The Understanding of Rationalism in C.S. Lewis and Michael Oakeshott: Tradition, Experience, and the Reading of Old Books

Sheahan, Luke C.; Callahan, Gene

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-83055-7_7

The Understanding of Rationalism in C.S. Lewis and Michael Oakeshott: Tradition, Experience, and the Reading of Old Books

Luke C. Sheahan⁴ &
Gene Callahan⁵

Chapter
First Online: 02 December 2021

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism ((PASTCL))

Abstract

C.S. Lewis was a major public intellectual in Britain, beginning from the late 1930s and continuing to his death in 1963. In both his non-fiction, especially The Abolition of Man (1943), and his fiction, most importantly in That Hideous Strength (1945), he offers a critique of rationalism and scientism that is often strikingly similar to those that Michael Oakeshott penned in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This essay examines the question to what extent this similarity is merely superficial, and to what extent the two writers shared a similar basis for their views. Furthermore, it examines whether there is an actual thread of influence: had Oakeshott been reading Lewis before writing his critique of rationalism, and if so, to what extent did Lewis’s work inform Oakeshott’s?

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Notes

1.
See Gene Callahan and Lee Trepanier, Tradition v. Rationalism (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2018).
2.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1955), 212–13.
3.
Alister McGrath, The Intellectual World of C.S. Lewis (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley and Sons, 2014), 45.
4.
Andrew Barkman, “Lewis the Young Philosopher, 1917–1919,” Pilgrim: A Journal of Catholic Experience, 2010, http://www.pilgrimjournal.com/lewis_the_young_philosopher.html
5.
See here Luke O’Sullivan’s introduction to Michael Oakeshott, The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence: Essays and Reviews 1926–51 (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2007).
6.
Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 292.
7.
Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London: Methuen and Co., 1962), 118.
8.
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1974).
9.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 9, 26–7.
10.
Ibid., 15.
11.
See Luke C. Sheahan, “Reason, Imagination, and the Abolition of Man” in Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism, ed. Gene Callahan and Kenneth B. McIntyre (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 164–9, for a similar discussion of Lewis’s ideas of “looking along” and “transposition.”
12.
See Gene Callahan, “Winch on Following a Rule: A Wittgensteinian Critique of Oakeshott,” Collingwood and British Idealism Studies 18, no. 2 (2012), 167–175.
13.
C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), 213.
14.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 110.
15.
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: Harper Collins, 1980), 99.
16.
Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 27.
17.
Ibid.
18.
Ibid., 28.
19.
Lewis, Abolition, 81.
20.
Michael Oakeshott, “The Tower of Babel” in Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 465–487.
21.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics translated by Terrence Irwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1985), 91–2.
22.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edition (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2001), 185–242.
23.
Lewis, Abolition, 25–6.
24.
Ibid., 25.
25.
Ibid., 24.
26.
Ibid., 25.
27.
Ibid.
28.
Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Books, 1979 [1924]), 34–5.
29.
For a longer discussion of Babbitt and Lewis, especially their ideas of will, reason, and imagination, see Luke Sheahan, “The Intellectual Kinship of Irving Babbitt and C.S. Lewis: Will and Imagination in That Hideous Strength,” Humanitas 29, nos. 1&2 (2016), 16.
30.
Lewis, Abolition, 14.
31.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 472.
32.
Lewis, Abolition, 24.
33.
Ibid., 44.
34.
Ibid., 49.
35.
Ibid., 27.
36.
Ibid., 65–6.
37.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 26–7.
38.
Lewis, Abolition, 72.
39.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 480.
40.
Lewis, Abolition, 16–7.
41.
Ibid., 77.
42.
C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-ups (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1965), 185.
43.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 7.
44.
Ibid., 29.
45.
Ibid., 7.
46.
Lewis, God in the Dock, 201–2.
47.
Ibid., 202.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Ibid.
50.
Michael D. Aeschliman, The Restitution of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Case against Scientism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1983), 7.
51.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 38.
52.
A phrase Lewis uses with approval to describe JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis, On Stories and Other Essays on Literature (New York: Harper Collins Publishing Co., 1982), 132.
53.
Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 16.
54.
Ibid., 17.
55.
Ibid., 39.
56.
Jane Jacobs & Jason Epstein, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Modern Library edition, (New York: Modern Library, 2011); F.A Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1944).
57.
Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 40.
58.
Ibid., 69.
59.
Ibid., 71.
60.
Lewis, Abolition, 54.
61.
Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 87.
62.
Lewis, Abolition, 56.
63.
Ibid., 57.
64.
Michael Oakeshott, Lectures in the History of Political Thought, ed. Terry Nardin and Luke O’Sullivan (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006), 114.
65.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 20–1.
66.
Ibid., 25.
67.
See Barkman, Lewis the Young Philosopher, op. cit. note 4.
68.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 37.
69.
Lewis, Abolition, 26.
70.
Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 41.
71.
Lewis, God in the Dock, 196–99.
72.
Ibid. Also see Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson, C.S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), ch. 5.
73.
C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns: A Compelling Collection of Timely, Journalistic Essays (New York, Harcourt Inc., 1986), 17.
74.
Lewis, Weight of Glory, 168–169.
75.
Lewis, God in the Dock, 315.
76.
Lewis, Abolition, 58.
77.
Lewis, God in the Dock, 316.
78.
Lewis, Weight of Glory, 167–8.

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Department of Political Science, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Luke C. Sheahan
Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Gene Callahan

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Department of Political Science, Siena Heights University, Adrian, MI, USA
Eric S. Kos

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Sheahan, L.C., Callahan, G. (2022). The Understanding of Rationalism in C.S. Lewis and Michael Oakeshott: Tradition, Experience, and the Reading of Old Books. In: Kos, E.S. (eds) Oakeshott’s Skepticism, Politics, and Aesthetics. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83055-7_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83055-7_7
Published: 02 December 2021
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