C. I. Lewis 1883 – 1964
C. I. Lewis (1883 – 1964) was an American philosopher of the Contemporary era, associated with Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy.
Clarence Irving Lewis was an American philosopher and the principal figure of the third generation of American pragmatism. A long-serving professor at Harvard, he made foundational contributions to modal logic in his Survey of Symbolic Logic and Symbolic Logic, and developed in Mind and the World Order a conceptual pragmatism in which a priori categorial schemes are chosen on practical grounds. His later Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation extended this framework to ethics, arguing that values are objective qualities of experience open to empirical investigation.
Clarence Irving Lewis was born in 1883 at Stoneham, Massachusetts, the son of a shoe-factory foreman. He took his bachelor's degree at Harvard in 1906, taught for several years to support his family, and returned to Harvard for the doctorate, taken in 1910 under Royce, Palmer, and Perry. After a long tenure at Berkeley he returned to Harvard in 1920, where he held the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy from 1946 to his retirement in 1953.
His major works are A Survey of Symbolic Logic (1918), the Symbolic Logic written with C. H. Langford (1932), Mind and the World-Order (1929), the Carus Lectures An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946), and the Woodbridge Lectures The Ground and Nature of the Right (1955). The 1918 Survey first introduced the systems of modal logic that bear his name, and Mind and the World-Order developed his pragmatic conceptualism.
Lewis taught that the categories by which we organize experience are pragmatic conventions that admit of alternatives, that empirical knowledge has irreducible elements of the given and of conceptual interpretation, and that ethics is grounded in the same kind of empirical valuation as ordinary cognition. His pragmatic Kantianism shaped Goodman, Quine, and the analytic-pragmatist tradition that runs through Sellars and Rorty. He died at Cambridge, Massachusetts in February 1964.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Pragmatism, Analytic Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“Mind and the world order require each other.”
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“There can be no a priori knowledge save by way of categorial schemes.”
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“Pragmatism is not the rejection of the a priori but the reinterpretation of it.”
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“All knowledge of the world is in some way categorical.”
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“Values are qualities of experience, open to empirical investigation.”
C. I. Lewis by topic
Frequently asked about C. I. Lewis
- When did C. I. Lewis live?
- C. I. Lewis was born in 1883 and died in 1964.
- Where was C. I. Lewis from?
- C. I. Lewis was an American philosopher of the Contemporary era.
- What philosophical movements is C. I. Lewis associated with?
- C. I. Lewis was associated with Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy.
- What was C. I. Lewis known for?
- Clarence Irving Lewis was an American philosopher and the principal figure of the third generation of American pragmatism.
- How many quotes are attributed to C. I. Lewis?
- There are 12 attributed quotations from C. I. Lewis in the 1001Philosophers collection, organized by topic.
Quotes that are not actually from C. I. Lewis
These lines are widely circulated as C. I. Lewis, but they do not appear in C. I. Lewis's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Written for the 1993 film Shadowlands by William Nicholson and spoken by Anthony Hopkins , who played Lewis.
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“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Unknown, but also attributed to Les Brown, a motivational speaker. Commonly attributed to C.S. Lewis, but never with a primary source listed.
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“You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Commonly attributed to Mere Christianity , where it is not found. Earliest reference seems to be an unsourced attribution to George MacDonald in an 1892 issue of the Quaker periodical The British Friend .
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“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but the actual source is Has been cited as being. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Has been cited as being in Mere Christianity , but it is not to be found there. It is in The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren (2002), so though the idea may not be original with Warren, these words are likely his. | Although Rick Warren's quote in 2002 is the one most often misattributed to Lewis,
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“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Paraphrased from a letter C. S. Lewis wrote to Mrs. Johnson on March 16, 1955: "A housewife's work [is] surely, in reality, the most important work in the world ... your job is the one for which all others exist", as reported in The Misquotable C.S. Lewis (2018) by William O'Flaherty, p. 63
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“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Not found in Lewis's works. | Integrity means doing the right thing at all times, without hesitation" is found in a 1943 syndicated newspaper column. Elsie Robinson, "Listen, World!" , Evening News (Harrisburg, PA), 1943-02-24, p. 10. | Integrity means doing the right thing even when no one is there
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“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Actually first said by Dr. John Trainer in 2012, as discussed on this page from William O'Flaherty, author of The Misquotable C.S. Lewis . The page also lists some of Lewis' actual quotes about children and distractions.