Abstract
This paper considers C.S. Lewis’ “doctrine of objective value” in two of his major works, The Abolition of Man and The Discarded Image. Lewis uses the Chinese name Tao, albeit with an incomplete understanding of its origins, for the objective worldview. The paper argues that Tao, as an explicit theme of The Abolition of Man, is also a determining undercurrent in The Discarded Image. In the former work, Tao is what Lewis wants to defend and restore against twentieth-century secular ideologies, which Lewis condemns as infected with “the poison of subjectivism”. In the latter work, where Lewis presents one of the best accounts of the European medieval model of the Universe, objective value (the Tao in Lewis’ argument) underlies both how the model has been shaped, and how Lewis, as a medievalist, accounts for and draws upon it as an intellectual and spiritual resource. The purpose of this parallel study is to show that Lewis’ explication of the Tao in The Abolition of Man, which is a “built-in”, implicit belief in The Discarded Image, provides a critique of tendencies towards the subjectivism prevalent in Lewis’ lifetime. These tendencies can be traced into the moral relativism, pluralism and reductionism of the twenty-first century, giving Lewis’ work the status of twentieth-century prophecy.
Highlights
IntroductionAs Lewis states, it is “the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” This definition of “doctrine of objective value” is given with his acute awareness of and alertness toward the “false philosophy” of “subjectivism”, which was becoming prevalent in Lewis’ time and, to most of us, is apparently more so in the present-day world of multi-culturalism
The Discarded Image (1964) and The Abolition of Man (1943) are two monuments in C.S
Clarification Three: Tao, a mere symbol or a conscious borrowing? Due to Lewis’ somewhat unclear specification of the origin of the Tao in Abolition, critical essays which deal with this book either totally ignore the ancient Chinese tradition involved in its powerful discussion of the Tao, treating it only as a linguistic symbol to represent the Natural Law,64 or claim on Lewis’s behalf that he is consciously and “surprisingly” borrowing from “the Chinese mystic” Lao Tze
Summary
As Lewis states, it is “the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” This definition of “doctrine of objective value” is given with his acute awareness of and alertness toward the “false philosophy” of “subjectivism”, which was becoming prevalent in Lewis’ time and, to most of us, is apparently more so in the present-day world of multi-culturalism Such philosophy debunks the traditional Tao, and subjectifies, relativizes, and nullifies the objective reality of value judgments, but feeds upon some “shreds” of the Tao for the “innovation” of another set of beliefs, a sort of “artificial Tao”, to serve the “pleasure” or whim of certain ideology manipulators whom Lewis called “Conditioners”. The Medieval Model which Lewis delineates in The Discarded Image formulates these aspects of the doctrine of objective value in a fascinating way
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