The Poison of Subjectivism was the most difficult piece for me to read thus far. I found a few points interesting however and first I want to point out what Lewis thinks subjectivism really means. This quote sums it up, "It does not believe that value judgments are really judgments at all. They are sentiments, or complexes, or attitudes, produced in a community by the pressure of its environment and its traditions, and differing from one community to another. Lewis explains how the idea from this quote leads people to create there own moral values which can be extremely dangerous. When people twist our innate moral law and start to make their own right or wrong is where many problems can arise. Lewis brings up the Third Reich and how Hitler changed peoples beliefs and made Jews into the enemy. People started to believe that to harm Jews was not something that was wrong, it was just necessary. This is the kind of thing that Lewis is trying to warn society about. The dangers of that thought can be devastating as we saw with the Holocaust.
Lewis goes on to explain that there is no standard of truth or justice; we have no way to measure this. Someone cannot say whether a person is necessarily a good or a bad person, or if they are living up to certain moral standards. When people point out flaws in others, who are they to judge upon what they believe is right or wrong. Lewis shows that throughout history civilizations have had very similar sets of laws or morals. This helps to prove that all humans have the same morale law written in our souls and trying to change this, also called Subjectivism, is where humans fall prey to major problems. To think that things such as what happened with the Nazis could never happen again is to be very naive.
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Nathan, I like how you touched on the theme of justice while addressing the dangers of subjectivism. I have heard that any other languages the Bible has much more significant overtones of justice than the english does. In light of this observation, subjectivism because all the more crucial to study and conquer. We may become slack on faith and love, but when we forget justice and conclude to rule what is just and unjust for ourselves, then we start to look like.... well, those who reject God totally!
ReplyDeleteFirst I must say that while I know you were quoting Lewis I was truly impressed with how you incorporated his points about the holocaust into your argument. Secondly I completely agree with you that we would be being naive to assume that something like the holocaust could never be caused by our shifting morals again and that this belief that we have advanced to a point where this could not happen again is a very dangerous one.
ReplyDeleteVery honest post Nathan. You raise an interesting example with your comparison to Hitler and the Third Reich. Because of the twisting of the moral law of the Nazis, it seemed ok for what they were doing. However, we all know that the Nazis were corrupt and evil.
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