Men Without Chests

Several years ago, I read C.S. Lewis's "The Abolition of Man" and realized pretty quickly that it was way over my head. I thought I was a reasonably intelligent guy, but that book was humbling to read. I plowed through it anyway and, although I understood parts of his argument, I couldn't explain it to someone else. I know because I tried once. It didn't work. Last week, I picked it up again and read the first chapter entitled "Men Without Chests" and it was really gratifying to find that I was able to understand much more of it. The Latin, Greek, etc. he uses may always throw me off, but I have a much clearer picture in my mind of what he was trying to say. I still don't think I can explain it clearly, but I'm going to try the first chapter here. I sometimes wish I could spend a few years getting an education in the Classics and Liberal Arts. I can't imagine going back for more formal education, but I never want to stop learning. Some of the most important ideas in life are outside the major I chose.

The Abolition of Man is a defense of absolutism and attempts to make the case that relativistic theory ultimately destroys the humanity of men. Lewis begins the book by discussing a passage in an English textbook for young boys. The passage tells a story of Coleridge at a waterfall speaking with two tourists. One described the waterfall as "sublime" and the other as "pretty". Coleridge agreed with the first assessment, but was disgusted by the second. The authors of the textbook then make the claim that in describing the scene, the two individuals were not so much describing the waterfall as they were their own feelings upon viewing it and the implication is made that those feelings are not important or, if important, are at most only relatively valid. When I read Lewis' description of the passage, I originally didn't see much to complain about, but Lewis rips the authors apart for what he sees as the pernicious end of this line of thinking.

There are two issues here that Lewis attacks. The first is 1) the relativity of value and the second is 2) the undesirability or unimportance of emotion. The first idea is a step down the path toward total relativism. The authors of the textbook are implying that an object or an idea can not actually BE something of value. Its only value lies in the emotional response of people experiencing it. The second issue is the implication that these emotions are unimportant or undesirable. This idea is again implied in another passage from the textbook debunking a piece of slick propaganda in an attempt to protect young boys from making foolish decisions based on emotion. The debunking is done by demonizing the emotional response, which can often be duped by propaganda.

Relative Value

In dealing with the first issue, Lewis claims that objects, events, etc. have value independently. He also claims that there is a proper emotional response for such values in objects or events. The waterfall, he says, really IS sublime, not simply because an observer recognized it as sublime, but because it has objective value of its own. When the viewer recognized and acknowledged it as sublime, he did so because he felt feelings of veneration and humility upon viewing it, those feelings being the appropriate response to the sublimity of the waterfall. Lewis cites Aristotle and others who claimed that a proper education consists in training young people to feel the proper emotion fitting to objects or events. The proper emotional response on seeing a violent crime, let's say murder, for example, might consist of horror, revulsion, and a desire to bring the criminal to justice. A morbid fascination or excitement is a twisted, improper response.

Lewis deals more with the relativistic issue in two later chapters, so I won't dwell on it too much here. In the second chapter (I read it again earlier this week), he shows that an attempt to walk the middle ground between absolutism and radical relativism is unworkable. Those two paradigms are, he claims, at least self consistent, but an attempt at compromise, as the textbook authors seem to be doing, is laden with paradoxes. In his third chapter, my memory tells me that, having established that there are only two self-consistent theories, he makes the case that the radical relativistic scenario takes the humanity out of men. But I haven't gotten that far yet. What really struck me on reading the first chapter again was how Lewis deals with the second issue - something I totally missed the first time I read it.

Unimportant Emotions

Lewis states that we are, by nature, made up of three basic parts. First, we are intelligence, represented by the head, with the power to reason. Second, we are emotion, or, I would also say, spirit or a power of will. These passions are thought to reside in the chest or the heart and should rightly be subservient to reason as the chest is below the head. Third, we are material creatures with physical appetites and passions. These appetites may be thought to center in the stomach. Lewis claims that the emotions are critical in governing the physical part of our nature because reason is incapable of doing it. Reason may, with practice, learn to govern emotions, but it is emotion that can govern the physical appetites.

Since emotion is seen as being centered in the chest, the evisceration of emotion by teaching young people that emotions are relative, unimportant, etc., is to surgically remove the "chest" of a man and leave him powerless to govern the baser instincts. I say "man" because Lewis talks about men and also because men are more likely than women to try to eliminate their emotions. Without emotion, we become, in a sense, mere animals, driven by our passions and instincts with our reason firmly intact, but unable to properly govern those drives.

By eliminating emotion, we may smugly think we're too smart to let someone use our emotions against us (again, think propaganda), but we also become cynical. I've fallen into that trap before, seeking to eliminate emotion rather than let those emotions govern me. The correct path, Lewis argues, is not the elimination of emotion, but learning to rein it in and guide it in the right direction. When made the servant of reason, those emotions empower us rather than enslave us. This path, by the way, also inoculates against propaganda and other forms of deception, but tearing out the chest is less work.

After reading the first chapter again, it occurred to me that, like our mind and body, maybe our emotions need exercise. When I listen to beautiful music, my emotions are swayed by the tune, the lyrics, and the beat. I read a book recently called "Dear John" that tugged at my heart and although not all of those emotions were pleasant, it seemed to me, as I was experiencing it, to be a healthy exercise to have them tugged in different directions.

Rather than tearing out our chests, perhaps, to be true men, we need to nurture proper emotion, train ourselves to feel the emotion fitting to an event or idea, and seek to govern emotion rather than eliminate it. In Lewis' words, "For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility [or emotion] there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts."

Men Without Chests. Lewis noted the widespread deformity in his day. It's a continuing epidemic today. Welcome to the Brave New World. Let's buck the trend.