A Dinosaur

Abstract

Probably the most famous moral argument in Western philosophy is the popular version C. S. Lewis developed in Mere Christianity. Lewis starts with the common-sense observation that we make moral judgments about right and wrong that we take to be objectively true. This suggests a reality beyond and behind the moral law that Lewis goes on to argue is like a mind, which points ultimately to a theistic explanation. Around the same time Lewis articulated this argument, he spelled out another version for a more academic audience based on the claim that if we are to have morality at all, we must take our basic moral judgments as self-evidently true. Lewis also developed other variations of the moral argument in his essays “The Poison of Subjectivism” and “De Futilitate,” the latter of which argues that our condemnation of cruelty and indifference gives us the substance for a moral argument.