c.s. lewis' ethic of reading

In Experiment in Criticism, Lewis sets out a system for judging and interpreting literature based upon how real-world readers “use” or “receive” it. Books that compel readers to “conceive, imagine, and feel as the words invite” are true works of art; they “guide [readers] into every cranny of a character’s mind or make palpable and individual” the worlds that they inhabit. Books that encourage readers to “use” the works for “castle building” and “assistance to [their] own activities” belong to “the many” and are not art (88). Rather, they form a spectrum of common diversions ranging from the harmless to the less-than-innocent. These kinds of works encourage readers to indulge in fantasies of various types, the most damnable of which Lewis calls “egoistic castle-building,” in which “the day-dreamer himself is always the hero. . . . It is he who makes the witty retorts, captivates the beautiful women, owns the ocean-going yacht, or is acclaimed as the greatest living poet” (52).

Lewis’ readers may notice that the system he sets out is in many ways a moral one. The very word “egoistic,” by which he describes the worst kind of reading, is a powerful moral judgment, especially from a Christian like Lewis, whose vision of hell in The Screwtape Letters is one in which the soul is so consumed with itself that the self becomes utterly lost forever. Indeed, the readers who merit Lewis’ most damning verdict are those who read stories about “the high life” for the vicarious pleasure they receive from them. The books they consume and dispose of depend entirely on “egoistic castle-building,” and Lewis’ description of these consumers on the lowest stratum of readers is charged with moral language:

"These are the favourite reading of readers in the lowest class; lowest, because reading takes them least out of themselves, confirms in them an indulgence which they already use too much, and turns them away from most of what is most worth having both in books and in life. . . . The woman reader does not believe that all eyes follow her, as they follow the heroine of the book; but she wants to feel that . . . they might." (55)

“Lowest,” “indulgence,” “too much,” “worth having”—this language charges Lewis’ system with a moral value in reading nearly unheard of in contemporary critical theory and practice. The egoistic castle-builder is lowest because his reading turns entirely on his self, his reading indulgent because it consists entirely in the vices of self concern and pride. It deprives him of the most important benefits of both reading and interaction with other people: the chance to experience the lives, feelings, thoughts, and perspectives of persons other than ourselves. In our best selves, we “seek an enlargement of our being. . . . We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts” (137). Reading only in order to seek oneself is a kind of self-love, then—the spiritual equivalent of masturbation.

Lewis’ thoroughly Christian ethic of reading could perhaps provide the perfect antidote to the often desolate and uninspired field of critical studies today. In abandoning the pursuit of authorial intent, modern criticism has made the conversation entirely one-sided and turned what should be a window into a mirror. By the standards of many modern critic, then, The Odyssey, Hamlet, and Anna Karenina can only tell us of ourselves—they are mirrors, not windows. Lewis, who condemns reading to see only oneself, acknowledges that modern works of literature—especially poetry—often encourage readers to treat them as “raw material for whatever each reader’s sensibility make of them, and there [is] no intention that one reader’s experience should have anything in common with another’s or with the [writer’s]” (102). Such a reading, Lewis grudgingly admits, is entirely “proper” for those works, then. But the admission itself contains a note of condemnation. Reading a work that is so vague and superficially spiritual that any reader can see himself in it does not satisfy the desire in our nature which draws our eyes from mirrors to pictures and stories: the desire “to be more than ourselves.” Without poiema each of us “sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and a selectiveness peculiar to himself” (137). Good literature succeeds where egoistic castle-building fails: it gives us the opportunity to see through a glass—not darkly, but clearly—and to know as we as we are known and know ourselves.

students and new ideas

In "Teachers as Students," Douglas Hesse argues that new students have trouble dealing with information that creates intellectual or moral dissonance. Rather than engage unfamiliar and potentially offensive writing, students usually dismiss the material as “stupid” or “poorly written.” This often has little or nothing to do with the actual quality of the work, but rather with the students’ lack of “prior knowledge” of the material presented. Hesse believes that in order for students to be able to enter into the academic "discourse community" to which they aspire, they must be able to process and respond intelligently to theories with which they might initially (or finally) disagree.

