Two Eastern Pennsylvania Gatherings to Discuss David Bentley Hart's Book All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life

This book by David Bentley Hart, All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life from Yale University Press, has been anticipated for over 8 years. While serving as the 2015-2016 Templeton Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, Hart organized and hosted a colloquium entitled “Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness in Nature” that took place on March 14 to 15, 2016.

David Bentley Hart Colloquium Poster For Mind Soul World Consciousness In Nature At The Notre Dame Institute For Advanced Study March 2016

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Hart’s place as a Templeton Fellow had been secured by a proposal that we learn from the book Roland in Moonlight (which includes the full text of this proposal) was actually written by his concerned dog. This proposal aligns closely with the topic of the March 2016 colloquium and both were promissory of a book to come from Hart that is finally arriving in the hands of readers starting on August 28, 2024 or about 3,089 days after the NDIAS colloquium on “Mind, Soul, World: Consciousness in Nature” that set the stage for this work.

It would seem that some of the time involved in bringing this book to press included haggling with editors (and likely with various university publishers) over a substantial rewriting of the entire manuscript. As Hart described the book during an October 16, 2023 interview in Australia:

So I rewrote it as a long Platonic dialogue, 530 pages of Platonic dialogue, and it has four figures in it. The gods, you see, have retreated to the Epicurean intermundia, but they keep an eye on things down here. And they argue about things like whether there's a transcendent God and what's going on on earth. And Psyche, Hermes, and Eros all argue in different ways for the reality of Mind and Spirit and God, and their antagonist is Hephaestus who was the god who created the first automata.

Probably the single most substantial source of previous writings by Hart about some of the technical topics covered in this ambitious Platonic dialogue between four Greek deities are his ten-part series called “Reflections on Life and Mind” that ran from September 29, 2023 to January 29, 2024 in Hart’s Leaves in the Wind subscription newsletter.

Of course, many other writings by Hart have touched on these vast topics related to the philosophy of mind and consciousness. In contrast to the more scientific treatment in the ten-part essay series noted above, we have, for example, the closing story in Hart’s most recent Prisms, Veils: A Book of Fables entitled “Theophania (a fragment)” which includes these evocative passages:

Only yesterday, I saw a cloud of golden pollen raised by the wind, rolling across a meadow, sparkling, glowing, fecundating everything with its glory; and in it I saw the gods entwined in one another’s limbs, and saw the tenderness and exuberance of their carnal embraces. How can I explain it, though? It is not as it was on the night. They do not step forth from behind the veil. Yet I am aware of them always. A slowly flowing river is a god’s languor, a great tree a god’s patient gaze, the night full of stars a god’s detached pity.

…How irremediable a schism it has become, as if gods and mortals are so remote from one another now that our very worlds have grown apart, into separate histories that are only very occasionally visible to one another, and that perhaps diverge from one another ever more greatly as the years pass. I see them, even if not directly, but I do not know if they are aware of me—or aware of any of us—at all.

…They are great and awful and beautiful, eternal and radiant and wise, and to have seen them is to have seen the beginning and the end of all we are and all we have ever been. And when at last they have truly gone, and they have ceased to be like us and we have ceased to be like them, will anything remain in us that still reflects that beauty, that eternity? I very much doubt it. And this is why I say I am no longer suited to life. For me, the night is always deepening, the world is always vanishing.

We might also note that Hart has published a book entitled You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature which takes its title from the line of a Psalm quoted by Jesus Christ in answer to some who have accused him of blasphemy after his statement: “I and the Father are one.” This book All Things Are Full of Gods takes its title from a belief attributed by Aristotle to Thales of Miletus. The similarity in these two book titles from Hart suggests that—while the forthcoming book is explicitly a work of philosophy—the topics of life and mind touch inevitably on questions of theology and specifically on the theological work of figures who Hart especially loves such as Saint Maximus the Confessor and Sergei Bulgakov.

Clearly, the points of contact and of potential preparatory reading could continue for some time. However, let me conclude by moving to the point of this post, namely, to extend an invitation to attend one or both of two in-person gatherings in Eastern Pennsylvania to discuss David Bentley Hart’s All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life:

1. A breakfast book discussion from 7:30 to 9:00 AM on Saturday, September 21 at Gus's Restaurant (1050 W. Main St., Mt Joy, PA).

2. A dinner book discussion from 5:30 to 8:00 PM on Sunday, November 3 at Gus's Restaurant (1050 W. Main St., Mt Joy, PA).

Please click here for the sign-up form to indicate plans to attend one or both events. Please feel free to share this sign-up form link with friends as well. Anyone is welcome to attend one or both of these events, but the first will focus on discussing the first half of the book while the second will focus on discussing the last half of the book.

I plan to watch the sign-up numbers and to call ahead to Gus’s so as to secure as many tables as needed in close vicinity to each other. If the numbers attending grow to be too many, we may need to split up a bit or adjust our plans to some extent. Finally, in case helpful as another way to share this information, here are links for two Facebook events with the first gathering and the second gathering.