Don't be a Bobblehead -- Abigale Bell

What is a man without a chest? This concept, borrowed from Plato, offers a somewhat broad idea of what makes us human. Lewis uses this ancient illustration to describe the degraded state of humanity today. According to Lewis, a man without a chest is one who allows his emotions to override his reason.

At first, many of Lewis' words were lost on me. However, after a second and third reading, I began to grasp the idea. Gaius and Titius, the not-to-be named English teachers, had confused truth for relativism. They have overlooked a part of the equation; they have commented on the emotion without rationality. Lewis comments on the fact that every statement, in order for it to have meaning, must make an assumption about something else. A thing described must have a certain value for the description to have value. 

A part of Gaius's and Titius's argument seems valid. Their assertion is that a thing elicits a response based on the state of a person's emotion towards the thing. Their falacy is that they consider emotion to be the absolute truth. Contrary to this idea, Lewis makes the point that emotions change and in order to make a right statement, one must allow reason to guide the emotion towards a thing. 

Lewis' dissection of Gaius' and Titius' philosophy makes a statement about a problem for humanity on a larger scale. We must have a foundation in absolute truth. Without such truth, everything falls to relativism. We should not allow ourselves to fall into the same falacy as Gaius and Titius. For those who consider themselves authorities without a foundation in the truth, "[t]heir heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so" (Lewis, 25). 


Tried to comment on Josh's and Emmett's posts.

Comments

  1. Braylan StringfellowMarch 15, 2022 at 9:15 AM

    I am glad that Lewis does call out these two unnamed people for their error in defining truth. Lewis is absolutely write about how we cannot rely on emotions to define truth because of how much that they can change. We need another C. S. Lewis in our day to teach people this exact same lesson again because of how much people use their emotions as truth.

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