Q: Doesn’t tying ourselves to an immutable [unchanging] moral code cut off all [moral] progress and acquiesce in stagnation. A: Lewis “Let us strip the question of the illegitimate emotional power it derives from the word 'stagnation' with its suggestion of puddles and mantled pools. If water stands too long it stinks. To infer thence that whatever stands long must be unwholesome is to be the victim of metaphor. Space does not stink because it has preserved its three dimensions from the beginning. The square on the hypotenuse has not gone moldy by continuing to equal the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Love is not dishonored by constancy, and when we wash our hands we are seeking stagnation and "putting the clock back," artificially restoring our hands to the status quo in which they began the day and resisting the natural trend of events which would increase their dirtiness steadily from our birth to our death. For the emotive term 'stagnant' let us substitute the descriptive term 'permanent.' Does a permanent moral standard preclude progress? On the contrary, except on the supposition of a changeless standard, progress is impossible. If good is a fixed point, it is at least possible that we should get nearer and nearer to it; but if the terminus is as mobile as the train, how can the train progress towards it? Our ideas of the good may change, but they cannot change either for the better or the worse if there is no absolute and immutable [unchanging] good to which they can recede. We can go on getting a sum more and more nearly right only if the one perfectly right is "stagnant". And yet it will be said, I have just admitted that our ideas of good may improve. How is this to be reconciled with the view that "traditional morality" is a depositum fidei [deposit of revelations] which cannot be deserted? The answer can be understood if we compare a real moral advance with a mere innovation. From the Stoic and Confucian, "Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you"; to the Christian, "Do as you would be done by" is a real advance. The morality of Nietzsche is a mere innovation. The first is an advance because no one who did not admit the validity of the old maxim could see reason for accepting the new one, and anyone who accepted the old would at once recognize the new as an extension of the same principle. If he rejected it, he would have to reject it as a superfluity, something that went too far, not as something simply heterogeneous [divergent] from his own ideas of value. But the Nietzschean ethic can be accepted only if we are ready to scrap traditional morals as a mere error and then to put ourselves in a position where we can find no ground for any value judgements at all. It is the difference between a man who says to us: "You like your vegetables moderately fresh; why not grow your own and have them perfectly fresh?" and a man who says, "Throw away that loaf and try eating bricks and centipedes instead." (Lewis, ‘The Poison of Subjectivism’).
Q: If we accept the primary platitudes of practical reason [conscience] as the unquestioned premises of all action, are we thereby trusting our own reason so far that we ignore the [Genesis 3] Fall [of man]…? A: As regards the Fall, I submit that the general tenor of scripture does not encourage us to believe that our knowledge of the Law has been depraved in the same degree as our power to fulfil it. He would be a brave man who claimed to realize the fallen condition of man more clearly than St. Paul. In that very chapter (Roman 7) where he asserts most strongly our inability to keep the moral law he also asserts most confidently that we perceive the Law's goodness and rejoice in it according to the inward man [Romans 7:22]. Our righteousness may be filthy and ragged [Isaiah 64:6], but Christianity gives us no ground for holding that our perceptions of right are in the same condition. They may, no doubt, be impaired [1 Timothy 4:2, 1 Corinthians 4:4 - the conscience can be corrupted and taught to feel wrongly innocent or wrongly guilty - one of functions of the blood of Christ is to cleanse the conscience of this corruption - see Hebrews 9:14]; but there is a difference between imperfect sight and blindness. A theology which goes about to represent our practical reason [moral judgement] as radically unsound is heading for disaster. If we once admit that what God means by "goodness" is sheerly different from what we judge to be good, there is no difference left between pure religion and devil worship (Lewis, ‘The Poison of Subjectivism’).
I remember, years ago, while I was in college, being introduced to your channel and Lewis in general via a TH-cam recommendation giving me the doodle about "The Poison of Subjectivism". This is a much longer and even better writing of that essay. Thank you so much for letting me relearn that old joy. God bless.
I thought your channel had stopped producing videos. I didn't see (or absent mindedly scrolled past) your last few video notices. Thank you, and carry on.
I really appreciate jow this showed that, while we can be confused about various parts of morality and thus work to better understand them, we cannot ever resolve the discussion as neutral observers. Luvkily, we don't have to either, since people, at their cores, have always felt the pull of the moral law, even when they haven't wanted to.
Instinct doesn't necessarily manifest in pleasure, we have an instinct to avoid harm to the self for example. And it is likely that the total destruction would cause serious emotional pain
I think Lewis replies to that in 'The abolition of Man": "Is the value of a systematization [a life] to be judged by the presence of satisfactions or the absence of dissatisfactions? The extreme case is that of the dead man in whom satisfactions and dissatisfactions (on the modern view) both equal zero, as against the successful traitor who can still eat, drink, sleep, scratch, and copulate, even if he cannot have friendship or love or self-respect...Dr. Richards’s system gives no support to his (and our) actual preference for civil life over savage and human over animal - or even for life over death."
