Author Description

Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 - 22 November 1963), commonly called C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Born in Belfast, Ireland, he held academic positions at both Oxford University (Magdalene College- 1925-54), and Cambridge University (Magdalene College- 1954-63). He is best known both for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.Lewis begins with a critical response to "The Green Book", by "Gaius and Titius", pseudonyms for King, Alex; Ketley, Martin (1939), The Control of Language: A Critical Approach to Reading and Writing. The Green book was used as a text for upper form students in British schools. Lewis takes the authors to task for subverting student values. He claims that they teach that all statements of value (such as "this waterfall is sublime") are merely statements about the speaker's feelings and say nothing about the object. Lewis says that such a subjective view of values is faulty, and, on the contrary, certain objects and actions merit positive or negative reactions: that a waterfall can actually be objectively praiseworthy, and that one's actions can be objectively good or evil. In any case, Lewis notes, this is a philosophical position rather than a grammatical one, and so parents and teachers who give such books to their children and students are having them read the "work of amateur philosophers where they expected the work of professional grammarians."In Men without chests, Lewis shows a Dystopian future and criticizes modern attempts to debunk "natural" values (such as those that would deny objective value to the waterfall) on rational grounds. The final chapter describes the ultimate consequences of this debunking: a distant future