Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures 20240703

And it is a great privilege for me to be with you at Acton University this summer. Eight years ago, our family had to make a decision about a move, and we ended up deciding to come to grand rapids. And in our pro and con list, the physical presence of the Acton Institute in grand rapids was a major plus. On the good side. So im glad to be here. Im also glad that we are here in person. It wasnt too long ago when we had to meet in a rather gnostic fashion, and so that we were able to meet incarnation early is a very good thing. Im also delighted to join you because we are discussing the intersection of c. S. Lewis, liberty and law, or jack lewis, as he was known to his friends and family. If your name was clive staples, you might go by jack as well. If youre attending this session, i probably dont have to sell you on why lewis liberty and law is a fun combination. I hope youll find our conversation illuminating. Whether you are new to lewis or a long time admirer. Speaking of newcomers to lewis, we get one nice account of meeting lewis for the first time from george sayer, who was a student of lewiss at oxford and one of lewiss first biographers. He writes, as i walked away from New Buildings and as an aside, oxfords New Buildings were completed in 1458. I found the man that lewis had called taylors sitting on one of the stone steps in front of the arcade. How did you get on . He asked. Oh, i think rather well. I think he will be a most interesting tutor to have. Interesting . Yes. Hes certainly that said, the man who i later learned was j. R. R. Tolkien. Youll never get to the bottom of him, but were not going to get to the bottom of him either. Right here now. But we are going to try to make some headway into lewiss views. I want to hit on four areas about lewis law and liberty in my opening remarks and as food for thought for our discussion afterwards. First, that contra to the conventional wisdom that lewis disdained and ignored politics. His personal life was very much intertwined with politics and law, and sometimes even policy. And one event in particular spurred him to write a short essay in which he endorses a version of limited government theory in almost explicitly lockean terms. So the first point is about lewiss personal and indeed biographical interest in things political. Second, well talk a little bit about a particular the justice issue that lewis was quite invested in. He was no wonk, to be sure, but he did get a bit into the Public Policy weeds when it came to the criminal justice system. Lewis cared deeply about law on the human level and its impact on Human Flourishing and freedom. Third will move from that specific policy issue to the big political picture. Lewis wrestled with the purpose of government on a macro scale, particularly with his very conflicted attitude about the welfare state. Lewis was, by instinct and temperament, very sympathetic to a more libertarian approach and a get off my lawn conservatism. But he also later in life became more aware of the plight of the less fortunate and thus, in his view, more open to Government Solutions to poverty. Fourth, we moved from human made law in human politics to god authored law with a capital l. Lewis is justly famous for his defense of natural law or what he referred to as the law of Human Behavior in mirror christianity or the dow in the abolition of man. This is the endure law from which any merely human law gets its legitimacy as we will see. Lewis is not so much a natural law theorist, but he is. It is safe to say a natural law apologist. Ill conclude by suggesting that all of lewiss musings about politics, law, both civil and natural and liberty, are framed in a teleological context. That is his understanding of liberty, properly understood is directional. Its heading somewhere. We, as human beings are heading somewhere. And to miss this aspect of lewiss teaching is to miss understand everything else. We might get from him. So claim number one, the personal life and the political. The conventional wisdom on lewis was that he really didnt care much for politics or for law, and that he thus would not have spent much time on those things or liberty either. And theres some truth to that in one respect. But the truth is also that he was surrounded by talk of law and politics from his early childhood, all the way through his death on november 22nd, 1963. Also the same day that jfk goes down in dallas. And aldous huxley, author of brave new world, passes away. We dont have time for the full case about lewis Politics Today or his views. He did remain interested in politics throughout his entire life. His father, albert lewis, was a lawyer and apparently took his work home with him. Lewiss older brother, warning, described their childhood as dominated by a one sided torrent of grumble and vituperation about irish politics. And its admittedly hard to avoid talk of law and politics. If you were growing up in northern ireland, as lewis did. Lewis his life as a young man was also dominated by political matters, as after 1914, all young british men his age knew that sooner or later they would be drafted to serve in the first world war. And lewis did serve in the infantry in world war one, fighting in the trenches and getting wounded. His father had tried to get him in the artillery, but lewis was so bad at math that that wasnt going to be an option. So if you struggle with math, you are in good company. With lewis. His life as a young man after the war became much more scholarly, of course, and on his return to oxford, he wrote to his father about reconvening with his fellow students. Most now veterans in the Junior Common Room of University College in oxford in 1919, and they read the minutes from their last meeting are made some five years before. With nothing to record. In the meantime, i dont know of any little thing that has made me realize the absolute suspension and waste of these years. More thoroughly. Lewis reflected all the enlistments and training, the viscera and trauma of the fighting men in the trenches and the resulting physical and spiritual brokenness that came from political decisions and counter decisions made by european politicians, civil servants, servants and military leaders. The staggering waste and incomprehensible loss caused by the great war cast an immense shadow over the turn of the century. Generation of britons. Its no wonder that lewis would harbor a lifelong distrust of government. As with most of us, lewiss political views were intimately connected to his biography, and so biographical details shed some light on those views. I want to focus on one particular event from lewiss personal life that gives us an interesting insight into his view of law and liberty. Lewis married joy Davidson Gresham in 1956, first in a civil ceremony, and then in a real Anglican Service in december of that year as joys death from cancer was imminent. This is the account depicted in the film in the play shadowlands. Joy did recover from her cancer, and they had a four short but happy years together before the cancer return and took her life at the age of 43. In july of 1960. What you may not know about joy lewis was that she was a divorcee, a former communist, a trenchant and rather salty literary critic, and an american of eastern european, jewish background. And as a good american. She, of course, had a shotgun and she was known to be rather prolific with that shotgun in the backyard of lewiss at the kilns in oxford. During this time, the lewiss had some trouble with some local young men. Really. Hooligans who had trespass on their property and vandalize, steal, cut down trees, all sorts of mischief crimes. And on one occasion, when lewis was wheeling joy around for a walk in their backyard, they caught the young man in the act. Lewis shiver closely jumped in front of joy in his wheelchair, ostensibly to protect her. And i cant repeat in this company exactly what joyce said, but i will paraphrase. It was something to the effect of, gosh darn it, jack. Get out of my way. Youre blocking my aim. One result of this encounter was lewiss rather curmudgeonly piece, delinquents in the snow published in a humor magazine in 1957, where you see some of the hooligans were later caught by the police and tried and caught. In this essay, lewis complains about how