C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law

by Justin Buckley Dyer, Micah J. Watson

Overview

Conventional wisdom holds that C. S. Lewis was uninterested in politics and public affairs. The conventional wisdom is wrong. As Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson show in this groundbreaking work, Lewis was deeply interested in the fundamental truths and falsehoods about human nature and how these conceptions manifest themselves in the contested and turbulent public square. Ranging from the depths of Lewis' philosophical treatments of epistemology and moral pedagogy to practical considerations of morals legislation and responsible citizenship, this book explores the contours of Lewis' multi-faceted Christian engagement with political philosophy generally and the natural-law tradition in particular. Drawing from the full range of Lewis' corpus and situating his thought in relationship to both ancient and modern seminal thinkers, C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law offers an unprecedented look at politics and political thought from the perspective of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107518971
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/18/2017
Pages:	172
Sales rank:	547,704
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Justin Buckley Dyer is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He is the author of Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition (Cambridge, 2012) and Slavery, Abortion, and the Politics of Constitutional Meaning (Cambridge, 2013), and the editor of American Soul: The Contested Legacy of the Declaration of Independence (2012). He earned a PhD in government at the University of Texas, Austin and a BA and MPA at the University of Oklahoma.

Micah J. Watson is 2015–16 William Spoelhof Teacher-Scholar Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science at Calvin College, Michigan. He is the co-editor of Natural Law and Evangelical Political Thought (2012), and has contributed chapters to this book as well as John Rawls and Christian Social Engagement (2015), and Reason, Revelation, and the Civic Order (2014). In 2010–11 he was the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and Public Life at Princeton University, New Jersey. He earned his PhD in politics at Princeton University, New Jersey, and his MA in Church-State Studies at Baylor University, Texas.

Table of Contents

1. The apolitical and political C. S. Lewis; 2. Creation, fall and human nature; 3. Divine commands and the natural law; 4. The early modern turn and the abolition of man; 5. Lewis' Lockean liberalism; 6. Screwtape is in the details; 7. Conclusion: politics in the shadowlands; 8. Selected bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

'… Justin Buckley Dyer and Micah J. Watson, associate professors at the University of Missouri and Calvin College, show in their groundbreaking new book, C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law, Lewis's understanding of truth and human nature, of what constitutes the good life and the good society, had significant political implications … Professors Dyer and Watson write that Lewis had 'a very limited view of government's role and warrant,' was skeptical of its capacity to inculcate virtue and worried about its paternalistic tendencies. The duty of government was to restrain wrongdoing. Because he believed in the fallen nature of humanity, Lewis was concerned by the concentration of political power.' Peter Wehner, The New York Times

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