It's official. Lizzy is better at my blog than I am. A full 24 hours post-deadline I am only halfway through The Abolition of Man. Given that this is an 80 page text, that's basically inexcusable. However, just 40 pages in and Lewis as already entered into innumerable complex topics and ideas and woven them together quite rapidly. I can't wait to read the next 40 pages!
I'm not really interested in short-changing this text, so my apologies, but there will be no post from me this week. Were this a class, I would have taken a quotation from the first half and whipped something up for you. Perhaps were there any readers to speak of, I may still have done this. But, fortunately, neither of these things is the case. (Fortunately?) (If you are actually reading this, my sincerest apologies. Assuming you're a faceless abyss is currently much better for my writing). Anyway, the beauty of this project is that I really get to spend time with a text and think about it and not immediately apply it to class materials.
For instance, this text served as part of the foundation for much of my Ethics class two years ago. Between the C.S. Lewis (Abolition and The Four Loves) and the Pride and Prejudice I managed to survive the "proper" philosophers (Aristotle, Aquinas, etc.) quite well. Now, however, this text is not the foundation for Ethical thinking. Nor is it the basis of my term paper or the answer to a short essay question. This summer is the object of my contemplation, and I hope to give it that due regard and requisite time here. Will the fruits be greater? I'm not going to short-change my education by making that assertion, but based on my reading thus far, I do know that there is more to learn from Lewis in this markedly short and famously complex text. So wish me luck! You'll see my thoughts on the text itself here soon.
By way of a teaser, here are a few of the quotations from the text that have caught my eye thus far:
"A theorist about language may approach his language, as it were from outside, regarding its genius as a thing that has no claim on him and advocating wholesale alterations of its idiom and spelling in the interests of commercial convenience or scientific accuracy. That is one thing. A great poet, who has 'loved, and been well nurtured in, his mother tongue', may also make great alterations in it, but his changes of the language are made in the spirit of the language itself: he works from within. The language which suffers, also inspires the changes."
"From within the Tao itself comes the only authority to modify the Tao."
"By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head."
"It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal."
"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful."
Until next time!
Mary
To be fair, I had only read 1 page of Abolition of Man when you wrote this post, so I dunno if we can really make the claim that I'm better at the blog. Can you imagine if I tried to turn in that last post for a class? "Yeah, I know the paper for this week was supposed to be on Abolition of Man, but I was still really on a Screwtape vibe, so that's cool, too, right?" :)
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