In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have reason to remember C.S. Lewis’s sermon, “Wartime Learning,” and blogged about it. The events of the past week have caused me to reconsider the essay and my comments. I’m reposting my comment from March 2020, as both are very relevant to the current situation.
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The September 11 attacks occurred when I was still a novice law professor and caused quite a crisis of conscience. What was I doing ruminating on the minutiae of administrative law and property-based environmental protection when so much more was at stake? What was I doing to keep people safe? Was it done?
A colleague recommended that I read a sermon given by C.S. Lewis in the fall of 1939, “Wartime Learning.” That was a great suggestion. Although I do not share Lewis’ faith, I found it both comforting and inspirational. It was exactly what I needed at that moment.
The current situation has led me to reconsider Lewis’s sermon, and I would like to recommend it to my readers. This sermon, like all of Lewis’s thought, is deeply rooted in his faith, but I believe it has something to offer theists and non-theists alike, or at least I do. I hope so.
Here’s how it starts:
Universities are societies that pursue learning. As students, you are expected to fashion, or begin to create, yourselves into what were called clerks in the Middle Ages: philosophers, scientists, scholars, critics, and historians. And at first glance, this seems like an odd thing to do during a great war. What is the point in starting a task that has little chance of being completed? Or that the lives of our friends and the freedom of Europe, even if our own do not happen to be interrupted by death or military service? Why – indeed, how – should we continue to care about these benign professions in times of crisis? balance? Isn’t it like messing around while Rome burns?
And here’s the short part of Lewis’ answer.
. . . I think it is important to try to see the current disaster in its true perspective. War does not create completely new situations. War only worsens the permanent condition of humanity and can no longer be ignored. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a cliff. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something much more important than itself. If humans had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until it was safe, the search would never have begun. It is a mistake to compare war with “normal life.” Life was never normal. Even the times we thought of as the most peaceful, such as the 19th century, if we look closely, turn out to be full of cries, alarms, hardships, and emergencies. There was no lack of plausible reasons to simply postpone all cultural activities until the immediate danger was averted or the crying injustice was redressed. But humanity long ago chose to ignore those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now and were not going to wait for the right moment that would never arrive. Periclea Athens not only preserved the Parthenon, but also, importantly, the funeral oration. The insects chose a different tack. They sought material well-being and nest security first, and likely received rewards for that. Men are different. They proposed mathematical theorems in besieged cities, held metaphysical discussions in condemned cells, joked on the guillotine, debated the last new poem as they made their way toward the walls of Quebec, Comb your hair with Thermopylae. This is not pompous.It is
our nature.
