"Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest"
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Lewis punctures a favorite modern shortcut: the idea that authenticity is just “following your instincts.” He does it with a deceptively simple swap. Instinct becomes “people,” and suddenly the slogan sounds absurd. Of course you can’t “obey people” in the abstract; a crowd is a quarrel. By yoking the inner life to a noisy public square, Lewis exposes the comforting myth that the self speaks with one clear, trustworthy voice.
The subtext is theological and moral without being preachy. Lewis isn’t denying desire; he’s denying desire’s right to govern. “Our instincts are at war” frames the psyche as a battlefield, not a brand. That’s a direct challenge to any ethic that treats impulse as evidence of virtue. He’s also warning about the stealth authoritarianism of appetites: each instinct “will claim” supremacy, presenting its own gratification as necessity, even righteousness. Hunger doesn’t just ask for food; it argues that everything else can wait. Fear doesn’t merely caution; it insists safety is the only good. Sex, pride, comfort - all make totalizing bids.
Context matters: Lewis is writing against both naïve Romanticism (the inner voice as sacred) and the thin moral psychology that often follows it. The line reads like a preemptive strike on self-help pieties and a defense of a thicker idea of conscience: some principle outside the scrum has to adjudicate, rank, and sometimes refuse. What makes it work is the wit of the analogy and the cold realism beneath it: left to themselves, instincts don’t create harmony. They create politics.
The subtext is theological and moral without being preachy. Lewis isn’t denying desire; he’s denying desire’s right to govern. “Our instincts are at war” frames the psyche as a battlefield, not a brand. That’s a direct challenge to any ethic that treats impulse as evidence of virtue. He’s also warning about the stealth authoritarianism of appetites: each instinct “will claim” supremacy, presenting its own gratification as necessity, even righteousness. Hunger doesn’t just ask for food; it argues that everything else can wait. Fear doesn’t merely caution; it insists safety is the only good. Sex, pride, comfort - all make totalizing bids.
Context matters: Lewis is writing against both naïve Romanticism (the inner voice as sacred) and the thin moral psychology that often follows it. The line reads like a preemptive strike on self-help pieties and a defense of a thicker idea of conscience: some principle outside the scrum has to adjudicate, rank, and sometimes refuse. What makes it work is the wit of the analogy and the cold realism beneath it: left to themselves, instincts don’t create harmony. They create politics.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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