One of my children, when he went to college, thought that the philosophy class would be a lot like dinnertime with Dad, where we would socratically talk about ideas, to get to the truth. But, alas, he was being asked to remember dates and pivotal figures and power struggles. It would be fair to say that this child of mine did not enjoy the course, any more than I would have.
Over adult years, this child of mine, now fully grown with serious responsibilities, and whom I respect greatly, has stopped having discussions like these with me. He thought that I was sparring, or playing, with no serious point to it. As if our adult conversations were to the truth as high school wrestling is to hand to hand warfare with bayonets. I was seeing our adult conversations as more analogous to Fort Benning or Parris Island, with the truth as being the next hill to take, at possible cost to our lives.
And as anyone who has trained and fought in the military or as a first responder, there is a joy to being part of a Band of Brothers (or the equivalent), and a joy in fighting a good fight, even where there is pain and suffering and the possible loss of all good things. The stakes are high, in loving and receiving the truth, and in defending the weak and the oppressed and in defending freedom.
When Lewis uses the word 'art', we may fairly substitute 'philosophy' or 'ideas' or even the humble term, 'words'.
Lewis writes:
C.S. Lewis. An Experiment in Criticism, p. 88.A work of (whatever) art can be either ‘received’ or ‘used.’ When we ‘receive’ it we exert our senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist. When we ‘use’ it we treat it as assistance for our own activities. The one, to use an old-fashioned example, is like being taken for a bicycle ride by a man who may know roads we have never yet explored. The other is like adding one of those little motor attachments to our own bicycle and then going for one of our familiar rides. These rides in themselves may be good, bad, or indifferent. The ‘uses’ which the many make of the arts may or may not be intrinsically vulgar, depraved, or morbid. That’s as may be. ‘Using’ is inferior to ‘reception’ because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it.
