The Spirit of Play in Shaping Culture, Creativity, and Spirituality | Sophia Lectures 2023 Part 1/5
Release Date: 06/11/2024
Douglas Murray: Reconstructing our Culture | Renewal and Renaissance: A Ralston Symposium
The Ralston College Podcast
Douglas Murray, revered cultural critic and author, delivers the highlight of Ralston College’s symposium of “,” a lecture exploring the theme of cultural reconstruction. Delivered from one of the beautiful, stately galleries of Savannah’s Telfair Academy, the audience is treated to an intimate address that is both deeply moving and inspiring of hope. Murray’s talk begins with the sober reflection that civilizations are mortal and share the fragility of life. He recounts how the loss of confidence experienced after the catastrophes of the World Wars led to the development of...
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What does it take to spark a new Renaissance?
The Ralston College Podcast
In February 2025, Ralston College hosted a landmark symposium in Savannah, Georgia, bringing together leading thinkers, artists, educators, and students for a searching conversation about the renewal of our shared culture. Over the course of a wide-ranging roundtable, speakers explored the collapse of higher education, the need for sacred space, the conditions for reawakening beauty and truth, the integral importance of literature, music and architecture, and the crucial role of the young in rebuilding a meaningful culture that can inspire and endure. This conversation is not an academic...
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Why We Tell Stories: Greg Hurwitz & Jonathan Pageau in Conversation
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“Why We Tell Stories” is a discussion between Greg Hurwitz & Jonathan Pageau which took place on January 31, 2025. In this exchange, two prominent professionals in creative fields discuss the place of passion, productivity, and integrity in the context of their careers, and offer insights which range from guiding, general principles to concrete, practical advice. Over the course of their discussion with each other and with the students, they field questions about the artistic process; about the public attention they’ve received for their work; about the lessons they’ve learned; and...
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The Enduring Consolation of Philosophy with Stephen Blackwood
The Ralston College Podcast
“The Enduring Consolation of Philosophy” is the keynote lecture delivered by Dr Stephen Blackwood at the 2024 Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance studies. In this talk, commemorating the 1500th anniversary of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, Dr Blackwood shows why this work is more relevant than ever. After takinging stock of the “meaning crisis” and our dire need for depth, Dr Blackwood meditates on the first great insight of the Consolation: that the remedies of the self must emerge from the self. The complex and intricate structures and patterns of Boethius’ work are...
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Dr Iain McGilchrist in Conversation with Ralston College’s Students
The Ralston College Podcast
In this intimate question and answer session, conducted in March 2024 with the students enrolled in Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities, the world-renowned psychiatrist, philosopher, and literary scholar Iain McGilchrist explores topics that animate the collective intellectual life of Ralston’s student body. Answering questions that range from the metaphysical heights of theology, liturgy, and religious life to the tangible depths of scientific inquiry and medical progress, Dr McGhilchrist challenges his interlocutors to think deeper about the relationship between mind and matter,...
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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 3: Finitude and the Infinite
The Ralston College Podcast
In his final , “Finitude and the Infinite,” Dr Iain McGilchrist grapples with the vital role that the imagination plays in the perception of reality, and what this power can disclose about reality itself. He shows that imagination has the capacity to make contact with an illimitable, irreducible, and inexhaustible world, one that presents itself to us under the aspects of finitude and infinitude. Beginning with the English Romantic poets, McGilchrist shows how these artists resisted the habits of perception that can be associated with the brain’s left hemisphere. This part of the...
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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 2: Symmetry and Asymmetry
The Ralston College Podcast
In his second Sophia Lecture, Dr Iain McGilchrist gives a bracing, counterintuitive account of the fundamental categories of our experience of the world. McGilchrist shows how fundamental binaries—such as stasis and motion, simplicity and complexity, order and randomness, and even straight lines and curves—do not occur in nature in ways that conform to our assumptions about an inert, independent, and predictable universe. Drawing from disciplines as disparate as physics, mathematics, biology and art, McGilchrist shows that asymmetry is not simply a principle of vitality, harmony, and...
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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 1: Division and Union
The Ralston College Podcast
This lecture, like the very essence of Ralston College’s mission, explores the profound interplay between division and union—a relationship that illuminates the nature of wholeness itself. Dr Iain McGilchrist delves into the insight that the whole is far more than the sum of its parts; it is a dynamic synthesis, a living interplay that transcends reductionism. Drawing on analogies from music, nature, and the human brain, McGilchrist reveals the delicate harmony between separation and connection, a truth exemplified most vividly in the brain’s two hemispheres. Here, division and...
