This is a fascinating and sometimes frustrating book. Lewis is writing with a range of Christian premises baked in through, which is not a problem for me but will turn off some readers. Unfortunately, the price of admittance also includes a few pages of defensive homophobic writing that is not simply wrong in my view, but fails to meet a standard of respect that I expect from modern social conservative writers I disagree with but find worth reading. I won’t bother to engage that section; however, I think Lewis also too frequently neglects the distaff portion of his audience and exhibits a failure of curiosity about classical female friendship that I think leaves his chapter on friendship incomplete and in one portion badly undercuts his analysis. This is all the more vexing as I’ve recently been reading Until We Have Faces, where he got some aspects of those friendships right years before he wrote this book. With that said I found Lewis an insightful writer, witty without being flashy and too wise to settle for most easy answers. Finally, I had the delightful experience of reading along with Kate and Monica; anything clever or insightful likely drew inspiration from one of them but any thoughts that fall flat I claim full responsibility.
He begins with a charming introduction that lays out his idea of need-love and gift-love. The former referring to the pull side of love for exemplified by infants with gift love being a range of acts of compassion and affection graciously shared even when full reciprocity is not possible. Most connections can involve both flowing both ways. Initially he was planning to focus more on this dichotomy but he found it introduced complication after complication. He sets of these concepts well and disabuses readers of the notion that there’s anything to be desired by the absence of a need for love.
The next chapter looks at liking and loves for the sub-human loves. Of a multitude of possible examples, he chooses nature and country. One interesting observation is that those most expert in a topic are not always those that you might wish to spend one’s time with; a horticulturalist may be so caught up in interesting plants as to distract from a larger walk, which is doubtless a charge that can be prosecuted against me on some of my favored topics. In considering patriotism, he identifies three key ingredients. First is love of home, the place and the way of life which includes this interesting passage.
Note that at its largest this is, for us, a love of England, Wales, Scotland, or Ulster, Only foreigners and politicians talk of ‘Britain’. Kipling;s ‘I do not love my empire’s foes strikes a ludicrously false note. My empire!
Lewis argues that any love (save that of God) can become a demon if overly elevated but praises the love of home and argues it should be highly compatible with the understanding that others love their own home in much the same way. His second ingredient is an attitude to the country’s past. He’s more skeptical of this, noting rightly that “the actual history of every country is full of shabby and even shameful doing. The heroic stories, if taken to be typical, give a false impression of it and are often themselves open to serious historical criticism.” He suggests that for this love the past is best engaged as a saga, ideally out of school, and with emphasis on inspiration and not to confuse it with textbook fact.
He then turns to the more dangerous ingredients, the third is a belief that one’s own country is better than all others. This can lead to believing one’s nation has special rights and duties. Lewis is hardly an ardent anti-colonialist here, but notes “our habit of talking as if England’s motives for acquiring an empire (or any youngster's motives for seeking a job in he Indian Civil Service) has been mainly altruistic has nauseated the world.” That is an expression of duty and those that emphasize rights over duties can be even worse. He goes on to briefly critique the potential excesses of overly associating one nation’s cause with righteousness, in ways that fit with standard realist critiques of idealism.
I would be interested, and can perhaps find elsewhere, a more direct discussion by Lewis of American patriotism. His third and fourth ingredients surely show skepticism of American exceptionalism. That said, I do think creedal civic nationalism better fits in the first two category and can be far more welcoming to the immigrant and binding to a larger community than a love of home alone. Similar to the ingredient of one’s nations stories, I think creedal commitments are healthiest when seen as aspirational and that one’s country has often failed to live up to them even if we hope to have progressed closer. Having recently listened to a discussion of David Campbell’s Writing Security, I’d say Lewis does not just describe but constructs a form of patriotism here that does not align with how I’d describe and construct it as an American. However, I like his normative evaluation here and I find it useful in considering mine own love of country and its risks.
My next post in this series will look at the first of his four loves - affection - before the main event, my argument that Lewis understands friendship too narrowly by focusing on only a single dimension.
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