The Way

At a glance

Scripture for reflection

“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

Jeremiah 6:16 KJV

UECF.NET summary

Having argued that traditional morality (the Tao) is not simply one culture’s arbitrary custom, Lewis turns to a figure he calls the “Innovator” — anyone who proposes to ground values on some basis other than the inherited moral tradition: pure reason alone, biological instinct, or claims about what is scientifically “natural.” Lewis tests each candidate in turn.

Bare facts about the world, he points out, never by themselves generate a duty: no amount of description of how things are can, on its own, tell us how things ought to be, without a value already assumed somewhere in the argument — and that assumed value always turns out to be borrowed from the Tao. Appeals to instinct fail for a similar reason: instincts often conflict with one another, and something beyond instinct is needed to judge which instinct we ought to follow — which is, again, an appeal to the Tao under another name.

Lewis concludes that the Tao cannot be judged, reformed, or replaced wholesale from some neutral standpoint outside it, because no such standpoint exists; every tool anyone might use to criticize or improve traditional morality — a concern for consistency, for consequences, for fairness — is itself part of the very moral inheritance under examination. Real moral development, on his account, happens organically, from within a tradition, by someone who already largely trusts it and is trying to apply or extend it faithfully — not by an outsider proposing to tear the whole structure down and start again on supposedly cleaner ground.

Main themes

• The gap between descriptive facts (“is”) and moral duties (“ought”)
• Why appeals to pure reason or to instinct cannot, by themselves, ground new values
• Moral tradition as a living inheritance that can grow from within, but cannot be replaced wholesale from outside

Key ideas

• Bare facts never entail a duty on their own; every moral argument needs at least one value premise, and Lewis argues that premise always turns out to already belong to the Tao.
• Instinct cannot arbitrate between competing instincts; whatever settles that competition is, again, a value drawn from the Tao rather than from instinct itself.
• Rejecting inherited morality wholesale “in the name of reason” is self-undermining, since the standards used to judge and reform morality — fairness, honesty, concern for others — are themselves part of the tradition being rejected.

Important concepts

• The Innovator — Lewis’s name for anyone who claims to ground new values “from outside” the inherited Tao — from pure reason, instinct, or supposedly neutral scientific fact alone.
• Is / Ought — The philosophical observation, associated with David Hume, that descriptive statements about how things are cannot by themselves logically generate prescriptive statements about how things ought to be.
• Organic development of the Tao — Lewis’s picture of legitimate moral change: growth from within a tradition by someone who honors its spirit, rather than demolition and replacement from a supposedly neutral outside standpoint.

Related Bible references

• Micah 6:8
• Psalm 119:105
• Isaiah 8:20
• Proverbs 22:28

Practical application

• When you hear an argument that traditional morality should be discarded for something newer and more rational, ask what value the new system is quietly assuming in order to make its case.
• Notice the places where you already stand inside a moral tradition, even while trying to reform or criticize particular parts of it.

Questions for study