C.S. Lewis on Reason

Abstract

While Lewis played a central role in the Oxford Socratic Club, only six of his twenty-eight talks survived in his own words—until now. Lewis’s “Notes on the Nature of Reason” is an approximately 1,700 word outline of Lewis’s talk “The Nature of Reason,” which he delivered to the Socratic Club on 15 October, 1945. Josiah Petersonand Charlie Starr introduce their transcript of Lewis’s outline, placing the talk in the context of the role Reason played in Lewis’s own life and work and his earlier and later statements on the nature of Reason in works such as “Why I’m Not a Pacifist,” “The Poison of Subjectivism,” Miracles, The Abolition of Man, and The Discarded Image. Lewis's talk emphasizes Reason’s certainty, its inability to provide its own subjects, and the distinction between Theoretical and Practical Reason. It also includes responses to what Lewis saw as the main objections to Reason. Several textual interpretation difficulties are also addressed in the introduction.