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Underrated: C.S. Lewis, by Judith Wolfe

Children’s books and popular presentations of Christian belief are what C.S. Lewis, who died 50 years ago this month, is best known for. But what makes him a favourite for earnest Christians’ christening and confirmation gifts — undaunted supernaturalism and doctrinal conservatism combined with an enticing rhetoric of certitude — makes him distasteful and a little suspicious to us intellectuals: “Mr Lewis is always clever” is the usual snub in Oxford Senior Common Rooms.

A.N. Wilson, in what is still the most widely read biography of Lewis, tries to dispel the magic by meticulously mapping Lewis’s intellectual development onto a well-worn Freudian chart of childhood trauma, repressed sexuality and frustrated ambition. But the diagnoses don’t really stick. There is no doubt, for example, that his mother’s death from cancer when he was nine left an indelible mark on Lewis’s psyche and imagination; but his responses to this and other blows were never obvious or merely reflexive. Indeed, one of the things that make Lewis remarkable is that, exactly contrary to Wilson, he never allowed experiences to become determining causes of his actions or convictions, but actively took hold of them as occasions for learning and, not least, self-questioning. The outcomes of such reflection were often unexpected, and Lewis accepted their consequences with uncompromising honesty.

One such conclusion was his conversion. The deaths first of his mother and then of his friends on the battlefields of the Great War aroused in the aspiring young poet a deeply felt and perfectly commonplace rage against a tyrannical God: “Come let us curse our Master ere we die, / For all our hopes in endless ruin lie. / The good is dead. Let us curse God most High,” Lewis wrote in his cycle of war poems, Spirits in Bondage, with all the consternation of Wilfred Owen or A.E. Housman. But probing further, he realised that it didn’t work — not because his protest was ineffectual but because it was incoherent. Richard Dawkins captures the reason well. When, at a 2012 podium discussion between Dawkins and Rowan Williams, an audience member asked tremulously what to make of the tragedy of an innocent child’s death, Dawkins shrugged that he could see here no puzzle or tragedy, but only an instance (sad perhaps for the mother, but unremarkable in itself) of the evolutionary principle of natural selection. Lewis came to the same conclusion: without God, there is no problem of evil. We may certainly ask, “If God exists, why does he allow evil?” — but we cannot answer that there is no God, or that he is a “brute and blackguard” morally inferior to any ordinary human, without also giving up our own sense of the outrage of evil. For if there is a creator God at all, then human reason, desire and moral intuition have their source in Him no less than the material world does; and if there isn’t, then any moral standard available to us can only derive from the same material processes that govern evolution, and so cannot ground the sort of outrage at the world’s futility that is irreducibly experienced as unconditional and absolute rather than merely relative and practical.

Read the complete article in Standpoint


Chesterton, el escritor británico a las puertas de la canonización, by Juan Manuel de Prada

En «La esfera y la cruz», el gordo Chesterton nos presenta a dos contendientes, un católico y un ateo, que pese a sus esfuerzos ímprobos no logran batirse en duelo a muerte, en defensa de sus convicciones, porque la autoridad establecida, muy tolerante y con-ciliadora, se lo impide. Obligados a convertirse en aliados, urdirán las más rocambolescas artimañas para burlar la vigilancia de esa autoridad que les impide enfrentarse; pero, finalmente, ambos serán detenidos y confinados como energúmenos, puesto que han osado perturbar la paz social con sus controversias teológicas. «La esfera y la cruz» se trata, por supuesto, de una novela alegórica que ilustra a la perfección el totalitarismo agnóstico que, so capa de moderantismo y neutralidad, acaba imponiéndose en las sociedades contemporáneas.

Contra ese agnosticismo aplanador y paralizante combatió Chesterton toda la vida, fingiendo que combatía con los ateazos peleones que se iba encontrando por el camino. Si leemos sus novelas y ensayos, descubriremos que Chesterton siempre trata a los ateos con deferencia e incluso franca simpatía; y que, en cambio, reserva su acritud para los que evitan la lucha, para esos espíritus «conciliadores» que tratan de aunar las doctrinas más diversas (sin adherirse a ninguna) y de agradar y halagar a todo el mundo. Chesterton entendía que la defensa de las propias convicciones solo se podía alcanzar mediante la disputa; pero en sus disputas, sobre sus dotes de polemista, se alza una alegría de vivir contagiosa, un amor hacia todo lo creado que se extiende también hacia sus contrincantes, quienes –aunque mohínos ante el vigor paradójico de sus razonamientos– no podían sin embargo dejar de aplaudir su gracioso denuedo.

