The Problem of Technology and the Mechanization of the Flesh

Part One: Technology as Ontology 

You can see technology as a society’s stock of tools and machines, which are made to serve particular purposes. Thus although you can judge the goodness or badness of the purposes, the tools themselves are neutral. “It is not a rifle that kills but a hard heart.” A rifle is a tool for killing but there are times when killing is justified or even necessary (e.g. hunting game to survive, defense of family), and times when killing is evil. Still, the purpose belongs to the tool, and not all purposes are equal. To that extent at least, not all technology is equal. The few varieties of tomatoes available in supermarkets are connected to their ability to be harvested by a certain kind of machine, which itself was invented to replace dependence on human workers: that machine is not a neutral tool but part of capitalist rationality. The Amish – to their credit – would have no use for it. Technology is always embedded in economic-social-power arrangements, supporting or undermining these. The Internet left in the university world would function differently than it does in corporate capitalism, though the basic technological idea is the same. Capitalism develops the complex of Internet technologies in radically different ways than would a non-profit university Internet. Again, the Amish have no use for it at all. Technology is an interplay of power, purpose, economics, and social form.

   A mechanical clock may seem like a neutral device for measuring time, but it imposes its own logic and purpose on how we experience and structure life. The purpose of a clock is to divide time into uniform, measurable units—hours, minutes, and seconds—transforming our subjective experience of time into a quantifiable resource. This shift is far from innocuous. By breaking time into discrete, measurable parts, the clock subtly changes how humans perceive and engage with the world:

1.    Loss of Organic Rhythms: Before clocks became ubiquitous, human life was structured around natural rhythms—sunrise, sunset, the seasons. The clock replaces these organic rhythms with mechanical regularity, detaching us from the natural flow of time.

2.    Efficiency Over Wholeness: The clock’s division of time encourages a mindset focused on efficiency and productivity, where time becomes a commodity to be used, saved, or wasted. This can fragment our activities and relationships, reducing the sense of wholeness or integrity in how we live.

3.    Dehumanizing Labor: In workplaces, the clock regulates activities into shifts and breaks, turning work into a set of timed tasks. Workers themselves may start to be seen not as whole persons but as units of labor measured in "man-hours."

In essence, the clock shapes how humans experience life by treating time not as a holistic continuum, but as a heap of interchangeable moments, much like the computer’s treatment of information. It has a purpose—measuring and dividing time—that influences not only what we do with it but also how we think about time, ourselves, and the world.

   The clock conditions us to think of time as a series of interchangeable units. This affects how we structure our lives—prioritizing schedules and productivity over the organic flow of life. Similarly, the photo conditions us to see representations (images) as interchangeable with reality, making it easier to forget the uniqueness and immediacy of the original experience. When you view a computer-produced digital photo, your perception of the image as a whole is indeed intact. You see the sunset, not the pixels or binary code. However, the critique is about the conditions that made the digital photo possible and how those conditions influence your experience, replacing or colonizing the original experience. The richness of the sunset as a lived, embodied experience (its warmth, its fleeting quality, its context in your life) is reduced to visual data. A computer captures only what it can quantify—not the subjective, emotional, or relational dimensions of the moment. The digital photo can be copied, resized, and edited endlessly. This undermines its singularity. Unlike a painting or a physical photograph, it no longer exists as a unique object tied to a specific time and place. The sunset has been reduced to parts (pixels, data points), which the computer assembles into an image. While you perceive the whole, the underlying process reflects a fragmented view of reality. The computer had to transform the sunset into data—discrete, measurable packets of information. This transformation emphasizes what can be measured and replicated over what is inherently unique or unquantifiable. The sunset itself, in reality, is a singular, unrepeatable event. The digital image, however, is a representation, created through a process that has prioritized its technical replicability over its uniqueness. [Plato’s allegory of the cave!]

   In all these cases, the mechanistic process doesn’t just transform the specific object (time or the sunset); it subtly changes how we think about time itself or experience itself. Time becomes something to measure and control, rather than something to live through or celebrate as part of Creation. The world becomes a collection of data points to manipulate, rather than a mystery to encounter as a whole. Both examples illustrate the same underlying colonization of the spirit: that technological systems tend to impose their own logic of fragmentation and mechanization onto our understanding of the world, subtly reshaping – or re-wiring – how we live and think.

     The action of  “processing information” is always the purpose of the computer itself. It is thus one that every user necessarily makes his own, even if implicitly, by the very act of using the computer. You may use the computer for evangelization or for selling porn. You may be trying to convey ideas, and not reduce them to bits of machinery. Nonetheless, by turning on the computer, you are just so far accepting the purpose of the computer itself. To achieve your purpose, you have got to let the computer achieve its purpose of processing information.

. . .

    It is also located in a society’s scientific, engineering, and economic infrastructure. Technology presupposes all of these. The form technology takes in capitalism is a function of a high level of scientific knowledge and engineering know-how put mostly in the service of corporate pecuniary interests. The rise of technology is one with the rise of science and capitalist industrialism.

Within this system the military power of a country is a function importantly of technology such that countries that are not part of this system would not be in a position to defend itself against an aggressor that was (all things being equal).

But modern technology can also be seen as the physical embodiment of a worldview, a way of seeing the earth (nature) and the human world, a was of seeing the human relationship to nature, to other human beings, to the past and future (i.e. to time), and even to God — as Marx, Mumford, Heidegger, and others have seen it despite differing philosophies. Technology is the filter, or lens through which those of us condemned to live in capitalism – whether in the liberal or autocratic-fascist versions – experience and conceptualize the very being of things. Technology is not just a metaphor for our take on reality but the most literal expression of it: that is, of the “modern project,” the project of mastering nature ostensibly to better the lot of Man but really to increase the power of the masters of technology (the corporation and the state) over man.  Technology is another name for the enterprise of becoming “masters and possessors of nature,” as Descartes put it. But as C. S. Lewis put in The Abolition of Man (a necessary read): “What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

      If nature is amoral, an indifferent, meaningless collection of stuff – as it is seen through the lens of technology – better, the regime of Technology-Science-Capitalism (one complex) – then there is no such thing as violating nature; there is just the raw transformation of the raw material of the world. If human making is unbounded by any pre-given moral order written into the heart of nature, then anything goes. The results are clear to see. I don’t just mean the Earth has been tormented to its limits but also our humanity. This is the fruit of the ontology and its corresponding epistemology of Technology-Science-Capitalism.

