Men Without Chests
Episode Stats
Summary
Dr. Michael Ward has written a guide called After Humanity, a reader s guide to C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, which is designed to make the book more understandable to the average reader. Dr. Ward is both a catholic priest and a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast we make men without
00:00:11.760
chest and expect from them virtue and enterprise we laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors
00:00:16.360
in our midst while this quote from c.s lewis is often cited few completely understand what
00:00:20.580
lewis meant by it nor understand the book from which it was taken the abolition of man which
00:00:24.720
unlike lewis's more popular works of fiction and christian apologetics is a broad philosophical
00:00:29.440
treatise aimed at everyone and perhaps the most admired and yet least successful of lewis's
00:00:33.800
writings my guest today has written a guide called after humanity that is designed to make the
00:00:38.000
abolition of man more understandable to the average reader his name is dr michael ward he's both a
00:00:42.520
catholic priest and a senior research fellow at oxford michael kicks off our conversation today
00:00:46.160
by offering a big picture overview of what the abolition of man was about which centers on lewis's
00:00:50.440
argument against subjectivism and for the idea that there exist objective moral values the denial of
00:00:55.400
which brings destructive consequences we unpack the case lewis makes for the existence of a natural
00:00:59.840
order which underlies all religions and cultures and why he called this universal objective reality
00:01:04.320
the dao we then get into what lewis meant by the idea of making men without chest the function of a
00:01:09.340
man's chest and why chest aren't being developed today we enter conversation with why moral debates
00:01:13.940
can seem so shrill and fruitless in a world without agreement upon objective values and if anything can be
00:01:18.420
done to build the chest of modern men after the show's over check out our show notes at
00:01:22.660
aom.is slash men without chest michael ward welcome to the show thank you brett good to be with you
00:01:39.280
thank you so you have written a reader's guide to c.s lewis's book the abolition of man now i think most
00:01:46.240
people who have listened or listening to this podcast are familiar with c.s lewis at least with his fiction
00:01:50.660
the chronicles of narnia or his christian apologetics the abolition of man is neither a work of fiction
00:01:56.160
nor is it christian apologetics we're gonna get in the details of what the abolition of man is
00:02:00.660
but before we do big picture what is the abolition of man about like what was lewis trying to do with it
00:02:06.020
the abolition of man is about the objectivity of value and what will happen if we deny the objectivity
00:02:14.420
of value so it's really both a defense and a prediction lewis is defending the fact that moral values and indeed aesthetic values
00:02:25.020
have a kind of objectivity outside our own subjective preferences we don't confer value upon
00:02:32.580
the world we rather identify it in the world we discover it we don't invent it but if we take the
00:02:40.940
subjectivist line and and start supposing that no there's no objective value out there we we just
00:02:47.440
we just make it up we project it from our own arbitrary will and and choice and preference and
00:02:53.640
whims um if we take that stance we're on a short route to self-destruction really that's why he calls
00:03:02.940
his book the abolition of man we'll be denying an essential part of our own humanity if we take that
00:03:08.540
approach so that's what he's trying to accomplish both defending the objectivity of value and forecasting
00:03:15.060
what will happen if we deny it well let's give some background on this what he lewis gave some
00:03:21.880
lectures that he based the abolition of man on he gave them during world war ii how did world war ii
00:03:28.540
and then also lewis's experience with world war one influence his ideas and abolition well obviously
00:03:35.400
in world war ii his country britain where i'm speaking to you from today i'm here in oxford in england
00:03:41.780
britain during the world war during the second world war was you know undergoing a terrible trauma
00:03:47.320
his country you know london had endured the blitz and there was food rationing and you know soldiers
00:03:55.600
are around the world fighting and dying in defense of the allied cause um so and you know it was a war
00:04:02.140
that lasted six years from our point of view 1939 to 1945 and he gave these lectures in february 1943
00:04:09.820
so he'd already you know the country had already been at war for about nearly four years and in that
00:04:16.600
context you know with with so much going wrong it was focusing people's minds and making them
00:04:23.260
argue you know about about these deep philosophical matters i mean why does it matter that we defeat the
00:04:29.700
nazis for instance you know is nazi morality better or worse than than british morality on the disputed
00:04:37.640
questions um and of course he's lewis is arguing that nazi morality is is no morality at all it's
00:04:44.580
absolute perversion it's it's the it's a monstrous immorality but in order to take that step you have
00:04:51.140
of course to argue that you're measuring both nazi morality and christian morality by some external
00:04:56.840
standard by a third thing which is objective value the objective standard which all human beings can
00:05:05.180
perceive or ought to be able to perceive and this is why we could hold the nazis guilty of a moral
00:05:10.620
crime that they were falling short of something that they should have been able to perceive and
