{"title":"Was C.S. Lewis a Rational Determinist?","authors":"R. Davis","doi":"10.3366/ink.2022.0155","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In his recently published book C. S. Lewis (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), Stewart Goetz argues that C.S. Lewis endorsed a form of rational determinism, according to which we are causally determined to draw the conclusions we do. Our inferences are not within our control; they happen to us whether we like it or not. If Goetz is right, then incredibly we must say that reasoning is not something Lewis ever did. I shall attempt to show that (taken in context) the texts to which Goetz appeals fail to support his thesis. In fact, upon closer analysis, they indicate precisely the opposite: Lewis was no rational determinist.","PeriodicalId":37069,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Inklings Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Inklings Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ink.2022.0155","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In his recently published book C. S. Lewis (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), Stewart Goetz argues that C.S. Lewis endorsed a form of rational determinism, according to which we are causally determined to draw the conclusions we do. Our inferences are not within our control; they happen to us whether we like it or not. If Goetz is right, then incredibly we must say that reasoning is not something Lewis ever did. I shall attempt to show that (taken in context) the texts to which Goetz appeals fail to support his thesis. In fact, upon closer analysis, they indicate precisely the opposite: Lewis was no rational determinist.