   Many of us worry about the Internet or biotech but our worries are often blunted by the bland assurance that the problem with technology isn’t technology itself but how we choose to use it. But this faith in the neutrality of technology expresses the essence of technology itself – the fundamentalist conviction that nature herself sets no limits to what we should do. What can be done is done as long as some corporation profits. Only at the extreme fringes where humanity is cancelled does the State try to impose limits (e.g. cloning) though increasingly that attempt seems like a relic from a pre-modern culture.  The belief that technology is a set of neutral instruments, like technology itself, is one with the conviction that there is no moral order in physical nature, just brute matter whose only meaning we put into it through our transformative making and doing. To say “technology is neutral” is to say “making, as making, is amoral, but you can add morality to making – if you wish.” Thus the human will is seen as the only source of moral value in the universe; technology is the instrument of this radical freedom.

     Technology becomes what Marx called a “form of social consciousness” that determines our largely subconscious “common sense.”

1.    The technological order cannot be changed or qualitatively altered. To refuse the fruits of technological “progress” is a form of madness or delusion.

2.    The existing technological order is morally good. Technology makes life qualitatively better. The past has nothing to teach us.

3.    What does not comply with the technological order is blameworthy. We can disagree about all kinds of issues as long as we don’t call into question the mainframe of Technology-Science-Capitalism (in its corporate form).

4.    What promotes this order is praiseworthy. People who serve it get Noble prizes – and lucrative jobs and social prestige.

5.    Whatever rank individuals hold in this order represents their intrinsic worth. Billionaires, scientists, engineers, etc. are worth more than the family farmer or traditional craftsman.

6.    The technological order represents the common good. To all appearances we all consent to it – or rather, it is so deeply ingrained in us we take it for granted, never occurs to us to question it.

7.    Corporations represent the interests of society as a whole. They are engines of employment and technological development.

8.    Capital (the power of those who control it to command labor and nature) is represented as a self-moving power that “creates jobs,” “brings prosperity,” etc.  

9.    Ultimate social agency rests in a non-human entity. Thus instead of “fate” or “divine plan” we get “technological progress” as the agency of history.

If you in a difficult rebellion manage to think outside this… not box but cage, you will be considered unhinged and ignored in liberal democracies; perhaps imprisoned or killed in the capitalist autocracies.  

   This molding of consciousness goes deep. The word “technology” sums up the historical shift from a concern with work according to nature and human nature – work that can intelligibly be a vocation –  to the taken-for-granted attitude that there is no nature, no reality to conform to in the first place. It is shorthand for the shift from the ideal of the craftsman to the ideal of the technician. And since this shift has affected how we make what we make, the technological mentality behind the shift is bound to be “wired” into our gadgetry itself.  Most of us cannot find meaning in work or a community of workers or in making well what needs to be made but only in the stuff (little of which you really need) you can buy with the money you make, if indeed you are lucky enough to make any money. It is a poor trade. Trading the real world for a digital Cave (referring to Plato’s allegory).

 

 

Grammar in the Thought of Stratford Caldecott

                                                        Stratford Caldecott (1953-2014)

 

In spite my brain energy being at an all-time low, I have been reading Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word. His understanding of grammar interests me, partly for its contrast to conventional, formal grammar and Wittgenstein’s philosophical grammar.

   For Caldecott, grammar transcends its conventional definition as a set of rules governing language structure. He views grammar as the foundational act of human understanding and expression. It is not merely formal but is deeply connected to recognizing, remembering, conceptualizing (seeing as), and articulating reality. Grammar, in this sense, relates to the first act of the mind: the formation of ideas – there is a certain logic or structure involved in reality disclosing itself to our experience (senses, emotions, intellect).

 Grammar and the First Act of the Mind

     In classical philosophy, the first act of the mind involves grasping the essence of things and forming simple apprehensions or ideas. Caldecott’s concept of grammar aligns with this process. Grammar, as the study of words and their relations, reflects the structure of reality itself. Words are not arbitrary; they signify deeper realities, pointing beyond themselves to the essences of things. For example, consider the word “sun.” It does not merely denote a celestial body but evokes its role in sustaining life, its symbolic meanings across cultures, and its centrality in human experience. A sentence like “The sun is rising” builds upon this by framing the sun within a relational structure—the act of rising, the observer’s perception, and the rhythm of day and night. This act of naming and structuring captures something of the order and meaning inherent in creation, showing how grammar connects our perception to the essence of what is perceived. Its essence is not a formal logical definition but its range of possible meanings – importantly also poetic meanings (genuine poetry is language at its most essential). The word sun is like a spring that continually flows as long as there are people with hearts and minds to drink from it.

   Caldecott’s view of grammar connects to the magical moment when the human mind first apprehends the essence of a being. This act is not simply a conceptual or definitional task but an intuitive grasp, akin to what the classical tradition called the first act of the mind. In this moment, the mind perceives a reality—not in isolation but as part of a larger order—and forms an idea of it. Take the example of the "sun." When a person first encounters the sun, whether through direct experience or reflection, they intuitively recognize its existence and significance. This recognition does not arise solely from reasoning or formal analysis but through an imaginative and sensory encounter: the warmth on the skin, the interplay of light and shadow, the dawning realization of its life-giving role. The word “sun” emerges as a name for this reality, but it carries with it layers of meaning that extend far beyond a mere label. These meanings come to include its physical properties, symbolic resonance, and relationship to human life and time.

     This moment of conceiving an idea is guided by a “logic” that Caldecott might associate with the grammar of being itself—a natural harmony between the mind’s capacity to name and the intelligibility of creation. Naming, then, becomes an act of participation in the deeper structure of reality. Grammar, in this sense, is not just about syntactical rules but the underlying principles that allow the mind to connect with, articulate, and remember what is true. It is a poetic grammar.