Your video seems to coincide with something that I have long thought and I'd like your response. Truth seems to be categorized into what I call Capital T or lower case t. T is that which would be universal truths (ie those recognized as the Tau in C.S Lewis' book Abolition of Man.) On the other hand, t is that which any culture uses to define the T for a specific time and place. Small t is always something less that T but is derived from it.
Lewis talks more about this point in detail in ‘The Poison of Subjectivism’ (see comments on this page for starter), and ‘The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment’. Can you get a copy of the former? “On the old view the problem of fixing the right sentence [in court] was a moral problem. Accordingly, the judge who did it was a person trained in jurisprudence; trained, that is, in a science which deals with rights and duties, and which, in origin at least, was consciously accepting guidance from the Law of Nature [The universal Moral Law], and from Scripture. We must admit that in the actual penal code of most countries at most times these high originals were so much modified by local custom, class interests, and utilitarian concessions, as to be very imperfectly recognisable. But the code was never in principle, and not always in fact, beyond the control of the conscience of the society. And when (say, in eighteenth-century England) actual punishments conflicted too violently with the moral sense of the community, juries refused to convict and reform was finally brought about. This was possible because, so long as we are thinking in terms of Desert, the propriety of the penal code, being a moral question, is a question on which every man has the right to an opinion, not because he follows this or that profession, but because he is simply a man, a rational animal enjoying the Natural Light. But all this is changed when we drop the concept of Desert...” (Doodled here: th-cam.com/video/vJYU0RPVbVc/w-d-xo.html More on the great problem with the "utilitarian concessions" in the sequel - On Punishment - A reply - th-cam.com/video/bqlwGskmtqM/w-d-xo.html
Q: Doesn’t tying ourselves to an immutable [unchanging] moral code cut off all [moral] progress and acquiesce in stagnation.
A: Lewis “Let us strip the question of the illegitimate emotional power it derives from the word 'stagnation' with its suggestion of puddles and mantled pools. If water stands too long it stinks. To infer thence that whatever stands long must be unwholesome is to be the victim of metaphor.
Space does not stink because it has preserved its three dimensions from the beginning. The square on the hypotenuse has not gone moldy by continuing to equal the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Love is not dishonored by constancy, and when we wash our hands we are seeking stagnation and "putting the clock back," artificially restoring our hands to the status quo in which they began the day and resisting the natural trend of events which would increase their dirtiness steadily from our birth to our death.
For the emotive term 'stagnant' let us substitute the descriptive term 'permanent.' Does a permanent moral standard preclude progress? On the contrary, except on the supposition of a changeless standard, progress is impossible. If good is a fixed point, it is at least possible that we should get nearer and nearer to it; but if the terminus is as mobile as the train, how can the train progress towards it? Our ideas of the good may change, but they cannot change either for the better or the worse if there is no absolute and immutable [unchanging] good to which they can recede. We can go on getting a sum more and more nearly right only if the one perfectly right is "stagnant".
And yet it will be said, I have just admitted that our ideas of good may improve. How is this to be reconciled with the view that "traditional morality" is a depositum fidei [deposit of revelations] which cannot be deserted? The answer can be understood if we compare a real moral advance with a mere innovation. From the Stoic and Confucian, "Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you"; to the Christian, "Do as you would be done by" is a real advance. The morality of Nietzsche is a mere innovation. The first is an advance because no one who did not admit the validity of the old maxim could see reason for accepting the new one, and anyone who accepted the old would at once recognize the new as an extension of the same principle. If he rejected it, he would have to reject it as a superfluity, something that went too far, not as something simply heterogeneous [divergent] from his own ideas of value. But the Nietzschean ethic can be accepted only if we are ready to scrap traditional morals as a mere error and then to put ourselves in a position where we can find no ground for any value judgements at all. It is the difference between a man who says to us: "You like your vegetables moderately fresh; why not grow your own and have them perfectly fresh?" and a man who says, "Throw away that loaf and try eating bricks and centipedes instead." (Lewis, ‘The Poison of Subjectivism’).
Q: If we accept the primary platitudes of practical reason [conscience] as the unquestioned premises of all action, are we thereby trusting our own reason so far that we ignore the [Genesis 3] Fall [of man]…?
