C.S. Lewis, Naturalism & Idealism

After spending a good part of the past two years studying Idealism in one form or another (Kant, Hegel etc.), here are a couple of article i've read recently:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/04/its-just-so-obvious.html

http://www.stanford.edu/group/ww1/spring2000/Glenn/Lewis.htm

Edward Feser's piece is about how at the turn of the last (20th) century Idealism in some form was considered in academia as fairly obvious - so obvious, in fact, that no real argument was needed to be given for its truth.. interestingly Feser then goes on to compare this dogmatic attitude to present day naturalism - most academic philosophers (and academics in general) would today take the same stance: naturalism is so obvious it doesn't even need to be argued for anymore..

The second article is about C.S. Lewis' intellectual journey from atheism to theism, a significant part of which was his adherence to the Absolute Idealism of Hegel (and before that Berkeley and Plato), as a kind of stop-gap between the two worldviews.. it's interesting to note that Lewis was educated around the time that Feser is referring to in which Idealism was just 'taken for granted' as a worldview.. after studying Kant and Hegel myself, despite how impressive they are intellectually, i've found it extremely hard to see how anyone could really take their views seriously (and obviously most don't anymore, due to naturalism being the reigning academic paradigm)..

Interesting stuff.