the Legal Process had failed miserably. The presiding judge had let them off with a fine and encouraged them to stop such pranks as if planned robbery and vandalism are mere pranks. Lewis worried about what such leniency might mean for englands political future. And he took this opportunity to describe how the social compact should work in theory. While warning of the consequences if the system broke down in practice, according to the classical political theory of this country, lewis summarized, we surrendered our right of selfprotection to the state on the condition that the state would protect us. So a dilemma arises when the state does not live up to its end of the bargain. The states promise of protect is what morally grounds are obligate nation to civil obedience. According to lewis. If this sounds to you a little bit like john locke, then i think youre on to something. The governments protection of natural rights, including the right to property, is why it is right for us to pay taxes. And wrong for us to exercise as vigilante justice. Lewis argues the state protects us less because it is unwilling to protect us against criminals at home and manifestly grows less and less able to protect us against a foreign enemies. At the same time, it demands from us more and more. We seldom had fewer rights and liberties, nor more burdens, and we get less security in return, while our obligations increase. Their moral ground is taken away. Lewis drew the same conclusion from this state of affairs that locke did. When the state can not or will not protect, lewis warns nature. Is come again. And the right of selfprotection reverts to the individual. I share this reflection of lewiss not only as an excuse to tell that story about joy lewis and her shotgun, but because it illustrates well the libertarian leaning. Leave me alone. Literally. Get off my lawn. Side of lewiss personality in most of his public writings, he was very careful not to appear too partizan. Politically, one way or another, going so far as to turn down a Winston Churchills proposal to honor lewis by making him a commander of the british empire. Lewis feared that would be used by some of his critics to paint him as a political conservative. But we do see here in this episode and the piece that resulted from it a little bit of lewiss views, he had a deep distrust of government power, whether it was misused in foreign wars or not, used properly enough to keep the domestic peace. And this deep distrust was not merely theoretical, but personal felt by lewis. So claim number two, lewis on law and Public Policy. Lewis has interest in criminal justice. Extended beyond this particular case with the hooligans. In may of 1962. Lewis wrote to the poet t. S. Eliot the following we must have a talk. Id wish i wish youd write an essay on it about punishment. The modern view by excluding the retributive element and concentrating solely on deterrence and cure is hideously immoral. It is vile. Tyranny. To submit a man to compulsive or a cure or sacrifice is him to the deterrence of others. Unless he deserves it. One might wonder why lewis didnt write the essay himself, except that he did. 13 years earlier, lewis wrote the humanitarian theory of punishment, which appeared first in an austrian law journal in 1949. He sent it to an australian journal because he could get no hearing for it in england. Nevertheless, the piece did elicit responses from three law professors in australia to whom lewis then in turn responded, and the resulting back and forth was published in rtes judge adjudicator. Then the law journal of the university of melbourne law school. You can now find lewis a side of this spirited, but well mannered debate in the garden. The dark collection in is the lincolns essay about the hooligans. Lewis was concerned about offenders being let off too easily and what that means for the fundamental social compact. Here he is concerned with criminals being treated as less than human. He was worried about developments in european jurisprudence such that deterrence and rehabilitation soon become the chief goals of the criminal justice system. Rather than punishing a wrongdoer simply because he or she deserves it. It may sound paradoxical, but lewis believed that when we punish a human being for a wrong, we acknowledge the dignity of that human being and make possible restoration. Because that human being should have and could have known better have the dignity enough to have known better. There is nothing wrong with deterring crime or rebuild, hating a criminal as a side effect of a prison term. Lewis argued, but if those are the chief priorities, then there are serious problems. First, deterrence treats the criminal who is still a human being made in gods image of intrinsic worth as a mere means rather than an end in himself. In that case, the more effective the punishment, the more effective the punishment so that the state might put on for the public, the better. From the point of deterrence, what lewis worried about was the truth of whether the accused is actually guilty or not doesnt matter. Its the effect of the show. Rehabilitate shown as the chief priority. Lewis worried meant that instead of criminals being sentenced by their peers to a designee rated amount of time as punishment for what theyve done, criminals will instead be treated as patients who are sick and it will be experts in psychology and penology who will determine when or if they are ever cured. And only then will they be released. And unlike a prison sentence, theres no time limit on when that will happen. And yet, individuals freedom will still be restricted. It will still feel like a sentence. But theres no limit to that restriction in principle, except what the expert doctors have to say. And who are we . Ordinary citizens, to question the considerable expertise of the experts. Lewis insisted that only the concept of moral desert and ground, legitimate punishment and limit the states abuse of power. We see in this essay how seriously lewis took human freedom and dignity and that he applied it even to those people, criminals whose interests and dignity, society is most likely to ignore or overlook. We see also in the response from the australian scholars of law that they took lewis seriously on this point, which is rather remarkable given his day job was as a tutor of english and a scholar of medieval and renaissance literature. We also see how important this policy issue was to lewis as 13 years later, near the end of his life, while convalescing from Serious Health issues, he tries to get t. S. Eliot to take up the case. Claim number three. Thus far, weve discussed lewiss personal connections to his thinking about politics and a particular policy area. He cared a great deal about criminal justice. Now we move to lewiss thinking about government at a more theoretical level, and in particular, the welfare state. And both the legitimate purpose of government and the temptation that come with the use of power. Lewis was deeply concerned about the abuses of an overly ambitious government. After all, human depravity gives both the rationale for government as well as reason to fear its excesses. In a short essay called equality, lewis says, i am a democrat because i believe in the fall of man as a calvin professor, i have to get human depravity in the fall in there by contract. And lewis here endorses it. He says that many others endorsed democracy for the wrong reasons. And he mentions here rousseau because they think human being so naturally good that everyone deserves a share in government. Lewis goes on to say, i know for myself i dont deserve a share in ruling a hen roost. Let alone a government. Lewis wrestled with the tension between his desire for a limited government, which both protects and respects a robust private sphere and massive social needs that seemingly only government can address. Government must exist, lewis acknowledged. But he also insisted that government exists for the good of individual groups and individuals and their liberty. Consider what lewis wrote about the ultimate purpose of government. As long as we are thinking of natural values, we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household, laughing together over a meal or two, friends talking over a pint of beer or a man alone reading a book that interests him and that all economies, politics, laws