The Restoration of Man

A classic work by Michael Aeschliman on C.S. Lewis has been reissued under the title The Restoration of Man: C.S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism.

Scientism may be considered the dominant religious expression of modernity. It's the view that the scientific method is the only reliable means of attaining truth and that anything that can't be known through the methodology of scientific investigation is not knowable and not worth believing.

The definitive critique of scientism, in my opinion, is philosopher J.P.Moreland's 2018 book Scientism and Secularism, but Aeschliman's book is also worthwhile and geared more toward the literary reader rather than the philosopher.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says of Aeschliman's book that,

The long overdue reappraisal of C.S. Lewis as a serious social critic and public intellectual has been much helped by Michael Aeschliman’s incisive monograph; its appearance in a new edition is very welcome at a time when crude scientism and incoherent forms of reductionist ideology seem (bafflingly) more popular than ever — as if we really don’t want to be human if being human involves reasoning, irony, growth, wisdom and joy.

David Klinghoffer focuses on Williams' assertion that contemporary scientific and philosophical reductionism is stripping us of our humanity, "as if we really don’t want to be human."

Klinghoffer writes:

It’s no secret that our reigning culture is anti-human. As Wesley Smith has written, a major drift in modern thinking “seek[s] to push us off the pedestal of unique value,” with “many academics, biological scientists, and evolutionary philosophers hav[ing] joined the anti-human crusade.”

That many adults don’t wish to be adults, and fight determinedly against adulthood with what they consider its unwelcome trappings (responsibility for others, personal dignity, even adult clothing), is also well known. But that many of us “don’t want to be human” is an additional insight, and a profound one.

You could call this twist in our thinking species dysphoria.

Klinghoffer's analogy to gender dysphoria is interesting for the question it tacitly raises. If the belief of those who suffer from the conviction that though they possess all the biological appurtenances of maleness they are nevertheless female is to be respected and accommodated, by what logic can we deny someone the same consideration who, despite having all the biological characteristics of a human being, nevertheless believes he's a cow?

When common sense withers in a culture madness soon swoops in to take its place.