by Martin Davie
In his 1941 essay ‘Bulverism, or, The Foundation of Twentieth-century Thought’ C S Lewis notes the tendency in twentieth century thought (which he attributes to the fictional Ezekiel Bulver) to attack a position that someone holds not by explaining the rational problems with their argument for holding it, but by suggesting that they only hold their position on non-rational grounds (‘you only say that because…’). Thus, he says, Freudians will suggest that people think Elizabeth I was a great queen because they have a mother-complex and Marxists will hold that people support free market economics because they are bourgeois. In other words, what people say is ideologically tainted at source and any arguments they offer can therefore be disregarded.
The problem with this approach, observes Lewis, that it gets things the wrong way round. It is only when you have gone to the trouble of examining the actual contents of someone’s thought that you are then in a position to decide whether or not they hold it on non-rational grounds. This is not something which can be decided in advance. In Lewis’ words:
‘Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is ‘wishful thinking.’ You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant – but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.’ [1]
As a further example of this point Lewis points to the way Christianity is dismissed: