Daniel W Hardy was not my friend
Sunday, March 29, 2009 at 11:45AM 
Daniel W Hardy 1930-2007
I learned this weekend that Daniel W Hardy died more than a year ago.
He was not my friend, but he was a great man who had a huge impact upon my life.
The first time I met Professor Hardy, I was only 16 years old. I will always appreciate the fact that he took a chance on me and, a few weeks later, I began as an undergraduate at the University of Durham.
The years that followed under his tutelage were challenging. Week after week, I would bring my essays to his office, only to experience the full force of his incredible mind tearing into my assumptions, ideas and perspective.
Some of these moments have stayed with me even to this day.
One example: we are sitting in a systematic theology seminar and considering the theme of ‘baptism’. Professor Hardy listens patiently to our best efforts and then drops a single question into the subsequent discussion.
‘Why is baptism associated with water?’
Damn it! I don’t know. I still don’t know.
For years, I kept coming back to this question, wishing that he had put me out of my misery and simply told me the answer. But he knew better than to do that. He knew full well that he had ‘tied a dialectical knot’ (Kierkegaard) that I had to wrestle with and try to untie for myself.
Like Socrates, he understood that the role of the teacher was simply to ask the right questions.
After Graduation, my life took on new directions and challenges. Yet somehow I found myself always looking to Professor Hardy for reassurance. He had set the bar extremely high and I struggled to be the person I felt he had required me to be.
Even when I published my own book on Philosophical Theology, it was to him I turned to write the Foreward. I still feel honored to have shared the pages of a book with such a great man and mentor.
So how should I explain this connection and continuing sense of awe?
Perhaps Professor Hardy can help me here.
In one of his books, he speaks of ‘uniqueness as selective exchange with environment’. In other words (I think), the only thing that enables us to stand out as ‘selves’ is our ability to focus and give attention to specific elements around us.
Consider, he says, what happens when you sit on a train:
When I sit in a railway train passing rapidly through the countryside, my whole environment (train and countryside) is undifferentiated for me until I fasten my attention on something. When I do, the ‘something’ suddenly becomes a foreground against a background... this act of attending, also constitutes me as distinct from the environment and as engaging in a selective relationship with it.” (Hardy, God’s Ways With the World, 1996).
Here’s what I take from this observation: As our lives rush by at increasing speed, we become ourselves only by learning to focus upon certain people, events, things that define us, orient us and give our lives meaning. Everything else is ‘white noise’ in the background.
These are the fragments - the 'stuff' - that makes life meaningful.
Professor Hardy, as many great teachers, not only taught me something about what I should attend to, but also himself was a fixed point of attention – an anchor that helped my understand who and what I was, as well as what I needed to become.
John Donne once wrote, ‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde.’ Today I realize this anchor is gone and I feel a little more alone than I did only yesterday.
Daniel W Hardy was not my friend. But he was my teacher and mentor. He took a chance on me. And for that, I will forever be extremely grateful.
Reader Comments (2)
How odd that you should be thinking of Dan Hardy so recently! I have thought a good deal about him in the last few days. I guess the point for both of us is that his presence lingers, beneficently, a lot of the time. I have no idea why I googled him today, really--discovering your post as a consequence.
Dan supervised my Ph. D. a number of years ago. I am sure we disagreed on a great many things, including the ultimate value of particularity! Nevertheless, all of his ministrations to me (of the sort represented by your anecdote) are valuable memories concerning how to think and how to live.
I actually said to myself as I prepared an exam for my students, "I think Dan would think this a fair exam. I hope that it would make him proud." I don't think that way about many people.
All the best,
Ron Thomas
Thanks for your comment, Ron. You are absolutely right! His presence does linger in a way that, as I write, reminds me of the East African concept of the 'living dead' - those who have left this life but whose impact continues to be felt in the thoughts and actions of we who remain. If that ended up being my own legacy, I would certainly feel that my life had been well lived!
Thanks again for being in touch and making the connection.
David