what?

C. S. Lewis, a writer and british gentleman, pointed out that a number of the questions we figure out are just nonsense, however we don't notice since we don't know enough; these questions would sound like "how many hours there is in a mile?"

I find the idea very suggestive; maybe half of the questions we ask are nonsense, contradictory in terms? It is well-known that a very clever question usually denotes you reckon half of the answer already. It's not only that "intellectual honesty" is an oxymoron (as in the previous post): "intelligent question" is another.

OK, I'm taking it out of context since Lewis' book is actually a sort of journal he called "a grief observed", which he wrote after his wife's death, while he was seriously in pain, suffering. He blames god for the loss, building up a rational framework to face the anguish, blames the absence, the nonsense, the nature.

Thus, he uses the fundamental questions to escape from his agony, realizing at the same time that most metaphysical questions may sound like "how many hours there is in a mile"; later, I guess, after some months, or years, he recovers, reads again the journal, finds it interesting and hands it out to the editor.


If a fundamental question were so fundamental (e.g. about the meaning of life), once I asked it to myself there would be nothing more important in my mind; I should devote myself to finding the answer. Since it is never the case, nothing seems to be so crucial until the moment, a reasonable alternative is that the question was, indeed, something not too different to how many hours there is in a mile.