I can’t believe it’s been 41 years since James Cameron’s The Terminator came out. I first saw it in the movie theater and like everyone else I was completely stunned by its energy and creativity. It might well be the best B-movie action film ever made. (Its sequel, T2, is an A-movie action flick that still feels like a B-movie, in a good way.) Cameron’s spin on what is essentially the ancient hunter-vs.-the-hunted plot—mashed up with about a dozen sci-fi tropes and a heaping serving of the Frankenstein/Dr. Faust myth—results in an almost perfect piece of entertainment. There is not a dull moment or lame moment in it. Every scene either surprises, shocks, or tickles the viewer.
The sequel, T2, is even better, mainly because it’s a coming-of-age film. Rather, it’s a becoming-human film. We watch as the Terminator observes human beings, learns from them, and begins to emulate their best qualities. It’s an archetypal story, and I (almost) tire of watching it. And, in the process of watching the film so many times over the years, I’ve repeatedly asked myself: What is it like to be the Terminator?
I love David Bentley Hart. He’s not only a great writer and philosopher, he’s a wonderful speaker and explainer of big, complicated ideas (actually, the biggest and most complicated ideas imaginable). He also has a scathing wit and a talent for skewering stupid ideas masquerading as wisdom.
I’ve read a lot of Hart’s work, and watched many of his interviews on Youtube (there are a ton of them). My favorite is posted above, and I encourage everyone to check it out. However, if you’re new to DBH’s work, you might find yourself frantically looking up a lot of terms that frequently come up. (I still do.) So, in order to ease the transition, here is a handy cheat-list of some of the more important ones:
Ontology – The philosophical study of being itself, especially in the questions of why is there something rather than nothing and does God exist.
Dualism – The idea that human beings are composed of two fundamental, separate things: mind and matter. This concept is most closely associated with René Descartes (i.e., Cartesian Dualism) and his famous statement, “cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”). Dualism is usually contracted with monism, the notion that all aspects of human life are reducible to one fundamental thing (typically, the physical laws of nature).
Materialism (a.k.a. Reductionism, Physicalism) – The notion that all aspects of human life, including consciousness, can ultimately be explained by scientific laws. That is, the fundamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force), genetics, Darwinian evolution, etc.
Apophatic – The idea that, because God (if He exists) is ineffable and beyond human comprension, we can only talk about Him in terms of what He is not rather than in terms of what He is (i.e., Cataphatic theology). For example, we can say that God is neither male nor female (despite the fact that most people use a male pronoun). But we can’t really say what His nature is.
Contingent – The concept of contingency refers to the fact everything in the physical universe exists as a result of something that came before it (including, ultimately, the Big Bang). THis becomes important in the so-called Ontological Arguments for the existence of God.
Thomist – The adjective used to describe ideas that derive from those of St. Thomas of Aquinas. (It’s pronounced TOME-ist.)
Qualia – Qualia is a fancy word used by philosophers–especially those concerned with the so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness–to describe feelings. That is, what it’s like to be conscious and experience things as a living being, and how is this possible.
Panpsychism – the ancient idea that all things–even those things we usually call inanimate–might have some kind of consciousness.
Apokatastasis – A Greek work referring to the restoration of all creation to a divine state. In some Christian philosophical schools of thought, it also refers to the eventual salvation of all souls (even those in hell, including the Devil). Hart has written extensively on this subject in his book That All Shall Be Saved.
A few years ago, I was reading yet another popular science book—I think it was Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe—when I came across a reference to one of those barroom brain teasers. It goes like this: if your image in a mirror is reversed with regard to right/left and left/right, why is not also reversed from up/down and down/up?
The answer, while elementary, is surprisingly difficult to articulate. It helps to imagine yourself, not face-to-face with your reflection, but back-to-back, with the plane of the mirror between you and your mirror-doppelgänger. Now stick your arms out and waggle your fingers. For both you and your reflection, up is still up, and down is still down. This side (left to you, right to your doppelgänger) is still this side, and that side (right) is still that side.
The only real difference is that up/down has an objective definition; that is, which direction is the earth and which the sky. But left/right has a purely subjective definition, relative to whose set of eyes one is looking through.
Ash Clifton, Writer 