The Abolition of Man

*The Abolition of Man*, by C. S. Lewis, is a book that shows once again how, over a half century after his death, the Oxford don's words can still move folks, inspire contemplation, and apply to contemporary issues. *Abolition* begins via critiquing an English educational text that was sent to him for a review. However, he doesn't tell us what book it is, which seems to be his effort to be gracious. As he is using their text in his argument in a manner that rips them to shreds, this is actually quite kindly of him. If this were an actual review, instead of a segue, one would imagine that Lewis would indeed have been gentler, and also named the authors, book title, so forth.

In the course of his argument, Lewis uses what he finds to be false methods of analysis that dismiss the universal truths of absolute morality, or of absolutes period. He proceeds with what he finds to be an objectionable example of analysis, or rather of a refusal to truly analyze, and then explores the reasoning behind it. Afterward, he delves into why the lack of absolutes behind this whole methodology the English text relied on leads to lack of absolute morality. From there, he begins to articulate the difficulties and dangers this presents.

For Lewis, this is a genuine issue as without some standard to judge morality by, how can we truly make judgements of right and wrong? I mean, we can do so, Lewis writes, but only on a weak foundation. The reason, Lewis says, is that without some absolute standard, we can only appeal to some vague reasoning for our morality, such as instinct or what not. But if the instincts for "x" are not true, and can be safely ignored, why not those for "y"? In other words, why obey the instinct to preserve the species if we can safely ignore the other instincts? If our self-preservation and desire to avoid pain and unpleasantness can make us bypass one instinct, whey not others?

In the end, Lewis does have a point, but he spends so much time analyzing why the philosophy of ignoring absolutes is not valid that he does not emphasize that the fact that folks do uphold certain principles means that they must be embracing some concept of absolute morality. I mean, he does address the point indirectly, but doesn't spend much time pointing out that that is the greatest argument that absolute morality *exist*.

This absolute morality Lewis dubs "the *Tao*" after an Asian concept. But in this case, it is him expanding said concept to all cultures, religions, moralities, so on, to encompass those points of morality that all these disparate elements share in common.

I personally think that C. S. Lewis has a very good argument except for a few issues. First of all, he ignores the concept of the search for truth. While he does seem to give a few words that show that the current or historical views of morality can be incomplete and new ideas introduced to strengthen these notions, he seems like he really thinks this is rare. To me, many of the ideas in the *Tao* he outlines not just *may be* amendable to reach those lofty ideals, but indeed *must be* so.

This is strange, because Lewis himself, in another book that he introduced concurrently called *Mere Christianity*, seems to credit this idea of changing concepts in fulfilling universal truths and morality (though maybe not the *Tao* itself, to be fair) in an argument that would strengthen his position here.

The other issue that is major is that Lewis again seems to over-emphasize the commonality between the moral systems. Given how differently they define terms, and thus some systems have allowed actions that other systems find abhorrent, this is a huge, gaping hole in his argument. If he went about explaining things with more leeway, as he did in *Mere Christianity*, this would not be an issue.

Lewis seems unwilling to admit that some parts of the *Tao* can be wrong, period. Some of the shared concepts of our absolute morality can be wrong. Now, given the time he lived in, and grew up in, this is obviously going to occur. Such issues that we recognize as violating human dignity, Lewis might not have, or thought them to be not so big an issue if he did. Though others he might have agreed with us on, but not seen how to get out of it without it taking a long time. For him, this would likely be the crux of a different book, and thus not properly part of this argument.

Finally, Lewis, though he does defend science, seems to have much issue with using science if some aesthetic notions are not kept. Such as use of cadavers and animal testing being wrong as some once thought. Though his other arguments seem good, he refusal to allow that these are not evil, and to seem to rely on "because that is" types of arguments hurts his efforts and make him seem anti-science, when I don't believe he was at all.

