Serious Play: Freedom, Imagination, & Spirit
In our era of machine-aided prediction and probability, the necessity of free and spontaneous play for human meaning and joy has become more clear.
In 2023, Cambridge University Philosopher of Religion Douglas Hedley gave a series of lectures entitled The Spirit of Play in which he probed the connection between play, imagination, and divinity in dialogue with thinkers such as Friedrich Schiller, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Johan Huizinga, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
In this conversation at Harvard Divinity School, Douglas Hedley will be joined by Wayfare Editor Zachary Davis to explore the deeper meanings and possibilities of poetry, philosophy, ritual, and other forms of sacred play.
PARTICIPANTS
Douglas Hedley is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University. He was educated at Keble College, Oxford and at the University of Munich, and has previously taught at Nottingham University. He is the Director of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and co-chair of the Platonism and Neoplatonism section of the American Academy of Religion. Dr Hedley’s work centers on concepts of imagination, violence, and the sublime, and he has published widely, from early modern philosophy—particularly the Cambridge Platonists—to Coleridge. He is the Principal Investigator for the AHRC grant on The Cambridge Platonists at the Origins of Enlightenment: Texts, Debates, and Reception (1650-1730), and is co-editor of the Series Studies in Philosophical Theology. He is a former Templeton Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Secretary of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion, and President of the European Society for the Philosophy of Religion. He has also held the Directeur d’études invités at the EPHE of the Sorbonne, the Alan Richardson Fellow at the Theology Department in Durham, and was Teape Lecturer in India in 2006. Dr Hedley is a highly sought-after expert in his field. In 2023, Dr Hedley delivered the inaugural Sophia Lectures at Ralston College.
Zachary Davis is the Executive Director of Faith Matters and the Editor of Wayfare Magazine. He is also the host of the podcasts Article 13, Writ Large, and Ministry of Ideas. He is the recipient of two John Templeton Foundation grants. He is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Harvard Divinity School.