 

 

Grammar and Remembering

    Caldecott emphasizes the role of remembering in grammar. To name something is to bring it into conscious awareness, to recall its place within the order of things. This remembering is not merely a cognitive process but an act of reconnecting with the essence of what is named. It involves engaging with reality as something meaningful and intelligible. For instance, the word “tree” carries more than its physical attributes; it evokes its role in nature, its symbolic meanings, and its connection to human experience. Grammar enables us to hold these meanings in tension, preserving and transmitting the memory of what has been perceived. There is a connection between poetic language and memorability. This is clearly very Platonic-Christian. The Ideas of things are of God's mind. When the being of a tree discloses itself in us, we are distantly receiving a part of God's mind. Our minds are finite (and fallible in our fallen world) images of God's. When the tree discloses itself to us, it is like remembering in the sense that the soul already has access to the eternal truths of God and the divine order — it has simply forgotten them due to the effects of the Fall. True education, therefore, is not so much a process of external learning as it is an act of recovering or rediscovering the deeper knowledge that the soul inherently possesses. 

 

Grammar and Music

     Caldecott’s vision of grammar is also connected to music. He views the structure of language as inherently musical, reflecting harmony, rhythm, and proportion. The relational aspects of words mirror the relational nature of notes in a melody. Grammar, like music, engages both the intellect and the imagination, drawing us into an encounter with meaning that transcends the merely propositional. For example, poetic language—which relies on rhythm, meter, and metaphor—demonstrates how grammar and music work together to evoke truths that are felt and intuited rather than strictly defined. This I need to think about more.

 

Grammar and the Trivium

    In the classical trivium, grammar is the foundation upon which dialectic and rhetoric are built. Dialectic analyzes and discerns truth through reasoned argument, while rhetoric communicates truth persuasively. Dialectic is what Socrates does. It is what I try to teach. It presupposes grammar. Grammar, however, provides the initial act of naming and structuring that makes thought and communication possible. Without grammar’s grounding in the order of reality, dialectic risks abstraction and rhetoric risks manipulation. Caldecott’s view restores the primacy of grammar as a formative, integrative discipline. It shapes the way we perceive and articulate the world, grounding our reasoning and persuasion in the recognition of meaning and order.

 

Implications for Education

     Caldecott’s understanding of grammar has implications for education. Teaching grammar in this sense involves more than imparting technical skills; it requires cultivating an awareness of language as a means of encountering reality. This can be achieved through using literary or poetic texts, for example: Using poetic and literary texts that reveal the structure of reality, such as descriptions of nature or meditations on universal themes. Integrating grammar with imagination and memory helps students see language as a reflection of the world’s harmony. Consider these lines from Old English poetry (how I wish I knew Old English!):

 

        "Éalá Éarendel engla beorhtast, / ofer middangeard monnum sended."

 

        ["Lo! Eärendel, brightest of angels, / sent to men over middle-earth."]

 

Here, the sun (Éarendel) is addressed as a herald of light and hope, revealing not only its physical presence but also its symbolic resonance as a source of guidance and life. The grammar of the text—its subject-verb-object structure and the evocative address—reflects a deeper structure of reality, where the sun serves as a bridge between the heavens and the human world. This poetic engagement deepens the act of apprehending the sun’s essence, merging its physical, symbolic, and relational dimensions. It shows the role of language in preserving and transmitting the shared memory of human experience. 

   So for Caldecott, grammar is far more than a technical discipline. It is an act of remembrance, a participation in the musicality of language, and a foundational means of engaging with the world. By naming and structuring reality, grammar connects us to the essence of things, laying the groundwork for thought and communication. He challenges modern, reductive views of language, offering instead a vision of grammar as a gateway to truth and beauty. I don’t pretend to fully understand what he wrote about grammar. This is my best attempt.

Ego-drama vs. Theo-drama

 

Ego-Drama and Theo-Drama: Contrasting Milton's Satan and Shakespeare's Macbeth

                                                      Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988)

 

Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar’s distinction between the ego-drama and the theo-drama provides a framework for understanding two literary figures I find archetypical of modern man: Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Von Balthasar uses these terms to distinguish between two contrasting approaches to life and meaning. The ego-drama is the narrative of the self, where individual desires, ambitions, and autonomy take center stage. It is a drama written, directed, and performed by the ego, often to the exclusion of any higher purpose. It is all about self-invention. In contrast, the theo-drama invites human beings to participate in a larger, divine narrative, where meaning is derived from alignment with human nature as revealed in the Creation and Providence (our vocation). The ego-drama seeks self-assertion, while the theo-drama calls for the actualization of the soul in service of a transcendent good. Both Satan and Macbeth embody the tensions between these two dramas, albeit in distinct ways.

 

Milton’s Satan: The Ultimate Ego-Drama

Milton’s Satan epitomizes the ego-drama in its purest and most destructive form. From the outset, Satan’s actions are driven by his unyielding desire for autonomy and self-glorification. In Paradise Lost, Satan proclaims, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” encapsulating his self-centered philosophy. His rebellion against God is not motivated by a higher principle but by his refusal to accept a subordinate role in the theo-drama.

• Focus on the Self: Satan views himself as the hero of his own narrative. He rejects the divine order, constructing a universe where his will and ambition are supreme.
• Isolation: By severing himself from God and the heavenly community, Satan becomes increasingly solitary. His grand speeches to his followers mask an inner emptiness and despair.
• Remorselessness: Satan’s ego-drama is characterized by a complete lack of remorse. His pride prevents him from acknowledging his error or seeking redemption. Instead, he doubles down on his rebellion, fully embracing his role as the antagonist in God’s cosmic story.

Satan’s tragedy lies in his meaning-blindness, his unwillingness to recognize that his defiance is self-destructive. By refusing to participate in the theo-drama, he condemns himself to a hollow existence, defined by perpetual resistance and despair.

 

Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Divided Ego

   In contrast, Macbeth offers a more complex portrayal of the ego-drama. Like Satan, Macbeth asserts his autonomy by rejecting the moral order. Spurred by the witches’ prophecy and his own ambition, he murders Duncan to seize the throne. However, unlike Satan, Macbeth is haunted by remorse.

