) mordant Ed Simon and I had a conversation recently, on any number of topics, but at greatest length on literary style and the tyranny of journalistic parsimony in style-manuals. During the first half of the exchange, there were occasional interjections and interruptions by a certain two-and-a-half year-old commentator, and as a result a few awkward cuts are now to be found in the recording. Once that captious critic had retired in disgust for a nap, things became more continuous (if less amusing).

My article on writing English prose, which provides the topic of our conversation for the first half hour or so, can be found online at https://thelampmagazine.com/blog/how-.... Ed's essay on the same topic can be found at the end of his essay collection Binding the Ghost.

David Armstrong writes a delightful Substack newsletter called "A Perennial Digression," for which he also recorded several interviews. The Substack is available online, and he has kindly provided me copies of the four interviews he recorded with me.

On poetry, translation, art & transcendence, Ronsard, Leopardi, Dante, consciousness, mind & being, the Last Men, universalism...

I recently enjoyed a conversation with the very eminent poet and translator Henry Weinfield. It ranged freely over many topics, most of which are listed above; but there were others as well (Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, for instance, all dropped by). My first acquaintance with Weinfield’s work came by way of his magisterial rendering of the complete poems of Mallarmé nearly thirty years ago and I have been an admirer ever since; but we became friends only in recent years.

Weinfield truly is a writer of extraordinary gifts; he is also a humane and generous soul.

On God, art, the novel, consciousness, the experience of the world, prayer, evil, heaven... (more or less what you might expect)...

Tariq Goddard is not only an esteemed novelist and publisher; he is also an extremely amiable man and a delightful interlocutor. The occasion of our conversation was the appearance of his latest book—High John the Conqueror—which is an ingenious amalgam of police procedural, supernatural thriller, metaphysical meditation, and morality tale. The conversation took its own course and the time passed very quickly.

On (let's see) fairies, dreams, fiction, consciousness, resurrection, children's literature, time, the Higgs boson, nature and supernature, the principium plenitudinis, and assorted related topics...

Salley Vickers is a wonderful novelist, but also a delightful, witty, kind, and (occasionally) sardonic soul. She also has magnificently good taste (I can tell, because her tastes and mine so frequently coincide). She also has a particularly sane vision of reality, which comes out in both her fiction and her conversation.

Excuse the hemming and hawing and broken syntax of her hapless interlocutor. The poor man seems to swing between spells of glib and fluently eloquent persiflage and spells of awkward, plodding, abortive, distracted, and positively semaphoric sentence fragments. Something to do, no doubt, with circadian rhythms, cycles of caffeine ingestion, and periodically insurgent feelings of bashfulness.

Excuse also the occasional respiratory noises picked up by a very sensitive microphone. As has been documented now with tedious regularity, my lungs were permanently affected by the illness that descended on me early in 2014, and in cold weather they still tend to labor a bit. The temperature here sank precipitately the day before our conversation. Next time—and there will be a next time—I shall adjust the equipment accordingly.

I had a conversation recently with China Miéville, the celebrated novelist, essayist, political theorist, and generally amiable soul. The proximate occasion, I suppose, was the appearance of his most recent book, A Spectre, Haunting, though our exchange ranged over his books and mine, fiction and non-fiction, and any number of topics that interest us both. And, of course, who can resist a conversation between a heterodox Marxist and a classical Christian socialist on the phenomenology of awe? I know I can’t.

This recording appears also on the Substack site for Leaves in the Wind.

Principally about his Bahá'í faith, but also about cinema, the nostalgias of middle-aged men, Emma Peel, Master Po and Master Han, and various other matters...

Rainn Wilson is an actor who has appeared in so many films and television programs that it is unlikely he needs much introduction. His best-known role is almost certainly that of Dwight Schrute in the American version of The Office. He is also, however, a writer and podcaster. And he is a genuinely lovely guy. Here our conversation chiefly concerns not his professional, but rather his spiritual life. Many of you may know—though I suspect a majority do not—that he is a practicing member of the Bahá’í Faith, and was in fact raised in the tradition.

Of course, other topics came up as well, many of them having to do with memories of a vanished and now essentially mythical epoch, the early 1970s. Given that he and I are nearly the same age, and inasmuch as middle-aged men are almost invariably sentimentalists about their childhoods, it was impossible for us wholly to avoid spasms of pathetic nostalgia.

If I seem a tad bibulous and inarticulate here and there, I ask your pardon. I may have been a little giddy during the recording, as I had been liberally dosed with both a muscle-relaxant and a strong pain medication; I had pulled a muscle on the right side of my neck. But I like to think I soldiered through, sustained by the pleasure of good company.