Lexington Community Education presents: All Things Shining: An Evening with Sean Dorrance Kelly

An unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and yet our culture offers us no clear way to choose. This predicament seems inevitable, but in fact it’s quite new. In medieval Europe, God’s calling was a grounding force. In ancient Greece, a whole pantheon of shining gods stood ready to draw an appropriate action out of you. Like an athlete in “the zone,” you were called to a harmonious attunement with the world, so absorbed in it that you couldn’t make a “wrong” choice. If our culture no longer takes for granted a belief in God, can we nevertheless get in touch with the Homeric moods of wonder and gratitude, and be guided by the meanings they reveal? In his new book All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, the chair of the philosophy department at Harvard University Sean Dorrance Kelly says we can. In All Things Shining Dorrance Kelly and co-author Hubret Dreyfus illuminate some of the greatest works of the West to reveal how we have lost our passionate engagement with and responsiveness to the world. The journey takes us from the wonder and openness of Homer’s polytheism to the monotheism of Dante; from the autonomy of Kant to the multiple worlds of Melville; and, finally, to the spiritual difficulties evoked by modern authors such as David Foster Wallace and Elizabeth Gilbert. Dorrance Kelly has been called “an eloquent new voice, sensitive to the sadness of the current culture and to what remains of the wonder and gratitude that could chase it away."

Pre-registration required by calling Lexington Community Education at 781 862 8043