Happy new year! All of your friends at the McConnell Center hope you are having a tremendous start to your new year. I recently saw that a few Captains were promoted to Major. Congratulations to them, and best wishes to everyone here.

This is the most important installment of Meditations yet, and I hope that you are hanging in there with your reading and can make good use of the podcast and the other material we share here. Think of it all as a world-class education just hanging out free in your pocket!

In this podcast, I revisit elements that I find to be the most impactful and most important in Plato’s Republic. Here, for example, is where he lays out the four parts of Virtue–Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, Justice–and where he opens our souls to show us their parts. To be a good leader, it is first necessary to lead yourself, and Plato provides us with the conceptual tools with which to get control of our lives. And, what a perfect time to discuss the three parts of the soul as we are in January struggling with our new year’s resolutions and trying to better ourselves.

I hope this podcast and the other material enclosed in this month’s Meditations help you along your journey.

Dr. Gary L. Gregg
McConnell Center Director

In this issue:

• Podcast: Dr. Gary Gregg on "On Education & Political Culture for Leadership: Part II" in Plato's Republic
• SBS Student Project: Trivius Caldwell, SBS 2014, on "A Wise Academy: The Un-Coddled American Minds at West Point"
• Book Recommendation: C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man recommended by Connor Tracy
• Video of the Month: Dr. Andrew Cayton (Miami University) on "Origins of the Imperial Republic"
• Next Reading Assignment: Target 4 (due Feb. 15)

{SBS Student Research Project}

Trivius G. Caldwell (SBS 2014) on "A Wise Academy: The Un-Coddled American Minds at West Point"

{Bookshelf Recommendation}

Men Without Chests: C.S. Lewis Channels Plato in The Abolition of Man

For many of us, the mention of the name C.S. Lewis brings Aslan, the heroic lion from The Chronicles of Narnia, bounding into our imaginations. Others may remember works such as The Screwtape Letters or Mere Christianity–two books that continue to serve as challenges and guides to those seeking to grow in their faith. The modern reader rightfully places Lewis among the ranks of the great children’s authors and Christian apologists, but he was also an important scholar and man of ideas. Today I call your attention to The Abolition of Man, one of his most important contributions to cultural criticism and philosophy.

​Lewis begins the book with a surprising discussion of an elementary school textbook. That book, though purportedly to be used to teach language, contains the hidden message that all value statements are subjective and relate only to the mental state of the speaker rather than to the world outside. According to this view, nothing is beautiful or horrific in and of itself but only becomes so because someone thinks it so. Lewis believes that this kind of message seeps into student’s minds and ultimately leads them to rejecting all objective value–including basic judgments of right and wrong.

Lewis described this process as creating men without chests. Lewis reminds us: “We were told it all long ago by Plato.” The head (reason) must rule the belly (appetites) through an “indispensable liaison”–the chest (“emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments”). By removing the chest, the intellect is left powerless against the appetites. Lewis sums up the ironic yet terrifying effects of this process by saying, “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in or midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

Throughout the rest of this small but very influential book, Lewis mounts a philosophical attack on subjectivism and draws upon a wide range of sources to support the doctrine of objective value, or as he calls it, the Tao. Lewis concludes by giving readers a chilling glimpse of a future in which we reject the Tao, debunk all value judgments, and are left to be conditioned by those in power. He generously provides an appendix containing illustrations of the Tao throughout history and across the world, including Babylonian, Chinese, Christian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Old Norse, and Roman sources.

Much has changed since 1943, but it’s fair to say that Lewis foresaw some of what would come. Though more than 55 years stand between us and his death, The Abolition of Man remains as relevant as ever. We would be wise to revisit it–and revisit it often.

– Connor Tracy