In our culture we greatly emphasize freedom, and yet we are not very ambitious about what we should be free to pursue. Often our cherished ideals seems limited: "Success" boils down to money and social recognition, "love" to sex and feeling, "happiness" to a painless life. And yet, is that it? Is that all we desire? Is that what freedom is about?

Deep down, we all share the experience that precisely when we achieve what we most desired, we feel that it is not enough. Inexhaustible desire is a universal human experience, and it is also an experience that makes us most uncomfortable, because it suggests that we cannot give ourselves what we really need. We are constitutionally lacking something, and we seek it in all we pursue: success, love, happiness.

As a consequence, we should admit that there is a mysterious factor that transcends our knowledge, and that human desire cannot be reduced to the mechanisms of stimulus and response that can be observed in nature. However, since it is difficult to recognize this dynamic, desire is normally reduced to instinct, and freedom to self-determination. And yet, the expectation for "something else" still lingers in our heart, no matter how hard we try to silence it.

An author who was exceptionally aware of this mysterious aspect of the human condition, and of its deep meaning, was C.S. Lewis. This presentation will be precisely about desire, and its significance, seen through some of Lewis's works.