Hesse's article is fairly old (it was published in 1993), but his main point remains well accepted and is, indeed, commonsensical. College ought to be a place where students are asked to grapple with things unfamiliar or things that may contradict their assumptions. We are all aware of the human tendency to seek out and consume information that supports our own positions and to ignore or reject things that complicate or contradict them. College ought to help break that habit. But the issue is more complicated than simply that students reject ideas that are contrary from their own preconceived ones without engaging them.

As an example, Hesse quotes a Compostion teacher who laments that when she gave her students an article called "Gods, Goddesses, and Bibles," a "sophisticated argument explaining the transition from pre-Biblical matriarchal cultures to ones which promoted Paul's misogynistic epistles," the students rejected it as "blasphemous" without appearing to have read it. This example reminds me of an experience I had my first year as a university student. In my introduction to philosophy class, the professor discussed how to test a position or argument by reductio ad absurdum. He used the pro-life position as his example, saying, “If abortion is murder because it destroys a potential human life, then masturbation is murder because it kills sperm.” This professor probably thought of himself as challenging deeply rooted prejudices and forcing us to think critically. Indeed, he might have said that even if we remained pro-life after thinking critically about the subject, at least we had been forced to base our positions on more solid evidence than blind faith. What several of us in the class realized, however, was that this professor either didn’t understand the pro-life argument, or that he had deliberately misrepresented it in order to belittle those of us who were opposed to the legality of abortion. No thoughtful pro-lifer argues that abortion destroys a “potential human life.” [1]

The point of this story is that soon after they enter college, those students whose beliefs might be challenged by "Gods, Goddesses, and Bible" will probably begin to expect their professors to only give them one-sided information chosen specifically to rid students of their convictions and values. Whether or not those students are justified in their suspicions, the belief is often there and it certainly complicates Hesse’s argument. Getting students to think critically is certainly a worthwhile pursuit, but if students don’t trust their professors to be fair-minded, no amount of exhortation to critical thinking and engagement is going to have the desired effect.

---

[1] In the case of the class which had to read “Gods, Godesses, and Bibles,” I would ask the teacher why, if she was prepared to offer students an article which questions the traditional reading of the Bible, was she not also prepared to offer them at least a summary explanation of counter-arguments put forth by Biblical scholars (I am too cynical to believe that she actually did). It is unlikely that any of her students were trained in textual criticism or Biblical scholarship, so she could reasonably expect one of two outcomes: either the students who were religious would reject the article as blasphemous, or they would accept it and reject their beliefs (or at least, reject traditional understandings of them). This is hardly conducive to “critical thinking.”

whose morality?

As an aspiring fiction writer, student of literature, and a teacher, I hear often enough that morality should have no part in what artists, students, and teachers do in their work. When they say "morality" in serious conversation, students and teachers alike deepen their voices into a mock-authoritative tone and use those ridiculous and reprehensible Quote Fingers lest someone take them to actually entertain the idea of universal moral principles. Critical articles and essays on literature examine their subjects from the standpoint of theory and if they treat of a work's morality at all, more often than not that morality is explained away as a quaint relic or an insidious attempt on the writer's part (either consciously or unconsciously) to control the distribution of power. One friend of mine summarized literary studies as finding out "who has power, who gets power, who loses power, and who surrenders power." Articles on writing pedagogy repudiate any notion of foundational truths lest they encroach on someone else's right to his or her beliefs.

But no one--not even those who say such things--believes a word of it.

Recently, some students and I read and discussed an article by Gerald Graff and Andrew Hoberek ("Hiding It From the Kids," College English, November 1999) in which the authors suggest that the only way literature programs can justify their existence to outsiders is theory (cultural, feminist, queer, postcolonial, etc.), since theory can use literary works to engage ongoing cultural discussions (such as those about race, gender, and sexuality). One of my fellow students forgot to read the article for class and so I explained briefly to her this central thesis. I also mentioned that I thought morality was a more important way of justifying literary studies, my fellow student looked surprised but interested.

