Week 7_2/28/16_Religion

“But in reality the origins of this passage have very little to do with savage, or even with civilised, religion.”

“For one probable relic of Celtic religion dug out of a medieval book we meet, clear and emphatic, a score of references to Mars and Venus and Diana.”

“Their cosmology and their religion were not such easy bedfellows as might be supposed.”

“There was no direct 'conflict between religion and science' of the nineteenth-century type; but there was an incompatibility of temperament.”

Lewis, C. S. The Discarded Image. London: Bentley House, 1964. Web.

            Throughout The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis uses the word religion. The first time he used it, it was going along with the meaning of savage that was being implied. From searching through the Oxford English dictionary online, they defined the word as a state of life bound by religious vows or as the condition of belonging to a religious order. With the word religious being very similar to the word being defined, I decided to find the definition of religious. Religious means to belong to a monastic order especially in the Roman Catholic Church. In general religion and religious have to do with beliefs in God and many people who pray or attend church are religious. There are many different religions in the world, and many different ways to express being religious. A way can be as simple as saying a prayer before a meal or attending church weekly.

            Lewis’ connotation of the word is closely related to the denotation. In the sentence talking about the direct conflict between religion and science, I believe the meaning is referring to the beliefs people have in God. He is saying that science has no impact on what people believe about their religion. They have their beliefs from the start depending on how they grew up. When I searched the word in the PDF, it came up four times, but religious appears frequently in the text and they have similar meanings. The two words are just used as different parts of speech. The text also refers to different religions so the connotations may depend upon what religion is being talked about. Throughout the entire book, religion is used frequently every few pages with the word religious being thrown in multiple times too. With the word being used so often, Lewis is trying to tell us that religion was a popular topic in the medieval times. The Discarded Image is conceptually a “model” of the world in medieval times. The book is focused on the topic of theology which has subtopics being religion and beliefs.

With religion being a pretty general word, there are connotations that go along with it, but they are all similar. In medieval times the word religion could be more serious than what people think of it as now. No matter how the word is used, the main meaning of religion is always there. I would say that the denotation of the word is used more frequently than the connotated meaning. The book mentions Christian a lot which is still referring to the term, it is just a narrower topic.

Overall, Lewis uses this word on purpose. Religion plays a big role in this novel. With Aristotle being discussed, philosophical topics are also talked about. From being in philosophy class currently, religion and philosophy tie together. From reading part of this book, I believe that Lewis wants us to think into everything and have our own thoughts on what is being discussed.

Week_7_2/26/2016_Belief(s)

"Medieval man shared many ignorances with the savage, and some of his beliefs may suggest savage parallels to an anthropologist." (p 1)

"But he had not usually reached these beliefs by the same route as the savage." (p 1)

"Savage beliefs are thought to be the spontaneous response of a human group to its environment, a response made principally by the imagination." (p 1) 

"What we should describe as political, military, and agricultural operations are not easily distinguished from rituals; ritual and belief beget and support one another." (p 1)

"Sometimes, when a community is comparatively homogeneous and comparatively undisturbed over a long period, such a system of belief can continue, of course with development, long after material culture has progressed far beyond the level of savagery." (p 1)

"The content of this belief is not unlike things we might find in savagery." (p 2)

"Savage beliefs tend to be dissipated by literacy and by contact with other cultures; these are the very things which have created Lazamon's belief." (p 3)

"They would have felt that the responsibility for their cosmological, or for their historical or religious beliefs rested on others." (p 17)

Lewis, C. S. The Discarded Image. London: Bentley House, 1964. Web.

C.S. Lewis' use of the words belief and beliefs is very frequent within the first two pages of his text, The Discarded Image.  He uses it often when referring to ‘savages’ and their ways.  The Oxford English Dictionary online defines the word belief simply as “mental conviction” (Belief).  This short definition lacks much explanation or expansion.   Fortunately, under this definition is another longer one that goes more into depth.  This second definition defines belief as “the mental action, condition, or habit of trusting to or having confidence in a person or thing; trust, dependence, reliance, confidence, faith.” (Belief).  These two definitions give a fairly specific idea of what belief can be defined as. 

