Daily writing prompt

If you could have dinner with any philosopher, who would it be?

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Honestly, the thought of dining with a philosopher probably doesn’t appeal to most people, especially if you imagine it in the most clinical sense.

You sit down at a nice restaurant. The waiter brings the menus. You’re trying to decide between steak and salmon, and the person across from you starts working through the nature of existence, the meaning of suffering, the problem of consciousness, and whether the chair you’re sitting in is actually a chair or merely your perception of a chair.

At some point, I’d probably start looking for the nearest exit.

I don’t mean that as an insult to philosophers. Some of them were brilliant people who helped shape the way civilization thinks. But brilliance does not always make for pleasant dinner conversation. There are plenty of historical figures I would admire from a safe distance without necessarily wanting to share an appetizer with them.

Frankly, I’d just as soon pick up a burger on the way home and dine with my dogs.

At least they don’t argue about metaphysics.

When I first saw the question, I pulled up a list of history’s most noted philosophers. I scrolled through the names and tried to imagine sitting across the table from each one. Socrates would probably answer every question with another question. Plato might spend the evening explaining that the meal in front of us was only a shadow of the ideal meal. Nietzsche would be exhausting before the bread basket arrived. Descartes might spend half the evening proving the restaurant existed.

And honestly, I just wasn’t feeling it.

But then I saw St. Thomas Aquinas on the list, and that took my mind in a different direction. If philosophers did not have to be limited to the ancient Greeks, gloomy Germans, or people whose portraits make them look as though they never once enjoyed a decent sandwich, then maybe I had better think about Christian philosophers.

That’s when the answer became obvious.

C.S. Lewis.

Technically, Lewis is probably more often described as a writer, scholar, apologist, and theologian than as a philosopher. But that distinction feels a little too tidy to me. Anyone who can write Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce has earned a seat at the philosopher’s table. He thought deeply about truth, morality, suffering, joy, imagination, faith, longing, and the human condition. He just had the rare gift of doing it without making you want to fake an emergency phone call.

That is no small achievement.

Lewis had the kind of mind that could handle the big questions without making them feel locked away in a university lecture hall. He could talk about theology in a way that made sense to ordinary people. He could write about temptation by inventing a correspondence between demons. He could write about heaven and hell by creating a strange bus ride from a gray city to the edge of glory. He could write about Christ by giving us Aslan.

And that may be one of the biggest reasons I would choose him.

I would want to talk to him about writing.

Not just the mechanics of writing, though I’d love to hear him talk about those, too. I would want to ask how he managed to write with such clarity and imagination at the same time. That combination is harder than it looks. Some writers are clear but dry. Others are imaginative but confusing. Lewis could be both precise and magical. He could explain a hard idea in a way that felt simple, then turn around and tell a children’s story that carried more theological weight than many sermons.

I would want to ask him about Narnia.

I read the entire series to my daughter when she was little, and yes, I read it in character. I did voices. I gave the creatures personality. I probably overcommitted, but that’s what dads are supposed to do when they read stories to their children. Those books became part of our shared imagination for a while. We walked through wardrobes, sailed on the Dawn Treader, feared the White Witch, loved Reepicheep, and knew that Aslan was not a tame lion.

I’d want to thank Lewis for that.

I’d want to thank him for understanding that children’s stories do not have to be small stories. In fact, sometimes they are the best way to tell the largest truths. A child can understand sacrifice, courage, betrayal, mercy, and redemption when those truths arrive through a lion, a lamppost, a faun, and a wardrobe. Lewis knew that imagination was not an escape from truth. It was one of the roads that could lead us there.

I’d also want to talk to him about faith.

Lewis did not come to Christianity as someone who was eager to believe. He fought his way there intellectually and spiritually. That makes his writing feel honest. He was not selling cheap comfort. He understood doubt. He understood grief. He understood longing. He understood the strange ache we feel when beauty points us toward something beyond itself.

That is one of the things I love most about his work. Lewis had a way of naming the feeling that this world is good, but not complete. That the joys we experience here are real, but they are also hints. They are signposts. They are echoes from a country we have not yet reached.

That kind of thinking appeals to me far more than an abstract debate about whether reality is real. Lewis was interested in reality, but not as a parlor game. He wanted to understand the world because he believed the world meant something. He wanted to understand longing because he believed longing pointed somewhere. He wanted to understand morality because he believed goodness was not something we invented, but something we recognized.

That would make for a better dinner than most philosophical arguments.

I don’t know where we’d eat. I suppose a pub would make the most sense. Something warm and comfortable, with wood tables, a decent meal, and enough noise in the background to keep the conversation from feeling too formal. I’d let him order whatever he wanted. I’d probably be too nervous to eat much at first, but I imagine Lewis would be the kind of person who could put you at ease.

At least, I hope he would.

And after we talked about books and faith and writing and Narnia and the strange ways God uses imagination, I’d probably ask him the question every writer wants to ask another writer.

How did you know when the work was good enough?

I suspect he would not give me an easy answer. Writers rarely can. But I think he might say something useful about honesty, discipline, humility, and obedience to the gift you’ve been given. I think he might remind me that writing is not merely about being published or praised or remembered. It is about telling the truth as faithfully as you can with the words you have been given.

That would be worth the meal.

So yes, if I could have dinner with any philosopher, I would choose C.S. Lewis.

Not because he would make me feel smarter.

Because he might make me want to think more clearly, believe more deeply, write more honestly, and look a little harder for the light behind the wardrobe door.