Rational Spirit

"When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked,
what says 'I want' remains" (65).
C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Points for Reflection

The Abolition of Man (1943)

1. does Lewis exaggerate when accords teachers the ability to profoundly shape students, to “cut out of his soul” (8-9) certain cognitive possibilities?
2. does Lewis appear ambivalent about the power and importance of human emotion?
3. how does might one’s starved sensibility make them more vulnerable to outside influence?
4. what does Lewis mean by the phrase “trained emotions” (24)?
5. does Lewis believe that parental instinct and affection should trump all other concerns?
6. what problems does Lewis identify in the determination to live according to one's instincts?
7. does Lewis consider all feeling/sentiment to be merely subjective?
8. does Lewis contend that discrete moral systems share more features than distinguish them?
9. does Lewis believe that our altruistic impulses can powerfully shape our behavior without the assistance of “practical reason”?
10. what qualms does Lewis have with classifying humanity as merely another part of Nature?
11. why does Lewis conclude that there is, really, no such thing as “Man’s power over Nature”?
12. does Lewis imagine that science which helps us shape our human descendants grants those descendants more power over themselves, or less power?
13. what does Lewis imagine will truly govern the motives of the eugenicists, or “Conditioners,” who try to predetermine humanity’s future?
    

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Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu