Peter Lawler’s thought-provoking “Stuck With Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biotechnological Future” has continued to occupy a fair amount of my mental states, and quotes like this provide ample material for continued reflection on the American conception of self and the tensions implicit in the very definition.

The first unrealistic view of the self, that it can be autonomous forever, is unrealistic mostly because selves happen to have bodies and are subject to the constraints of a physical universe. Our culture’s obsession with death or, rather, it’s obsession with avoiding death and any sustained conversation on the subject most often manifests itself in the litanies of hundreds and one tips to gain and maintain health. Health, dieting, and longevity technologies are marketed everywhere one turns, and an increasing number of middle-class Americans are obsessed with organic and healthy whole-foods in a concerted attempt to avoid the real and imagined impacts of ingesting insecticides, chemicals, and mutated genes along with our five daily servings of fruits and vegetables. The elephant in the room, though, is the hard fact that even the most healthy individuals eventually die—if not from old age then from freak accident. Autonomy will be lost one way or another.

A growing number of Americans are being forced to face the impossibility of the eternally autonomous self, often in the guise of aging parents but sometimes in their own aging bodies. Despite our dreams and aspirations of perfect freedom, we must recognize that our bodies place a definite limit on autonomy. Recognizing this truth will go a long way towards modulating our definition of self and should motivate us to re-evaluate our goals as we balance a utopian ideal of eternal autonomy with the more real recognition that our bodies don’t last forever—and that the longer they last, the more often they continue to exist at the expense of pleasure, comfort, and freedom. The number of people living into their eighties and nineties is increasing, but so is the number of people living in full-time “retirement” homes or on hospitable beds, tied down by oxygen tubes, IVs, and an array of life-sustaining machines that stretch the claim that life, at any expense, is always better than death.

The second unrealistic view of the self, often held in contrast to the first, maintains that only the autonomous deserve to live. A less extreme but similar position holds that only the autonomous life is worth living. Either way it is formulated, this view overlooks the long-held position (held by a number of humans across the spectrum of time and culture) that some of the most valuable aspects of life come only by going through processes of pain, struggle, and even death. Many American’s would be hard-pressed to acknowledge that a loss of freedom could have its benefits (Patrick Henry’s famous words about liberty and death echo in the souls of most). However, I contend that many Americans would benefit from re-evaluating their notion of freedom in light of an equally American axiom: Life has inherent dignity.

There is much to be said about the dignity of life, and many have said it—folks on both sides of the contemporary political divide. Of note is our society’s on-going clamor for rights for children, for prisoners, for the poor and needy, and even for the aging, each of which are noticeably not completely autonomous, no matter how you look at the matter. If these human beings have rights (they do, under natural law, God, and our Constitution), then it is unrealistic to maintain, especially in the same breath, that only the autonomous deserve to live.

The tension between these two unrealistic views of the individual lies near the heart of some major issues in the American “culture wars.” What is important for all of us to grapple with, regardless of where we might stand on particular issues, is to re-evaluate our notion of the individual and freedom. We just might find that our current presuppositions are contradictory and in need of some serious adjustment.

The difference between them is crucial, yet few conservatives seem to understand the difference.  And therein lies the problem, argues James Polous:

I am no great defender of Rick Santorum, and I am inclined to think about ‘community’ the way Thatcher thought about ’society’, but it’s obvious that what falls through the cracks in the easy contrast between Reagan’s and Santorum’s comments is the difference between cultural libertarianism and political libertarianism. Reagan is clearly talking about the latter; Santorum is talking about the former. There are obvious problems: Reagan says ‘less centralized authority’, not ‘less centralized power’, and Santorum says ’succeeds as a culture’ but also talks openly of ‘government’ getting ‘involved in the bedroom.’ So I don’t want to be too glib in the other direction and suggest it’s easy in today’s climate for conservatives or anyone else to neatly separate out political from cultural issues.

But I do think it’s easier as a rule than it is now, and this is so because the basic general (as opposed to central) authority governing our cultural conduct has more or less unraveled, and we are trying to fill that gap through politics and, specifically, through law. This won’t work, but it’s a stopgap measure until the culture reconstitutes itself authoritatively. But since cultural libertarianism holds, when it comes to cultural authority, that the only rule is there are no rules, this is something of a pipe dream. And this is the main point Santorum is trying to make, even though he is the wrong messenger because he wants to put central (i.e. Federal) power to work in institutionalizing a cultural authority that can no longer stand on its own two feet. Reagan, on the other hand, is clearly speaking in political terms, speaking of conservatism as a political disposition that carries, viewed from the national level, a bias against checking cultural libertarianism with centralized political power.

If I am reading Polous right, he is suggesting that Santorum’s conservatism turns toward political machinery to solve what are cultural problems, problems which we lack resources to solve because culture lacks the authority to solve problems on its own.

Perhaps I misunderstand Polous, but it seems odd to say there are no authorities outside politics to which culture turns.  I think primarily of science, which is increasingly the only ground on which cultural libertarianism is checked.  Even the law is increasingly written only on the basis of evidence that is properly “scientific.”  The questions of homosexuality and homosexual marriage are indicative of this trend, as the question of legality is here determined by the conclusions of the social sciences.

The unchecked union of law and science is a dangerous one for cultural conservatives, and for cultural libertarians.  As the law is increasingly subordinated to the deliverances of the lab, the temptation to build a utopian society will become significantly stronger, as will the means of accomplishing it.  Within such a union lay the seeds of a scientific totalitarianism of the kind that C.S. Lewis describes in That Hideous Strength.

Cultural conservatives would do well, then, to cease attempting to strengthen the State to further their own cultural agenda.  Such a strategy is short-sighted, unless we are simultaneously working to bring about an authority beyond science upon which the laws can be based (and here I speak of ethics, which is inextricably tied to metaphysics).  Whether, and how, such an authority can be recovered in a pluralist, empiricist society such as ours are difficult questions.  I leave them for another day.

In an age saturated by information, our most precious asset is our ability to give–and take away–attention.

For most young people, their attention is very rarely concentrated in one spot for an extended period of time.  We are masters of multi-tasking, a freedom that has been increased exponentially since the creation of the walkman.

There are questions, though, about the effect such multi-tasking will have on us.  And while the occasional ’scientific’ study has popped up defending or critiquing multi-tasking, the evidence is far from conclusive.  Not only that, but there is a genuine “problem of the criterion” in even asking the question:  it is not clear in trying to identify the pros and cons of multi-tasking what counts as a benefit or vice.  Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You is an extended defense of tv, movies, the internet, etc. but it’s plausible that all the benefits he identifies could have been gained, and gained more quickly, through a concentrated reading of Shakespeare.

Most people are either worried about this problem or they are not.  Courtney Martin is in the former camp.  For the record, so am I.  And I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to articulate those worries in the forthcoming book from Crossway on all things new media.  For now, though, I highlight Martin, who relays this letter from Josh Waitzkin to students in a former professor’s class:

I understand that your minds move quickly and we are all impacted by a fast paced culture, but do you realize the horror of shopping online while Dalton describes…mothers throwing their children into a well to avoid a barrage of bullets? What are you doing? There comes a day when we must become accountable for our own learning process…Take it on. This is your life. What is the point of neurotically skipping along the surface when all the beauty lies below? Please seize the moment and listen deeply to Dalton’s final lectures. Close the computers. Stop typing madly and soak in the themes he develops…Learning is an act of creativity, not mind-numbing, tv watching passive receptivity.

Martin comments:

As you might imagine, it caused quite a stir when professor Dalton distributed Waitzkin’s letter to the class. The previous semester, the entire college had considered a computer ban in classrooms, but the students and some of their professorial allies argued that it was an infringement on students’ rights, and the idea was promptly dropped. (Professor Dalton, an anarchist, says that while the laptop use during his lectures saddens him, he would never ban the students from doing it.)

It is remarkable to think that access to a laptop in the classroom, without which the educational system has survived some 2500 years, is now considered a right by students.  It is tempting to dismiss students with the condescending, “When I was in school…”  Such a strategy can only acknowledge the yawning gap between the generations, rather than solve any problems.  Most students today have no idea what they have lost by the ubiquity of computers in their lives.

I won’t tip my hand (yet) as to what I think is lost.  I’d like to hear from you:  what’s lost, if anything, in an environment that has multiple media each vying to have us attend to them?
(HT:  Al Mohler)

Job 38:1-7: “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me… Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding…. Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Exodus 20: 1-3: And God spoke all these words: “I am [Jehovah] your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

Psalm 82: 1-7:
God takes His stand in His own congregation;
He judges in the midst of the gods.
How long will you judge unjustly
And show partiality to the wicked?

Vindicate the weak and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and destitute.
Rescue the weak and needy;
Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.
They do not know nor do they understand;
They walk about in darkness;
All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I said, “You are gods,
And all of you are sons of the Most High.
“Nevertheless you will die like men
And fall like any one of the princes.”

Arise, O God, judge the earth!
For it is You who possesses all the nations.

John 10:31-39: The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?” The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.” Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I SAID, YOU ARE GODS’? “If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

“If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.” Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp.

I haven’t written anything on the recent decision by the California Supreme Court to overturn the ban on homosexual marriage in large part because I haven’t yet read the 121 page decision. Stuart Taylor’s read it, though. And he’s fired up:

First, the California court’s 121-page opinion was dishonest. This was most evident in its ritual denial of the fact that it was usurping legislative power: “Our task … is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated a marriage rather than a domestic partnership … but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution [emphasis in original].”

This was a deeply disingenuous dodge, if not a bald-faced lie, to conceal from gullible voters the fact that the decision was a raw exercise in judicial policy-making with no connection to the words or intent of the state constitution. It is inconceivable that anyone but a supporter of gay marriage “as a matter of policy” could have found in vague constitutional phrases such as “equal protection” a right to judicial invalidation of the marriage laws of every state and nation in the history of civilization.

Taylor isn’t exactly a right-wing conservative. He is a supporter of homosexual marriage who sees this sort of activism as having a net long-term negative impact on the cause of gay activists. He continues:

The California court’s majority descended into especially slick sophistry when it suggested that the many gay-rights reforms that the state’s elected branches had already adopted were not a reason to let the democratic process work but rather a mandate for judicial imposition of gay marriage. The message to voters in other states may be: If you give the judges an inch on gay rights, they will take a mile.

Also disingenuous was the majority’s vague dismissal of the powerful argument by opponents of judicially imposed gay marriage that the made-up constitutional principle underlying the decision would also–if seriously applied–require the state to recognize polygamous and incestuous marriages among adults….

This is not to deny the importance to many gay couples and their children of being officially recognized as “married.” They should be treated as married. But to decree this by judicial fiat has large costs to democratic governance. Judicial power to override the deeply felt values of popular majorities should be used sparingly, to enforce clear constitutional commands or redress great injustices, not deployed whenever the judges think they can improve on the work of the elected branches or accelerate progressive reforms already under way.

Anyone concerned about the rule of law in American society has reason to be concerned by this latest kerfuffle over homosexual marriage. But the decision underscores the real movement in American society, which is a movement away from an ontological understanding of relationships and toward a contractual understanding.  As Patrick Deneen observes:

To my mind, what’s most striking about the Court’s decision is the language of the inviolability of “individual liberty and personal autonomy.” These are the legal and Constitutional grounds on which a decision about the basis of marriage are being grounded. On the basis of such grounds, can there really be marriage at all, at least in a form that is worthy of defense? Aren’t we really talking about an advantaged tax and property arrangement, one that can and should be altered at the will and inclination of the individual’s “liberty and autonomy”? It is really nothing other than the contractual partnership defended in Locke’s Second Treatise, sans the children (or at least conceived by the couple in question). And doesn’t it permit any possible form of coupling, including ones not limited to couples (e.g., polygamy, etc., between consenting adults?)…

In other words, the legal status of marriage is no longer based on the recognition of a deeper, metaphysical reality, but is instead a recognition only of the decisions of two autonomous individuals, who may at any point reverse their decision without penalty.  As Deneen concludes:

Would gay marriage proponents be willing to step up in defense of the elimination or serious truncation of no-fault divorce provisions, and in support of “covenant marriage” counseling, efforts to reduce sex before marriage, the legal discouragement of divorce, and more generally “the dying of the self” for the other against the grain of our time that valorizes “individual freedom and autonomy?” For that matter, would a vast number of heterosexuals? Until then, we are debating at the edges and missing the heart of the matter.

This is, I think, the basis for Joe’s intriguing and provocative suggestion:

By adopting a form of “covenant marriage,” gays and lesbians could lead the charge in restoring the sanctity of marital commitment. It would also be much more difficult for foes of same-sex civil marriage to justify excluding homosexuals if they would be willing to adopt such a proposal. The American people are becoming more receptive to the idea of civil union yet are hesitant to expand the definition of marriage. If the purpose of same-sex marriage is to recognize a lifelong commitment to one partner, then homosexual couples should lead the way by adopting this higher standard.

That, of course, will never happen.  But it is imperative for defendants of same-sex marriage to acknowledge that the war against homosexual marriage was lost at least fifty years ago, when no-fault divorce laws were instituted, if not several hundred years ago when John Locke’s theory of autonomy became the new basis for Western Civilization.

(HT: Rod)

This is the day whereupon we remember those who have given their lives in service for our country and offer our thanks to those who are currently serving.

I remember two such individuals here.

From Oliver Wendell Holmes’ Memorial Day speech on May 30th, 1884:

But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.

Such hearts–ah me, how many!–were stilled twenty years ago; and to us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year–in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life–there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death. Year after year lovers wandering under the apple trees and through the clover and deep grass are surprised with sudden tears as they see black veiled figures stealing through the morning to a soldier’s grave. Year after year the comrades of the dead follow, with public honor, procession and commemorative flags and funeral march–honor and grief from us who stand almost alone, and have seen the best and noblest of our generation pass away.

Lee Strobel is going to be at Biola University this Tuesday giving away copies of his new DVD, “The Case for Christ.” Those who are in the area shouldn’t miss the opportunity to hear JP Moreland, Mike Erre, Strobel and Craig Hazen, not to mention pick up their own copy of what is doubtlessly an informative video.

I’d be curious to hear feedback from any Mere-O readers who do attend. You can email me at matthew dot l dot anderson at gmail dot com.

We also must return to Pascal for a reminder that the biotechnological project cannot turn us human beings from mysterious into manufactured beings. The effort to deny the reality of the fundamental unpredictability of human life that is intrinsic to technological thinking is ultimately futile. The good news is that technology may finally make us so unhappy that we will being to effectively criticize its consequences with the whole human good in mind.” (p. 71)

Peter Lawler opens a notoriously difficult topic, the actual and theoretical relationship between biotechnology and human identity, with a surprising rush of optimism. “Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and our Biotechnological Future” blazes with a collection of stand-alone chapters exploring, among other things, the American notion of individuality, the tensions between individual and communal goals and ends, competing theories of how things ought to be given our technological advancements, and the utopian dreams of Americans today.

Acknowledging the range of views on these subjects—from shameless romantic idealism of a world free from necessity to gloomy predictions of the destruction of human liberty—Lawler forcefully argues that, whatever advances are made in technology, they will always be limited by human beings themselves. His optimism smacks of irony in that it is largely the continued phenomenon of human dissatisfaction, misery even, despite an unprecedented increase in healthy, beautiful, and leisurely lifestyle options that undergirds his conviction that technology will never free humans from the necessity of virtue.

…Both the hopes and the fears we have concerning technology today are exaggerated. The limit to both is human nature; technological progress cannot satisfy our deepest longings or make us at home in the world. Nor can it completely uproot us from our human attachments or produce beings without moral or spiritual lives. We remain social beings open to the truth, nobility, and God, beings who love an die, and it is a large exaggeration to say that technology has reduced our world to a wasteland completely inhospitable to beings such as ourselves. It is equally an exaggeration to say that technological progress has been good for moral and spiritual life, or to say that we are able to control adequately that progress on behalf of properly human purposes. The very idea of technological control takes part in a way of thinking that is incapable of making properly human distinctions. We should thank God that we are still required to live morally demanding lives, and that we seem unable to bring human nature or human self-consciousness under our control.” (p. 68)

No advancement will be made, he argues, that will ever be able to free humans from themselves and the necessities imposed by their contingent existence. It is this argument that provides an answer to the hopes and fears of those on both sides of the promises of technological advance. Lawler grounds his argument in empirical observation of human experience, often noting the interesting phenomenon of increased dissatisfaction among those Americans who most benefit from advance technology—it is the middle-class American with more options, better health, greater wealth, and easily accessed pleasures that also tends to be the most unhappy. The disparity present immediately raises questions regarding the possibility of technological advancement to give true happiness.

Besides empirical observation, Lawler also spends a good deal of time parsing out Locke’s human being “as [an] autonomous individual and nothing more,” emphasizing that this concept of humanness was primarily employed in the abstract by Locke (a theory of what humanity could be, rather than a statement of fact) to create a society in which human beings would be able to become more and more like this abstraction. Given the general American acceptance of Locke’s individual as a worthy ideal, Lawler shows that, since this ideal is an abstraction it will never be fully realized since it leaves out certain important aspects of what it means to be human—things like the natural gregariousness of humanity, the continued propensity of humans to think of themselves as citizens and parents as well as autonomous individuals, and the terrible fear of being alone that motivates so much human behavior.

Drawing on anecdotes from college campuses as much as from suburban coffee shops, it is this latter feature, the modern fear of being alone, that provides grounds for much of Lawler’s optimism. With the freedom to design increasingly perfect lives and bodies comes the sinking realization that this perfection alienates at least as much as it frees us to be happy. As biotechnology isolates individuals by freeing them from any sort of perceived dependance on others and necessity of any kind limiting their choices, the political or social drive of humans will provide a counter-balance to the otherwise completely isolating tendencies of technology.

Take-away question: Can the absolute freedom of human beings (free from necessity, impositions of nature, society, and God) result in happiness?

Humor me for a minute and allow me to make a significant number of generalizations and assumptions, most of which stem from my experience.

Theological liberals often tend to be political liberals as well.  In this, they often want the State to act as an agent of compassion along with the Church.  Political conservatives resist this on the grounds that it is not the State’s function or role.  At the same time, theological liberals often want the State to remove itself from the business of marrying people, as this is the proper role of the Church.

Compare that to theological conservatives, who often happen to also be political conservatives.  Typically, they wish to reduce the State’s role in acts of compassion as the State tends to be inept and such acts are the proper dominion of the Church.  At the same time, they argue that the State has an interest in preserving traditional marriage.

I do not think the positions are actually internally contradictory.  But framing them this way does expose the interesting tension between their understanding of the State’s role in society.

While offering his own take on the differences between the respective literary imaginations of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Martin Cothran offered this substantial and skillful critique of my defense of C.S. Lewis:

Matthew Lee Anderson at Mere Orthodoxy has responded to Longenecker, saying that he unjustly uses Narnia as representative of all of Lewis’s fiction. He points to Till We Have Faces as an example of fiction written by Lewis equal to Tolkien’s. But ironically, it is the allegorical aspect of Till We Have Faces that is the only really valuable aspect of the book. In fact, it seems to me that it fails the test of a good allegory in a way that the Narnia books themselves do not: that you can enjoy the story quite apart from the allegory. I do think Till We Have Faces does a better job of creating a convincing world, but the story just isn’t as compelling as Lewis’s children’s books.

Cothran and I part ways here. It is hard to compare Till We Have Faces with Lord of the Rings because the plot lines and narrative perspective are so different, but I find the story in Till We Have Faces quite enjoyable. Not only that, butt I would strenuously disagree with his characterization of the book as an allegory–it is much more significant than that. As Doris T. Myers writes in Bareface: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s Last Novel:

The bare outline of the story has fascinated poet, philosophers, and ordinary readers throughout the centuries. It is more than allegory; it has all the mysterious resonance of a myth. That is, the meaning, though clear, is yet somehow beyond our grasp. We think we have understood the story, but there is always something beyond, inviting us to ponder it more deeply. The originality of Lewis’s approach is to ignore allegory, to deemphasize the mythic literary tradition, and to treat it as something that could, perhaps did, really happen.

With this assessment I heartily concur. While there are clearly allegorical elements to the book, it is much richer than that, and enjoyable apart from those elements. Myers’s description of the story as a myth places it in the same category as Lord of the Rings.

Cothran also takes on my argument regarding G.K. Chesterton:

I don’t know which stories Anderson is referring to here. Certainly Chesterton’s characters make some interesting speeches, and certainly his fiction has flaws, but you simply cannot look at something like The Man Who Was Thursday (a work written, by the way, when Chesterton was an Anglican) and view it as a backdrop for anything other than Chesterton’s own original genius. Chesterton’s stories were perfectly suited to Chesterton’s vision of the world: a place where mirth and magic underly every ordinary thing.

To say that Chesterton’s vision is didactic is sort of like saying that The Divine Comedy is didactic: it’s true, but it is so inadequate an assessment as to tell us nothing essential about the work. It also doesn’t prove Anderson’s point. There is a certain didacticism to Chesterton, but Chesterton, unlike Lewis, isn’t trying to create a secondary world. Chesterton doesn’t need a secondary world to instruct us about this one. To Chesterton, this world is fantastic enough.

I am afraid Cothran missed my point, which was less about Chesterton’s fiction and more about his Catholicism. I agree with Cothran’s assessment of Chesterton’s writings, many of which I have read and almost all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed. I raised him only as a counterexample to Longenecker’s argument that Lewis’s didactism stems from his Protestantism. Cothran’s reply does not, as best I can tell, refute the point.

Indeed, Cothran grants the didactic nature of Gilbert’s writings. Regardless of whether that happens in a “secondary world” or “this world,” my point is that his incarnating of stories is, on Longenecker’s account, more Protestant than Catholic–reason enough, I think, to question Longenecker’s neat distinctions.

Two more brief points.

First, Cothran approvingly cites this assessment of Narnia by Humphrey Carpenter:

Indeed one can regard all Lewis’s most successful literary work as pastiche. He chose a form from on source, an idea from another; he played at being (in turns) Bunyan, Chesterton, Tolkien, Williams, anybody he liked and admired. He was an impersonator, a mimic, a fine actor; but what lay at the heart of it all? Who was the real C. S. Lewis?

It may be the case that Lewis drew heavily on source material, but that is hardly problematic. Shakespeare didn’t have an original plot to speak of, yet we hardly degrade him by calling him a ‘mimic.’ Lewis’s is a great thinker precisely because he stands at a crucial moment in history, synthesizing and distilling the greatest thinkers of the Western tradition.

Second, while (again) I agree with much Cothran has to say about the differences between Lewis and Chesterton, I think he goes awry when he writes:

Narnia is fantastic because it is different. We may be like Peter, and Lucy, and Susan, and Edmund, but we are not like Prince Caspian, or Mr. Tumnis, or Reepacheep, or the White Witch. The only characters in Narnia with which we can really identify are not from Narnia. Middle Earth, on the other hand, is fantastic because it is familiar. There is a little bit of Frodo in all of us–and Bilbo, for that matter, and Aragorn, and Merry and Pippin.

In short, while Cothran finds the attraction in the difference, I look to the sameness: there is, in fact, a little bit of Caspian, of Tumnus, of Reepicheep in us. Who doesn’t wish to join Reepicheep on his quest to the edge of the world? Who has not longed to go with him, like Caspian, but been held back by duties and obligations?

It is, in short, precisely because Narnia so nearly reflects this world that it resonates so deeply in us. The differences only serve to make the lessons and the stories more palatable to those who may not learn them otherwise. Greed is an easier vice to spot if the person who suffers from it turns into a dragon. But the greed is the same in Narnia as it is here.

P.J. O’Rourke is a serious thinker.  But this is too good to pass up:

All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my bellybutton exposed.

No, P.J.  No, you wouldn’t.

(Ht:  Joe)
And now for something completely different.  My brother writes:

A little while ago, Jenni Hargis, a former neighbor and total sweetheart, fulfilled a dream of a lifetime and met Ellen Degeneres. What I didn’t know: she danced on Ellen, and is now part of their contest for Dancer of the Week.

On this here blog, I don’t ask for much. But today, I’m demanding. Go now, and vote for Jenni. She’s Dancer #1.

A former neighbor, Jenni is a bright young lady with a rather remarkable story.  If anyone deserves to win, it’s her.  Go forth and vote.
And no, I will never link to the Ellen Degeneres show ever again.

(Serious blogging returns tomorrow.)

Via Rod Dreher comes this piece by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who writes:

Tolkien disliked allegory so intensely because he felt it was too didactic. It leaves no possibility that any other levels of meaning in the work could exist. Tolkien understood the artist, created in God’s image, to be a “sub-creator” — producing a work of the imagination that functioned best when it followed God’s own complex action of creation.

To do this most successfully, a complete alternative world had to be created in which the work of redemption could be played out within its own consistent and logical constraints. It was not enough to create a world with symbolic pointers to Jesus Christ and the cross; that world would have to have a whole history and unique inner dynamic that would incarnate the universal truths in a totally fresh way.

The difference between Narnia and Middle Earth points to the underlying difference between the imagination of Lewis the Protestant and Tolkien the Catholic. For the Protestant, truth is essentially dialectical. It consists of abstract propositions to be stated, argued, and affirmed or denied.

For the Catholic, Truth, while it may be argued dialectically, is essentially something not to be argued but experienced. The Truth is always linked with the mystery of the incarnation, and is therefore something to be encountered.

Many Protestants will argue, for instance, that God’s primary revelation is Sacred Scripture, while Catholics maintain that God’s primary revelation is Jesus Christ. That Lewis produced works that were profound, worthy, and beautiful, but less than fully incarnational, while Tolkien produced a masterpiece that incarnated the same truths in a complete, subtle, and mysterious way reflects the deeper theological differences that remained between the two men.

Longenecker’s argument that didactic nature of Lewis’ fiction stems from his Protestant faith is dubious for several reasons. For one, the argument isolates the Chronicles of Narnia as paradigmatic of all of Lewis’ fiction. While Lewis is often didactic (especially in Perelandra), no claims about his literary imagination are complete without reference to ‘Til We Have Faces, Lewis’ best piece of fiction. ‘Til We Have Faces is a rich, intricate examination of the nature of love, and no more didactic (I would argue) than Lord of the Rings. In its depth, gravity, and style, ‘Til We Have Faces is, in fact, a worthy equal to Tolkien’s work.

Secondly, the fiction of G.K. Chesterton–no slouch of a Roman Catholic himself–is even more didactic than Lewis’s. At points, his stories serve only as backdrops for his characters’ always amusing and edifying speeches. For Longenecker’s argument to stand, he would have to agree that Chesterton’s imagination was more Protestant than Catholic–a thought, I’m sure, which Chesterton would himself reject, and which would be difficult for any reader of Chesterton to sustain seriously for long.

To conclude, then, while I would grant the superiority of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings over the Chronicles of Narnia, the idea that this is due to their respective theological systems is tendentious at best. Longenecker passes over more mundane, boring, and probably accurate explanations–Lewis wrote many things besides the Chronicles of Narnia, while Middle Earth was Tolkien’s central focus–and reaches beyond where the evidence (at least as he presents it) leads.

Stephen Pinker’s diatribe (an appropriate word, I think) has prompted a fair number of responses from some pretty intelligent folks around the blogosphere.

The assumption implicit in my question about Pinker’s reading of Leon Kass is that he fundamentally misunderstands Kass’s hermeneutic and philosophical style. My brother, rightly, wondered what had prompted that thought in me.

I was going to answer him, but then I read Darwinian Conservative Larry Arnhart’s take, who pointed out exactly what I would have:

Here’s an example. Pinker writes that in the report, many of the authors “assert that the Old Testament is the only grounds for morality (for example, the article by Kass claims that respect for human life is rooted in Genesis 9:6, in which God instructs the survivors of his Flood in the code of vendetta: ‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God was man made.’”

Now, if one actually reads Kass’s contribution to this report, which can be found here, one sees the following passage that Pinker is citing: “Human life is to be respected more than animal life–Why?–because man is more than an animal; man is said to be god-like. Please note that the truth of the Bible’s assertion does not rest on biblical authority.” Notice that Pinker ignores Kass’s disclaimer that the truth of this assertion does not depend on biblical authority alone–in contrast to Pinker’s claim that the authors of the report are asserting “that the Old Testament is the only grounds of morality.”

There is a serious point here. In Kass’s book on Genesis, and in some of his other writings, Kass does sometimes suggest that the Bible might provide a moral teaching that goes beyond secular reasoning. But Kass is rather evasive about this. And Pinker has no interest in probing into the complexity of Kass’s writing. All that Pinker cares about is condemning Kass as a conspirator in promoting theocracy in America.

After reading Pinker’s essay, I was pretty confident he had badly misread Leon Kass. I didn’t think, though, that he may not have read the collection essays he was writing about. But among those who have read the essays, that is very much a possibility.