What is the moral imagination? Why is it important? In this episode, I discuss the concept of the moral imagination and 15 ways to develop it. I discuss the origin of the term in Edmund Burke's critique of the French Revolution and his worry that the reductionist Enlightenment view of reason would lead to what C.S. Lewis called "the abolition of man." It would diminish our fundamental human experiences--love, joy, hope, friendship, justice, compassion, mercy, grief, and forgiveness--and undermine the dignity of the person. I discuss a number of thinkers, including Gertrude Himmelfarb on tradition, Russell Kirk, Joseph Pieper, Mary Douglas on condensed symbols, Joseph Ratzinger on reason and beauty, Iain Mc Gilchrist on neuroscience, Peter Berger on plausibility structures, and more.
In the second half of the talk I outline 15 ways –practical and theoretical -- to build and develop our moral imagination including:
Reading Good Stories & the Importance of Fairy tales—for adults and children
Re-sensitizing ourselves to good and evil
· Recovering the idea that beauty is both Objective and Subjective
· Rehabilitation of Reason
· Recovering Authentic Subjectivity
· Why language matters and how abuse of langue leads abuse of power
· And why we need to build plausibility structures, go outside, observe the the sabbath & cultivate silence
Resources and Outline
Edmund Burke on the Moral Imagination
“All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion” Edmund Burke
C.S. Lewis: Abolition of Man
“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 honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful”
Russell Kirk on Burke and Eliot
· Moral Imagination
· Idyllic Imagination
· Diabolical Imagination
Christopher Dawson: “Christianity has been deprived,” he said, “All these channels have been closed by unbelief or choked by ignorance. Christianity has been deprived of its means of an outward expression and communication…It is the task of Christian education to present and recover these lost channels of communication. Christopher Dawson Historic Reality of Christian Culture
Building the Moral Imagination
1. Read Good Stories and Listen to Beautiful Music
2. Detox: Re-sensitize ourselves to good and evil
3. Rehabilitate and Expand Reason
a. “I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text-books… It is not a theory they put in his mind, but an assumption, which 10 years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.” C.S. Lewis, Abolition of Man
b. Modern Concept of Reason is Reductionist Empiricism
c. Critique Critical Thinking
4. Recover Objective Beauty
“The only really effective apologia for Christianity comes down to two arguments, namely, the saints the Church has produced and the art which has grown in her womb. Better witness is borne to the Lord by the splendor of holiness and art which have arisen in the community of believers than by the clever excuses which apologetics has come up with to justify the dark sides which, sadly, are so frequent in the Church’s human history.” Joseph Ratzinger
5. Sanctify Worship
6. Build Authentic Subjectivity
7. Rehabilitate the Heart
a. Reasonable Emotions / Spiritual Emotions
C.S. Lewis: The Head Rules the Belly Through the Chest
8. Respect Language
See Joseph Pieper: Abuse Language Abuse of Power and George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
9. Build Community
a. Family
b. Church
c. Civil Society
10. Build Plausibility Structures—Peter Berger
11. Play Music together, draw, paint, and do plays and poetry at home
12. Refine Manners
13. Go Outside
14. Cultivate Silence
15. Honor the Lord’s Day
Some Recommended Reading
C.S. Lewis: The Abolition of Man
Vigen Gurion: Tending the Heart of Virtue
Mitchell Kalpagian: The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature
Gertrude Himmelfarb: The Moral Imagination from Burke to Trilling
Iain McGilchrist: The Master and Its Emissary
Dietrich von Hildebrand: The Heart
Russell Kirk: Eliot and His Age
Mary Douglas: Natural Symbols
Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind
Robert Coles, The Call of Stories
Benedict XVI, Regensburg Address, Deus Caritas Est, Spe Salvi
Joseph Ratzinger: The Spirit of the Liturgy / Values in a Time of Upheaval
Joseph Pieper, In Tune with the World / Only the Lover Sings / Abuse of Language
Yosef Yitzhak Lifshitz, “The Secret of the Sabbath” / “Far Away So Close”
Abraham Heschel: The Sabbath
John Paul II: Dies Domini (The Lord’s Day)
Ep. 20: What is the Moral Imagination? + 15 Ways to Build it and Recover Our Humanity