Patristics
As a patristics scholar, Hart is especially concerned with the Greek tradition, with a particular emphasis on Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor. His writings on such figures are distinctive in that they are not cast in the mold of typical patristics scholarship; Hart is quite willing, for instance, to use Maximus as a "corrective" to Heidegger's "history of Being". The emphasis is very much on ideas and "deep readings", which seek to wrest from ancient texts insights that might fruitfully be brought into living contact with contemporary questions.
Hart's work is controversial in some respects, and he has his critics, particularly among Protestant thinkers in the Reformed tradition. His defense of the classical doctrine of divine apatheia, of the analogia entis, and other aspects of Christian tradition are all worked out within the web of his own thought and elicit extensive debate. Issues of the Scottish Journal of Theology and New Blackfriars have devoted special space to his work.
As a cultural critic, Hart appears "conservative" in many respects, but his politics are difficult to define. On a number of occasions he has called himself an "anarchist monarchist". He is as suspicious of classical liberal capitalism as of centralized state socialism, and so his criticisms of modern culture are largely free from any conspicuous partisan allegiances.
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