Rate this book

The Experience Of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (2013)

by David Bentley Hart(Favorite Author)

4.27 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0300166842 (ISBN13: 9780300166842)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Yale University Press

review 1: In an age of philosophical poverty, David Hart enriches us with 'The Experience of God'. In this book, Hart shows that God's existence can be found through our experience of Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. Our awareness of being leads us to being's inherent contingency and the need for the non-contingent God. Our experience of consciousness shows us the intelligibility of all things and the need for the all-encompassing intelligence of God. Our yearning for bliss inexorably takes us to the need for the God of truth, beauty, and goodness. Such is Hart's argument, in a tremendously compressed form.But in this book Hart does so much more. He persuasively argues that our modern culture has become almost incapable of experiencing God. Due to the prolonged influence of material... moreism and naturalism, our culture has attempted to fit all experience into the boxes of the tangible and the scientifically provable. Hart devotes many pages to deconstructing materialistic arguments against the existence of God. But in so doing, he recognizes that the true problem is not bad philosophy, but rather a disenchanted culture that cannot conceive of the spiritual. This book can be tiring and very difficult, but is ultimately quite rewarding.
review 2: Positive: 1) Innovative---Hart attempts to synthesize the various traditional metaphysical schools. 2)Hart properly distinguishes the demiurge from the source of being. 3) I largely agree with Hart's conclusions drawn throughout the book.Negative: 1) Much too long---could have been half the length. 2)Only occasionally engages with his opponents---and when he did, he tended to brush them aside without actually engaging with their ideas. 3)Frequently asserts that his position is just obvious if one just gives it some thought. less

Download links for: The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss

Advertising