Chesterton se entromete en los dobladillos de las medias verdades

En Chesterton conviven la sabiduría de la vejez, la cordura de la madurez, el ardor de la juventud y la risa del niño; y todo ello galvanizado, abrillantado por la mirada asombrada y cordial de la fe. En su constante exaltación de la vida (que no es hedonismo, sino confianza en la Providencia), en su perpetuo arrobo ante el misterio, en su deportiva y jovial belicosidad, subyace siempre una aversión risueña hacia toda forma de filosofía moderna, a la que contrapone el realismo de la fe cristiana: «La muralla exterior del cristianismo es una fachada de abnegaciones éticas y de sacerdotes profesionales; pero salvando esa muralla inhumana, encontraréis las danzas de los niños y el vino de los hombres; en la filosofía moderna todo sucede al revés: la fachada exterior es encantadora y atractiva, pero dentro la desesperación se retuerce, como en un nido de áspides».

Un niño que destripa un reloj

Toda la obra de Chesterton, en realidad, no es otra cosa sino una glosa de las verdades de fe contenidas en el catecismo, expuesta al modo grácil y malabar de un artista circense. Como escribió Leonardo Castellani, para poder enseñar el catecismo a los ingleses había que tener una alegría de niño, una salud de toro, una fe de irlandés, un buen sentido de «cockney», una imaginación shakespeariana, un corazón dickensiano y las ganas de disputar más formidables que se han visto desde que el mundo es mundo.

Nos descubre que el sentido común está en aquello que nadie se atreve a formular

Nada de esto le faltó a Chesterton; y con esta munición de cualidades –más alguna pinta de cerveza– cuajó una escritura luminosa e incisiva, capaz de entrometerse en los dobladillos de las medias verdades para delatar su fondo de mugrienta mentira, capaz de desvelar la verdad escondida de las cosas, sepultada entre la chatarra de viejas herejías que nuestra época nos vende como ideas nuevas.

En los libros de Chesterton, las verdades del catecismo se ponen a hacer cabriolas, se pasean por el mundo como si estuvieran de juerga, llenando cada plaza de ese fenomenal escándalo que nos produciría ver a un señor en camisón o a una damisela con bombín; y de esta aparente incongruencia que surge de la lógica más aplastante cuando se hace la loca brota su poder de convicción. Chesterton se pasó la vida refutando todos los tópicos (que es la expresión más habitual de las modernas herejías), hasta descubrirnos que el sentido común no está en lo que todos repiten, sino en lo que nadie se atreve a formular; y lo hizo divirtiéndose como un niño que destripa un reloj y luego lo recompone cambiando de sitio todas las piezas, para demostrarnos que no debemos preocuparnos por medir el tiempo, pues dentro de nosotros habita la eternidad.

Read the complete article in ABC Cultural


Tintin: The True European, by Peter Strzelecki Rieth

As Europe struggles with economic woes brought on by the combination of unrestricted government largess and corruption and avarice, it seems every thread of this current struggle emanates from the problem of European character and the concurrent angst surrounding it. A brief reflection on the problem of European character and an illustration of how centered it is at the causal crux of the European crisis may equip us to provide some solutions.

In brief, what I call the problem of European character and the concurrent angst surrounding it is the fact that the essence of the European Union, the modern European political project, is a negation of war between European nations. This means that the European character, if one can even speak of such a thing, is founded in the proposition that whatever happens, Europeans must remain united, for division inevitably leads to a war of all against all and the annihilation of European civilization. The founding event of this outlook was World War II. As such, there is no positive defining trait of European character, only a negation of war, which is to say that modern Europe is founded on the fear of being toward death. This special kind of glue holding the Union together is, to my mind, best defined using Heidegger’s concept of angst. Thus, when crisis strikes on account of numerous errors, a fear sets in against tampering with the ailing union as that may lead to its collapse and to war. Yet to do nothing, or as some quarters are urging, to strengthen the faulty bonds of union even further, will lead also to collapse and war because it will deepen the crisis and give rise to public aggravation and revolutionary fervor. The diagnosis is clear: the European Union, which arose from the common European character trait of angst, cannot sustain itself by angst. The European character must be enriched with positive traits or be undone.

Some “Euro-enthusiasts” may well now shake their heads and claim that this expanded, positive European character already exists, made visible in the thousands of pages of regulations instructing the citizenry on how to be tolerant, open-minded humanitarians who love mother Earth, their fellow man, and embrace science. The chief problem with this view, abstracting from the philosophical questions that arise regarding the desirability of this particular modern, ahistorical, and secular European character, is that it resides in regulations, not in the heart of the people. Regulation lacks the personal import even of law. The importance of this distinction is such that regulation dictates the minutiae of everyday life. It not only prescribes an ethos, as law does, it dictates the precise, quantified application of said ethos. Civilizations which are built on virtues, whether piety or tolerance, that are mandated, registered, stamped, and stipulated in paragraph 16, subsection 2 of the revised revision of the regulations revising previous revisions–such civilizations die.