"I know when I say 'morality' you think I mean, 'Men should wear pants and women should wear dresses,' right?" I said. My friend nodded.

I explained to her that for me, one of the most important functions of great literature (another word some people seem positively terrified to use without insulating it in Quote Fingers) is to give us a safe playing field in which to learn how to live. It is not so much that literature didactically shows us what to do and what not to do, but that it allows us a safe place in which to learn the physical and spiritual consequences of actions. Once I explained it that way, my friend warmed up to what I was saying.

"I would say that's something like . . . showing me how to exist and operate in the world," she said. "I'm not sure I would call it morality."

In other words, our understandings of what good literature can do for a thoughtful reader (show him how to live or how not to live) were roughly equivalent, mostly compatible, but we were using different words to express our ideas. I was happy to use "morality" to describe what I was talking about, but she preferred to avoid that loaded term.

But is the issue--the academic dread or loathing of that word "morality"--just about semantics? Is it really just a problem of terms? I think my fellow classmate would have said so had I articulated the question in that way, but I think it's more complicated than preferences about words.

Graff and Hoberek justify the existence of literature departments by pointing to the ability of literary theories to speak to the issues that concern society. So, for example, I can make Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew relevant to modern culture by interpreting it from the standpoint of feminist theory. I might use Petruccio's treatment of Kate and her eventual succumbing to his power over her to explain or elaborate on historical patriarchy, to discover something about male dominance over women. (That is not my reading of the play, of course, but I believe it could be the nutshell version of one feminist reading). The practical societal use of such a reading would be to inform the conversation over women's rights, marriage, and gender roles.

When I explain the use of my "feminist" reading of The Taming of the Shrew in this way, it sounds innocuous, safe from any didactic underpinnings of morality. But the underlying assumption of feminism is a moral imperative to respect the rights of all persons, regardless of gender. Indeed, to assert a "right" to anything is to say to everyone else, "You must not, should not, may not deny me this," which is the very language of morality.

I can imagine that a theorist who wanted to deny the moral dimension of feminist theory (or any other type of theory) saying that, "Yes, we use the language of 'should' and 'ought,' but what is really going on is that those whose autonomy and rights have been violated have stood and demanded equal treatment. It's not about what someone 'ought' or 'ought not' do. People are saying, 'I will no longer accept this treatment.' It's about the power to throw off oppression." But this is at best disingenuous. It denies the ubiquitous language of movements like the women's movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. If movements in which oppressed peoples rise against their oppressors are really about power, then we must dispense of all this talk about "rights." There is no such thing as a right if there is no "should" and "should not."

It seems to me that even those of us who are most eager to remove 'morality' from the vocabulary of literary studies realize that there is a moral dimension even to the theories which are so dear to them (even if they refuse to describe it as "morality"). The question is not, "Why are those in literary studies so afraid or intolerant of a morally-informed study of their subject?" The real question is, "Whose morality are we talking about?" Or to put an even finer point on it, "Who are we rejecting when we repudiate the word 'morality' from our vocabulary?"

At the end of the day, all of our talk about expelling didacticism and values from literary studies (and from society in general) is sheer hypocrisy. The real project of the theoretical model (either consciously or unconsciously) is the replacement of one morality with another. If nothing else changed than that academics admitted to each other and the world that this is what they have been doing, the academy would be far more respectable.

are you a spiritual fruit? (a poorly organized, mostly uninformed rant)

Yesterday I saw two things that bothered me more than they probably should have. First, I was driving home from work yesterday and saw a bumper sticker that read GOD DESIRES SPIRITUAL FRUITS, NOT RELIGIOUS NUTS. I had seen this same bumper sticker before and didn't think much of it at the time, but yesterday it caught my attention and made me think for a long time about that word, "religion." Then last night I took my wife out to eat for Mother's Day and saw a guy in a black tee that made me look twice. The only word on the front was RELIGION, which had a circle around it and a line through it. The letters were white; the circle was red. On the black background I suppose it was intended to be an attention-grabber, and indeed it was. I watched the guy for a while, thinking he was probably a Richard Dawkins minion announcing his enlightened-ness to the world, but then he turned around and I saw written on the back of his shirt EMBRACE JESUS. "Oh," I said to my wife. "I see."

