C. S. Lewis: The Anti-Platonic Platonist

Abstract: This essay argues that in much of his fiction and prose writings, C. S. Lewis strains conventional Platonism to accommodate Christianity, and vice versa. His "peculiar Platonism" includes his use of and interpretation of poetic creations as markers of a more authentic reality than mere reason can provide. ********** At the close of The Last Battle, the final book in C. S. Lewis' Narnia series, the old professor, Digory Kirke, observes that the heaven he and the other dead characters have reached is simply a better version of the places they knew in life. As they all move " [f]urther in and higher up" (154), finding ever more vibrant versions of familiar landscapes, he mutters, "It's all in Plato, all in Plato" (170). Is it really? Yes and no. Lewis' fiction's relation to Platonic philosophy is as complex and partial as Lewis' relation to Kirke, whom we should not confuse with his author. At numerous points in his essays and letters Lewis takes care to distinguish his Christian faith from Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas. In The Four Loves, he calls St. Augustine's devaluing of human affections mere "neo-Platonic mysticism" (121). In a letter to a friend dated 1940, Lewis states, "Plato thought ... flesh and grass bad, and ... he was wrong" (Letters, 335). The Platonic illusion Lewis finds most dangerous is the fantasy that Christians can approach the good, which for Lewis is God, by turning away from the flesh and the grass and loving purely charitably--one might say platonically--as though they were not human and therefore by definition low and needy. The Christian's embrace of God requires, paradoxically, a humble and constant acknowledgement of his or her lack of and distance from Him. (1) It follows that Platonic ladders or stairways promising incremental approach to the highest and best are problematic images of true Godward experience as Lewis perceived it. Yet, paradoxically, Lewis finds in Plato support for the idea that our closeness to God depends on our admission that we are in a sense far from Him. Lewis alludes frequently to Plato's Symposium's description of Love itself as a condition of neediness ("Love needs beauty ... and does not have it" [Symposium, 201B]). A notable example of this allusiveness occurs in Lewis' That Hideous Strength, where young Mark Studdock's first feelings of real love for his wife are illuminated by a memory of Socrates' teaching on this score. "Love, Plato says, is the son of Want," Mark thinks (360). Lewis' use of one of the ideas voiced by Socrates, Plato's spokesman, to support his departure from another is characteristic of his selective approach to Plato. His very choosiness enables him, despite his reservations, to call on Plato's thought repeatedly in his speculative constructions of Christ, heaven, humankind, earth, and angels. In what follows I'll address this paradox, addressing three questions: What parts of Platonic philosophy does Lewis use in his fiction? What problems, if any, result from his use of Platonic ideas in a medium Plato--or at least Socrates--found morally dangerous, namely poetry (interpreted broadly as the creation of imaginary worlds)? And can those problems be resolved in Platonic terms? The answers, briefly, will be: lots of Platonic parts, several problems, and yes. First, what Plato is in Lewis' fiction? In fact, the brand of Christian Neoplatonism found in Lewis' Narnia books, his adult space trilogy, his allegorical work The Great Divorce, and his late novel Till We Have Faces is as syncretic as that of (say) Sir Philip Sidney. In the words of William Johnson and Marcia Houtman, Lewis' "Platonism is highly selective and ... diffused," "filtered through St. Paul, Augustine, the Florentine Platonists, and the Christian Humanists" (76-77). (2) In Lewis' fiction we find ideas picked piecemeal from Plato where they serve plot and theme. Thus his space-fiction trilogy contains "daimones" such as the spirit which Socrates, in Plato's Apology and other dialogues, claims inspires his inquiries (e. …