00:05:16.360
indeed really did know even though they tried to suppress it so that's the immediate context the second
00:05:22.560
world war but in the background there's the first world war because in the first world war lewis had been
00:05:29.080
an officer a junior officer in the british army he'd been a second lieutenant and he'd served for six
00:05:35.980
months just towards the end of the great war and he'd been very nearly killed a shell had exploded in
00:05:41.880
his trench and it obliterated the man next to him and it spattered lewis full of shrapnel bits of which he
00:05:49.180
carried around in his body for a long time afterwards and uh he had a sort of out-of-body experience
00:05:55.500
the picture the thought came to him here is a picture of a man dying he thought he was done for
00:06:01.600
and that is relevant to the abolition of man because in the abolition of man he will argue that the
00:06:08.100
crucial test of the objectivity of value is our willingness to suffer for it until we have to suffer
00:06:14.900
for doing the right thing like defending our country until that happens it's hard to tell for sure that
00:06:23.460
the value is really objective because it might just be convenient it might just be to our advantage
00:06:29.060
but as soon as we have to suffer for it well then we realize oh no this has some objective reality
00:06:35.380
because if it were purely subjective i could change it couldn't i i could make it more compatible with my
00:06:40.720
wishes so having gone through a near-death experience himself and having seen many of his comrades killed
00:06:48.580
and some of his friends lewis knew what he was talking about when when he when he referred to
00:06:55.320
that old latin tag from the poet horus dulce decorum est pro patria mori it's sweet and seemly to die
00:07:03.880
for one's country this wasn't just some abstract principle some noble ideal from the past this was
00:07:11.060
something that lewis had had tested on his own pulses as it were so i think that helps account for for some of
00:07:17.940
the rhetorical power of the abolition of man that it sprang from a a deep part of lewis's own experience
00:07:24.900
and it has been you know a much admired book the abolition of man it's it's but we can come on to
00:07:30.780
that yeah well let's continue on some of lewis's like intellectual biography obviously the world war
00:07:35.940
one had a big influence on his thoughts about okay there is an objective moral reality value out there
00:07:41.660
because he experienced you know i'm dying for this thing that i believe in besides world war one
00:07:47.380
how else did lewis's life influence his thinking and abolition of man yes in in the course of my guide
00:07:54.860
that i've i've written after humanity i have a a few background chapters on the immediate context of
00:08:01.760
lewis's own life and indeed his his background growing up where he in various places talks about
00:08:08.780
his own struggles with with subjectivism he talks about his own vicious subjectivism in his autobiography
00:08:15.400
he talks about how his mind was split between the world of facts without one trace of value
00:08:23.300
and the world of feelings without one trace of truth or falsehood and that fact value distinction
00:08:30.700
or opposition that polarization between facts and values is is really something that he's he's trying
00:08:39.020
to overcome in the abolition of man by saying that facts have values and values can be factual
00:08:46.160
the opposition between the two is a is a false opposition it's a misleading dichotomy which we've been
00:08:52.660
lured into in the last three or four hundred years for for various historical and philosophical reasons
00:08:58.080
and we need to break out of that opposition and he had in his teens and his twenties he'd struggled
00:09:05.180
out of that mode of thinking and having found the escape route he wanted to share it having faced up to
00:09:13.780
the enemy of subjectivism he knew the power of that of that uh position so i think again that's
00:09:20.900
relevant to the abolition of man and why it has has achieved such status that it's it's
00:09:27.900
in a way it's a work of poetry of course it's not written in verse it's written in prose but it's
00:09:33.100
poetic in the sense that it it comes from lewis's own quarrel with himself wb yates the great irish poet
00:09:41.420
said that when we quarrel with others we make merely rhetoric but when we quarrel with ourselves we make
00:09:50.120
poetry and therefore the abolition of man can be seen as a poetic work because it comes out of lewis's
00:09:56.180
own struggle with himself on this very question he's not just taking pot shots at some some you
00:10:02.340
know target which will advance his academic career he's not just you know beating down some fashionable
00:10:08.360
opponent um which will make him look good no this is something that he's sort of existentially
00:10:13.600
grappled with okay let's dig into this book a bit and kind of suss out like what lewis means by
00:10:18.760
subjectivism why he thinks that's a problem and then his predictions for what happens if we don't
00:10:23.940
recognize there is objective value in the world so he begins the the abolition of man by referencing
00:10:28.740
a book that he calls the green book and this was an actual prep school textbook it was for english
00:10:34.520
composition basically and lewis makes the case that you know while this prep text book looks innocent
00:10:40.760
and useful he actually says it's really insidious what was lewis's problem with the green book
00:10:46.000
yes the green book was in reality a book called the control of language and it was by these authors
00:10:54.060
alec king and martin kettley though lewis calls them gaius and titius and as you say he refers to the
00:11:02.040
volume itself as the green book so he's casting a sort of veil of anonymity over both the book and the
00:11:07.840
authors to save their blushes but also because you know this is just a springboard into his bait in
00:11:13.800
into his larger argument um we shouldn't get too bogged down in in the details of the green book
00:11:20.040
but we do need to obviously give it as much attention as lewis gives it and and the attention
00:11:25.600
lewis gives it is because it it introduces to school children a subjectivist frame of mind
00:11:33.760
which is bad enough in itself i mean that would be bad if it was done sort of openly and straightforwardly
00:11:39.160
but it's particularly insidious because it's not even the the real subject of the green book the
00:11:43.880
green book as you say is supposed to be about understanding literature it's not propounding a
00:11:49.060
particular philosophy of value it's smuggled in this very deleterious philosophy uh while supposedly
00:11:57.240
being about something else that's why it really gets lewis's goat he he thinks this is is is is not
00:12:03.300
just philosophically wrong it's it's a it's kind of crime against children too so the green book just
00:12:10.280
discusses the story of the poet coleridge samuel taylor coleridge and how he viewed a great waterfall
00:12:18.320
here in england and how as he was viewing it one a fellow tourist said isn't that waterfall sublime and a
00:12:27.720
second person said no it's merely pretty and coleridge supposedly endorsed the term sublime but
00:12:34.780
turned away from the epithet pretty with disgust and the authors of the green book use this as as a way
00:12:41.640
of saying yeah well why why would coleridge turn away in disgust it's it's not the case that the
00:12:48.440
waterfall had any objective value about it that it was objectively sublime if you want to call it sublime
00:12:54.600
call it sublime if you want to call it pretty call it pretty because you you confer value from your
00:12:59.280
own subjective perspective there's nothing real out there that you have to get your feelings into
00:13:04.380
accord with so that's what the green book argues and that's what lewis takes issue with and it as i say
00:13:14.000
it's a springboard into this larger case about about subjectivism and how the denial of subjectivism
00:13:20.800
leads to a very shrunk and shriveled and suffocating world of of competing subjectivisms because there's
00:13:29.040
no there's no common ground between between you and me if your truth and my truth are utterly
00:13:36.260
incommensurable and they can only be commensurable if there's an objective reality that you and i both
00:13:42.540
have access to all right so just to clarify and recap subjectivism says that there are facts out there
00:13:47.780
there are waterfalls there are cultures there are actions but they don't have objective value
00:13:53.480
themselves so you can look at the night sky at the stars and think well those are just big balls of
00:13:59.120
gas and not feel anything or you could look and think well that's awe-inspiring it's sublime it's
00:14:05.160
beautiful and with subjectivism either reaction is fine because it's you know to each their own
00:14:10.160
but what lewis is arguing is saying that no things do have an objective value and i got a quote here
00:14:15.900
where he basically says this he says things possess a quality which demands a certain response from us
00:14:21.620
whether we make it or not so he's saying certain things should they should elicit certain responses
00:14:27.500
from us yes that's that's right um there are realities which we perceive that meet our senses
00:14:36.100
and they they contain within them a certain quality which we need to recognize and respond appropriately
00:14:46.440
to in other words the world the world is is qualitative it's not just quantitative and this
00:14:53.460
is part of lewis's larger target here that the and this is why i said about the thing about how
00:14:59.600
over the last three or four hundred years we've arrived steadily at this more and more subjectivist approach
00:15:05.000
because since the the scientific revolution of the of the 17th 18th centuries we've come to view
00:15:12.500
facts as those things which can be measured and weighed and quantified according to the the systems of
00:15:23.940
of inductive scientific empirical inquiry all of which are good in themselves but they're only one way of
00:15:34.000
investigating reality and to reduce all knowledge to that quantitative measurable mathematical
00:15:40.700
mode of knowledge is is is limiting uh it's foolish there are many other ways of apprehending reality
00:15:48.860
other than the quantitative so that's that's why the fact value distinction has has has crept upon us
00:15:56.500
because we've we've we've come to think of facts as these as necessarily value free
00:16:01.760
they have no quality to them they're merely quantitative but that's that's a full step
00:16:08.680
that's a misstep and we should never have gone down that path and you know the the sad philosophical
00:16:15.000
history of the last three or four hundred years testifies to that fact we're gonna take a quick
00:16:19.580
break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so lewis he starts making this
00:16:26.880
case that there is a universal objective moral value based reality that it exists he calls it the
00:16:34.360
dao tao like the dao from like the way confucian way or the asian way what evidence does lewis give
00:16:42.160
for the dao's existence because you know the scientific mindset would look well there's no you can't see
00:16:47.280
the dao you can't see that there are this this objective value based reality exists you can't measure it
00:16:52.680
so what does lewis propose as evidence that it does exist well he says that the dao is is self
00:16:59.300
evident that it's a premise it's not a conclusion we have to assume that value is objective before we
00:17:08.180
can get anywhere that that this is this is the moral ecology that we find ourselves within just as
00:17:15.380
we find ourselves within the actual physical atmosphere and environment of the world so there
00:17:23.480
is a moral ecology that could not be otherwise and we discover it we don't invent it these moral truths
00:17:32.920
are built into reality just as mathematical truths are built into reality and indeed you know that those
00:17:43.440
who would take a very reductive scientistic approach are themselves already acknowledging that fact
00:17:52.440
because by the by the very fact that scientists assume that the world is knowable and that and that
00:18:02.320
science can be either correct or false you know the the answer to a mathematical equation or to a
00:18:08.740
scientific experiment can be either true or false they're already acknowledging that there is something
00:18:14.340
out there called truth you know they may have a very attenuated understanding of what that truth is
00:18:19.260
they may see it only in quantitative terms but the fact that they see it in any objective terms at all
00:18:26.600
testifies to this very truth that lewis is arguing for that the dao surrounds us and supports us
00:18:32.600
before we take any step in any direction we can't get out of it so it's a it's a very foundational kind
00:18:41.080
of paradigmatic argument that lewis is making that we are our feet are already on the way whether we
00:18:49.240
like it or not we can't get out of it it's a little bit like the observer effect in science in physics you
00:18:55.980
know the the very fact of observing something changes the thing which is under observation
00:19:00.560
the very fact of trying to suggest that we live in a value-free world already implicitly
00:19:08.500
acknowledges that there is such a thing as value because you know even if you're trying to advance
00:19:13.960
a subjectivist case you're wanting to argue that subjectivism is itself objectively true so it's
00:19:21.100
self-defeating it's it's illogical so what lewis is really arguing for is basic foundational moral logic
00:19:29.780
so i mean why doesn't he call it like this sounds like natural law or first principles why does he
00:19:34.440
why does he call it the dao instead of that because he's wanting to argue for its universality and by
00:19:41.260
reaching all the way into chinese philosophy he's sort of emphasizing that fact through his through
00:19:47.360
the very terminology that he's deploying if he called it natural law um or some other much more sort
00:19:53.980
of western sounding term like the first principles of practical reason or something like that he would
00:20:00.760
have lost a trick in the game as it were in the rhetorical game of emphasizing the universality of
00:20:07.660
of this thing that he's trying to describe and remember even by 1943 when he gave these lectures
00:20:15.420
lewis had already acquired something of a reputation as a christian apologist he'd published the problem of
00:20:21.520
pain he'd begun his broadcasts over the bbc which became the book mere christianity so he already had
00:20:27.980
something of a profile as a speaker a defender of christianity and his point here is not to defend
00:20:34.620
christianity per se or even to defend theism he's wanting to defend the objectivity of value which precedes
00:20:45.040
and undergirds theism and christianity and indeed all systems of moral and logical thought whatsoever
00:20:52.200
so it's not it's not a peculiarly christian argument that he's making it's much more of a
00:20:58.180
humane argument it's part of our humanity that he's trying to describe because all human beings
00:21:04.140
have been made with this awareness of moral value it's you know from a christian point of view he would
00:21:12.700
argue of course that that is a that is a sign of the fact that we've been made in god's image and
00:21:17.800
this thing that he's talking about is really conscience what saint paul says in the in his
00:21:22.880
letter to the romans is the thing that even the gentiles who are without the law have as a as a law
00:21:28.100
written in their own hearts now accusing them now condemning them now acquitting them but he's not
00:21:33.620
wanting to rest his argument on those christian principles or those on that christian vocabulary
00:21:39.380
he's wanting to make a purely philosophical case which all people of goodwill all people of
00:21:46.000
who are you know prepared to accept the objectivity of value can can get on board with and that's one
00:21:53.620
of the reasons why the abolition of man has has acquired such a wide audience so many readers from
00:22:00.260
so many different backgrounds have have said this is a really valuable contribution to thought you know
00:22:05.940
there's a prominent british philosopher at the moment called john gray who's an atheist and he
00:22:12.560
devoted a whole bbc radio broadcast that he did recently to the abolition of man describing it as a
00:22:18.200
as a very prescient and prophetic work which was as relevant now as when lewis first delivered the
00:22:23.900
lectures and perhaps even more so and john gray is an atheist um but he's an atheist who believes in
00:22:30.520
the objectivity of value and what evidence does lewis give for the existence of the dao well
00:22:35.880
one piece of evidence is that is the the universal moral code that you can point to and that he does
00:22:43.100
point to in the appendix of the book so in the appendix he has eight moral laws the duty of general
00:22:51.520
beneficence the duty of special beneficence the duty to ancestors and elders the duty to children
00:22:59.000
and posterity and and four other duties or laws and under each of these eight headings he he cites any
00:23:07.640
number of examples from traditions and cultures and religions around the world and down through history
00:23:14.280
he quotes babylonian sources hindu sources jewish christian native american aboriginal australian
00:23:24.080
norse any number of different cultures and approaches to the world have come to remarkably similar
00:23:33.420
conclusions about what is right and wrong obviously there are points of difference but lewis's aim in this
00:23:41.400
appendix is to is to point to the remarkable unanimity that there is on on major central points of
00:23:50.900
human behavior and he's not arguing that this proves the dao even universal common consent would not prove it
00:24:01.460
because it's self-evident it has to be taken as i say as a premise not as a conclusion it's the starting
00:24:09.220
point but the very fact that you can point to this huge overlap between different very different cultures
00:24:15.880
is remarkable sort of circumstantial evidence of of the of the validity of his argument
00:24:22.460
and how does lewis think we learn about the dao is it something you have to read about you have to get
00:24:27.240
lectured about what does the matriculation in the dao look like
00:24:30.480
well you can learn about it by reading you can learn about it by being lectured on it at school or university
00:24:40.060
um you can learn it and indeed most of us do learn it primarily from our parents and our siblings
00:24:47.980
as we grow up in our families because you know the the domestic arrangements are the are the prime
00:24:53.500
teachers of of value it's a case of old birds teaching young young birds how to fly that's a an image
00:25:02.520
that lewis uses we shouldn't think of it as as being conditioned into one particular mode of
00:25:09.900
thought the difference between the the lewis is talking about is the difference between propaganda
00:25:15.500
and propagation but a propagandist just conditions people into a into a set of views that he himself
00:25:24.600
the propagandist doesn't necessarily share but in true propagation of the dao in true moral formation
00:25:32.980
the the parent the teacher the pastor whoever it is finds this this moral law to be binding upon them
00:25:42.220
too they're sharing something that they know to be valuable they're not trying to to merely
00:25:49.400
condition other people to to take a view that will be of convenience to them so you know this is
00:25:57.620
you see this don't you in very little ways in in families when when the parents tell the children
00:26:03.480
don't swear you know don't use cuss words and then mummy or daddy says something rude
00:26:10.760
and the children say you shouldn't say that you told me not to say it and of course that's that's a
00:26:16.240
prime example of the very thing we're talking about here that you know the parents need to live up to
00:26:20.200
their own principles and you know sometimes parents say don't do as i say do don't do as i do do as i
00:26:26.680
say but true propagation of of moral value is when we we live up to the the very principles we're trying
00:26:36.200
to to communicate so the most famous line in the abolition of man is this i've seen people quote this
00:26:42.740
lots of times i think it's kind of taken out of context though so they're not they kind of take it
00:26:47.620
out they kind of rip it from the abolition of man and lose the big picture thing what lewis is trying
00:26:52.140
to do it's this it's uh we make men without chest and expect from them virtue and enterprise we laugh
00:26:58.460
at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst we castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful
00:27:03.600
the men without chest part i think is what gets most of the attention what what does lewis mean by
00:27:08.440
by chest what and what does it mean to not have a chest yeah the first chapter of the abolition of
00:27:13.840
man is entitled men without chests and that springs from a kind of threefold model of the human person
00:27:21.900
that lewis develops so he sees the human person philosophically speaking as a threefold unity
00:27:30.320
the head the chest and the belly and in the head we have rational thoughts in the belly we have
00:27:39.980
senses and passions and feelings appetites from the head upwards from the neck upwards we are as it were
00:27:48.900
you know like the angels angels are and are rational spirits from the belly downwards we're like the
00:27:55.180
animals we have senses and and passions but in the chest we have the definitively human faculty
00:28:04.040
and in the chest passions and emotions are not squelched or denied but they are regularized they're
00:28:13.800
stabilized um we we don't want to either pretend we are more spiritual than we are we are after all
00:28:23.060
embodied creatures but neither should we suggest that we are more sensual than we are because we are
00:28:31.220
also rational creatures and we need to combine the head and the belly in the chest and make ourselves
00:28:38.200
truly rational animals which is what you know that's the classic definition of a human being
00:28:43.620
and that combination that unification of the two sides of our nature happens symbolically speaking in the
00:28:51.960
chest which is this seat as lewis calls it of just sentiments stable and civilized feelings
00:29:00.480
regularized emotions so we can feel and we ought to feel we ought to feel deeply but we shouldn't feel
00:29:08.220
irrationally that's the point okay so to recap here basically a man without a chest is a man whose
00:29:15.020