We've done a bad thing with this word "religion." There was a time when if you said "I am a religious person," everyone knew what you meant; they understood you to mean that you embraced and practiced a particular system of belief about the world and about God that imposed on you a certain quality of character and action. There were certainly varying degrees of assent to religion and varying degrees of hypocrisy; there were always people who believed and practiced wholeheartedly and people who were less than sincere about it. But everyone knew what "religion" meant.

Lately, though, the use of "religion" has become muddied. There are certain brands of Christianity - particularly Pentecostal denominations and the "non-denominational" denominations - in which this misuse of the word "religion" is very common. They often say things like, "I'm not religious. I'm spiritual." The difference? By "religion," they mean "empty religion" (which to them means liturgical and ritualistic traditions like Catholicism, liturgical Methodism, Lutheranism, etc.). By "spiritual," they mean "true religion," which must not be restricted by structure or ritual. If it isn't random, it isn't open to the Spirit. And so some find themselves saying things like, "Christianity isn't a religion; it's spirituality."

What this ignores or forgets is that the Bible itself refers to Christianity as "religion" and differentiates between empty religion and true religion: "If anyone thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives in his heart, this man's religion is vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:26-27). For Christianity to be "true religion," it must make a difference in your life and how you behave. If it does not, it is empty.

And there is another reason some are giving up "religion." In the current political and social arena, religion is the great whipping boy on which all the world's problems are blamed. War, racism, slavery, the oppression of women, child abuse, rape, people growing up to have all sorts of psychological problems, and that most heinous and yet hard-to-define crime, "intolerance," are all said to be caused by religion. If we were only rid of religion, we'd be rid of these problems. And so, many Christians have repudiated the word in favor of the chimeric and all-inclusive "spiritual."

They have plucked this word out of the tree of pop-culture, in which it means a vague belief in supernatural forces or beings, a belief in what is called "karma" (which has little to do with the Buddhist and Hindu understanding of karma), and a general sense of "different strokes for different folks." The danger is that the accompanying meaning is going to bleed through into Christianity. Christianity, for "spiritual" people, becomes less and less something that imposes definite responsibilities upon individuals, giving them all the benefits of a spiritual (in the proper sense) life without all the inconvenient requirements religion involves.

The irony is that this is exactly what the secularists who decry the evils of "religion" want. They will have won the battle if they can turn all religion into a vague "spiritualism" that makes no exclusive claims and requires nothing of its adherents except for them to be nice to people. In the effort to shield themselves from the attacks of religion's critics, they essentially raise the white flag and admit defeat.

"it's worth it all . . ."

Here's something we all used to know, then some folks came along and told us that this is a job only for the dull, the dimwitted, and those who don't want to live the life of a liberated woman.

Happy Mother's Day, all you moms. And thank you.

just shut 'em up

One of the first freedoms to go when a totalitarian regime rises is the freedom of speech and of ideas. The University of Toledo and Smith College are leading the way. How ironic that those who would otherwise tout intellectual freedom and "tolerance" are so intolerant of ideas they are unwilling (unable?) to engage and refute.

this guy says it better than I did

On the First Things blog, Spengler says what I've been trying to say here all along (only he says it more lucidly and concisely):

"It is right and proper for the Jews to desire that all the world should worship YHWH in their own way, and inconsistent of them to object to the same desire on the part of Christians. But the critical point is that the dispute over the Easter prayer is a quarrel within Israel. Jews should worry only if and when Christians cease to pray for them, for that would signify that Christians had forgotten the root onto which the wild olive branches are grafted."

Here is the entire post. It is well worth reading.

sigh . . .

Good thing those Swiss have their priorities straight.

liberation

A certain man teaches a child to write the alphabet. He gives him a piece of paper and a pencil and patiently teaches the boy each letter one by one, capital and lower case.

Then one day, the boy has learned not only to write the whole alphabet, but also words and sentences. He remarks to the teacher how stifling it is to be restricted to the piece of paper. Why can't he write anywhere else? The desk? The dictionary which sits on the desk?

After thought, the man takes the pencil and piece of paper away from the boy and says, Now you are no longer restricted to writing only on the piece of paper.

the eternal demolition?

Picture this: You're taking a little time between two loads of laundry to read "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey." It's a Saturday off, the kids are down for a nap, and you're enjoying some quiet time with Wordsworth. Then comes a knock. Through the obscure glass oval window in the door, you see a man in a suit waiting patiently. Thinking it's a Witness ready to hand you a copy of Awake! or The Watchtower, you open and the visitor holds out a book of philosophy and says in a French accent, "Here is a very complicated theory of language and meaning that has no consequences or practical application. Want to learn it?"

In his April 6th blog post "French Theory in America," Stanley Fish writes about deconstruction theory and its influence and effects in the American academy. One of his main points is that, despite the fact that deconstruction has been used for and against political, religious and social agendas, deconstruction theory as articulated by its originators (Derrida, et al) does not have any necessary practical consequences. Fish writes

"It doesn't take anything away from us. We can still do all the things we have always done; we can still say that some things are true and others false, and believe it; we can still use words like better and worse and offer justifications for doing so. All we lose (if we have been persuaded by the deconstructive critique, that is) is a certain rationalist faith that there will someday be a final word, a last description that takes the accurate measure of everything. All that will have happened is that one account of what we know and how we know it - one epistemology - has been replaced by another, which means only that in the unlikely event you are asked "What's your epistemology?" you'll give a different answer than you would have given before. The world, and you, will go on pretty much in the same old way."

There are three problems with Fish's argument:

 - To say that there exists an unbridgeable separation between sign and signified, between language and the things that language describes, does have great consequences if it is really "true" (notice that Fish talks about whether or not deconstruction theory is valid while desperately avoiding the use of the words "true" or "false" to refer to it). As one friend of mine observed after reading Fish's article, reading the Constitution in light of deconstruction theory would have catastrophic practical consequences.

- If Fish is right, if deconstructionism in itself has no practical consequences and life will simply go on as long as people don't pervert deconstructionism for use in furthering their particular agendas, then why should anyone care about the theory?

- If deconstruction is indeed "true" or "right," then by its very nature it has an internal contradiction. Stated crudely, deconstruction theory says that there is no ultimate meaning in language, that there is an inevitable separation between words and the things words signify, that there is no such thing as truth or falsity outside of language; but we must use language itself to articulate the theory. As many critics of deconstruction have said before, isn't deconstruction theory invalidated by its own principles?

In philosophy there is a concept called the liar paradox. It involves statements like "This sentence is false," which swings like a pendulum between truth and falsity. If the sentence is true, then it is false; if it is false, then it is true. Deconstructionism seems to suffer from the same problem. And what can be made of a theory that tumbles in upon itself to infinity?

expelled, the nazis and the jews

One of the most controversial things about Expelled is its claim of a connection between the Nazis and Darwinism. The film asserts that, while Darwin himself wouldn't have supported the Nazis, much of the Nazi philosophy and policy towards the Jews and other "inferior" races came straight out of Darwinism. Darwinism, the film says, wasn't "sufficient" for the beliefs of the Nazis, but it was "necessary." (For more about the connection between National Socialism and Darwinism, see this article by David Klinghoffer).