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Dr Iain McGilchrist on the Cultivation of Wisdom
The Ralston College Podcast
A conversation between Dr Iain McGilchrist, neuropsychiatrist, philosopher, and literary critic, and Dr Stephen Blackwood, President of Ralston College, on the occasion of Dr McGilchrist’s March 2024 visit to Savannah to deliver Ralston College’s annual Sophia Lectures. Dr McGilchrist discusses his experience spending time with Ralston College students, his reasons for accepting the College’s invitation to deliver the Sophia lectures, and the necessity of leisure for deep thought. Applications for Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities program are now open.
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The Education of Iain McGilchrist, Part II: Medical School and Beyond
The Ralston College Podcast
The second part of a conversation between the renowned literary scholar and psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist and Ralston College president Dr Stephen Blackwood about Dr McGilchrist’s remarkable educational trajectory. In this episode, Dr Iain McGilchrist explains how he left his successful career as a literary scholar to pursue training as a psychiatrist and how his combined study of literature, philosophy, and neuroscience informed his later academic work, including his books The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale University Press, 2009) and...
info_outlineUniversity of Cambridge philosopher, Professor Douglas Hedley, delves into the concept of play and its vital role in understanding the human condition. Drawing on Johann Huizinga, Hermann Hesse, and Josef Pieper's ideas, Hedley links play to the divine act of creation, asserting it as an essential element of our existence associated with freedom, creativity, and spirituality. He considers various viewpoints from Christian and Eastern traditions, addressing criticisms and underscoring play's civilizing role. Through Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game," Hedley probes into play's societal function, its ties to leisure and festivals, and its life-enriching effects. The lecture's Q&A session offers additional insights, marking it as a significant resource for those intrigued by play's profound meanings.
Douglas Hedley is a distinguished philosopher at the University of Cambridge, celebrated for his extensive research in the philosophy of religion and Platonism. He is the author of multiple influential works on imagination and religious experience.
Glossary of Terms
Sophia: Greek word for wisdom, used in the context of the lecture series to signify the exploration of wisdom through philosophy.
The Delphic Oracle: The ancient Greek oracle at Delphi, famous for its cryptic predictions and guidance, including the maxim 'know thyself.'
Resources
Website: https://www.ralston.ac/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RalstonCollegeSavannah
X: https://twitter.com/RalstonCollege
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ralstoncollege/
Douglas Hedley
https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/directory/douglas-hedley
https://www.ralston.ac/people/douglas-hedley
Living Forms of the Imagination -Douglas Hedley
Sacrifice Imagined: Violence, Atonement, and the Sacred - Douglas Hedley
The Iconic Imagination - Douglas Hedley
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture - Johan Huizinga
In the Shadow of Tomorrow: A Diagnosis of the Modern Distemper - Johan Huizinga
Leisure: The Basis of Culture - Josef Pieper
The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) - Hermann Hesse
The Journey to the East - Hermann Hesse
Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age - Robert N. Bellah
Tertullian. (n.d.). De Spectaculis.
De Ludo Globi: The Game of Spheres - Nicholas de Cusa
Plato. (n.d.). Symposium.
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html
Plato. (n.d.). Phaedo.
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html
Plato. (n.d.). Laws.
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.1.i.html
Quotes
"Platonic games and jokes are much more serious than the serious things of the Stoics." - Marsilio Ficino [00:09:20]
"Play may well be a key to understanding something about ourselves." - Douglas Hedley [00:09:00]
Chapters
[00:00:00] - Introduction
[00:01:00] - Welcome and introduction of Sophia lectures series
[00:06:40] - Topic introduction: The Spirit of Play
[00:08:13] - Guest speaker introduction: Professor Douglas Hedley
[00:09:40] - Distinguishing play and game
[00:15:00] - Play as an intimation of the sacred
[00:20:40] - The link between play and freedom
[00:26:40] - Essentialism and play as an essential part of human condition
[00:31:20] - Critique of play within the Christian tradition
[00:36:50] - The glass bead game by Hermann Hesse
[00:45:00] - Critique of Mandarin culture in the glass bead game
[00:51:00] - Religious aspect of play
[01:02:00] - Suspicion of leisure in Anglo-American culture
[01:04:00] - Q&A session
[01:37:19] - Conclusion of Q&A session and end of the lecture