sentiments aren't educated he either feels things too much when he shouldn't or he doesn't feel
00:29:20.880
anything at all when he should and what lewis is saying is we need to train our emotions to combine
00:29:25.520
reason with sentiment that gives us that chest and when we have that chest then you know like it's
00:29:31.560
like a cooler edge of the waterfall we can think about and recognize the right response to something
00:29:36.540
and then make it more tuned and congruent with nature and by nature i'm talking like capital in nature
00:29:43.340
absolutely yes uh so you you can you can discern value within objects that meet your senses
00:29:53.120
they're not just dumbly there they're not just imprinting themselves upon your senses as if you're
00:29:59.500
nothing more than a clay tablet one of the images that lewis uses in making this point is is the image of
00:30:06.740
the aeolian harp you know that stringed instrument that you you can put up you know hanging from the
00:30:13.300
branches of a tree or you put you fix it in the in in your window and and so as the wind blows through
00:30:19.620
the strings they sound that's an aeolian harp and the romantic poet shelley likens a human being to
00:30:30.620
an aeolian harp with this important difference that we're not we're not just physical instruments we are
00:30:39.100
rational instruments if you like we can think we we don't just receive impressions from the outside world
00:30:47.060
but we we can't we have the power of internal adjustment we can think about them and we can
00:30:54.400
make ourselves more or less in accordance with what we see so you know lewis isn't wanting to say
00:31:01.440
you know clicking his fingers in some sort of in some sort of reductive way and saying
00:31:05.600
well of course that waterfall is sublime you idiot um whereas this waterfall over here is you know
00:31:12.600
is is is merely pretty um it's not something that you you just can click your fingers and and sort out
00:31:19.740
there's there's there's there's a whole process of of of development of taste and perception you know
00:31:30.100
think of think of how over many years a great wine expert trains their palate so as to be able to discern
00:31:39.480
the the grape and the and the process of fermentation and all the other things that a great sommelier will
00:31:46.040
know about wine but you and i i dare say well certainly say this for myself i drink a wine and
00:31:53.480
i've i've got very little that i can say about it except oh i like it or i dislike it but if i bothered
00:31:59.280
to train myself to make myself more intelligent on this matter i i could begin to discern all sorts of
00:32:06.300
subtle shades likewise with waterfalls there may be some that are merely pretty there may be some that
00:32:12.300
are between pretty and sublime and but there are undoubtedly waterfalls that are absolutely sublime
00:32:17.780
and if you don't see that you're not really seeing the thing that is there but it it takes time you know
00:32:23.860
this this although it's a a self-evident framework of value that lewis is pointing out to be to be
00:32:31.680
self-evident it's not the same as to be obvious and that's why we need moral formation moral training
00:32:37.040
moral education we need to become what we are no it sounds like the development of this this chest
00:32:44.060
this part where we combine feeling with reason it's a very aristotelian project right like you learn
00:32:51.440
through just experiencing over and over again like the right emotions to have for the right things for
00:32:58.260
the right reason at the right time yes you're quite right to say it's aristotelian uh lewis himself
00:33:03.700
quotes aristotle um just turning to the bit in the book where where he quotes aristotle in the
00:33:11.000
nicomachean ethics aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the people like and dislike what he
00:33:18.700
ought to like and dislike in other words you know there are certain things that are likable and certain
00:33:25.460
things which are dislikable and if if you get them around the wrong way you are less than educated
00:33:30.200
you're less than human you need to develop your chest and this incidentally is you know just a
00:33:36.940
little side side light um this is something that we see in the narnia books so you know the great
00:33:42.460
king of narnia peter king peter the high king over all the other kings and queens when he he's a boy when
00:33:48.920
he arrives in the story but by the end of the lion the witch and the wardrobe he's grown into a
00:33:52.980
a tall and deep chested man whereas in the last narnia book the last battle we've got this evil
00:34:00.600
character that the ape shift and shift says that he has a weak chest apes always have weak chests he
00:34:08.400
says because he's not truly human he's merely an ape and lewis in the course of surprise in the course
00:34:15.320
of the abolition of man talks about how we can make ourselves into trousered apes if we choose we can
00:34:22.120
make ourselves less than human if we don't develop our chest and how does how do we not develop our
00:34:27.500
chest is it just is it happen on purpose do we decide i'm just going to ignore that or i mean what
00:34:32.780
do you what do you think lewis would say like why are we developing men without chest well it's happening
00:34:38.940
in all sorts of ways and one of the ways which he's identifying in that opening chapter is is through
00:34:44.780
through school textbooks which are subtly indoctrinating children with a subjectivist approach
00:34:51.260
to the universe when they're supposedly teaching them about english composition so we we breathe it
00:34:58.040
in from all different sorts of sources you know to a certain extent going back to that little example
00:35:03.700
