Bear with a digression. CS Lewis was a professor at Oxford. His novel “That Hideous Strength” is about an organization that wants to use science to save humanity.
“It’s a little fantastic to base one’s actions on a supposed concern for what’s going to happen millions of years hence; and you must remember that the other side would claim to be preserving humanity, too.”
— That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) (The Space Trilogy 3) by C. S. Lewis
Of course, it all goes very, very bad. The whole book can be read as a warning against what we now call transhumanism, obviously from a Christian perspective.
Given CS Lewis’s Oxford connection, I have always wondered if some of the faculty had their doubts about the FHI
While I do appreciate this reference and agree with CS Lewis here, I think it's a bit of a stretch to draw a connection between him and the present day Oxford philosophy faculty. He was a single don from nearly a century ago, who now really belongs to the canon at large rather than a single university. Perhaps the current faculty all hold some special reverence for him, but it seems more likely that modern mainstream philosophers (not only at Oxford) merely share with Lewis some basic grasp of common sense, which informs their skepticism of FHI and EA.
I agree with you completely. And yet...I can't imagine at least some of them aren't aware of it, and it might have planted a seed. I could totally believe there was a faculty meeting and someone said: "Didn't CS Lewis write a book or two about this?" followed by laughter (some of it nervous). It's just so odd to me that out of all the universities in the world, FHI ended up at the place CS Lewis was when he wrote this book. I can pull quote after quote out of it, that if you don't know it was written in 1943, you would think he was parodying FHI and EA. Which really reflects that these two movements aren't that new.
Not defending it. Just think the parallels with the novel are amusing. John Gray has been arguing for years that humanism and transhumanism grew out of Christian millennialism
I doubt that the philosophy faculty would take CS Lewis' opinion seriously into consideration. He was a decent storyteller, but not much of a philosopher.
His work is often quietly cited by a handful of moral philosophers. In particular, The Discarded Image, anytime someone is writing about medieval philosophy.
Anyway, being a philosopher simply isn't what the guy did and academics are fairly dismissive without consideration anytime religion (and specifically Christian apologetics) gets in the mix.
> academics are fairly dismissive without consideration anytime religion (and specifically Christian apologetics) gets in the mix.
In fairness, it's a good heuristic. Most Christian apologetics are just less poetic subsets of the Book of Job, but their authors act like they have some new and exciting insight that will prove Christianity 100% for sure this time. It's a total waste of time to engage.
C.S. Lewis's works are the exception, not the rule, since there's actually something there to engage with. Plus, he's just a good author.
Maybe. I don't disagree with you at all really, but I don't think it's "Christian apologetics" who get derided in academic spheres. Being openly religious (specifically Western religions, other world religions get virtually no pushback) at all is considered gauche. People I've known to be religious in these spheres are typically very quiet about it. I'm not religious, but lean more towards agnosticism than atheism and I don't feel comfortable sharing that in these circles. If there's any place you should be comfortable saying "I don't know" it SHOULD be this one.
It's also really weird in fields like archaeology/anthropology in North American institutions where western religious texts are given no consideration (not that they should) whereas Native American creation myths are given a kind of deference. White guilt is a powerful thing.
I'd interested to take a look if you have any further info about which moral philosophers and which works cite The Discarded Image?
I admit I haven't read that one myself; my own take on him as a philosopher stems from reading Mere Christianity and summaries of Surprised by Joy, and not being aware of any references to his work by more recent philosophers that I've been interested in such as Chomsky, Zizek, or Dennett. I got a strong feeling that Lewis' arguments and exposition were guided by something other than logic, though they pretended to be following it. The trilemma is an example of this.
> I got a strong feeling that Lewis' arguments and exposition were guided by something other than logic, though they pretended to be following it. The trilemma is an example of this.
One way to discover that we necessarily have worldviews outside of logic is to look at a statement like this, and realize it appeals to something outside of logic (feelings) to critique how someone else is only pretending to follow it.
I am not saying that I or anyone am perfectly logical or uninfluenced by feeling. Hume was exactly correct when he said the reason is the slave of the passions.
But - with his trilemma, Lewis claims "here is a logical argument for believing in the Christian god", and then presents a weak and illogical argument. It's difficult to know what to make of this except that Lewis was somehow blinded to the logical flaws.
> "here is a logical argument for believing in the Christian god"
That is definitely not the point of the trilemma. It simply argues that Christ must be placed into one of three categories, which do not include "generally nice and completely harmless moral teacher". He was clearly claiming to be God, which obviously leads to the trilemma of choices between Liar, Lunatic and Lord.
That doesn't say which one of those three to pick. Just ruling out the other possibilities by considering the claims he made about himself.
I don't know if that's true. Certainly there are biblical scholars who would disagree. It's not mentioned in the first three gospels, for example.
> obviously leads to the trilemma of choices
Again, not obvious. The three choices are logically incomplete. There are other possibilities, such as that Jesus was not a ful-on lunatic: he had a single delusional belief about his own divinity but was otherwise rational.
It's a false trilemma, as there are othe possibilities: he did not actually exist historically, or he was a wise, nice guy and others made up all the God stuff over the years, or he was a nice guy trying to help people and he thought tactically the mystical claims would allow him to help more people. One can probably imagine a bunch more or less realistic possibilities given a little while to think about it.
You must remember that the trilemma exists in a context. Lewis set it up as a reply to people who "say that they're ready to accept Jesus as a good human teacher, but not ready to accept him as God". That is, they already accepted that he existed, and that the set of teachings recorded was more or less accurate.
That rules out "did not actually exist historically" and "others made up all the God stuff over the years". (I mean, those exists as possibilities in an absolute sense, but not as possibilities that he had to answer, because the people he was answering didn't hold those as options.)
And to me, "a nice guy trying to help people and he thought tactically the mystical claims would allow him to help more people" sounds a lot like "liar". Liar with good intentions, but still liar.
Well, if you have to presuppose that the gospels are true then you are probably arguing with a tiny slice of people: those who believe the gospels are more or less accurate down to the specific quotes of Jesus but do not believe he was the son of God. I would say that "accept Jesus as a good human teacher" is a far broader category than this and nothing about it implies a particularly strict belief in the truth of the gospels.
I'd also say that, even accepting the gospels, we have to really take wide views of "liar, lunatic, or Lord" to make it work. Lewis himself further described the "liar" as akin to the "Devil of Hell" - I wouldn't characterize the liar I described as such. And he said the lunatic was akin to "the man who says he is a poached egg", but people are great at compartmentalization and can hold some very silly specific beliefs while still being otherwise rational, sane people. Even "Lord" admits plenty of things we wouldn't recognize as Christianity, e.g. rejecting the trinity or plenty of other heresies.
In the 1950s, in Great Britain, the basic accuracy of the gospels was a lot more widely shared assumption/presupposition than it is today.
If you're going to accept Jesus as a good human teacher, but not accept that he actually taught what the gospels say he did, then you have a good teacher but no teachings. And maybe that's a position that a lot of people like, because it leaves them an empty figure into which they can pour whatever teachings they personally favor, but I think it's rather a cop-out. (A steelman version would be: "I think he was a good human teacher, but no reliable record of what he actually taught survives, so we cannot claim that any particular teaching or position has his stamp of approval." But I still think that's weak. If you can't trust the record of what he taught, how can you trust the record that he was a good teacher?)
Accepting the gospels, the liar you describe is still offering people eternal life, at a price - "take up your cross and follow me". (The cross was not just a burden, it was an instrument of execution.) If the eternal life isn't there, it's hard to describe that as a benign or beneficial lie. Note that many of his followers were executed. (Our record of that doesn't depend on the gospels - Tacitus also says this.) You may say that this still falls short of Lewis's description, but it's far from your description. (I'd have to go back and reread Lewis's argument to see how tightly he has boxed people in on the "liar" branch.)
>Accepting the gospels, the liar you describe is still offering people eternal life, at a price - "take up your cross and follow me". (The cross was not just a burden, it was an instrument of execution.) If the eternal life isn't there, it's hard to describe that as a benign or beneficial lie.
If you don't actually believe in the supernatural stuff it seems like the definition of a benign lie. He thinks having society follow his broader teachings would result in a much better society on net, regardless of some people being killed for following and spreading it. He thinks that you go in the dirt when you die so he says, hey, actually you go up to this great place. This really helps it catch on and spread. Nobody finds out that part's not true because when they die they just go in the dirt.
Any kind of large-scale change will have some specific people dying compared to the counterfactual of not making the change. To assess whether the change is benign, positive, or negative, we must grapple with both the positive and negative impacts.
For example, I could wave a magic wand today and fix climate change, saving millions or billions of lives. But since I did so, some granny slips on a patch of ice next winter and dies from the fall. Without my magic wand, she would have lived.
Now, I don't specifically know who this granny is before I choose to wave my wand, but as a thinking individual I understand that some such granny must exist. In fact, there are probably many grannies who will die as a result. Would you argue that waving my wand is not a positive change because specific people exist who will be harmed?
I don't think it rules out "others made up all the God stuff over the years". It's perfectly reasonable to take John with a big pinch of salt and believe that Jesus did not claim divinity, and I wouldn't be surprised if Lewis' intended audience included such people.
It's highly debatable whether Jesus believed himself to be divine. There are more than three options, for example Jesus may have simply made a mistake in his own reasoning. It is not as inconceivable as Lewis makes out that Jesus was a lunatic or a liar.
My feeling is that Chomsky, Zizek and Dennett aren't free of being guided by something other than logic for some of their arguments as well. For example, Dennett's arguments against the hard problem of consciousness come across as dogmatic materialism.
Could you expand on that, and perhaps provide an example? I've heard similar claims, and people using the phrase "consciousness explained away". Certainly Dennett is an unashamed materialist. The word "dogmatic" however suggests he holds that position as a matter of faith, which I think is a misrepresentation.
Thank you! I love Mary Midgley and now that you mention it, it makes sense. Of course, there's the Oxford connection, and Midgley was critical of reductionist materialism, though she was no Christian apologist. There are loops within loops here, such as the Anscombe connection to both of them.
Thank you. The name vaguely rings a bell but certainly not someone I know much about.
The natural follow-up question -although probably hard to answer - is whether the existing philosophy faculty includes others like Midgley who have a positive view of Lewis, to the extent that it would influence this decision. I would have expected most of the philosophers there to be in the analytic tradition, but happy to be shown wrong.
“It’s a little fantastic to base one’s actions on a supposed concern for what’s going to happen millions of years hence; and you must remember that the other side would claim to be preserving humanity, too.”
— That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) (The Space Trilogy 3) by C. S. Lewis
Of course, it all goes very, very bad. The whole book can be read as a warning against what we now call transhumanism, obviously from a Christian perspective.
Given CS Lewis’s Oxford connection, I have always wondered if some of the faculty had their doubts about the FHI