Chapter Three: Longing for the Island; or, Lewiss Theory of Heavenly Desire In the previous chapter, I examined

the merely argued dialectic of [Lewiss] philosophical progress;292 that is, I was mainly concerned with Lewiss love of God qua Truth and his rational quest to find Him. Needless to say, such is only part of Lewiss philosophical journey, for while we know Lewis came to believe in the existence of God and the supra-rational mainly because of rational arguments, his appreciation of the supra-rational, which ultimately led to his conversion to Christianity, was greatly enhanced on account of two things: an affect in the soul that thirsts for the heavenly, which I will call heavenly desire, and the deliberative or poetic imagination. This is to say and I will argue this more fully in the next chapter throughout his first three philosophical phases, Lewis the narrow rationalist was repeatedly forced to reduce or explain away heavenly desire and the mythical images haunting his mind a mere biological hiccups or worse. However, as he matured which, perhaps not accidentally, coincided with his move from teaching philosophy to teaching literature Lewis came to see the longing in his soul and the beautiful but confusing images in his imagination as pointers to the divine. That is, by rationally reflecting upon both heavenly desire and the mythical images in his poetic imagination, Lewis the wide rational theist came to see both that particular things in this world are pointers to their perfections in the next world and that mythical images, largely derived from literature (in particular, though not limited to, the Bible), are in many case indicators or reflections of a mysterious part of Gods nature, which Lewis simply labeled Myth. What is vital to keep in mind is that both heavenly desire and the poetic imagination provide information to ones reason information which should not be reduced by reason (since the images in the poetic imagination, for instance, are supra-rational), but which can still be evaluated by reason in that they can be said to be either false insofar as they contradict what is already known of God, for instance, His perfect moral nature, or they can be said to be potentially true in varying degrees insofar as they do not contradict what is already known about God; hence, we recall that Lewis said, I recommended Christianity because I thought its affirmation to be objectivelyt rue.294 Since these two topics heavenly desire and the mythical images in the imagination are rich areas for investigation in regard to Lewiss philosophical Christianity, I will discuss heavenly desire in this chapter and myth and imagination in the next. As for the structure of this chapter, I propose to work through the various concepts Lewis used in regard to heavenly desire to give us an appreciation for not only the Oxford dons eclecticism in regard to this concept, but also the value he put on the role of affect in his philosophy. The various concepts that make up, or at least are broadly related to, heavenly desire will be looked at in roughly chronological order in regard to Lewiss encounter with, or mention of, them, starting with Platonicer os and then moving on to Romanticism, thenumi nous,Sehns ucht, and Joy. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion about how these concepts tied into Lewiss so-called Argument from Desire. I: PlatonicEros