i gave about bad parenting when parents don't live up to their own principles i mean that that is a kind
00:35:11.000
of subjectivism that a parent is unwittingly and you know no doubt regretfully imparting to their
00:35:18.180
children and then we as individuals if we see how how useful a dodge it can be to say that value is
00:35:26.560
subjective then we can say oh if someone's you know trying to get us to see a bit of moral logic
00:35:33.740
which might result in us us having to change our behavior we we might fall back into a subjectivist
00:35:40.360
viewpoint for our own convenience and you would say you know well that's your truth this is my truth so
00:35:47.400
who are you to tell me what to do and that's a way of you know short-circuiting any kind of moral
00:35:53.000
persuasion because you know from our own cowardly selfish point of view we don't want to change and
00:36:00.440
that that's i think underlies a lot of subjectivism it's it's just a way of defending our our selfishness
00:36:07.720
and then as lewis says in that second line of men without chess is that we laugh at honor and are
00:36:12.320
shocked to find traitors in our midst you know we go down the subjectivist route we kind of well there's
00:36:16.600
really is no such thing as honor is just a word right and then when someone does something
00:36:21.420
terrible or dishonorable like oh my gosh can you believe this guy it's like well what did you expect
00:36:26.740
yeah yeah yeah absolutely you know the you could take it into the sexual sphere couldn't you and
00:36:34.940
at the moment you know we've got this big movement the me too movement which in many respects is very good
00:36:42.520
and right and proper that um you know men should not abuse women i mean that that's an absolute
00:36:49.100
foundational statement of moral behavior but it's interesting how you know in in so many films
00:36:56.680
you may you may have seen men screwing around and you know james bond for instance sleeping with a
00:37:03.660
different girl every night and so on the one hand we want to indulge the you know the libido through
00:37:10.980
through the james bond proxies but on the other hand we get deeply and rightly annoyed with harvey
00:37:17.020
weinstein when he starts doing the same sort of thing in real life and we can't have it both ways
00:37:22.260
if we if we laugh at sexual self-control we can't really pretend to be shocked when we find
00:37:33.620
predators in our midst so your book is called after humanity which is a nod
00:37:39.220
to philosopher alistair mcintyre's great book after virtue and i'd write listeners who haven't
00:37:45.480
read that book go read it like it's one of those it'll like it shifts the way you view the world
00:37:50.300
after you read after virtue it's a hard book to read but i think it's a worthwhile one what insights
00:37:55.780
does mcintyre give us about what happens when we debate i guess morality outside of the dao
00:38:03.780
yes after virtue is a very very important work as you say it's it's not terribly easy but it's it's
00:38:12.640
worth grappling with just as the abolition of man is not terribly easy but worth grappling with
00:38:17.980
and indeed the the reason i called my guide to the abolition of man after humanity is a little nod to
00:38:26.460
after virtue in after virtue mcintyre is arguing that in our present culture differences of view
00:38:35.500
have become incommensurable like i was saying earlier there's no third thing between you and me
00:38:42.420
that we can measure our viewpoints against because there's no objective reality there's no objective
00:38:49.660
value is there in a subjectivist modernist viewpoint there's no common yardstick against which diverse
00:38:56.120
perspectives can be reckoned and for as long as these differences are considered unimportant
00:39:01.620
it doesn't really matter and we can celebrate diversity as a as a thing that's good in and of
00:39:08.040
itself and diversity is a good thing to a certain extent but but it won't solve serious disputes
00:39:15.640
because when you and i diverge when you and i have diverse opinions about say you know the me too
00:39:23.680
movement or you know rape and sexual predation who's gonna tell us that i'm right and you're wrong or
00:39:30.600
the other way around diversity is unable to arbitrate serious disputes and then the pendulum swings all
00:39:38.320
the way to the opposite pole and here now i'm finally going to quote alistair mcintyre that's why
00:39:44.960
mcintyre says it's easy to understand why protest becomes a distinctive moral feature of the modern age
00:39:52.260
and why indignation is a predominant modern emotion the self-assertive shrillness of protest arises
00:40:01.080
because the facts of incommensurability ensure that protesters can never win an argument
00:40:08.760
the indignant self-righteousness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability
00:40:17.340
ensure equally that the protesters can never lose an argument either hence protest is characteristically
00:40:26.120
addressed to those who already share the protesters premises protesters rarely have anyone else to talk to
00:40:35.000
but themselves this is not to say that protest can't be effective it's to say that it can't be
00:40:41.820
rationally effective and that its dominant modes of expression give evidence of a certain perhaps
00:40:49.740
unconscious awareness of this that's all mcintyre and it's it's like a it's like a finely detailed
00:40:57.280
portrait of the modern age isn't it just shout trying to shout down your opponents trying to out
00:41:03.200
protest the the uh the protesters on the other side of the fence but not through any rational argument
00:41:10.820
not through moral persuasion leading to a freely chosen change of viewpoint it's it's just
00:41:18.620