and institutions save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes are a mere plowing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of the spirit. Collective activities are, of course, necessary, but this is the end to which they are necessary. Lewis insisted that the state exists for individuals and households and not the other way round. We see here a break from some of lewiss favorite teachers, plato and aristotle. Lewis was a platonist. Lewis was an aristotelian, but both those thinkers alike favor the collective over the individual. The public over the private, and aristotle in particular defines a political activity as an intrinsically natural part of Human Flourishing. Lewis, on the other hand, saw political activity as only a means and often a distasteful one at that. To genuine aspects of Human Flourishing. Not an intrinsic part of flourishing itself. Yet even as only a means collective activities are necessary. And lewis recognized the appeal of technocratic Government Solutions to address our collective social problems. The temptation to invest government with more power, he noted, always works on a real need. That has been neglected. Lewis feared that legitimate human problems that require social coordination and collective activity will give rise to solutions that are far worse than the original crisis, something we may have witnessed in the last few years. In his book that hideous strength, the conclusion to his Science Fiction trilogy this there is a conspiratorial Government Organization and i see the National Institute of coordinated experiments. This illustrates exactly his fear. And if you actually go and google uk and i see there is such a Government Organization, its just its not about that, but something else. Lewis writes, we have, on the one hand, a desperate need hunger, sickness and the dread of war. We have, on the other, the conception of something that might meet it all in a competent global technocracy. Three pretty scary words. The temptation to use a real need as a pretext to accumulate and concentrate power is not a new temptation. But the difference in the mid 20th century, lewis warned, was that success looked more and more like a legitimate possibility. He writes, in the ancient world individ joules have sold themselves as slave boys in order to eat. So in society, here is a witchdoctor who can save us from the sorcerers, a warlord who can save us from the barbarians. A church that can save us from hell. Give them what they ask. Give ourselves to them bound and blindfold. If only they will. Perhaps the terrible bargain will be made again. We cannot blame men for making it. We can hardly wish for them not to. Yet we can hardly bear that they should. The question about progress has become the question whether we can discover any way of submitting to the worldwide paternalism of a technocracy without losing all personal privacy and independence. He closes with this question is there any possibility of getting the super welfare states honey and avoiding the sting . Whether we can get that welfare state honey without the sting was perhaps the most pressing, practical political question for lewis. And the stakes were and i think remain enormous. While acknowledging the great needs for which technology and Big Government provides answers, lewis endorsed simple values that he feared were endangered by a no at all state to live ones life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labor, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity. After his death, this is what liberty meant for lewis. This was the good life. He was skeptical that the modern state can deliver a cure worth the the worth the cost. Lewis predicted soberly that, as always, some men will take charge of the destiny of others. They will be simply men. None. Perfect. Some greedy, cruel and dishonest with an allusion to the namesake of our institutional hostess week. He asked rhetorically about the welfare state, whether we have discovered some new reason why this time power should not corrupt as it has done before. Claim number four lewis as natural law apologist, we move now from lowercase law and liberty and politics to law and liberty with uppercase ls for every human legal system and political regime rests on an underlying view of human nature and morality. And we cant talk about lewis and law without discussing natural law. As ive said, i believe lewis was a natural law apology est rather than a theorist. We dont go to lewis for the nooks and crannies of how a natural law system delivers specific moral conclusions on this or that particular issue. But lewis does article eight the inescapable reality of the natural law. He defends natural law in positive terms, arguing for the reality of the moral law, but also in negative terms, showcasing how stark the alternatives are. If we abandon the natural law. He also delivers these apologies, these defenses in straightforward, logical works like mirror christianity and the abolition of man. This year being the 80th anniversary of the abolition of man, he also illustrates these ideas imaginatively in his fiction. Most prominent prominently in the ransom trilogy or the sci fi trilogy, but also in the chronicles of narnia and other writings. On august six of 1941, lewis delivered the first of his celebrated bbc broadcast talks, which later would be compiled and published as mere christianity. The bbc had invited lewis to give a series of talks explaining the foundation of beliefs of christianity to a war weary nation. And in his first 15 minute segment, lewis introduced or reintroduced to the british public. The idea of natural law. He began by directing our attention to everyday conversation, listening to others talk about how we are a constant appealing to moral standards in interacting with each other. I gave you a bit of my orange. You give me a bit of yours. Hey, dont cut in line. You promised you would do this. So i. We were constantly appealing to some kind of standard. This doesnt make sense unless we believe that there is a standard out there that we can appeal to a law of sorts. This law. Lewis explained, was called the law of nature because people thought that everyone knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. And he added, i believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong . Unless right . Is it real thing which the nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced if they had had no notion of what we mean by right then, though, we might still have had to fight them. We could no more have blamed them for that than for the color of their hair. Lewis used the confrontation with the evils of nazi ism, and he gets a pass from godwins law because he actually fought germans in the first world war. Use the evil nazi ism to highlight the reality of the moral law in a dramatic way. If your moral ideas can be true, he argued. And those of the nazis less true, then there must be something, some real morality for them to be true about the reality of basic moral principles known on some level by everyone was foundation all to lewiss understanding of the christian message. The first basic point of his talk, therefore, was that human beings all over the earth have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way and cannot really get rid of it. An essential second claim from lewis was they do not, in fact behave in that way. He maintained that these two claims that there is a natural moral law and we fail to keep it are the foundation of all Clear Thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. Moreover, lewis did not think that a post Christian Society could recover moral truth by first directly becoming christian. And to be clear, he believed that the britain of his day was postchristian somewhere in the same comparison as a divorce. He is to someone who is married. Lewis thought the truth of the matter was the reverse. Instead of returning directly to christian ethics, the world must first simply return to a belief in real objective morality. Only then would it be open to returning to christianity. For he writes, christianity is not the promulgation of a moral discovery. It is a dress only to penitence, only to those who admit their disobedience to the known moral law. It offers forgiveness for having broken and super natural help towards keeping that law. And by so doing, reaffirms