• Ambition and Self-Assertion: At the start of the play, Macbeth contemplates the theo-drama. He knows that killing Duncan violates both divine law and human decency. Yet his ambition drives him to act, placing his desires above the moral order.
• Capacity for Remorse: Unlike Satan, Macbeth experiences intense guilt. After killing Duncan, he laments, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?” This line reveals his recognition of the enormity of his crime and his deep yearning for absolution.
• Self-Concept and the Fear of Repentance: Macbeth’s inability to repent stems not just from a lack of will but from a fear that repentance would shatter his self-concept as a man of courage and reveal the ego that acted to be a false self. To Macbeth, courage is tied to relentless action, even when that action leads to further moral decay. To fail to act because natural law forbids it is for Macbeth equivalent to showing cowardice in the face of the enemy. Acknowledging his guilt would require him to redefine his identity, something he is unwilling to face.

Macbeth’s tragedy is his divided soul. He recognizes the theo-drama but chooses to remain in the ego-drama, consumed by his ambition and paralyzed by his guilt.

Theological and Literary Implications

   Satan and Macbeth illustrate two paths within the ego-drama. Satan’s unyielding pride leads to complete isolation and despair. Macbeth, on the other hand, retains a capacity for remorse, hinting at a potential for redemption that he ultimately rejects. This distinction highlights the moral and spiritual dimensions of Balthasar’s theo-drama:

1.    The Role of Remorse: Remorse signals an awareness of the theo-drama. While Satan’s pride precludes remorse, Macbeth’s guilt reveals his recognition of a higher moral order.

2.    The Possibility of Redemption: Macbeth’s tragedy lies in his refusal to act on his remorse. His capacity for guilt suggests that he could reenter the theo-drama through repentance, but his ego and despair keep him trapped.

3.    Isolation vs. Communion: Both characters are isolated by their rebellion, but Satan’s isolation is absolute. Macbeth, by contrast, remains tethered to the moral order through his conscience, even as he distances himself from it.

  

The Existential Hero and the Ego-Drama

    Hans Urs von Balthasar’s distinction between the ego-drama and the theo-drama finds an intriguing parallel in the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s existential hero is committed to radical freedom and self-definition, rejecting any preordained essence or divine narrative. Sartre’s hero creates meaning – a divine power – solely through individual choice and action, aligning closely with the self-assertion of the ego-drama. Like Milton’s Satan and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Sartre’s existential hero denies participation in the theo-drama, seeing it as a negation of autonomy.

     Sartre’s concept of bad faith, a denial of one’s freedom and responsibility, sheds light on the inner conflict of Macbeth. By refusing to fully confront his guilt and redefining his identity as a man of courage, Macbeth embodies bad faith, avoiding the existential hero’s demand for radical honesty about one’s actions and their moral implications. On the other hand, Satan might appear as an archetype of Sartre’s ideal of authenticity. He acts with full awareness of his rebellion and embraces his self-imposed identity, proclaiming his autonomy even at the cost of damnation. Yet, in Sartre’s framework, this too might fall short, as Satan’s self-assertion depends on his opposition to God, suggesting a paradoxical dependence on the very theo-drama he denies. I am not sure it is possible to be fully autonomous without either bad faith or simple incoherence.

   While Sartre’s existential hero seeks freedom through radical choice, von Balthasar’s theo-drama suggests a different path: freedom through participation in a higher narrative. The isolation of both Satan and Macbeth underscores the tension between autonomy and meaning. Macbeth’s guilt hints at the reality of the theo-drama, a reminder that even the ego-drama cannot entirely silence the human longing for redemption and communion.

 

 

Setting: A Quiet Corner in an Oxford Pub

                                                

                                                               A. J. Ayer (1910-1989)

C. S. Lewis sits at a table, nursing a pint of ale, his face a mixture of cheer and thoughtfulness. Across from him sits A. J. Ayer, sipping a glass of wine, exuding the analytical precision of a philosopher on the offensive. The conversation begins as Ayer brings up Lewis's "Men Without Chests."

---

Ayer: Men Without Chests, Lewis, is one of your more impassioned works, but let me be frank: it is riddled with sentimentality and a fundamental misunderstanding of modern philosophy. Your defense of the "chest" — what you call the seat of just sentiments — strikes me as an archaic attempt to justify emotions that, under rigorous scrutiny, amount to nothing more than subjective preferences. Surely you recognize this?

Lewis: (smiling) My dear Ayer, sentimentality is the charge often leveled by those who cannot admit the necessity of sentiment. You reduce emotions to subjective "preferences," but in so doing, you cut man in half. The chest, as I argued, is the bridge between mere appetite and rational will. Without it, man becomes either a calculating machine or a mere animal. Tell me, how does your Language, Truth and Logic account for the undeniable moral experiences of humanity?

Ayer: Those so-called "moral experiences" are precisely the problem. They are expressions of emotion and nothing more. When someone says, "This is good," they mean only that they approve of it. "This is bad" merely signifies disapproval. Your entire edifice of universal morality collapses under the scrutiny of logical analysis. You might find it troubling, but the facts do not care about your sense of unease.

Lewis: And yet your analysis seems to ignore the reality of human life. If all moral statements are mere expressions of approval or disapproval, why does the moral discourse of mankind resonate across cultures and centuries? Your view leaves us with a kind of ethical nihilism, does it not? If I say, "Courage is virtuous," and another says, "Cowardice is virtuous," does your philosophy offer us any grounds for adjudication?

Ayer: Only in terms of social conventions or shared emotional responses. There is no "objective" moral truth to be found. To seek one is to embark on a fool’s errand. Ethics, like aesthetics, belongs to the realm of taste.

Lewis: (leaning forward) And here is where your philosophy meets its undoing. If we accept that morality is merely subjective, then what of the tyrant who finds pleasure in cruelty? What of the society that embraces oppression? By your logic, we can call these "distasteful" but never "wrong."

Ayer: Precisely. "Wrong" and "right" are terms reflecting shared human sentiments. They hold no more objective weight than preferences for red wine over ale.

Lewis: (sighing) But if you reduce morality to mere preference, you reduce man to something less than human. We do not simply prefer justice over injustice; we know, deep within us, that justice is proper to man’s flourishing. Let me press your position further, Ayer. If moral statements are only expressions of emotion, then the statement "All moral claims are subjective" must also be an emotional utterance. By your own account, why should anyone accept it as a truth?

Ayer: (pausing) That is a category error, Lewis. The subjectivity of ethics is a conclusion reached through logical analysis, not a matter of emotional response.

