The Reality of the Law

Big idea

Summary

Lewis returns to his two opening observations, that people sense a law they ought to obey and that they fail to obey it, to draw out a deeper philosophical point. He distinguishes between 'laws' that merely describe what things do, like a stone always falling when dropped, and a law that describes what should happen but often doesn't. With inanimate objects, calling something a law of nature is really just shorthand for observed regularity; there is no sense in which a stone could be blamed for disobeying gravity. Human moral law is different in kind: it persists as a real standard even though people constantly violate it, which shows it cannot simply be equivalent to a description of human behavior.

He then works to rule out easier explanations. Perhaps 'ought' just means 'the behavior I find personally convenient'? Lewis shows this fails because we blame a deliberate but failed attempt to harm us more than an accidental injury that actually hurt us, and because decent behavior often costs the person doing it rather than benefiting them. Perhaps morality just means 'what benefits society as a whole'? Lewis argues this too collapses into circularity: if asked why we should care about society's benefit, the only honest answer is 'because we ought to,' which simply restates the moral law rather than explaining it away, much as saying the point of football is to play football is true but says nothing new.

Having ruled out reducing the moral law to convenience, self-interest, or utility, Lewis concludes that this law must be a real thing, existing independently of what any of us think or want, and yet not a 'fact' in the ordinary observable sense the way rocks and weather are facts. This leads him to the striking claim that there is more than one kind of reality in the universe, an argument that sets up the next chapter's move from establishing that a moral law exists to asking what kind of power might stand behind it.

Key points

• Laws describing physical nature, like gravity, are just shorthand for regular behavior; nothing is blamed for obeying them.
• The moral law is different: it persists as a real standard people constantly break, so it cannot be equivalent to a description of actual behavior.
• We blame failed attempts to harm us more than accidental harm, showing morality is not just about what is inconvenient to us.
• Decent behavior often works against a person's own interest, so morality cannot simply mean self-interest.
• Explaining morality as 'what benefits society' is circular, since it just pushes the question back to why we ought to care about society.
• The moral law must be real and independent of human opinion, yet not an observable fact like ordinary events.

Illustrations & analogies

• Lewis contrasts a man who takes a train seat fairly with one who steals it by trickery, both equally inconvenient to him, yet only the second draws blame, showing morality is not simply about inconvenience.
• He compares moral talk to calling a stone 'the wrong shape,' arguing that we don't actually think a stone is blameworthy the way we think a dishonest person is.
• He uses the analogy of football: saying decent behavior exists 'to benefit society' is like saying football exists 'to score goals,' true but circular, since it doesn't explain why the goal itself should matter.
• He points to wartime double agents, useful to both sides yet despised by both, to show that usefulness and moral approval are not the same thing.

Notable lines

Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair.

C. S. Lewis Book I, Ch. 3 — The Reality of the Law

So you cannot say that what we call decent behaviour in others is simply the behaviour that happens to be useful to us.

C. S. Lewis Book I, Ch. 3 — The Reality of the Law

You are saying what is true, but you are not getting any further.

C. S. Lewis Book I, Ch. 3 — The Reality of the Law

For reflection and discussion

1. Lewis says calling something 'wrong' only makes sense if there is a real standard beyond personal convenience. Do you agree that morality cannot simply be reduced to self-interest?
2. Why does Lewis think that explaining morality as 'what's good for society' doesn't fully answer the question of why we ought to be moral in the first place?
3. What does Lewis mean by saying there is 'more than one kind of reality' in the universe, and why does this idea matter for his larger argument?