December 20, 2013
The Reason and Imagination of C. S. Lewis
By Kevin W. Clark
Academic Dean, Instructor of Philosophy and Theology
While many people around the world remembered President John F. Kennedy on the 50th
anniversary of his assassination this past November 22, others reflected on the continuing legacy
of a man who died that very same day—C. S. Lewis. This bookish Oxford don, Christian
apologist, and children’s author would have been incredulous upon hearing that fifty years after
his death his books will continue to sell in the millions and will be embraced by Christians the
world over. And yet, this is the case: the Chronicles of Narnia alone sell about three million
copies each year in some 40 languages.1 Many have written about Lewis in the past month or so,
and I gladly join the chorus of his admirers. It is only by coincidence, however, that I do so in
proximity to the 50th anniversary of his passing from these lenten lands. The true inspiration for
what follows is a surprising educational experience I recently enjoyed while reading an essay of
his with my students.
After completing one of the more successful units on Plato in my ten year career as a philosophy
teacher at Geneva, I came face to face with an educational dilemma. With only a two-day
academic week leading into Thanksgiving break, should I follow my syllabus and introduce a
new unit? Or should I take advantage of the somewhat self-contained character of the two-day
week and engage the students with some extra-curricular learning? While I must admit that I had
been eagerly anticipating the unit on Aristotle (“the master of those who know”), my intuition
that the special circumstances of the week dictated otherwise eventually won the day. I would
give something extra to my students—an educational gift, as it were. But what to do?
Since we had just finished reading Plato’s famous “Myth of the Cave” from The Republic, it
occurred to me that following up with an essay or article that references or alludes to this passage
in some way would be perfect. In the academic life, there is nothing quite as satisfying as getting
the reference before reading the footnote. It’s as if one is being welcomed into the great
conversation. I gazed at my bookshelf in hopes that something would stand out. Serendipitously,
it happened that my eyes fell upon the collection of C. S. Lewis’s essays entitled The Weight of
Glory. I recalled there being an essay in that volume that makes extensive use of the imagery and
ideas we had encountered while reading of Plato. After a quick scan of the table of contents I had
found it—“Transposition.” Happily, while eagerly perusing the essay, I found too that it had the
added bonus of being an excellent work of Christian apologetics. So, off to make copies of the
article I went with expectations in mind of students reveling in Lewis’s subtle use of Plato. I had
1
Michael J. Ward, “And We Should Not Let Them Be Forgotten,” in The London Times (23 November,
2013), accessed at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/article3929471.ece
not anticipated, however, that I myself would share in the educational experience in such a
moving way.
“Transposition” is a powerful and persuasive argument against the reductionist claims of the
skeptic who denies any form of transcendence—not simply the transcendence of what we might
call the supernatural, but the transcendence of the soul with respect to the body, or the mind to
the mere brain. I will not rehearse Lewis’s argument within the brief space of this article,
however; for it was not actually the argument itself, understood as a series of propositions
leading necessarily to a conclusion, that I found so persuasive. His logical reasoning was sound,
of course, but it was rather the way Lewis brought together reason, experience, and imagination
within an appeal to the whole person that affected me so profoundly.
Among Lewis’s many strengths as a persuasive writer is his uncanny ability of constructing
poignant and effective analogies and illustrations for his arguments. Honed no doubt from a
lifetime spent poring over poetry and imaginative literature, he has the power of capturing
ordinary human experience in images that are both profound and concrete. As a reader, I have
often found that his argument is won long before he arrives at the conclusion simply because of
the effectiveness of an illustration or analogy. For the analogy often resonates so deeply with
human experience, and is so aptly chosen to illustrate the point under consideration, that the
reader simply gives his consent. This is not to say that Lewis relies completely on metaphors
rather than logical reasoning to make his argument. On the contrary, careful analysis of his
writings reveals a subtle logical structure and carefully crafted rhetorical appeal operating below
the surface of his disarmingly clear and conversational prose. Indeed, it appears that what makes
Lewis’s arguments so compelling is the fact that they are eminently logical and engagingly
literary at the same time. He brings reason and imagination to bear in a way that elevates
ordinary human experience; his appeal is to the whole person.
The essay “Transposition” illustrates Lewis’s skill in this regard with unmistakable clarity. He
begins by reflecting upon the ordinary experience of the way diverse emotions are manifested in
the body, and then goes on to develop it as an analogy from which to construct his argument
against the skeptic. In particular, Lewis ponders the curious fact that the emotions arising from
such diverse experiences as love, death, and beauty have the same physical effect, namely, a
certain queasiness in the stomach. We all know very well, notes Lewis, that love and death and
beauty are not essentially identical even though they result in an identical physical state of
affairs. Thus we know as well that our emotions are richer, subtler, and more diverse than how
they are played out physically. Indeed, they transcend the bodily sensations in which they are
manifested. Having identified this concrete instance in human experience of a higher reality
transposing itself into a lower medium (much in the same way, Lewis notes, that an orchestral
piece is transposed for play on the piano), Lewis goes on to trace this same phenomenon of
transposition in a number of other areas of human experience.
The overall effect of Lewis’s method is to show transposition as the rule in human experience
and the reductionism of the skeptic the exception—an ingenious turning of the tables on the
skeptic’s argument! Beyond this clever reversal, however, I found that Lewis’s appeal was much
deeper. He was able somehow to draw my emotional, aesthetic, rational, spiritual, even bodily,
experiences into a compelling and harmonious whole, of which the truth of the Christian faith
resonated beautifully. This made for a powerfully compelling argument against the claims of the
skeptic in a way I had not previously considered. To be sure, Lewis’s appeal was rational, but it
was not a merely logical demonstration, where some X of human experience necessarily implies
a Y of revealed truth, such that any rational mind must assent. Perhaps this kind of argument
would have refuted the skeptic, but it would have granted the question to the skeptic who sought
to reduce human emotional, mental, and spiritual experience to a question of mere logic. Lewis is
far too shrewd to grant his opponent’s question. Hence, rather than refuting the skeptic’s
argument, he made its mere logic to appear threadbare in comparison with the rich tapestry he
wove together in his own reflection upon human experience. Or, to change metaphors, the rich
symphony of Lewis’s essay resonated with my embodied human existence while the beggarly
claims of the skeptic sounded like clanging brass. He struck a chord, as it were, out of the several
singly sounding notes of my own life.
Reading “Transposition” with my students caused me to consider again the practical implications
of our anthropology, our Christian understanding of what it means to be human. How often do I
affirm that man made in God’s image is neither mere mind nor mere body, but rather an
irreducible union of body and soul, and yet attempt to teach or to persuade with mere deductive
logic? Lewis practices a different and more full-orbed kind of logic, however, one that harnesses
reason and imagination in order to bring ordinary human experience into harmony with the
revealed truth of the Christian faith. As I read, I was both delighted and inspired, but also
reaffirmed in my resolve to learn from this great teacher and to imitate him in my own teaching.