Lewis: (smiling) But if you grant the category of logical analysis its privileged place, why deny that the human experience of morality might point to something real? Your system, Ayer, collapses under its own weight. It is a reductio ad absurdum of human nature. In seeking to eliminate moral truth, you undermine the very rationality you hold dear.

---

At this moment, a young woman, Anna, a university student, approaches the table with a book in hand.

Anna: Excuse me, Professors, I couldn’t help overhearing. I’ve been studying Edith Stein’s philosophy of emotions, and I think she might offer an alternative to this impasse.

Lewis: Please, join us, Anna. I am familiar with Stein’s work, though I confess it has been some years since I read her.

Ayer: Edith Stein? A phenomenologist, wasn’t she? I’m curious to hear how her ideas would fare against the cold steel of logical positivism.

Anna: Stein would argue that emotions are neither mere subjective preferences nor irrational impulses. Instead, they are intentional acts that disclose value. For instance, the feeling of compassion isn’t just a reaction; it reveals the value of the person who is suffering. Emotions, properly ordered, are ways of perceiving the moral structure of reality.

Ayer: (raising an eyebrow) And what distinguishes this from mysticism or wishful thinking?

Anna: The distinction lies in their grounding in reality. Emotions, for Stein, have an objective intentionality. They can be erroneous, of course, just as thoughts can be mistaken. But they are not inherently irrational. Rather, they are part of the human person’s engagement with the world—a world that contains values just as it contains physical objects.

Lewis: (nodding) Precisely. What Stein provides, Ayer, is a fuller account of human experience than your narrow empiricism allows. If emotions can be seen as responses to objective value, then they are not merely subjective whims. They are part of what makes us truly human.

Ayer: (finishing his wine) You both speak as if values and emotions inhabit some Platonic realm, waiting to be discovered. But without empirical verification, I remain unconvinced. And yet, I admit, this conversation has given me much to consider.

Anna: (smiling) Perhaps that’s all one can ask for in philosophy—a willingness to consider new perspectives.

---

As the conversation winds down, the three leave the pub, their debate unresolved but enriched by the exchange. Lewis strolls home, pondering Anna’s insights, while Ayer reflects on the strength of their convictions. Anna, meanwhile, feels a quiet satisfaction at having bridged two seemingly opposing worlds.

 The Heart and the Head (again)

                                                                Edith Stein (1891-1942)

Plato and Aristotle both believed that emotional responses – which then may inform action – could be more or less appropriate to reality. For example:

·        Aristotle describes virtue as a state of character involving the right emotional response. Emotions like fear, anger, or desire must hit the “mean” appropriate to a given situation. For instance, courage is the mean between recklessness (excessive fearlessness) and cowardice (excessive fear). Both fail to conform to the true dangers or opportunities of a situation.

·        In the Poetics Aristotle argues that the emotions of pity and fear aroused by dramatic action help the audience grasp the deeper truths of human vulnerability and moral responsibility. These emotional responses are not arbitrary but are cultivated to align with the reality of human frailty and ethical dilemmas.

·        Aristotle also sees emotional alignment as connected to phronesis (practical wisdom), which ensures that one’s emotions are not only moderated but also attuned to the particulars of each situation. For example, righteous anger in response to injustice is what a virtuous person feels: i.e. a person who perceives and acts according to the moral truths of the situation. A Christian saint, who sees deeper into moral reality than Aristotle’s virtuous pagan, may temper anger with pity.

·        For both Plato and Aristotle, shame is not merely an unpleasant emotion but reveals moral and spiritual misalignment.  Shame also connects the individual to the communal and divine dimensions of goodness, as it often arises from failing to meet the expectations of others or the higher moral order. When properly directed, shame helps us recognize our alienation from the good and can inspire us to return to harmony with it. Plato sees this as essential for both personal and societal virtue.

·        Plato describes prisoners in a cave who mistake shadows for reality. Upon being freed and exposed to the true world of forms, their emotional responses (fear giving way to awe and wonder) manifest the nature of reality from a human perspective.  

 

I could go on.

Plato and Aristotle both emphasize reason in guiding emotions. For Plato, emotions, such as desires or anger, are part of the soul's non-rational aspects and are "blind" without the rational part, which directs them toward the good and truth. His allegory of the chariot in the Phaedrus vividly illustrates this dynamic, where reason must control the spirited and appetitive elements to align the soul with its ultimate purpose. Similarly, Aristotle sees emotions as not inherently irrational but as needing cultivation through reason and habituation. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he underscores that virtue involves feeling emotions appropriately, in harmony with reason’s judgment about what is right in specific situations. Both philosophers argue that emotions, left untethered to reason, lead to disordered lives, but when shaped by reason, they become integral to moral excellence and an accurate apprehension of reality. Their shared insight underscores the continuity in their views of the rational soul's harmonizing role in human flourishing.

     Emotions, while not "cognitive" in the modern sense, play a critical motivational role in the moral and intellectual life for both thinkers. Without emotions, the judgments of reason would lack the dynamic force needed to inspire action. For Plato, the spirited part of the soul (thumos) is essential for motivating the pursuit of justice and virtue. It acts as a bridge between reason and desire, providing the energy to implement rational judgments. In his Republic, Plato shows how emotions like shame, when aligned with reason, become powerful allies in moral development, helping the individual resist base desires and act in accordance with the good. Similarly, Aristotle highlights the necessity of emotions in motivating virtuous action. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he argues that emotions, when properly habituated, enhance our ability to respond to situations with the right degree of intensity and aim. While reason identifies the good, emotions provide the energy to pursue it, and practical wisdom (phronesis) ensures their harmony. Aristotle famously claims that virtue involves both acting rightly and feeling rightly, suggesting that emotions, when rightly tuned, are indispensable for moral excellence (for bodily creatures), . Thus, while emotions are not rational in themselves, both recognize their role in ensuring that the insights of reason are carried into action and fully integrated into the life of the soul. C. S. Lewis summarizes this best:

. . .

And this is where my position differs. Just as emotions can be untethered from reality (from the Good), thoughts unformed by right emotion can also be untethered from reality. Thought about an evil done, for example, uninformed by remorse, is equivalent to an irrational emotion (anger at your child) disconnected from insight into reality (the reality of children in general and your child in particular). Thoughts, when uninformed by right emotion, can also become untethered from reality – this is an inversion of the classical emphasis on emotions requiring the guidance of reason. I think that emotions are not merely passive forces needing rational correction but active contributors to the alignment of thought with reality.