The first concept I want to examine in regard to heavenly desire is Platonicer os, or, as Lewis called it, Eros Religion295 or spiritualer os.296 My reason for beginning with this term is twofold. First, Plato was arguably the first to give aphi l osophi c al description of a phenomenon that Lewis would come to associate with heavenly desire. And second, despite the fact that Lewiss first feeling of heavenly desire was when he was less than ten years old (when he saw his brothers toy garden, an event we will talk more about in the next chapter),297 Lewiss first intellectual encounter with a phenomenon related to heavenly desire was in Platos dialogues, which, we recall from chapter two, he started reading back in 1913 at the age of fifteen. Indeed, one of the best examples of Platonic eros is found in Platos Phaedrus, which Lewis read in 1915 and reread many times over the course of his life, including during the time he was writing his first major works: The Quest of Bleheris298and Dymer.299 And it is from Phaedrus that we read the following mythical account of Platonic eros. Once, long ago, the soul dwelt in the upper heavens with the gods and together they were enraptured in the beatific vision: the contemplation of true Beauty and Reality i.e. the eternal Forms. But one day the soul looked away from the world of the Forms due to its rational faculty exercising imperfect control over its passionate faculty. Consequently, when the soul looked away, it plunged further into the physical world, resulting in distorted knowledge and the loss of true happiness. Forgetfulness of its true home set in when the soul was incarnate; however, it was not total amnesia. The soul had the ability to remember its true home if it would only direct its attention to the knowledge innate within itself which would, in turn, point to its origin, the eternal Forms, the object the soul truly desired; or to put it another way, the soul needed to be possessed by a god, whose maddening love or eros for knowledge would propel the soul heavenward: This then is the fourth type of madness, which befalls when a man, reminded by the sight of beauty on earth of the true beauty, grows his wings and endeavours to fly upward, but in vain, exposing himself to the reproach of insanity because like a bird he fixes his gaze on the heights to the neglect of things below; and the conclusion to which our whole discourse points is that in itself and in its origin that is the best of all forms of divine possession, both for the subject himself and for his associate, and it is when he is touched with this madness that the man whose love is aroused by beauty in others is called a lover. As I have said, every human soul by its very nature has beheld true being otherwise it would not have entered into the creature we call man but it is not every soul that finds it easy to use its present experience as a means of recollecting the world of reality.300 From this myth in Phaedrus, along with another myth in Symposium (a book Lewis said to die without having read . . . would be ridiculous301), we may draw the following conclusions. First, Platonic eros is the innate desire or appetite for Beauty (since love must always have an object302). Second, since Platonic eros or love is always for something it knows about but lacks, the soul has some knowledge of true Beauty but lacks complete knowledge of it; hence, Platonicer os is the son of Poverty (a mortal who is always wanting) and Contrivance (an immortal god who, in virtue of his immortality, lacks nothing, including knowledge).303 Third, since wisdom is one of the most beautiful things, and Love is love of Beauty, it follows that Love must be a lover of wisdom;304 that is, Platonicer os is a love of Truth because the Truth is

beautiful; indeed, it is from this that we get the concept of the philosopher, who is a lover of Truth. Fourth, since what is good is the same as what is beautiful, the soul, lacking the Good, also desires it.305 Fifth, because without the Good, the soul cannot be happy, the soul, by desiring Goodness (and Beauty and Truth), also desires happiness: And what will have been gained by the man who is in possession of the good? I find that an easier question to answer; he will be happy.306 And sixth, while all people desire after Beauty, Goodness, and happiness, most fail to find these because they mistake images or copies of these Forms for the Forms themselves; indeed, instead of using the images or copies of the Forms in this world of flux as signposts that point beyond themselves to the Real World, most settle for loving the imperfect images. The only true philosopher sees objects of the beauty in the lower physical world as markers that help the soul remember true Beauty. Now Lewis was familiar with all of this from very early on, but his knowledge of it grew considerably around 1922, when he, though still an atheist, first read Boethiuss Consolation of Philosophy, which presented Platonic eros proper in a Christianized form. Mythical elements aside, Boethiuss understanding of Platonicer os and its relation to Beauty, Truth, Goodness, and happiness was virtually the same as Platos. However, there were two important differences: (1) Boethius accepted Plotinuss assessment that the soul in its nature loves the One and longs to be one with Him;307 that is, Boethius agreed with the Father of Neoplatonism that theer os in the soul is a desire not simply for knowledge of the One (Plato), but also union with the One (Plotinus); however, (2) while Plotinuss doctrine of the souls mystical union with the One carried with it connotations that Christians were often uncomfortable with, Boethius knew that Jesus himself spoke in similar terms (e.g. the union of the Father, Son and believers), and so, following Augustine (and perhaps others), argued that thee ros in the soul is a desire for Perfect Happiness or Happiness That Never Fails, which also happens to be Perfect Goodness, and since nothing better than God can be conceived of, Boethius equated God with Perfect Goodness which in turn he equated with Perfect Happiness and the true Home of the soul.308 Nevertheless, as Lewis himself confessed: even when he read Boethiuss Christian account of Platonicer os, he, like Boethiuss drunken man [who] cannot find by what path he may return home,309 did not immediately associate his own longings (which we will talk about shortly) with Platonicer os and the desire for God. In fact, these explicit connections only occurred when Lewis wrote The Pilgrims Regress, in which he quoted approvingly from both PlatosPhaedo and Boethiuss Consolation of Philosophy in regard to what the Oxford don then called Romanticism.