This school year I have been working on an undergrad research project in partnership with my advisor Dr. Phillips and Dr. Rourke. We met about every 2 weeks this year and discussed a C.S. Lewis book that we read. Through the readings and the discussion I have come up with a preliminary abstract that summarizes what I believe Lewis is saying about Ethics.
C.S. Lewis has had a dramatic influence on western culture through his famous children’s fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia. On an academic level he has contributed a plethora of works in the areas of theology, philosophy, literature, and literary criticism during his time as a professor at Oxford University and then Cambridge University. Informed by his Christian faith, Lewis’ works contribute to the philosophical discussions surrounding a consistent normative ethics. The purpose of this research was to discover and extract what his normative ethics is from his prolific works. Lewis believes that the natural law informs all societies at all times in history about what is right and wrong. The natural law points toward God as the objective standard of morality and is guided by God’s love, which is charity. According to Lewis, the purpose of every thought and action of humans is to become more charitable. Referencing human history, Lewis shows how all humans are inherently evil by nature. We all have free will to choose to do good or evil. Left solely to our own power, we would choose evil and habituate ourselves to do evil with a continually smaller chance of choosing a good action the next time. Lewis here introduces the idea of God’s Grace, which is the only power that can turn a human towards charity and continually seek it. In essence, Lewis’s normative ethics is focused on habituating charitable thoughts and actions that are powered by God’s Grace and motivated by God’s character.
Those of you who have read a lot of Lewis's writings feel free to point out anything that you think is incorrect in my assessment of his writings.
