Modern Age - Fall 2017 - 49
The man who despaired of political solutions had much
to say about the foundations of a just political order
The Old Western Man:
C. S. Lewis on Politics
and Modernity
Justin Dyer and Micah Watson
"S
peaking not only for myself but for all other Old Western
men whom you may meet," C. S. Lewis concluded his inaugural address at Cambridge University, "I would say, use your
specimens while you can. There are not going to be many more
dinosaurs." Cambridge had plucked Lewis away from Oxford by
offering him a chair in medieval and renaissance literature, and
Lewis's title for his first address was "De Descriptione Temporum," a description of the times. Lewis turned his observant eye
to a watershed difference between a previous age, that of Austen, Milton, and Shakespeare, and the modern age of machines,
Justin Dyer is professor of political science and director of the Kinder
Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri. Micah
Watson teaches political science at Calvin College. This essay derives in
part from their book C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law.
modernagejournal.com
49
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