• Emotions, when attuned to the Good, can provide essential insight into moral reality. For example, remorse over an evil act reflects not just a cognitive judgment that the act was wrong but also a profound recognition of its moral weight and relational consequences. What we feel tells us what is important and feeling often precedes intellectual understanding. Without this emotional resonance, the thought about the act remains abstract and potentially disconnected from its full reality.
• Conversely, thoughts lacking emotional engagement—like indifference to suffering—risk becoming cold, detached, or even complicit in moral error. It is because we feel pity that we know that even those most unfortunate have dignity, for example.

Here I am close to the thought of Edith Stein, whose work I still need to study more closely. Stein argues that emotions are not merely subjective reactions but intentional acts that disclose values in the world. For instance, joy reveals the value of something good achieved, while sorrow uncovers the loss of something precious. This aligns with the phenomenological tradition of seeing emotions as cognitive in a broad sense, helping individuals grasp aspects of reality that might be inaccessible through abstract reasoning alone.

   My position implies that some emotional responses – Stein's joy (also joy for C. S. Lewis – go deeper than intellect, are spontaneous, and make possible the deepest metaphysical and religious insights. They don’t need to be trained by reason in the person of authorities who are rational (parents, teachers); they judge reason. Indeed, certain emotional responses such as joy or Sehnsucht can reach deeper than intellect, arising spontaneously and serving as a gateway to profound metaphysical and religious understanding. Joy, for Stein and C. S. Lewis, is not just an affective state but an engagement with the world that reveals the fullness of value inherent in a meaningful experience. In her analysis, Stein considers emotional acts as rooted in the soul's depth, where they connect to spiritual and metaphysical dimensions. Joy, for instance, might arise spontaneously in response to beauty, truth, or goodness, transcending intellectual deliberation and providing direct insight into the essence of these realities. Such emotional acts are pivotal in religious experiences, where they open the person to the divine, facilitating an intuitive grasp of the sacred that might elude purely rational thought.

. . .

Art - especially song and poetry - is to emotional intelligence as dialectic (philosophical conversation) is to the pure intellect. It is striking how marginal poetry has become; how empty music has become in the society I inhabit. Consumerism and capitalist work, bureaucratic and technological society is toxic both for philosophy (head) and poetry (heart), which I say are interconnected and in harmony together can disclose Being. I share with Tolkien and many Romantics the belief that something precious and essential has been lost in industrial-technical-scientific society. Among other things like community, craft, and real farming, what was lost was a poetic and symbolic consciousness, "a mode of knowing that connected us with nature and the natural law" (Stratford Caldecott, Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education). We see nature as meaning stuff not only because nature as science reveals it has in capitalism pushes it on us but because we have laregely lost the ability to see it otherwise. This is the famous wasteland metaphor of Elliot, the hollow men metaphor of Nietzsche. The imagination has been colonized by capital and the Nothing threatens (Ende, Never-Ending Story). 

    

The first course I attended during college was called Literature and Philosophy. How intuitively perfect. Both are together necessary to be at home in a world we can partially understand. 

 The Chest and the Will

                                                          The pub where the inklings met

A Dialogue Between C. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre

Scene:

The pub where the inklings met. C. S. Lewis sits in a well-worn chair with a glass of stout ale. Jean-Paul Sartre enters, hands in his pockets, surveying the room with a detached curiosity. 

---

Lewis: Welcome, Monsieur Sartre. Your writings, though deeply at odds with my convictions, have fascinated me. Let us speak as fellow pilgrims seeking truth, though our roads differ.

Sartre: (taking a seat) Fascinated, you say? Perhaps what you call truth is no more than a mask for comfort, Monsieur Lewis—a refuge from the brutal freedom that defines our existence.

Lewis: In media res. I like that. Freedom unmoored from truth is not liberty but chaos. Yet, let us begin where I suspect we both agree: the formation of the human being. What do you believe education ought to accomplish?

Sartre: To educate is to awaken the child to their radical freedom. Each person must invent their own essence; we are, as I have written, condemned to be free. The teacher is merely a guide, clearly presenting the choices so the child may shape their destiny.

Lewis: (leaning forward) But can one shape what is not first grounded? You speak of freedom as though it were a self-sufficient thing. Yet I see it as a capacity, like sight, which must be directed toward something meaningful. Is it not the task of education to train the child to see what is truly good, and to love it? And loving it, choose it?

Sartre: The “truly good,” as you call it, is an illusion born of centuries of oppression. There is no inherent good—only the values we choose for ourselves. A child is not a seed waiting to be cultivated; they are pure potential, unbound, a blank canvas upon which either they or their social class will paint.

Lewis: (smiling faintly) A blank canvas, you say? And yet every painter begins with the rules of proportion, the discipline of brushwork. Shall we teach the child nothing of virtue, of courage, of justice? Shall we leave them adrift in a sea of choices without a compass or chart?

Sartre: (leaning back) You misunderstand me. The child must learn, yes—but not what to love, only how to decide. Autonomy is the goal, not conformity to some so-called natural order. Give them what they need to paint their own pictures of themselves and the world and leave them alone.

Lewis: Autonomy, rightly understood, is the fruit of mastery. Consider a violinist. Before they are free to express themselves through music, they must first be bound by scales and technique – and to a teacher they trust to show them the way to competence. It is no violation of their autonomy to submit to the realities required by mastering the instrument. It would be a violation to force them to learn the violin if they wanted to play the piano.  Like with the violin, the child must be taught to love virtue and goodness, to train their emotions through imaginative art, role models, proverbs, or history to love courageous, just, self-disciplined, wise people, and through them to love courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. In the end, their reason may find a friend in their passions rather than a rebel.

Sartre: And in this training, you enslave them! You speak of ordering loves, yet whose loves? Whose order? Surely, it is but your own preferences writ large—a subtle tyranny.

Lewis: (gently) Not my preferences. The point is to conform your preferences to what is real and good. To conform your preference to justice rather than injustice, courage rather than cowardice, and so on. And you, in your rejection of order, impose another tyranny: the tyranny of infinite choice without a guide. The soul of a child, Monsieur Sartre, is not an empty slate but a garden. Left untended, it will grow wild with weeds. Tended well, it may bloom in harmony with the truth of its design.

