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A Brief Comment on C.S. Lewis's Response to G.E.M. Anscombe

A Brief Comment on C.S. Lewis's Response to G.E.M. Anscombe A Brief Comment on C.S. Lewis’s Response to G.E.M. Anscombe Jon Fennell Many readers of this journal know of the exchange between C.S. Lewis and G.E.M. Anscombe on 2 February 1948 at the Oxford Socratic Club. In the wake of this exchange Lewis revised Chapter III of Miracles, the result appearing in the subsequent 1960 edition of the book as ‘The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism’. The direction that Lewis would take in his revision was suggested both in his response that evening to Anscombe and in a brief reply to her comments published in The Socratic Digest later that year. Both are usefully included in God in the Dock. Lewis’s argument against naturalism is that it fails due to performative contradiction (sometimes also known as ‘retortion’ or ‘self-referential incoherence’). The very articulation of the doctrine, he states, demonstrates its falsity. ‘If it [naturalism] is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat’. The reason that we cannot under naturalism know truth is that it maintains that all events, without exception, unfold mechanistically, that is, blindly according to natural laws of cause and effect. Thoughts, ideas, theories, and accounts of the world are among the events http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Inklings Studies Edinburgh University Press

A Brief Comment on C.S. Lewis's Response to G.E.M. Anscombe

Fennell, Jon
Journal of Inklings Studies , Volume 9 (1): 5 – Apr 1, 2019
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
2045-8797
eISSN
2045-8800
DOI
10.3366/ink.2019.0027
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Abstract

A Brief Comment on C.S. Lewis’s Response to G.E.M. Anscombe Jon Fennell Many readers of this journal know of the exchange between C.S. Lewis and G.E.M. Anscombe on 2 February 1948 at the Oxford Socratic Club. In the wake of this exchange Lewis revised Chapter III of Miracles, the result appearing in the subsequent 1960 edition of the book as ‘The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism’. The direction that Lewis would take in his revision was suggested both in his response that evening to Anscombe and in a brief reply to her comments published in The Socratic Digest later that year. Both are usefully included in God in the Dock. Lewis’s argument against naturalism is that it fails due to performative contradiction (sometimes also known as ‘retortion’ or ‘self-referential incoherence’). The very articulation of the doctrine, he states, demonstrates its falsity. ‘If it [naturalism] is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat’. The reason that we cannot under naturalism know truth is that it maintains that all events, without exception, unfold mechanistically, that is, blindly according to natural laws of cause and effect. Thoughts, ideas, theories, and accounts of the world are among the events

Journal

Journal of Inklings Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2019

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