strong arming people into sharing your view whether they like it or not because there's no common yardstick
00:41:27.280
there's no objective reality to value that that's the moral age in a nutshell isn't it yeah explains twitter
00:41:35.700
i think yeah so yeah i mean so the point is that that mcintyre is making there is without that
00:41:43.160
objective moral reality that we can argue within basically the only way you can affect changes is
00:41:48.620
whoever whoever is the loudest or the most most forceful will win the argument yeah and so might
00:41:54.160
becomes right this is a point that lewis makes repeatedly in the course of the abolition of man
00:41:59.800
and in his in his other works that if if there's no objective value the only question is one of power
00:42:09.260
who has their levers on who has their hands on the levers of power the political power or
00:42:17.040
or the power of the media or literal physical power that that's where right will reside but not in a
00:42:28.940
neutral realm to you to which both the powerful and the weak have access you know this is nietzsche
00:42:35.020
predicted that too right when he said you know god is dead well here's what happens when god is dead
00:42:40.620
you're going to have it's basically will the power that's all there is yes absolutely so lewis you
00:42:45.980
know gives this idea it shows us what will happen if we turn our backs on that there's this idea that
00:42:51.180
there's an objective moral reality it just sort of turns into emotivism is what mcintyre calls just
00:42:56.580
people feeling things and shouting at each other and no one never coming to a conclusion did lewis
00:43:04.080
give any prescriptions on how to avoid avoid that or was this more of a just like here's what's
00:43:10.700
happening watch out what's happening if you're not careful this is what's going to happen
00:43:14.800
uh well he he's prescribing all sorts of ways of avoiding subjectivism principally by just arguing
00:43:24.460
showing it's it's falsity it's that it's it's self-defeating and also by forecasting the very
00:43:32.820
unattractive destination to which it leads as for how we train our chests well that's that's not
00:43:42.300
something that is easily done by an individual on their own it requires a whole community you know
00:43:49.480
parents training their children up in the way they should go teachers doing the same people in
00:43:56.400
positions of public authority not abusing that authority likewise shapers of public opinion in the
00:44:04.320
media being careful to speak the truth and to speak nothing but the truth artists in the way they tell
00:44:11.760
their stories and in novels and films everybody has a part to play so those are some of the
00:44:17.020
prescriptions which are sort of implicit in the abolition of man but really his argument is is is
00:44:21.920
principally intellectual and negative it's intellectual in that he's you know arguing for a
00:44:29.480
philosophy philosophically for the for the objectivity of value and it's negative in the way that he's
00:44:35.580
predicting a bad end if we adopt a subjectivist perspective yeah it's a jeremiah it's a prophetic
00:44:44.120
thing yes yeah well michael this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about
00:44:50.660
after humanity and your work more generally after humanity is published by word on fire academic
00:44:57.940
a new imprint and if you go to word on fire dot org slash humanity you can find lots more about the
00:45:06.320
book and um if you want to find about me more generally i've got a website michaelward.net
00:45:14.240
so and i'm also on facebook people can befriend me on facebook i don't do twitter myself but i i'm
00:45:21.160
i do quite a bit on facebook so yeah those are the ways to find out and i ought to add by the way
00:45:28.480
that if you order your copy of after humanity through word on fire's website you get a free copy of
00:45:34.760
the abolition of man by c.s lewis with a matching cover the publishers of the publishers of the
00:45:41.220
abolition of man have brought out a kind of complimentary edition which is very nice to have
00:45:46.140
well michael ward thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thanks brett i enjoyed it
00:45:51.160
my guest today was michael ward he's the author of the book after humanity a guide to c.s lewis's
00:45:56.000
the abolition of man it's available on amazon you can also go to wordonfire.org slash humanity to
00:46:01.600
pick a copy up there if you buy it from word on fire you'll get a free copy of the abolition of man
00:46:06.400
with your order also check out our show notes at aom.is slash men without chest where you find
00:46:10.720
links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:46:12.900
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at artofmanliness.com
00:46:24.400
where you find our podcast archives well as thousands of articles written over the years
00:46:27.380
about pretty much anything you think of and if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the aom
00:46:30.860
podcast you can do so on stitcher premium head over to stitcher premium.com sign up use code
00:46:35.020
manliness at checkout for a free month trial once you're signed up download the stitcher app on android
00:46:38.920
ios and you start enjoying ad-free episodes of the aom podcast and if you haven't done so already
00:46:43.020
i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us your view on apple podcast or stitcher it helps
00:46:46.200
out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a friend
00:46:49.780
or a family member who you think we get something out of it as always thank you for the continued
00:46:53.300
support until next time this is brett mckay reminding you to not only listen to the aom podcast