it. In other words, you have to admit youre sick before you will see the doctor. And jesus did not come for the healthy in his essay god in the dark. Lewis posits that the main difference between the ancient and the moderns is that the ancients, christians, pagans all believed that there was something wrong with them and they were in the dock or on trial. God was the judge. We moderns, lewis says. Put god in the dock. He has to make his case as to why we should believe in him. We might with this case and believe. But the roles are reversed. One challenge faced by the modern world the christian for lewis, for morally serious people, is that many deny that morality has any objective basis at all, though that doesnt mean that they are relativists or mild mannered about their own moral claims. As we see in our civil or uncivil discourse today. Far from it. But morality on various modern accounts is merely a social construct that exists to serve the interests of its creators. That idea, lewis argued, was the disease that will certainly end our species. And in my view, our souls. If it is not crushed, lewis did not so much argue to the conclusion that the natural law exists. Thats a tricky proposition for reasons well get to shortly. But he is trying to persuade his audience and us that we already believe in objective morality. Lewis also didnt just defend the natural law. He played offense. He attacked the alternatives. And nowhere more powerfully than in the three lectures that became his book, the abolition of man. This was originally delivered as three lectures at the university of durham. As i mentioned, 80 years ago this year. One of the most intriguing features of abolition is how lewis frames the debate. Many works of natural law theory take something of a defensive position where the author assumes that natural law is on trial or in the dock, as lewis might say and must be valid or reasonable. Lewis does not take that tack. Instead, he turns the tables. Instead of assuming that the dow his word for the natural law, must be established or defended, he proposes to interrogate the alternatives. Critics aim to undermine the old values by teaching students to see through or check the privilege of Old Fashioned sentiments and moral judgments. But why think we should only defend our position . Why not ask what motivates them . What grounds their positions . And what do they propose as a replacement to objective morality . One important clue to understanding what lewis is up to in the abolition of man is found near the conclusion to the last battle. Lewiss apocalyptic conclusion to the chronicles of narnia. In this scene, forces of evil have been defeated. Goodness has prevailed as maybe a spoiler. But aslan wins in the narnia chronicles. All that remains is to pass into aslans country for eternity. Yet one troubling plot point remains unresolved. The treacherous dwarfs are determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They sit huddled and miserable in the dark confines of what they take to be a black hole. Queen lucy, always lewiss moral exemplar, tries to persuade the dwarfs to see things as they really are. They are not in a black hole, but in the midst of the open sky. The grass and fragrant flowers. Paradise awaits them. If only they have eyes to see. And ears to hear. Lucy tearfully begs aslan to help the dwarfs, and he provides them a sumptuous feast, but to no avail. Not even aslan will force those who choose blindness to see what truly is. They will not let us help them. As one says, they have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only their own minds. Yet they are in that prison and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out. The last chapter of the abolition of man is about that prison. It is about the predicament of those people who do not merely misunderstand or misapplied this or that moral teaching, but who reject root and branch the very possibility of moral reality. It is about the predicament of nihilism. From lewiss perspective, writing a book of natural law theory. When many people question the very foundations of morality itself, would something of a fools errand. You dont write chess manuals for those who think games are complete waste of time. You cannot persuade someone to take their medicine if they reject the good of health. You dont review. An opera for cultural philistines who despise music. One has to first write about the intrinsic good of play, the good of health, and the good of art and music. Only if those basic premises or goods are accepted can one have a conversation or even an argument about games, medicine and music. So how does one argue about First Principles . Lewis believes we cannot argue to them. We argue from them. He says the primary moral principles on which all others depend are rationally perceived. We just see that there is no reason why my neighbors happiness be sacrificed to my own as we just see that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. If we cannot prove either axiom. This is not because they are irrational. But because they are selfevident. And all proofs depend on them. Their intrinsic reasonableness shines by its own light. To not see that reasonable ness is to be like the minority and dwarfs morally blind. Lewis does not attempt to prove the validity of natural law, a quixotic task. But rather he appeals to our capacity to reason to illustrate the alternatives to a belief in fundamental moral principles. Lewis hopes to awaken a realization in his readers that they do, after all, believe in natural law. He does this differently in each of the three chapters laying out in men without chess, a platonic and aristotelian picture of the human person, as well as the high stakes for moral education and the political community. In the second chapter, the way lewis dissects any attempt to extract one isolated component of the natural law and build a new ethic just about around that, while getting rid of all the others and the last chapter, or the abolition of does not so much present the positive case for natural law, as it does reveal the stark and to a minimally decent moral person horrific alternative. What we have been through a brief survey of some of lewiss thoughts about law and liberty. Glancing quickly at his biography and his thinking about criminal justice and the welfare state, and weve touched very briefly on lewiss work defending natural law and putting its alternatives to the test. I said earlier that i would conclude with a brief word on ultimate understanding of liberty in mere christianity. Lewis uses a fleet of ships to illustrate morality. Morality consists of two parts, he writes. One we might think of as external relations, making sure each ship interacts well with all the other ships, not cutting them off, not running into them. The other part of morality for these ships is internal. Keeping ones own ship seaworthy by proper and ship maintenance and discipline. But lewis notes, the two parts are interconnect. It if you let your own ship go to port, youre not likely to long avoid mishaps with the other. And if youre constantly into other ships, your own wont remain seaworthy very long. But there is a third element, and that is where the ships are sailing to. Lewis took seriously law and politics and culture, justice, literature, all sorts of earthly goods. But ultimately true liberty is not the absence of restraint in the ambitious pursuit of whatever ones desires happen to be. It is not sailing. However, one likes to, wherever one likes genuine. Liberty is the freedom to become what we ought to be, to go where we are called. And lewis was nothing, if not insistent that we are meant for more than this world. All of those goods i. Ive mentioned culture, justice, literature, music, family are second things. Theyre vitally important, wonderful creation of goods. But they are not the first thing. Ultimately, one must understand. Lewis within the context of his christian faith. The practical problems of religion and law and political liberty are important. And lewis offers some resources with which to grapple with these problems. Understanding natural law and objective morality is crucial, and lewiss thought on the matter can be instructive. Our resistance individually and collectively to the moral law and rationality itself, is discouraging. And lewiss logical arguments and fictional apologetics should inspire us to do better. But lewis, the mere christian, would have us remember that for christians, the success of our witness depends not even on not only or even primarily upon these things. It depends the people of god living out their faith with integrity, humility and verve. We will not achieve the perfect answer, nor be Perfect People on this side of eternity. And though this earthly life is important, it does take place in the shadowlands and does not compare with the coming reality of heaven, where we will go further up and further in. The answer is, lewis did leave behind positive and negative arguments for the moral law. The rational christian apologetic and imaginative fiction should inspire those who share his vision to continue in that tradition. As lewis observed the great heroes of the faith all left their mark on earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven. It is, since christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one aim at heaven. And you will get earth thrown in a at earth, and you will get neither. We would do well to do likewise. Thank you. At this point, we have a chunk of time for q a. We have mike here and a mic here. So if you have any questions, challenges, diatribes, denunciations. Come on up. Im really fascinated with understanding of social order, and i appreciate the way in which this lecture is kind of illustrated some of his concerns with not allowing the state to kind of trump other kinds of orders, friendships and whatnot. I do remember in one of lewiss essays, it might have been membership. He talked about democracy being a necessary fiction and it was something that that decided that we all have kind of a fundamental equality. He is actually an illusion, but a necessary illusion. I just love to hear you kind of comment on this concept of lewis, which is that democracy is a necessary fiction. Yeah, i think so. Theres the essay membership and then theres the the shorter essay equality. And i think what he says and i could get the chapter in verse wrong, i think he says a democracy rests on the fiction of our equality. And so he takes aim at equality. There as a good in itself. He does not think equality is good in itself. He likens it to medicine and, clothing that is needed because of the fall that actually god created us to delight in unequal relationships. We look up to our parents. We might then help our children when theyre younger. We look up to our coach or a mentor or to a saints right. We dont claim to be equal to a saint. And so he does. Hes not against equality as you know. Abraham cobb recalled some goods, mechanical goods or goods that we need because of the fall. So lewis, in that essay, defends and thinks that legal equality is very good. And he says, we need more economic equality. But he says that hes not hes not against equality in those spheres. What he worries about and here he is, hes swallowing a little bit. He didnt read tocqueville, i dont think, but was concerned about as well that the the the chief liability of a democratic government could be a democratic culture in which everyone thinks, im as good as you to the next person. And he thinks that that leads to greed. Right. Which is its a spiritual poison. So he does say in that essay that we should work for more equality in the legal sphere and in the economic sphere, but that in our in our relationships, we should not be so troubled by by inequality. Now, ill say one more thing. So its a its one i actually want to talk about on this subject. So ive talked a lot about it in the great divorce. Any of you have read the great divorce that lewis imagining himself visiting hell and then riding a bus up to up to heaven and in that book he has a vision in heaven of a woman coming in who is who is in front of a great procession, just completely celebrated, such that lewis almost wonders if it might be our lords mother and his guide. George mcdonald says, no, no, thats someone youll never have heard of. But during her life in england, she she was saintly. She took in the poor and the kids and even animals. She hasnt credible life to lewiss vision what greatness is, you know, is not musker or bill gates or churchill. Its someone who lives a saintly and sanctified life following gods commands. So, yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you very much for your talk. Im daniel pitt. I was wondering if you could talk some more about lewiss concept of freedom. My understanding is that he believes that the law enhances our freedom. So its not a freedom from law. Actually, rule of and laws actually provide the basis for Human Flourishing. Is that correct . I think given the fall, were going to need human laws to direct us so when we think about guardrails on a road that limits us, but it limits us for our good to get where we should go. So there is a sense, i think its quite right to say that he endorses a view that law restricts us for our good. But he is also as a believer in the fall. He knows that the government is also people by fallen officials and he is quite worried about the intrusions of that. So hes in terms of what he is worried about, hes more worried about intrusions than he is about articulating the need for it. On the i think on the higher understanding of law, as in the natural law or gods law, then i think its much more the law of what it means for us to flourish. Right. That that this is so you know, if im talking with my students, we talk about you know, the the perspective athlete who wants to be excellent, she will restrict aspects of her life. She will she will not sleep in. She will restrict her diet. She will turn down other opportunities to have the freedom to be a great athlete. And so i do think that lewis is deeper conception of gods law for us is that there are things that it would say no to, but for the purpose of this, this deeper purpose of being who god calls us to be is that youve put it excellently. Right. Thank you. Thank you. First of all. So we see the weight of glory. Lewis says, of course, that are all heading into an inevitable eternal destiny to either heaven or hell and all inadvertently helping each other to one or the other. Any depicts this very greatly, of course, in the great divorce. So my question is in light of this fact of the eternal destiny, how does retributive punishment and justice recognize the including Capital Punishment, recognize the dignity of both the perpetrator and the victim, but he thinks that it respects their dignity because they are treated as someone who could have known better. Right. So when we think about an animal doing something wrong, we might scold it, but we dont blame it in the same way. It is only someone who has enough dignity to choose and who knows whats right in his from his point of view. And this is something that comes up in his treatment of purgatory, which is controversial among some, but basically saying, you know, if i need to be cleansed or punished, i should want that right that i deserve it. Youre exactly right about this. Question of Capital Punishment raises it in particular and remains a live issue. He he nowhere has a considered treatment of that. He did write a couple of letters to the newspaper. Lewis did not like newspapers, never read them or said he didnt read them. He said if something important enough happens, someone would tell him. But he did write to a few newspapers and on one on Capital Punishment, he doesnt argue for it with a positive view that the Capital Punishment is absolutely right. But he undermines the argument that its necessarily wrong. So i think he was not quite settled on it. His argument was that hes not sure that anyone who needed to spend 40 years of the rest of their life in prison would be any more likely to come to faith than someone who has, i think he says, two weeks until the gallows. So. So i think he i dont want to get to be careful. I dont want to say what i think what lewis said. But there is room in there for the sort of thinking that when it comes to someones reception of the truth, such that they might be saved, its not clear or entirely clear that living their russell one life in prison would be more likely lead to that then than than Capital Punishment. That said, i dont want to say that lewis officially or publicly endorsed Capital Punishment. I think he was uneasy about it, as i think