Sartre: (with intensity) You presume there is a gardener, and worse, a design! I see no such thing. The child must rebel against all imposed meaning to discover their own. That is freedom.

Lewis: (pausing, looking at the fire) But rebellion is a tool, not an end. You would leave the child in perpetual revolt, without offering them anything worthy of allegiance. The difference between us is that I believe that reality tells us what is good, bad, beautiful, ugly, real, unreal. I think a human being’s being forbids me to oppress him, and that it is not an arbitrary choice. I am conforming my will to reality when I try to treat him justly, whether I feel like it or not. (And I should feel like it though that requires emotional education.) Tell me, what do you propose when the child asks, “What is worth loving?”

Sartre: (after a pause) They must decide for themselves. No one can make that choice for them. Your understanding of reality in the end presupposes God, the Creator. My philosophy is a consequent exploration of life assuming there is no God.

Lewis: (turning to Sartre) And yet, in your own life, you made choices not in a vacuum but within a web of influences: language, culture, mentors. Why deny the child the same gifts? You and I both served in the army. You were active in the French resistance even if not in a combat role. Do you not see that, in rejecting any higher reality, you rob children of the chance to encounter something greater than themselves?

Sartre: Perhaps. But I would rather risk emptiness than deceive them with comforting lies. My service expressed my subjectivity. My service was not a conformity with some value deemed external.

Lewis: (with warmth) And I would rather they risk discomfort in seeking the truth, not as a lie but as a treasure hidden in the field. For without something to anchor their loves, what becomes of the child but a reed tossed in the wind?

. . .

 

Scene:

The same study, now quieter as evening falls. The firelight flickers warmly, casting long shadows on the walls. Lewis pours tea, while Sartre pensively smokes a cigarette.

---

Lewis: (handing Sartre a cup) Perhaps we have approached this from too high a vantage, speaking of education as though it were an abstraction. Let us descend to particulars. Shall we speak of courage?

Sartre: (taking the cup) Courage, yes. A virtue I can respect, though perhaps not as you conceive it. For me, courage is the acceptance of absurdity and the assertion of one’s will despite it. It is a rebellion against despair.

Lewis: A rebellion, you say? Yet courage also serves. In the face of fear, courage aligns the soul with what is right, even when it costs dearly. Consider the soldier who charges into battle not for his own glory but to protect his comrades.

Sartre: A noble picture, but I would ask: did the soldier choose this path freely, or was he coerced by duty, propaganda, or tradition? Is it courage if he acts merely from unexamined loyalty?

Lewis: (nodding) True courage must be freely chosen, yet it does not arise from freedom alone. The soldier acts not merely from loyalty but from love—love for his comrades, for his homeland, even for the ideal of justice. Can courage exist without such loves to anchor it? I don’t think so.

Sartre: Love, you say? Love too can be a trap. A soldier may die for a false ideal, a romanticized nation, or an unjust cause. What matters is not the object but the act: to choose freely in the face of nothingness. Only that is authentic. To act based on a comforting illusion is bad faith – deferring the locus of decision to a place outside the self.

Lewis: (thoughtfully) Yet a free choice made without regard to truth risks becoming a mockery of itself. If courage can be misguided, then surely there is a standard—something that tells us when courage is rightly directed. Surely, we would call ‘courage’ when the SS guards showed when even in the face of the Red Army they stayed to force the remaining prisoners on death marches?

Sartre: (leaning forward) But who defines this standard? You would impose it from above, while I would have each person define it for themselves even if it means accepting that the SS guards showed a kind of courage. But then they were brainwashed by the regime. That is why I don’t recognize what they did as courage even though it involved risk.

Lewis: (with a smile) Let us leave courage for now and turn to a different virtue: chastity. Here, too, is a battle, though fought in quieter fields. What would you say of it?

Sartre: (with a wry smile) I would say it is a relic of repressive morality. Why suppress one’s desires when they are an expression of freedom? To deny them is to deny oneself.

Lewis: (gently) Yet is not self-denial sometimes necessary to attain something greater? Chastity is not repression but mastery—a channeling of desire so that it serves love rather than consuming it. Would you not agree that unchecked desires often lead to misery?

Sartre: Perhaps. But misery also arises from denying oneself too rigidly, from bowing to rules imposed by others. Desire, like freedom, must be authentic, not shaped by fear or guilt.

Lewis: And yet unchecked desire is its own tyrant. Consider the one who indulges every whim, only to find themselves enslaved by their passions. Is this the freedom you advocate? When the rules are imposed by others, I agree with you. But in the case of a virtue, the good of the human person determines the rules. I know you deny that there is a real good of the human person. It is that denial that leads to your radically immoral philosophy.

Sartre: (pausing) You speak of enslavement, but I see something different: the freedom to make mistakes, to live authentically, even at a cost. I would rather fail on my own terms than succeed by yours.

Lewis: (nodding slowly) I understand your point. Satan made the same point in Paradise Lost. But let us take one more virtue: justice. Surely, here we might find common ground. What is justice, if not the right ordering of relationships, ensuring that each receives their due?

Sartre: Justice, as you describe it, is an ideal. In practice, it is a construct, shaped by power dynamics and historical contingencies. What one culture calls justice, another may call oppression.

Lewis: And yet some acts are universally condemned: treachery, exploitation, cruelty. Are these not violations of justice, regardless of culture? Does not every human heart, however shaped by time and place, recoil at such things?

Sartre: (after a pause) Perhaps. But even if we agree on certain wrongs, we may still disagree on what is right. Christians believe abortion is a violation of our humanity; feminists believe it is an essential part of emancipation. Justice, like all virtues, must be redefined by each age, each individual.

Lewis: (smiling faintly) Here, then, is our divergence. I see justice not as a human invention but as a reflection of a higher reality—a reality that calls us not to create but to conform, not to impose our will but to align it.

. . .

Lewis: Jean-Paul, let us consider the role of art, particularly stories and fairy tales, in shaping the moral imagination. Do you believe these tales have any bearing on the formation of character?

