Objective Value And C.s Lewis

[OraProMe]

So I'm reading C.S Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" and in the few opening pages he describes that certain objects merit specific reactions. He describes a waterfall that is objectively sublime.

[i]In their second chapter Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. You remember that there were two tourists present: that one called it 'sublime' and the other 'pretty'; and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust. Gaius and Titius comment as follows: 'When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall... Actually ... he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word "Sublime", or shortly, I have sublime feelings' Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: 'This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.'1

Before considering the issues really raised by this momentous little paragraph (designed, you will remember, for 'the upper forms of schools') we must eliminate one mere confusion into which Gaius and Titius have fallen. Even on their own view—on any conceivable view—the man who says This is sublime cannot mean I have sublime feelings. Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker's feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings', in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible. But we need not delay over this which is the very pons asinorum of our subject. It would be unjust to Gaius and Titius themselves to emphasize what was doubtless a mere inadvertence.
[/i]

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm

Now, to my thinking, the waterfall is not objectively good, bad, sublime, horrid, ugly, beautiful etc. the only thing the waterfall is objectively is...a waterfall. Any appearance of universality or consensus to the value of a specific object is not absolute but rather a result of common social and cultural factors. For example my grandmother, who has a fear of large amounts of water, would describe the waterfall as terrifying rather than sublime and I don't see how this would be any more correct or incorrect than anyone elses subjective opinion.

Someone please explain this to me or give your thoughts? I was reading this at 3am last night so that probably contributed to my lack of understanding.

Edited December 17, 2009 by OraProMe

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='OraProMe' date='16 December 2009 - 10:39 PM' timestamp='1261017552' post='2022095']
So I'm reading C.S Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" and in the few opening pages he describes that certain objects merit specific reactions. He describes a waterfall that is objectively sublime.

[i]In their second chapter Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. You remember that there were two tourists present: that one called it 'sublime' and the other 'pretty'; and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust. Gaius and Titius comment as follows: 'When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall... Actually ... he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word "Sublime", or shortly, I have sublime feelings' Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: 'This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.'1

Before considering the issues really raised by this momentous little paragraph (designed, you will remember, for 'the upper forms of schools') we must eliminate one mere confusion into which Gaius and Titius have fallen. Even on their own view—on any conceivable view—the man who says This is sublime cannot mean I have sublime feelings. Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker's feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings', in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible. But we need not delay over this which is the very pons asinorum of our subject. It would be unjust to Gaius and Titius themselves to emphasize what was doubtless a mere inadvertence.
[/i]

[url="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm"]http://www.columbia..../abolition1.htm[/url]

Now, to my thinking, the waterfall is not objectively good, bad, sublime, horrid, ugly, beautiful etc. the only thing the waterfall is objectively is...a waterfall. Any appearance of universality or consensus to the value of a specific object is not absolute but rather a result of common social and cultural factors. For example my grandmother, who has a fear of large amounts of water, would describe the waterfall as terrifying rather than sublime and I don't see how this would be any more correct or incorrect than anyone elses subjective opinion.

Someone please explain this to me or give your thoughts? I was reading this at 3am last night so that probably contributed to my lack of understanding.
[/quote]

Your view is in league with what C.S. Lewis is saying. He did not say that the waterfall is or is not sublime. He said, as you do, that the waterfall is objective, and that that the waterfall's nature is independent of their perception of that nature.

Goodness, beauty, and the like, are objective. Our perception of these realities (on this earth, at least) is subjective. It's like color. Even if two people perceive a particular shade of blue differently, and consider it to be aesthetic or not, it is still sourced in an objective wavelength of light, in a certain parameter of nanometers. Likewise, some people may enjoy two different types of music. The difference in the enjoyment is found in the disposition of the person to particular rhythms and melodies, not in the music itself.

~Sternhauser

Edited December 17, 2009 by Sternhauser

[Fiat_Voluntas_Tua]

I was able to read C.S. Lewis's actual copies of The Summa Theologica, "The Green Book", and "The Brother's Karamazov" ... it was aweseome!