C. S. Lewis on Politics and the Natural Law
by justin buckley dyer and micah j. watson
cambridge, 170 pages, $44.99
Of the making of books about C. S. Lewis there is no end. Although interest in his thought receded somewhat in the decade or so after his death in 1963, it gradually recovered, has grown enormously, and shows no signs of diminishing. What, then, if anything, might this book by Dyer and Watson provide that is not already well known?
While it is true that they cover much well-trodden ground along the way, they provide a clear, concise, and informative treatment of an aspect of Lewis’s thought that has been less studied. Lewis is not generally thought of as a political thinker. Indeed, apart from a few casual essays available in collections of his shorter writings, he wrote very little about the sort of questions that make up our day-to-day political debates. Still more, Lewis showed relatively little interest in politics and on occasion expressed actual dislike of it.
All true, Dyer and Watson grant. Although, near the end of the book, they discuss a few political positions that Lewis actively espoused, they acknowledge that he “took little interest in transitory policy questions.” What does that leave for them to write a book about? “Lewis did have much to say about the underlying foundations of a just political order.”