A: As regards the Fall, I submit that the general tenor of scripture does not encourage us to believe that our knowledge of the Law has been depraved in the same degree as our power to fulfil it. He would be a brave man who claimed to realize the fallen condition of man more clearly than St. Paul. In that very chapter (Roman 7) where he asserts most strongly our inability to keep the moral law he also asserts most confidently that we perceive the Law's goodness and rejoice in it according to the inward man [Romans 7:22]. Our righteousness may be filthy and ragged [Isaiah 64:6], but Christianity gives us no ground for holding that our perceptions of right are in the same condition. They may, no doubt, be impaired [1 Timothy 4:2, 1 Corinthians 4:4 - the conscience can be corrupted and taught to feel wrongly innocent or wrongly guilty - one of functions of the blood of Christ is to cleanse the conscience of this corruption - see Hebrews 9:14]; but there is a difference between imperfect sight and blindness. A theology which goes about to represent our practical reason [moral judgement] as radically unsound is heading for disaster. If we once admit that what God means by "goodness" is sheerly different from what we judge to be good, there is no difference left between pure religion and devil worship (Lewis, ‘The Poison of Subjectivism’).
How is it possible for one person to be so insightful 😭❤️ C S Lewis is amazing!
Thanks for the video!! On point as always
Your channel is one of the BEST because it simplifies the most difficult ideas. Thank you for bringing C.S. LEWIS to the masses.
Thank you for what you do, CSLewisDoodle. My family is always happy when you release a new one of these videos.
I remember, years ago, while I was in college, being introduced to your channel and Lewis in general via a TH-cam recommendation giving me the doodle about "The Poison of Subjectivism". This is a much longer and even better writing of that essay. Thank you so much for letting me relearn that old joy.
God bless.
Yay! New CS Lewis reading + art! Love these!
I thought your channel had stopped producing videos. I didn't see (or absent mindedly scrolled past) your last few video notices.
Thank you, and carry on.
Few things make me perk up like seeing a new CSLewisDoodle! These are awesome!
The two giants of philosophy are (in my opinion) Aristotle over all other in the category of crude philosophy, and C.S. Lewis for advanced philosophy.
I really appreciate jow this showed that, while we can be confused about various parts of morality and thus work to better understand them, we cannot ever resolve the discussion as neutral observers. Luvkily, we don't have to either, since people, at their cores, have always felt the pull of the moral law, even when they haven't wanted to.
Woohoo. A doodle vid. I long doe these. Thanks my guy.
Excellent as usual. Thank you.
Love these! Great work!
32:01"...their activities in the long run always directed against their freedom"
Those who offer new ethical morality.
Tough to follow (I was called away again and again while watching) but very well done.
But you came back, again and again!
Instinct doesn't necessarily manifest in pleasure, we have an instinct to avoid harm to the self for example. And it is likely that the total destruction would cause serious emotional pain
I think Lewis replies to that in 'The abolition of Man": "Is the value of a systematization [a life] to be judged by the presence of satisfactions or the absence of dissatisfactions? The extreme case is that of the dead man in whom satisfactions and dissatisfactions (on the modern view) both equal zero, as against the successful traitor who can still eat, drink, sleep, scratch, and copulate, even if he cannot have friendship or love or self-respect...Dr. Richards’s system gives no support to his (and our) actual preference for civil life over savage and human over animal - or even for life over death."
Your video seems to coincide with something that I have long thought and I'd like your response. Truth seems to be categorized into what I call Capital T or lower case t. T is that which would be universal truths (ie those recognized as the Tau in C.S Lewis' book Abolition of Man.) On the other hand, t is that which any culture uses to define the T for a specific time and place. Small t is always something less that T but is derived from it.
Lewis talks more about this point in detail in ‘The Poison of Subjectivism’ (see comments on this page for starter), and ‘The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment’. Can you get a copy of the former?
“On the old view the problem of fixing the right sentence [in court] was a moral problem. Accordingly, the judge who did it was a person trained in jurisprudence; trained, that is, in a science which deals with rights and duties, and which, in origin at least, was consciously accepting guidance from the Law of Nature [The universal Moral Law], and from Scripture. We must admit that in the actual penal code of most countries at most times these high originals were so much modified by local custom, class interests, and utilitarian concessions, as to be very imperfectly recognisable. But the code was never in principle, and not always in fact, beyond the control of the conscience of the society. And when (say, in eighteenth-century England) actual punishments conflicted too violently with the moral sense of the community, juries refused to convict and reform was finally brought about. This was possible because, so long as we are thinking in terms of Desert, the propriety of the penal code, being a moral question, is a question on which every man has the right to an opinion, not because he follows this or that profession, but because he is simply a man, a rational animal enjoying the Natural Light. But all this is changed when we drop the concept of Desert...” (Doodled here: th-cam.com/video/vJYU0RPVbVc/w-d-xo.html
More on the great problem with the "utilitarian concessions" in the sequel - On Punishment - A reply - th-cam.com/video/bqlwGskmtqM/w-d-xo.html