anyone should be. But he did not he did not argue against it either. Thank you. Thank you, dr. Watson, for your your talk today. The first question was maybe think of lewiss chapter on hierarchy of preface to paradise lost as one of those places where he definitely you can see lewis kind of does think theres room for equality, but he also deeply loves the sense of hierarchy that he sees in milton. My question for you is really based off of your reading of lewis and his write he wrote. So much and youve read so much what he wrote. Lewis seems to be incredibly prophetic in that he writing across the late thirties, forties into the fifties. I mean, he without the not in particulars but in very broad trends, he accurately predicted several of the moves that modernity would make. Some of them that seem obvious to me at least, are the he at the end of abolition of man. Hes sort of outlining the transhumanist movement. He projects that globalism is going to be the trend. He almost is talking about some of the big tech privacy invasions that are possible today without the Actual Technology at his day. He the government, was going to continue to grow and that would continue to be a danger to to liberty. So with that, what in your view, is it what allowed lewis to be so prophetic . Why was he able to look at his world and kind of see the trends and be more right than wrong in those broad, sweeping kind of senses . Thats a fun question. Yeah, i would. And just recently, ross douthat just had a piece about lewiss that hideous strength and how prescient he thinks it is, which i commend to you. If you are if you also want to see a bit of lewis that that transhumanist subject you mentioned Google Ray Kurzweil who is was may still be the chief engineer of google and and has been waiting for the singularity takes 100 something pills every day and has collected every scrap of information about his father, whom he tragically lost to early in the hopes that once the a. I. Reaches singularity, it will be able to effectively recreate his father and theyll be able to commune in the cloud. So the idea is a sound quite freak of narcissism, right . Sound outlandish, to put it mildly, but also a fellow who has several. And again, if you google, google kind of has an effect on our lives. So a real guy when lewis, you know so sometimes people will dismiss lewis a little bit as a childrens author or think hes overdone. And there are a lot of people talk about him a lot, and im guilty of that. My response to that is that Cambridge University created a chair in renaissance and medieval literature to steal him from oxford and cambridge doesnt steal people from oxford unless those people are pretty, pretty good scholarly chops. And in his inaugural address at cambridge, he he he talks about himself as a dinosaur. And because he sees himself as being of the age that his past of the ancient and medieval age, and he feels out of touch with with modernity and so the dinosaur thing is get a look at me. You can there wont be many more of me left. Right. So in terms of how he could do it, he i do think hes remarkable. There are a number of remarkable thinkers and and there have been talks on them this week in father newhouse said, you know, there are people who can stop reading c. S. Lewis and those who cant. And the latter are eventually thought to be lewis scholars. And so in my own life, i know theres im always got something by lewis, but then im just consistently impressed with his insights here, there and everywhere there are some things i think he got wrong, which is a different talk, but most part i think hes remarkable and i think thats because he lived through languages and books and in the different epochs and eras. He was able to read. You know, he said he sometimes found himself thinking in greek for those of you who know another language, you to the point where, you know, when you if you were an american, you wake up his writing and you think hell play, you know, you know french, if thats what comes. Hes what he this was inhabited those things and then he also you know he lived a life at oxford that was kind of the protestant version of a monastery. Right. He wasnt married every night to dinner, was with other scholars. He was asked by oxford to write the the the Oxford University press entry for they they did a volume on each century of literature. So the us the Oxford English history of the 16th century which turned out be oh he called it his oh hell project. And for that he every book in the boden library that was published in 16th century. So the guy was just he was gifted and then he worked. I mean, hes like Michael Jordan was incredibly gifted and worked his tail off. And i think lewis in some ways, that might be the first time lewis ever been compared to Michael Jordan. So i want to get that get that out there. But yeah, i just i do think hes remarkable. Not perfect, but a pretty remarkable fellow. I dont know where no one among us is perfect. Personally, having come from the inner smug comfort of being in anarcho capitalist, in the belief that government is essentially evil, and that the worst thing that could happen if anarcho capitalism didnt work is another government having moved into reality based on the foundation that youve outlined, which is naturalize selfevident and impossible for us to fulfill, there that tension between, yes, we had to have a government, but then, as in the case of the hooligans, the government fails us and i expect that there is no answer to this from c. S. Lewis nor anyone else. What is the yardstick by then, which we can measure particular government activities as to whether they are just in accordance with natural law . Good grief, thats a thats a tough one. A one yardstick i think would be, you know, when we think about the rule of law, one requirement of the rule of law is that it applies to everybody or should. And thats never going to be perfectly applied. But some systems will get closer to it than others. We think about, you know, the only teaching parable. I think thats right. In the Old Testament is nathans story about the the rich man who steals the poor mans you. Right. And is used to to illustrate what david did with bathsheba and when davids ire is fueled against this rich man who has stolen the poor mans you, he says that, you know, surely this man must die. And nathans response is, you are the man, right . So one test, then, of a government that has some integrity is can those in charge and the rich and powerful get in trouble . And we can all think of examples in the United States and in other countries that are represented in this room or that has not been the case, but its also its reason to i would take some comfort, irrespective of the particular details of both cases. I do not want to get into this, but that weve had a couple of president s in my lifetime who have been impeached. Even if you dont agree with either impeachment or both, that a president has to worry about that strikes me as a good sign about our system. As problematic our system is in many ways. So that be one one test i we give is are those in charge worried about the law at all and and well you know that continues to be an ongoing story even now in our headlines. Having recently read screwtape makes a toast, i was wondering in regards to the discussion on quality, those brought up earlier are. You sure he didnt read tocqueville . Just and if not, where do you think he got this idea on equality of how and example in school it makes a toast is the emperor that just takes a sword out in the field and chops off all the heads of the of the wheat right where what influences do you think is there and do you think that or why was lewis so passionate about this idea of equality . Well, see, yeah, youre its actually dangerous to say that. I know he didnt read tocqueville. I dont think he wrote. I hope i can find it in four. So my little trick for figuring out a shorthand if lewis read somebody is theres a three volume set of his letters, which are if youre a lewis fan, theyre wonderful to read through and youll see him responding to things like his joy, his exhusband, about what to do with the kids after shes died. I mean, its really quite poignant and personal. And i look in those in the index since tocqueville is not there, you know, roosevelt, hes in there a few times. So it could be that he he would have