tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post113459599026424115..comments2023-08-10T05:32:21.163-04:00Comments on An Examined Life: The Last BattleVitae Scrutatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1134780761969979842005-12-16T19:52:00.000-05:002005-12-16T19:52:00.000-05:00Thanks very much for your kind words. I, too, very...Thanks very much for your kind words. I, too, very much enjoyed that scene from the Silver Chair (and not just because off all the not-so-cryptic references to Platonism!).<BR/><BR/>I think that Gopnik would agree, finally, with your reading of A Grief Observed--I didn't mean to exaggerate his distance from it. It is interesting to me, though, that he said virtually nothing at all about Till We Have Faces.Vitae Scrutatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1134686854249618832005-12-15T17:47:00.000-05:002005-12-15T17:47:00.000-05:00I was led to your blog by our similar libraries on...I was led to your blog by our similar libraries on "LibraryThing."<BR/><BR/>Thanks for this essay. The scene of the dwarves in the stable in the Last Battle has stayed with me throughout my life as a powerful explanatory image. You are right that it is not only believers who want to believe what they do; and that that desire does not, in either case, prove anything at all about the truth or falsity of what they believe. <BR/><BR/>You mention "The Silver Chair" as a theology-light book, and this is true, but one scene in it has also stayed with me: the scene where the witch throws some kind of powder on the fire, and begins to sing (magically), and works on persuading the children that the Overworld doesn't exist. because they can only describe the Overworld in terms of what they can see around them, so the sun is like that lamp but bigger, and hotter, and hangs in the sky, they must have made it all up; invented a bigger, hotter, invisibly suspended lamp in a 'sky' that they've invented by analogy to the roof over their heads. And such is her enchantment and her persuasion that the children are giving in, when Puddleglum stamps on the fire, putting most of it out, and says he'd rather die believing in something he's invented, then, than accept that the Underworld is all there is. But in fact, the reader knows the sun exists. I have been proof, ever since, against arguments that attack analogy. <BR/><BR/>My reading of "A Grief Observed" is, rather, that it shows us Lewis astonishingly hanging onto his faith, even in the worst of his grief; but being very honest about how it feels.Merely Academichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00452389428113097744noreply@blogger.com