James writes:
Over at The New Criterion, I remark on some of the websites that have directed readers to this weblog and to my profile of Jeffrey Hart. Here I also provide links to more about what I've written about Hart over the past year. These notes formed the first draft of my article.
I am pleased to add Powerline to the list of weblogs that have taken note of Hart, and now the Alumni Magazine profile. Blogger Scott Johnson is a former student of Hart's, and his post is a dissenting opinion to Hart's recent direction.
Scott's post reminded me that an interesting paragraph about Hart's own time as an undergraduate didn't make it in the final piece. Here it is:
Over fifty years ago, Hart was enrolled in a course at Dartmouth that had a profound effect on his life. The professor was Eugen Rosenstock-Hussey, a Christian existentialist.
"He complicated my naturalism. I was interested both in animals in the naturalist sense, and naturalism as a philosophy. He said, you cannot live empirically. You live forward in time. You don't know how it is going to come out. You don't know how your career is going to turn out, or if it's the right career. Or marriage. Or whatever. Life is always a movement into the unknown. One of his repeated mantras was 'history must be told.' You are constantly creating new institutions, and your guide must be history. You see that here with co-ed, for example. Dartmouth a very different school than it was when I came here in 1947. Dartmouth is MUCH improved now. I probably would have stayed at Dartmouth today."
I still think about him and I'm going to write about him. I'm going to write a memoir called 'Snapshots From Heaven' and he's going to figure in one "Snapshot."