read tocqueville, but i dont know that he did. But youre exactly right. That that that concern about the liability of a democratic culture. So, yeah. As as to his different influences, i think in some ways both of them would have been had had some of the same classical education. I dont know that i can give you at this point, like the five books that you would have read that have led him to that. Those conclusions he does. He was enchanted by aristocracy, but aristocracy liability is cruelty. And so given his belief in the fall, he was not an aristocrat for government, but he was pretty sympathetic to it culturally. And so similarly tocqueville was an aristocrat, but who saw that the tide of democracy as aligned with gods will and know how much he believed in god doing that in personal kind of theistic ways is debatable but inevitable. And so they both kind of shared this yearning or appreciation for, the glories of past accomplishments while at the same time both being, i think, horrified by how those systems treated the least of these right. So im punting a little bit on the exact sources. I think it was just part of the warping move of all of his education to to appreciate the greats. I mean, he was and he was a platonist in an aristotelian and plato, you know, wasnt a big fan of democracy, killed this guy. So, yeah, i hey, so something i know about c s lewis conversion is that it seems to have been prompted through a large period of time and then eventually through divine revelation. So he describes this conversion experiences getting into a cab and coming out a completely different person and im paraphrasing there. C s lewis is a really powerful force for natural law proponents because out of that conversion experience, he can share truths for through wellcrafted metaphors and through story. And however, i wonder how we can replicate that work today and if its effective outside of divine revelation. So what are some practical ways that that this modern generation of truth seekers can copy . Lewis is persuasive work in the 21st century. Thank you. Yeah, great question. So, lewis in the Screwtape Letters Screwtape Letters publication is what gets him famous in the united. Hes on the cover of time magazine. After that, he has screwtape say to and if you havent read them. Its a series of letters from senior demon to a junior demon. The junior demon attempting to steer a human patient to hell. So its advice on how to get someone to hell. Lewis said it was his least favorite thing to write because he didnt. It was dry and gritty to put oneself in the mindset of hell. And in the first letter, he says, youre relying on reason to try and get your patient to hell. And human beings dont really rely on that anymore. It used to be that they they relied on reason. If they were persuaded something was true, then they would actually change their lives and do it. And now they dont. So lewis, while still believing in the legitimacy of reason and writing books that relied on reason, abolition man miracles, problem of pain, mere christianity. To some extent, he shifts his approach to a more fictional narrative approach when he says that, you know, people resist. If you tell someone the right thing to do, the Immediate Response is resistance. But if you can illustrate something good through a story, then he says that they can sleep past or you can sneak past those watchful dragons that resist being told whats right and so at the same time, he very much oppose the idea of christians and other people of goodwill, other faiths, thinking, okay, heres the moral i want to get out of this society. Whats the story that can do that . Right when he talks about how he wrote the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, he says, i saw a faun carrying parcels through the snow right. And thats what started the story. And later, this lion kind of came in so he would well, he does think that that we need stories and fiction and music and culture, not for the sake of it has to be those have to be good. Right . Those stories told us stories and good literature themselves. And then in lewiss case, the moral and the faith came naturally into them because it was coming from him. And thats what he was all about. He says, i believe in christianity as i believe the sun has risen not only because i see it, but by it i see everything else. So i think christians, we cannot be c. S. Lewis was i think, a one off. But we can i think, follow his lead to some extent in doing and providing and working on good things that can win over our our who dont share our faith also has really good and get it pass those watchful dragons into the water, into the culture, particularly now that i think as my own view, politically speaking, the time at which the protestant, catholic, kind of consensus is done. And we can, we can. Im not sure it was ever right to take on that mantle in the first place, but we are going to be more i think a more of a of a minority, which gives us something of a freedom to just let loose and be ourselves and see what happens from it in the different spheres of law and literature and music and art and all those things. So thats sort of a convoluted answer. What you really, really need there is that. So thats a good book project there for someone to write. I think. I think were yeah, i have a more broad question about the relationship between token and lewis was curious. It seems to me that while lewis is rather conservative about some things, that token is much, much more. So more skeptical about technology, democracy and so on. Do you think that there is any record them interacting about this or other kind of topic . Yeah. So bradley bursar is here this and he would he would to give an even better answer to that but they certainly did share a distrust of technology. We see this in lord of the rings, right, with saruman is realm and lewis even he didnt really ever learn how to drive a car he thought cars he sounds like a front porch person familiar from portrait that the introduction of cars has destroyed the sense of space that you can now get someplace 60 miles away in an hour. He used to on these long walks he go on these walking tours with friends. Were talking would be more conservative than lewis. Lewis on marriage. I agree with tolkien on this. Lewis has some i think some problematic things to say about marriage. And then in his own marriage was a little controversial with joy, david and gresham, in terms of how it started. He basically got married to keep her in the country and then, you know, fell in love with her. And they were married in a real sense. Tolkien wrote a letter to lewis about his treatment of marriage and your christianity and never sent it. But we have the letter and we can see that that difference. So theyre certainly what they were. They were good friends. There was a bit of a, you know, not a quite a falling out, but a cooling of the and it did, i think, center around when joy came into the picture. But i think there was a reconciliation after, her passing away and theres there is a number of good works out there looking at the of them talking was certainly crucial in playing a role and lewis is to faith in other in other areas tolkien could be not as conservative as one would think in terms of his rewrites and reimagining some of the northern and norse literature works. Thats something ive just been learning about recently, but but yeah, i know its a fascinating area and i think the two of the most interesting that just happened to end up being very good friends in the same place. It would have been fun to been a fly on the wall. Thank you so much and greetings greetings. You talked about lewis making a move from more libertarian get off my lawn and as you said later a little more concern for the poor and other things like that that he starts to have factoring into his political thinking very bright guy. Right. Were in a very bright room as i pastoring a church. Ive got people in the room who are morally fumbling. They struggle telling their own cases. You know, if you will write that. How did when lewis looked at the world, hes got this of selfreliance that affords him a kind of liberty when he looks the world and he sees nietzsche, call him the bungles in the botched. When he sees people that are kind of broken, struggling. They cant put their own moral laces together. Does he ever talk