Mere Morality

These are some notes I wrote down while reading the first few sections of C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. I have transcribed them here into blogform, so to speak.

After reading the preface, I am already struck by Lewis's cautious, yet purposeful tone. As a layman, he does not attempt to address topics which a should not, and includes only those which will serve the purpose of his writing and be of benefit to the reader. There are lessons to be learned in this, both for the writer and the Christian. Moving on to Lewis's chapter on Moral Law, we can see that Moral Law, according to Lewis, is not an arbitrarily ordained set of rules, nor is it societal "herd instinct," as many a modernist would have us believe. The relativist is stymied in this regard, because to declare that one brand of morality is better than another would be to compare it to some outside standard of morality. Of course, the only option seems to be to label all forms of morality as equals. This, however, breaks down when you begin to examine various divergent forms of morality that are plainly contrary to the way things are supposed to be. Thus, if we are forced to abandon that line of reasoning, we must conclude that there is, in fact, such a thing as Right, or "real morality." However, this Right must not be confused with the Rule of Decent Behaviour. This rule consists of whatever behaviours society happens to approve of. In this instance, there really isn't a "right" behaviour, since the whims of society are subject to change from time to time. Thus, this line of reason might lead us to believe that there is no natural morality, or real Right, and yet the ways in which we are forced to consider the matter compel us to accept the existence of Right.

This is in no way a complete discussion of Lewis's argument, but it was something I was thinking about earlier, and such things are the stuff of this blog.