Section IV Meditation in a Toolshed Flashcards
Consider carefully Lewis’s analogies, “seeing the beam of light” and “seeing by it.” What is the difference he implies between looking at and along?
Lewis is essentially making a distinction between objective and subjective observation. One may objectively observe the girl whose doll is broken and analyze what she is doing and infer how her responses reflect her psychological framework (“nascent maternal instinct”), but that does not describe what she experiences, just how she acts in relation to her experience. For a full picture of what is happening to this girl, one must have both the objective observation of what she is doing, and the subjective observation of what she experiences when her doll is broken.
How would you explain it in your own words?
Difference between being in the experience, and looking at the experience from outside of it. Objective vs subjective.
What examples does Lewis use to illustrate the differences between viewpoints?
The feelings of being in love vs. observing a person’s physiology who is in love. Or a person contemplating timeless and spaceless truths about quantity. Being in the act of worshipping and observing the act of worship. A girl who loses a doll feels as if she lost a friend, whereas the outside observes that she is projecting feelings of family on to a simple object. Idea of chivalry, moral ideals,
Which are the most effective in your view and why?
Examples about feelings seem most effective. Feelings have not yet been fully able to be communicated and translated from person to person. The experience is much different than observing feelings happening.
Not just feelings, these are subjective experiences which means that one is analyzing the information in relation to their rationality, faculty of logic, emotions and personal history. For this I would reference the girl with the doll (who experiences feelings of loss, the reasoning that she figures that this is something she cannot regain, and contemplating how her history with the doll makes the doll meaningful to her).
What does Lewis mean when he says, “people who look at things have had it all their own way . . .”?
Lewis means that it is easier for those looking at certain situations rather than looking along them. In other words, if you are able to remove yourself from the emotions of the situation then you are able to perceive it in a clearer sense then if you are looking along the situation. Those who look along have been “brow-beaten”.
The people who look “at” something is the predominance of rationality in the West since the reign of philosophy that entered Western culture since Socrates (in truth, a little before–but the Pre-Socratics did not have quite the same impact and staying power). This was not as strong during the Medieval period when Christianity was more dominant and a mystic influence could be brought out, which is almost exclusively subjective.
How are they more “privileged” than those who “look along”?
At has been understood as the most objective and true. Along has not been seen as worthy. Today’s society has flipped this on its head.
Are these viewpoints mutually exclusive or complementary?
Complimentary. You do both.
It can be either exclusive or complementary depending on the situation. I can objectively observe pain in childbirth and can approximate the feelings of the soon-to-be-mother, but I can never truly subjectively understand it. However, these terms are not mutually exclusive.
What does this tell us about Lewis’s “ways of seeing”?
no answer
What are some of your “toolshed” experiences?
no answer
So what? (i.e. about the entire concept)
no answer
