I’m sure many of you watching this have
heard of C.S. Lewis, although most of you
probably can’t remember where you know his
name from.
He is perhaps most famous for his children’s
books, The Chronicles of Narnia.
However, this video is more focused on Lewis’
academic and apologetic writings.
I want to be careful to note here that even
though Lewis talked about Sehnsucht in his
apologetic writings, he also talked about
it elsewhere.
Moreover, he is far from the only person to
talk about it and that’s why I wanted to
devote time to discussing it in class.
For other examples, see the works of :
It is a German word that is usually translated
as longing or nostalgia.
But it’s not simply missing the comforts
of home or the way that things used to be.
We see it more accurately rendered as a sense
of displacement or alienation from the object
of one’s desires.
Lewis’ most famous rendering of sehnsucht
can be found in his so-called argument from
desire:
Now, Lewis juxtaposes this desire for another world
with other desires that are more easily filled.
We are hungry and food satiates our hunger.
We are thirsty and drink satiates our thirst.
But, as Lewis noted, this longing, sehnsucht,
has no fulfillment in this world.
Now, why talk about a longing
that doesn’t correspond with this world?
That’s a really excellent question
and the answer will probably surprise you –
because it makes everything else make sense.
Lewis tackled the problem of sehnsucht in
a number of ways.
In The Problem of Pain, he wrote:
In The Problem of Pain, Lewis goes on to ponder
So, sehnsucht is an unfulfillable desire that,
although painful,
points beyond contentment in this world.
We can see it in our sense of connection to
everyone who has come before us and everyone
who will come after.
Our sense that people who came before us would
have understood us and, perhaps more importantly,
our desire to leave behind traces that will
allow those who follow to understand as well.
There Is, in fact, one institution that serves
as a temple to sehnsucht – the university.
Indeed, the university is a theoretical place
built upon the reality of sehnsucht.
The university is not merely buildings housing
faculty who teach students life skills and key concepts.
The university is an organism, and its many
faculty and students are complex and highly
interconnected organs.
These connections are, of course, not simply physical
the way an umbilical cord connects a child to its mother.
They are connections of longing.
Professors want to work at universities because
they allow faculty to pursue their longings
for knowledge, for mentoring students, and
their desire to share their findings.
It is important to remember that students
coming to university bring a whole host of
longings of their own.
They long for knowledge, acceptance, purpose,
friendship, approval, hope, and, yes, even love.
College is not simply hard because the work
is hard and tuition is expensive, it’s hard
because you learn about the longings of other
people and about your own longings.
This has been a long-winded way of saying
the question of sehnsucht is the question
of the deepest longings of a person.
What, in other words, will make people happy?
But we don’t really mean happy in the sense
of excited,
we mean happy in the sense of content.
Does money make people happy?
Does fame?
Does pleasure?
These are difficult questions to answer and,
partly, they’re hard to answer because it
is hard to figure out what would be enough
to fulfill our deepest longings.
Take two recent pop culture examples that
identify a powerful longing outside the realm
of immediate experience.
The Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga duet, “Shallow”
from A Star is Born and the opera masterpiece
“Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman.
Both sets of lyrics are devoted to exploring
this powerful, poignant, longing.
Neither song resolves this longing.
Neither song purports to know the object of
this longing.
“Never Enough” is tied for second most
popular song on The Greatest Showman soundtrack,
while “Shallow” topped the Digital Songs
sale chart for ten weeks, two and a half times
longer than her next closest single.
I think the success of songs such as these
is more than just a fluke, it is a reflection
that they resonate with people on a deeper level.
It is my hope that this lecture resonated
with you on a deeper level,
and that it helped you understand yourself a little bit better.
That’s what this module has been all about.
