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The Way Runs through the Chest

The Way Runs through the Chest Michael Ward’s After Humanity succeeds as a guide. The purpose of a guide is to help one see, or see more fully, what is before one’s eyes, to explain without explaining away. A poorly wrought critical study risks overwhelming the reader with a mass of minutiae; the reader who swims in such a sea of details might be tempted to abandon entirely the surface of the text he had begun to study, and plunge into its depths never to return, imagining it is there that he might discover the true heart of the text, telling himself and others that he has thus achieved profundity rather than drowned. Ward’s study is well-wrought. He carefully sifts and generously quotes and cross-references Lewis’s corpus (works major and minor, philosophical and literary, public and private, timely and scholarly, plus letters and debates and radio addresses and diary entries), critical responses to Abolition, and later philosophical works akin to it in various ways and then successfully binds the analysed parts of the text back into a whole. In so doing, Ward establishes the ‘enduring value of [Abolition’s] philosophical seriousness and rhetorical power’ and suggests that Abolition is ‘the philosophical theme of Lewis’s output’, whereas http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Inklings Studies Edinburgh University Press

The Way Runs through the Chest

Papadopoulos, Pavlos
Journal of Inklings Studies , Volume 11 (2): 7 – Oct 1, 2021
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
2045-8797
eISSN
2045-8800
DOI
10.3366/ink.2021.0118
Publisher site
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Abstract

Michael Ward’s After Humanity succeeds as a guide. The purpose of a guide is to help one see, or see more fully, what is before one’s eyes, to explain without explaining away. A poorly wrought critical study risks overwhelming the reader with a mass of minutiae; the reader who swims in such a sea of details might be tempted to abandon entirely the surface of the text he had begun to study, and plunge into its depths never to return, imagining it is there that he might discover the true heart of the text, telling himself and others that he has thus achieved profundity rather than drowned. Ward’s study is well-wrought. He carefully sifts and generously quotes and cross-references Lewis’s corpus (works major and minor, philosophical and literary, public and private, timely and scholarly, plus letters and debates and radio addresses and diary entries), critical responses to Abolition, and later philosophical works akin to it in various ways and then successfully binds the analysed parts of the text back into a whole. In so doing, Ward establishes the ‘enduring value of [Abolition’s] philosophical seriousness and rhetorical power’ and suggests that Abolition is ‘the philosophical theme of Lewis’s output’, whereas

Journal

Journal of Inklings Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Oct 1, 2021

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