It occurred to me while I was watching the film that this might be a dangerous tactic, amounting to almost an ad hominem attack. After all, don't many of religion's foes say things along the lines of, "All the major wars have been fought because of religion" and "All terrorists are religious," etc.? They righteously cite the Inquisition, the Crusades and the Salem Witch Trials in their attacks, assuring us that we'll all be nicer to each other if we rid ourselves of religion.

But then I realized that what Expelled does is actually a brilliant tactic. Before the section of the film about the Nazis, we see scenes of protesters with picket signs protesting "religion" (i.e., intelligent design) being taught in schools, many using words like "terrorist," and then we see Bill Mahr saying that it is not drugs or alcohol that should be regulated, but religion, since religion is the source of most wars and terrorism. Soon after, Ben Stein visits Aushwitz.

The point? We often do horrible things in God's name, but we don't need religion to be able to treat people like animals. The Nazis only needed the philosophy of Nietzsche and Darwinism. Stalin and Pol Pot only needed Communism (an anti-religion philosophy) and a certain obsession with power. History has a list of horrors committed in the name of religion, but it has an equally long list that has nothing to do with religion.

Evil parading under the guise of religion doesn't say something about religion; it says something about humanity. We'll use whatever is available to justify our wrongs, large or small.

and these are christians?

Yep, this makes a lot of sense.

went and saw expelled this evening . . .

. . .  and it was well worth the sixteen bucks. I won't detail the whole film, but there are a few things I'd like to say about it.

- I read some reviews of Expelled ahead of time that complained of the film's lack of a specific definition of "evolution" and "intelligent design." While I did miss a detailed explanation of intelligent design, one of the interviewed scientists (his name escapes me now) did give a rough definition - namely, that ID posits that there is design in nature, and where we see design, one infers a designer. ID does not specify whether the designer is the Judeo-Christian God, Allah, Isis, or any other deity. A deist, a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian can all equally accept the tenets of ID.

- Another of the interviewed scientists provided a helpful and often overlooked distinction. He said that when discussing "evolution" one must specify what is being talked about. "Evolution" might refer to simply change within given species over time, or it can refer to Darwinism itself, which posits that all the plethora of species came from one single-celled organism billions of years ago. Failure to make this distinction renders much discussion about evolution meaningless.

- The film is worth seeing, if for no other reason than being able to see Richard Dawkins make a fool of himself - as indeed he does towards the end of the documentary. It staggers the mind to think that such dumb words can escape the mouth of even a mildly educated person. I won't ruin it for anybody who hasn't seen the film. I will only say that I always thought he was a moron (I mean, I am a Christian theist, and he did write a book called The God Delusion), but now I know that he is. As Richard John Neuhaus says in the current issue of First Things, there used to be atheists one could respect intellectually (Marx, Neitzche, etc.). Now we have Dawkins. What a shame. If he keeps up, he'll probably drive some fence riders into being theists. Maybe even Christians.

BTW - for a good primer on intelligent design theory, see this article at Salvo Magazine.

i hope obama heard these words . . .

. . . from Pope Benedict in his arrival ceremony:

"As the nation faces the increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I am confident that the American people will find their religious beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue reasoned, responsible and respectful dialogue in the effort to build a more human and free society."

irony

In a speech given with the Pope at his arrival ceremony, President Bush had this to say:

"Here in America you'll find a nation of compassion. Americans believe that the measure of a free society is how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us. So each day citizens across america answer the universal call to feed the hungry and comfort the sick and care for the infirm. Each day across the world to eradicate disease, alleviate poverty, promote peace and bring the light of hope to places still mired in the darkness of tyranny and despair."

And yet America does not live up to its own standards, since the help and protection we offer to those who are strong enough to stand up for their own rights are not extended to those who cannot defend themselves, the weakest of the weak.

In defense of the President, though, his administration has done more to help the pro-life cause than any President in a long time. 

Also, it may be that the President was cleverly reminding his fellow Americans that, in fact, we treat our "weakest and most vulnerable" citizens in the same way Hitler treated Jews (an unpopular comparison, I know, but perhaps unpopular because it's true?).