about that . About about the Element Society that just doesnt have the benefits of, his education and thinking and yeah yeah he does and. And you would find that more in his letters than this. Theres two two ways to answer that. One is once lewis became as popular as he was, he got a lot of letters and he wrote everybody back towards the end of his life, his brother, when he would help. But he almost felt it was a duty. He hated, in part because got so many cards and felt this kind of, you know, categorical, imperative requirement to write everybody back. He does write about that. So he he he got know people in their problems because they would write to him about their problems. They would also send him stuff of americans in particular had a really funny or at least relationship with the United States i married an american, a two american stepsons. But then some ways found around the United States culturally problematic. He, you know, he had about as privileged a life as one could have without being, you know, a baron or something. But he also lived through World War Two in the rationing, went on, i think, through 1956, in the rationing in britain was significant even past the war. And so people would send him stuff all the time and he would hear about their problems and write back. So thats one element. The other is his is marriage. So joy davidson, gresham, her exhusband, was abusive, was outlandish and mistreated. And their boys and, he saw through her experience how hard it would be to be trying to raise two kids, just doing it on your own. He was kind of but hed just do it on your own sort of thing, a man and, you know, calling it as home as castle. But in her position and a mistreated and then you know abused by a husband and so he writes a letter to an in florida basically says you know ive said hard things about our British Health system. All right. Hes been critical of it. But its better than if theres nothing. Right, which is a little bit of a, you know, a view that its not the ideal, but itd be better than there being no safety net all. So i think it was his experience knowing joy and seeing what it was like for her to try and struggle for a while, that it helped him appreciate a little bit more that theres got to be something out there for. Those folks, ideally it would be the church and, you know, family charity. But if thats not their, you know, theres needs be something else. Yeah. Good morning and so lewiss views on equality are, you might say, provocative, given todays atmosphere of gender equality or gender relations. Could you contrast just his view of equality and hierarchy, i guess, including like what he talks about in the end of that hideous strength with todays climate. Yeah, i think lewis, you know, the earlier earlier question from joshua saying he was prophetic and i think he saw the direction things were going. He has another essay called Democratic Education and then the screwtape proposes a toast is about American Education in particular. He had it published in the saturday post and he basically predicts that everybody Everybody Wins a trophy culture and so i think, you know, he would be i mean he he would be in danger of being canceled if he were around today he also believed in wifely obedience to husbands and things like that. So he had a more view on those things. And although he makes a a paradoxically pro working class, progun or less educated case in that Democratic Education piece does he argues for just a straightforward aerostar heresy in education. Education should be aimed at the students who do best and then he anticipates the objection, which i think is what hes here today. He says, well, what about the parents of tommy and tommy just sits in the back of the classroom. No offense. Anyone sit in the back and in the back he is hes whittling and youre going to do is youre going to come to him and say, hey, lets know that whittling is really great. Thats going to give you. Were going to give you a first class grade for that. And turnarounds. And lewis said, leave him alone. He doesnt his want that right hes hes the one who on the you know out on the playfield is is beating up the and hell have a happy life doing something else. In other words lewis argues there that one does not have to go to college or get a doctorate in order to be successful, that you can have a fulfilling, genuine, good, flourishing life in the trades. So his argument elitist in one respect and insofar he wants education to be aimed at the kids who do well in calculus and greek and all. But he doesnt think that that is the only way to have a good life. And he defends and he actually goes on to say democracy he needs folks like tommy to keep the eggheads in line because the fall doesnt just apply to one class more than another. Its the eggheads who get us into the most trouble. So, you know, itd be its fun to think about what someone would be like in a, in a different era. I think he would be allergic to some the egalitarianism that we have today because he would because he said hes as if you make it into an ideal you effectively are going to be fostering envy. And i think a lot of our discourse is fueled by envy and and a you know and is the is the opposite of that and were in supply of that. And so, yeah, i hate to interrupt, but we have time for one more question. Lucky me. And got in the he has a little discourse on the the tyranny the moral busybody. And i think thats a theme through a lot of his fiction that oftentimes the attack on liberty or what is truly good comes from the projected position of the moral high ground. So seeing how today thats really the case, that a lot of the attack on liberty comes from tolerance, these these virtues. How could we learn from louis to communicate the importance liberty over maybe some of those projected high grounds of the moral good in our society. I think youre first a firm that youre right. Well, thinking about how to answer the question. At one point says that theocracy is his most detested form of government because it is because those who are in charge of enforcing it will be motivated by their duty to god to make sure that were all doing what we supposed to be doing. Whereas other folks might or sleep. But the holy motivation keep people in line is look. And so yeah, the moral busybody he is throughout all his works he really doesnt care for that. And theres a personal aspect that to his life as well and biographically which we dont have time to get into. So how do we kind of combat the overweening crucible like atmosphere that there is particularly on social media that can be exaggerated i think its going to be standing up to the bullies. I think its going to be its going to take some people who are who who are elite to do that. Whatever you make of j. K. Rowling as an author or the harry potter stuff or of her other views, she is kind of refuse to shut up about her views of that about women being biologic cli women and i think thats had an enormous impact and will continue and so i think one of the things that we just have to we do is is not not give in to the little request that were asked to do. So how that might be manifest for me as a professor in some circles. I dont have pronouns. If you have to look at me and wonder what my pronouns are, you know, just seem pretty obvious. But so i think theres going to be Little Things like that where we just dont we actually up and its going to take people when theyre pressured by companies or societies or families to say, look, we live in a free country. You can live how you like it. Im not going to support that or buy into it. And i think we at some point, we have pay some penalties on that. But i theres this im not a classicist, but horace has this line. I wont be able to say it in latin. Something to the effect that if you if you drive out nature, she will come back a pitchfork and i think in a lot of these these debates and these two minute hates that we have online from places were trying were driving out nature and so the long term in the medium term we might be losing on the short term i think things will come back and i think we have to kind stand our ground. And then thats going to thats going to help people dont people dont like resisting us and theyre empowered by going along. So thats i dont i dont know. Thats how lewis would put it. But i think thats thats what i would say. Okay