            This word gets thrown around a lot, especially within the first few pages of the book.  When I searched the word, it came up 33 times within the entire text, 8 within the part of the reading we did.  The fact that this word is used at least one time in the first three sentences shows that this word is important to Lewis’ ideas.  It’s used a total of five times just on the first page.  It also helps Lewis explain his statements that though ‘savages’ and those in medieval times believed in the same things, they came to these beliefs through different means.

Lewis uses the word in various contexts, though many of them pertain the ideas and faiths of ‘savages’.  The first use of the word brings together the beliefs of men in medieval times and ‘savages’, which we can assume means a man who is rather barbaric or ignorant.  In this case, the use of the word belief can mean truths held that pertain to faith, but I would argue that it could also mean truths about concrete facts, such as biology or mathematics.  This brings me to the connotation of the word belief. 

            Belief, which is a version of the word believe, doesn’t necessarily have to do with faith or trust in something.  The more in depth definition of belief uses words like trusting, confidence, and dependence, which leads you to understand that belief is more emotional than it is intellectual or analytical.  I think that belief can be a synonym of truth at times.  For example, someone could say that it is of the belief that ___ is true.  Although this seems to fit the second definition of the word belief, I would go further to say that it can also mean an idea that a vast majority or humanity as a whole accepts as true, a belief that can be proven by fact, not faith.  Not every use of this words follows this connotation though, I think that the intellectual connotation and emotional definition use of the word is used evenly by Lewis.   

            Overall, Lewis’ use of the word belief follows the same definition and connotation that we hold true today.  Every time it’s used within the first 21 pages of the book, it has relatively the same context, and is used in the same subject matter almost every time.   

"belief, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 26 February 2016.

Week 7_2/26/16_Nature

The word “nature” according to the Oxford Dictionary can be defined as the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the land scape and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to human creations. Lewis uses the word “nature pretty frequently in the beginning of Chapter I.  Lewis says: “Nature, and especially the less accessible parts of her, with spirits both friendly and hostile, is characteristics of the savage response”.  We can see on page two line 9, he explains the poet Lagmon who wrote a poem called “Brut”. In this poem Lagmon tells us how the air is inhabited by great many beings, some good and some bad. We immediately considered this to be absurd and thought of the people of that time to be savages for believing in such a thing. 

The second time we see the word “nature is on page three, line 7. “My second example is perhaps more interesting. Int he fourteenth-century Nlerinage de l'Homme by Guillaume Deguileville, Nature (personified),” p.3. Lewis describes the scientific studies of nature on how the earth orbits around the moon. We immediately believed this fact without observing it or having proof of it ourselves. A scientist came and made a claim that the earth orbits around the moon and boom we believed it. On page four, line 7. “The lower region of change and irregularity he called Nature (<pvcns). The upper he called Sky (ovpav6s).” Lewis discusses how apparently the universe and sky were divided into two regions. The top called “the sky” and the bottom called “nature”. Yet we believed in this assumption again without any source of proof or observation. Lewis also gives us a brief definition of nature on page four, line 14, when he says, “ Nature was made of the four elements, earth, water, fire, and air. Air, then, (and with air nature and with Nature inconstancy.” Here the word “Nature inconstancy” means nature that is changeable, not sticking to a predetermined course. And we see this in nature and the definition Lewis proposed to us. Due to human activity on earth the world doesn’t stay the same and is constantly changing.

The overall message Lewis is trying to convey is the concept of us looking at the medieval times and considering the things they believed in to be absurd or to be savage beliefs, whereas we ourselves constantly believe in many things such as what we read about nature and instantly believe it without proof or knowledge on the entire situation. I personally agree with Lewis when it comes to us judging the people in history by their beliefs and making it seem absurd when we ourselves do it repeatedly. I find it quite interesting about how the poet described nature’s air as being full of spirits of good and bad. We shouldn’t judge people on their previous beliefs because future generations are going to do the exact same while looking back at us and reading of all the things that we believe in. An example may be us believing that there is another so called “planet earth” that is much larger than the earth we live on now. We haven’t observed or proven this we just believe it because NASA told us it exists.

Citation source: Lewis, C.S. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. London: Cambridge University Press, 1964. Print.