Sartre: I approach such stories with suspicion. They risk embedding in the child a ready-made moral order, a world of absolutes that denies their freedom. Why teach a child that they must always be the hero who slays the dragon? Why not let them choose to ally with the dragon, or reject the narrative altogether?

Lewis: Because the stories are not arbitrary constructs but mirrors to truth, albeit truth refracted through the lens of imagination. Fairy tales invite the child into a moral universe where courage defeats cowardice, and good triumphs over evil. They are not constraints on freedom but guides, much like a map to one who ventures into the wilderness.

Sartre: And yet, such maps impose paths and destinations. They make the world appear pre-ordained, discouraging the child from imagining their own horizon. I would rather let the child confront life without such preconceptions, finding their own meaning in the dragon, the hero, or the wilderness.

Lewis: But, Jean-Paul, a child left utterly unformed is not free—they are lost. Freedom is not the absence of form but the discovery of the right form. A child who learns from fairy tales learns to see bravery as noble, treachery as vile. These stories awaken the heart, preparing it to make free, wise choices when the time comes.

Sartre: What of the distortions these tales carry? The damsel always in distress, the prince always rescuing her—what do such patterns teach but the perpetuation of stereotypes?

Lewis: Ah, a fair critique, but an incomplete one. The archetypes of fairy tales are not meant as blueprints but as starting points. They sketch the contours of a moral world. From there, the child grows to ask deeper questions: Can the prince also learn humility? Might the damsel show courage? The key is not to discard the tale but to let it spark reflection and refinement.

Sartre: Perhaps there is value in a story that challenges rather than affirms—a fairy tale where the dragon is misunderstood, the hero flawed, the damsel in control of her fate. Would that not better serve freedom?

Lewis: Some stories may indeed offer such complexities, but even they must stand on some foundation. A story without any moral structure disorients rather than liberates. Complexity has its place, but first the child must learn to recognize virtue and vice in their clearer forms. Only then can they wrestle with ambiguity.

Sartre: So, you see art as pedagogy, a primer for life’s moral questions. But does that not rob art of its autonomy, its pure aesthetic joy?

Lewis: Art is richer than that. Its beauty is not diminished by its power to instruct; indeed, the two are intertwined. A fairy tale’s aesthetic joy lies not only in its enchantment but in its resonance with truths we cannot articulate fully in propositions. The dragon’s defeat stirs us because it whispers that evil can be overcome.

Sartre: And yet, for me, art must liberate, not prescribe. Perhaps we are both asking art to serve our philosophies—mine of freedom, yours of virtue.

Lewis: And perhaps, in the best stories, the two are not so far apart. For what is freedom without virtue? And what is virtue if not the capacity to choose the good freely?

 

. . .

 

Lewis: Jean-Paul, you define human nature as radical freedom, the capacity to transcend any given fact or essence and create meaning ex nihilo. But is this freedom truly liberating—or is it, as Milton’s Satan demonstrates, the root of our estrangement from the Good?

Sartre: Estrangement? No, Lewis. Freedom is the essence of human dignity. Satan, in Paradise Lost, proclaims, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." That sentiment captures the human condition: the refusal to accept a predetermined order. Freedom is the rejection of servitude. And God – the embodiment of external authority – is the enemy of freedom, of autonomy.

Lewis: But in seeking to reign, Satan denies his own nature as a creature. He severs himself from the Source of being, choosing autonomy over communion. In his rebellion, he is not liberated but enslaved to his own will. Radical freedom, as you call it, becomes a prison of the self.

Sartre: Only if you see his rebellion as a fall rather than an ascent. I see no Source of being external to us. Autonomy is not a prison but the foundation of authenticity. Satan’s rebellion is heroic because he refuses to bow to an arbitrary divine order.

Lewis: Heroic? Jean-Paul, look closer. Satan’s speeches brim with despair, not triumph. His supposed autonomy renders him fragmented, his mind a chaos of contradictions. He becomes, as Milton so masterfully shows, a being at war with himself, consumed by envy and rage. Is that the authentic life you envision?

Sartre: Perhaps Satan is tragic, yes, but his tragedy lies in the cost of freedom. To choose is to risk failure, to accept the anguish of being. Yet it is better than your “communion,” which I see as a surrender, a negation of one’s own will.

Lewis: You misunderstand the nature of communion. It is not the negation of the will but its fulfillment in alignment with reality. Satan, in rejecting the Good, also rejects the reality of his own nature. He attempts to unmake himself, to become something impossible—a self-created being.

Sartre: And why should he not? If there is no fixed nature, then existence precedes essence. We are free to define ourselves, even if it means creating a new kind of being. Satan’s defiance is the ultimate expression of freedom.

Lewis: But at what cost? In defining himself apart from the Good, Satan rejects the very conditions of joy, truth, and love. He becomes, in Milton’s words, "his own tormentor." The ontological fault line you defend—that freedom means radical self-definition—is the very ground of despair.

Sartre: Despair is an inescapable part of freedom. But it is a despair we must own. Better despair than delusion. Your Good, your fixed nature, strikes me as a comforting fiction, a way to escape the anguish of choosing for oneself.

Lewis: On the contrary, the Good is not an escape but the foundation of freedom rightly understood. Milton’s Satan, for all his pride, is the epitome of delusion. His cry of "Better to reign in Hell" reveals not strength but self-deception. For in Hell, he reigns over nothing—just as radical freedom, unanchored from the Good, masters nothing but emptiness.

Sartre: And yet, Lewis, I must ask—why should your Good compel me? If it exists, why is it not self-evident? Why do so many, like Satan, see only domination, not love, in the so-called Source of being?

Lewis: That, Jean-Paul, is the great tragedy of our fallen state. We see dimly, as through a glass darkly. Our wills are turned inward, and thus we mistake the love of God for tyranny. It is only through grace—and, yes, the guidance of true stories and traditions—that we begin to see clearly.

Sartre: Grace? Stories? Perhaps you and I will never agree, Lewis. But I cannot help admiring your conviction, even as I reject its foundation. Freedom, to me, remains a first principle, even if it leads me into darkness.

Lewis: And yet, even in the darkness, a light shines. I can only hope, Jean-Paul, that one day you will see it not as a threat to your freedom but as its fulfillment.

p.s. This was an experiment with ChatGPT. It generated a dialog and I modified it.