Love of Lewis

With the announcement that the C.S. Lewis college will be starting up nearby (see here for details if interested), it seemed a good time to read another Lewis book. I just read The Four Loves for the first time. It was...well, just like every other Lewis book I have ever read--mildly interesting, nice if I don't think about it too much, but ultimately unsatisfying. I like Lewis, and I like his books, but I cannot understand the devotion to his writings. This book, for example: it has some interesting reflections on the nature of love. He breaks love into several categories--more than four actually--and then skips lightly over the terrain throwing out a random set of observations on each. Like all of Lewis' books, it gets one pondering a topic in a pleasantly diversionary way--that is the strength of his work. So, as long as I don't think too much about what Lewis is saying and just use the occasion of reading him to think about a topic, then I like the book. But as soon as I start paying too much attention to Lewis himself, his argument seems terribly lightweight. In many ways Lewis is Chesterton-light. ( I suppose this is the same as the manner in which the Narnia series is Tolkien-light.) My favorite Lewis book is still The Abolition of Man.

Love is a great topic to ponder. Everyone cares about it, yet there is almost no discussion of it in the modern academy. I once asked a class if anyone would be interested in taking a course called "Reflections on Love." There was universal revulsion to the idea of the class. Everyone immediately thought that the class would be nothing but hearing sappy love-sick teenage tales. The idea that there is an academic side to a discussion of Love was inconceivable to anyone in the room.

That being said, it is, in fact, hard to think of a good curriculum for a course on Love. I also think it would be a nightmarish course to teach--in part because I think it would attract all the wrong sort of students.

On the aforementioned matter: the C.S. Lewis college experiment really interests me. I have no idea if it will actually work or not, but I am glad it is close enough to here that I have some chance of hearing how things are going.