Poison of Subjectivism

The Poison of Subjectivism is a difficult and highly intellectual piece by Lewis. I really appreciate how Lewis defends his positions carefully and thoughtfully, leaving little room for the position he is opposing to defend themselves. I appreciate how he points out that morality is not, and cannot be something subject to our will. To prove this point, Lewis uses the example of Nazi Germany; if morality is subject to man’s will, then what the Nazi’s did was not wrong. In the same way, if morality was subject change based on the will of individuals, our justice system would have no basis, because what is considered “wrong” for one man could be interpreted as morally correct by the offending man. To sum this up Lewis states, “Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring.”
Another quote I liked was “Except on the supposition of a changeless standard, progress is impossible.” Lewis uses the illustration of a train moving towards a terminus. If the terminus is immobile, the train is able to make progress toward it; however, if the terminus moves at the same speed as the train, the train cannot get any closer and no progress is made. In the same way, if there is not a permanent moral standard present in our world, but instead one that keeps changing, we can never come any closer to it, meaning our moral ideas will never make any progress. To have progress, you need to have an end, something to be striving to get closer to. It would be as if you were running a race with no end. No matter how long you ran for, even if you reached exhaustion, you would be no closer to the end of your run, and so it is as if you did not even run at all.
The final quote that spoke to me was “unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish. I like this sentence because it brings me back to the biblical idea of being like a child. Matthew 18:3-4 tell us “And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Sometimes we dismiss our years as children as simply our “learning phase,” whereas we should instead be trying to learn how to go back a be as a child.