Philosophy

Miracles 1.2 / 1.3 Both Experience and History are logically subordinate to Philosophy when it comes to ones views of Miracles. Miracles 1.4 Philosophy drives our conclusions. Ex. 'A book cannot be written //before// events which it refers to.' This denial of real predictions is an example of a philosophical view ( taken for granted ) which leads to the conclusion that the gospel of John must have been written after the execution of St. Peter. This is also an example of Lewis's use of Illustration.

Something very constant does appear again and again in Oriental religion and in its Western adaptations (ancient Gnosticism and modern Theosophy). It is one of the three perennial views of the universe, which are, in my opinion: //1.// Materialism (from Democritus to Marx) //2//. Amalgamated High Paganism (from Iamblichus to Steiner) 3. Christianity (from the Apostles to the child who was confirmed this year).

Of course for people like you and me the only live issue is between //2//. and 3. We’re under no obligation, are we?, to say that everything in //2//. is pure falsehood. May it not contain (a.) Truths about the spiritual world omitted by Revelation because they are irrelevant to our redemption. (b.) Truths omitted because they are positively dangerous and noxious to us in our present condition (c.) Real psychic facts of no particular importance (d.) Semi-rationalised - or philosophised - mythology (e.) Diabolical delusions. (f.) Straight quackery for catching flats. And all these mixed in various degrees and modes. What stamps it as an over-all false //way -// which is not the same as a set of totally false propositions - is, for me, the fact that it is all for people of a //particular type//. If all Christians were people like Origen or Henry More or Wm. Law in his last phase (but we have Aquinas, Pascal & Dr. Johnson), or people like Italian peasants & Irish nuns (but we have Hooker and Pasteur), we’d be in the same position. //Collected Letters//, to William P. Wylie, 28 March 1958

…to lose what I owe to Plato and Aristotle would be like the amputation of a limb. //Rehabilitations//, chapter 3, The Idea of an English School, paragraph 8

I am not condemning philosophy. Indeed in turning from it to liter­ary history and criticism, I am conscious of a descent: and if the air on the heights did not suit me, still I have brought back something of value. It will be a comfort to me all my life to know that the scientist and the materialist have not the last word: that Darwin and Spencer undermin­ing ancestral beliefs stand themselves on a foundation of sand; of gigan­tic assumptions and irreconcilable contradictions an inch below the surface. It leaves the whole thing rich in possibilities: and if it dashes the shallow optimisms it does the same for the shallow pessimisms. But hav­ing once seen all this `darkness', a darkness full of promise, it is perhaps best to shut the trap door and come back to ordinary life: unless you are one of the really great who can see into it a little way - and I was not.

At any rate I escape with joy from one definite drawback of philoso­phy - its solitude. I was beginning to feel that your first year carries you out of the reach of all save other professionals. No one sympathises with your adventures in that subject because no one understands them: and if you struck treasure trove no one would be able to use it. //Collected Letters,// to his father, 14 August 1945

To be ignorant and simple now--not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground--would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. //Learning in War-time//, paragraph 10