Here, angst will worry: does it therefore follow that Europeans are destined to fall back on national and ethnic prejudices? Perhaps there are other alternatives available to them besides secular, liberal sophistication masking bureaucratic banality or some pompous nationalist stereotypes. Certainly the philosophers present us with numerous alternatives, though all of them might well be impractical for any landmass not populated by a majority of philosophers. We also cannot, it appears to me, reach far back into European history, for to expect of modern Europeans to adopt Roman virtue, Athenian wisdom, let alone Christian agape, may well be expecting too much. If we wish to look for something in modern European history grounded in a firmer basis than philosophical speculation then I suggest we look no further than Tintin.

Tintin, for those who do not know and love him, is the European par excellence, created by author Hergé. His authority is widely acknowledged by children throughout the world, regardless of their age. General DeGaulle apparently called Tintin his only international rival. Tintin, if one really thinks about it, is the perfect template for a European character rooted in positive traits rather than merely in angst. Rather menacingly, the present generation risks knowing Tintin not through his European manifestation, but through the rather poor interpretation of his adventures presented to the world by the American director Steven Spielberg. All the more reason why I shall now endeavor to make a composite defense of Tintin as being of paramount importance and relevance to the present crisis.

First, Tintin has proven himself a keen political realist. I begin with this because some may well now expect me to embark on platitudes regarding Boy Scout virtues as exemplified by Tintin, rather than say anything of hard-nosed relevance to the grave situation Europe faces. Quite the contrary! It was Tintin, who, back in 1929, exposed the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and the plight of its people at a time when the vast majority of Western opinion was either ignorant of or fascinated with the Soviet system. Tintin’s revelations were, for decades, characterized as childish caricatures until the publication of the Black Book of Communism made the broad public aware of what Tintin had reported as fact from the very outset. This, if nothing else, qualifies Tintin for serious consideration as a relevant voice in European affairs: where so many were wrong about the Soviet Union, he was right from the beginning.

Detractors will no doubt point out that Tintin may well have been stunningly right in his premiere journalism, but quickly followed up on that by being stunningly wrong in his treatment of European colonialism. From his wholesale slaughter of the helpless species populating the Congo, to his insensitive remarks to a room full of Congolese regarding their homeland “Belgium”, one quickly can see why these detractors may feel it quite a bad idea to hold Tintin up as a worthy ideal for European character. Why, at one point, Tintin even helped a Priest!

Yet the measure of ideals is not their perfection, but rather how they deal with their all too human imperfections. In the case of young Tintin in Congo, he did what he could to help the native populations, while everything we might be tempted to fault him for was, as author Hergé admitted, the result of not taking his work too seriously at the time and being unreflective about the prejudices of his age. Out of all of Tintin’s remarkable adventures, his sojourn through the Congo may be most fraught with vices, but we can take heart that Tintin learned from his mistakes, as we can see in his escapades in the Far East shortly after leaving the Congo. There, Tintin so exemplified courageous virtues in his gallant struggle to aid the Chinese in their time of desperation as to have earned the praise of Chiang Kai-Shek himself, not to mention endearing himself to the Dalai Lama, who to this day declares his love for the boy reporter.

This evolution from a rhino-hunting, crocodile-dynamiting, Al Capone-chasing adventurer into a serious young man of high moral principle and gallant instinct betrays a character trait sorely lacking in the modern European. The modern European is nihilistic in private, bureaucratic in public. Tintin, by contrast, demonstrated a a playful lightness and joi de vivre in his private life combined with moral conscience in public life. Tintin’s youth, his evolution, is not linear, but rather curvilinear. In the beginning, he fluctuates between noble deeds like helping the Indians by fighting exploitative Americans and lighthearted slap stick. Yet as Tintin’s experience of the world grows, his moral imagination is refined and his humor matures. The latter is actually tied intimately with the former, as moral reflection is quite impossible without humor. Only a character type like that of Tintin’s could permit such an evolution, and only a European of such character could hope to escape the trap of modern European Union: the prospect of despotic union or war, both laced with angst.

Tintin’s political teaching does not, however, stop there. He provides us with a wonderful illustration of the folly of radical factionalism and demonstrates how it is always the mother of despotism. How memorable his misadventures are in the banana republic of Generals Alcazar and Tapioca, where revolutions take place on a daily basis, where the people oscillate between wild revolutionary fervor and grinding tyranny, where no matter who wins, dictatorship and poverty remain constant. The illustration, although set in a South American context, certainly does tell us quite a bit about human nature and the folly of revolutions. Far from being a means towards salvation from tyranny, Tintin seems to teach us that strife, faction, and partisan division are a direct route to tyranny. Civilized people, in contrast to the banana republics, Tintin suggests, never engage in revolution but rather rely on other means. Revolutions appear an easy solution, but end up solving nothing while expending the accumulated public stock of disappointed hope.

Read the complete article in The Imaginative Conservative


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