C.S. Lewis on Moral Values: Tao Supremacy
Item 4: The Lack of Instinct as the Foundation of the New Morality
C.S. Lewis offers several criticisms of instincts as the basis for values:
- If it is an instinct, an unavoidable natural impulse is naturally obeyed, why write books like the Green Book that exhort us to obey instinct?
- Claiming that if people obey the instinct to die for the country or friends as instinctive, happiness and satisfaction are only achieved when we are dead, and therefore is not satisfaction or happiness at all.
- If instinct must be obeyed, why? What is the basic instinct to obey? Another instinct? Why obey *that* instinct? There is no final foundation to obeying instincts.
- Some instincts should be resisted, not satisfied. In fact, there are many instincts, telling us what to do. They are at war. How to choose which to obey and which not to obey? There is a need for a criterion or basis for determining which instincts to obey and which not to obey. Something outside of instinct is necessary to determine which instincts to obey and to dominate it.
- Finally, with regard to the test case of dying for country or friends, it seems that there is no such instinct at all. Lewis has no such impetus. Most just have an instinct or impulse of sacrifice for their own children or grandchildren, posterity, and not for future generations. Another law besides instinct is needed to encourage us to such action.
Conclusion: Neither utilitarianism nor instinct is a good basis for a new morality. But it is already in the Office of Technical Assistance.
Item 5: The Inevitable Supremacy of the Tao as a Basis for All Moral Values
What innovative moral justification is being sought for something already in the OAT itself? It is the fundamental or obvious axiomatic set of first principles of all morality; not the result of moral arguments, but the foundation for all moral arguments. Also: Any attack on Tao presupposes Tao. There is no way to remove oneself from the Tao or to select certain things from it and reject the rest. If you accept parts, you must accept all; if we reject parts, we should reject the whole, but this can not be done!
The Tao is therefore the basis of all value systems. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. No new value system can be built by one of the Laws of Association by Similarity of the Tao. All these efforts are limited to being fragments of Tao itself. Rebellion against Tao is a rebellion against the tree branches or trunk (see the epigram at the beginning of this chapter.) No new primary colors, or a new sun or the sky in which to be moved.
Item 6: Evolution of the Tao
Can the human understanding of the Tao improve? Or is it a moral code set in stone? Can it be obeyed? Are not the various joints of the East and the West, Christian and non-Christian, contradictory? Lewis thinks that our understanding of Tao can improve, which requires criticism, the removal of contradictions, and actual development in perception. But there are two ways to go about this: from outside and from within the Tao:
It is parallel to the way a language theorist and a poet treat language. The first as an independent critic, surgically if you will, and the second as a real lover, in a kind of organic way.
One caveat: Lewis admits to being a Christian theist, but he is also not treating a discussion for theism, Christian or otherwise here. Rather, he is trying to prove that if humanity is to have any value at all, then we must accept the validity of the Tao.
Item 2: The Power of Man Over Nature is Actually the Power of Some People Over Others Using Nature as an Instrument for Exercising That Power
C.S. Lewis offers three examples of how the development of scientific technology in radios, airplanes, and contraception, is actually the power of some individuals over others. We do not use these conveniences just because we are powerful. Why?
First, one must be able to pay for the use of these things. If you do not have the money, you do not have the power these things provide.
“Any of these three things I mentioned can be retained by some men over other men – by those who sell, or allow the sale, or those who own the sources of production, or those who make the goods.” (66)