c.s. lewis

Like Plato, C.S. Lewis believed that the human soul was made up of three parts — the head (the rational, reason-driven part of you), the belly (your appetites and base instincts), and the chest (the seat of virtue-seeking sentiments and well-tuned emotions). In order for your head to make your decisions, particularly the decision to live a virtuous life, rather than your decisions being driven by your belly, the head needs the aid of the chest, of right feeling.

A few months ago, we had Michael Ward on the show to talk about why C.S. Lewis felt that modern life was making “men without chests.” Today, I talk to a guest who can shed light on what Lewis thought was needed to build that chest back up. His name is Louis Markos and he’s a professor of English, as well as the lecturer of the Great Courses course: The Life and Writings of C.S. Lewis. At the start of our conversation, Lou gives us some background on Lewis’ life, including his conversion to Christianity, and how the nature of that conversion influenced his thinking on how to pursue virtue more broadly. We then talk about Lewis’ philosophical argument for there being a universal moral order, and why the chest is so vital for staying grounded in it. We spend the rest of our discussion unpacking the three ways Lewis believed the chest could be “educated”: reading stories and myths, rejecting “chronological snobbery” to learn from the past, and developing friendships that inspire excellence.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• Louis’ Great Courses course: The Life and Writings of C.S. Lewis
• The books Louis has authored
• AoM Podcast #430: Why You Need to Join the Great Conversation About the Great Books
• AoM Article: The Power of Conversation — A Lesson From C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien
• AoM article on Plato’s view of the tripartite nature of the soul
• AoM series on Norse mythology
• AoM Podcast #178: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings Mastermind Group
• The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by James George Frazer
• The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
• The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
• The Chronicles of Narnia — The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis
• The Book of Virtues by William Bennett
• AoM Article: The Winston Churchill School of Adulthood — Cultivate a Nostalgic Love for History
• AoM article on C.S. Lewis’ advice on overcoming the “horror of the same old thing”
• AoM articles and podcasts on friendship

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

While this quote from C.S. Lewis is often cited, few completely understand what Lewis meant by it, nor understand the book from which it was taken, The Abolition of Man, which, unlike Lewis's more popular works of fiction and Christian apologetics, is a broad philosophical treatise aimed at everyone, and perhaps the most admired and yet least accessible of Lewis's writings.

My guest today has written a guide, called After Humanity, that is designed to make The Abolition of Man more understandable to the average reader. His name is Dr. Michael Ward and he's both a Catholic priest and a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford. Michael kicks off our conversation by offering a big picture overview of what The Abolition of Man was about, which centers on Lewis's argument against subjectivism, and for the idea that there exists objective moral values, the denial of which brings destructive consequences. We unpack the case Lewis makes for the existence of a natural order which underlies all religions and cultures, and why he called this universal, objective reality the "Tao." We then get into what Lewis meant by the idea of making "men without chests," the function of a man's chest, and why chests aren't being developed. We end our conversation with why moral debates can seem so shrill and fruitless in a world without agreement upon objective values, and if anything can be done to build the chests of modern men.

Several years ago we published an article about famous "mastermind groups" from history. One of them was a group of British scholars called The Inklings. From this group came two of the 20th century's most famous English writers: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. After I first learned about the Inklings, I wanted to dig deeper into this male-only writer's club to find out more about each individual and the group's effect on their respective lives and careers. In The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, husband and wife team Philip and Carol Zaleski profile the four most prominent members of the Inklings (Lewis and Tolkien, along with Owen Barfield and Charles Williams), how the group started, and how its dynamics changed over its 30-year history.
In today's podcast, I talk to Philip and Carol about the history of the Inklings and what we can learn from them about forming our own mastermind groups.