Despite these criticisms, Lewis does have really good points overall, and warns of real dangers. For instance, he expresses some strong words for the danger of the planners that try to manipulate humanity into their concept of an ideal design. And given the danger then, and I would argue in many ways now (as I think this is rising again on both the Left and Right) of the evils of eugenics and euthanasia, this is timely. If we would only listen to his sage advice, and that of others, we would avoid these problems.

Despite several criticisms rendered, this was an intellectually and spiritually stimulating read, and made me think, truly *think*, about the good and bad of the author's arguments. And then some. For that reason, as well as the great arguments and timely warnings of perennial issues to contend with, it was truly a great read.

Rating: 4/5 Stars.

Excellent book. What Lewis was dealing with in a more incipient form (Post-modernism) is now the accepted philosophy of the day. Lewis asserts that the knowledge of the Tao (something akin to Natural Law) is shared by all men, and that value judgments proceeding from it are something more weighty than mere arbitrary subjective feelings. Lewis goes on to assert that there are first principles that are on the one hand not susceptible to proof but on the other not in need of being proved. The third section of his book warns that those who are able to "control nature" wind up being controlled by it. He makes the case that the actions of the present generation condition the possible actions of the future one, such that in a distant future you have two classes: the Conditioned, and the Conditioners. This, Lewis asserts, leads to a totalitarianism which might appear benevolent, but is nonetheless in control and which will brook no rival.

I think I need to read this book about three more times--slowly--to grasp all that Lewis says. He's an amazing thinker, and that rarest of all amazing thinkers: he is able to communicate clearly.

This is one of Lewis's shortest books, but it is dense. I know I didn't catch everything that was going on in this first reading so I'm not completely confident of my understanding (or rating), but I' ll try to give a basic overview anyway. The book's subtitle is Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools, but that is a completely inadequate description of the content. To be sure, Lewis begins by excoriating an English textbook for advocating a certain philosophy in which "all sentences containing a predicate of value are statements about the emotional state of the speaker and...all such statements are unimportant," but that is just the jumping-off point.

His criticism of the English book quickly turns into a defense for the existence of a universal, objective moral standard which he refers to as the Tao and defines as "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are." He spends the rest of the book arguing for its existence and explaining the dehumanization that he believes would occur should humanity ever succeed in completely eliminating/forsaking it (a scenario which he plays out in the N.I.C.E. institute in That Hideous Strength).

I didn't find all of his reasoning completely convincing on a first reading, and I think that (as is usually the case with such attempts) this attempts to follow the topic "to its logical conclusion" end up overblown and needlessly apocalyptic. However, there was a lot to think about here in regard to evidence for the existence of objective truth and morality (which he does not explicitly try to tie to Christian morality alone). Not my favorite Lewis book, but a good example of him at his most philosophical.

When I'm reading C.S. Lewis, I'm blown away by his writing and often think about how he's brilliant, even if (and sometimes especially because) I don't understand exactly what he's saying.

"The Abolition of Man" is made up of three long chapters which were originally three lectures that he gave about "The Tao." Here's a quote from Lewis about "The Tao":

“The Tao, which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or…ideologies…all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they posses.”

As I read this book, I had a hard time following his line of thought, and I wonder if it is because this was originally meant to be heard orally. Of the C.S. Lewis books that I've read, this is probably my least favorite so far, but mainly because I wasn't tracking with his general message. It felt like his ideas were all over the place, with no cohesion between the chapters.

I still love Lewis, I'm just not a huge fan of this book.

One cannot argue that C.S. Lewis deserves all of the accolades he has received about being one of the great intellectual forces of the 20th Century and certainly many of the criticisms as well. To be a well loved intellectual force in the 20th Century one must also generate an equal and opposite force of intellectual hatred. One need only read through the notes of Ayn Rand in the margins of her copy of “The Abolition of Man” to see her disdain for him and his thoughts.

Discounting the debate for now and discarding the the veracity of Lewis’s universal set of guiding principles, the Tao, or the way, Lewis sets out to prove it’s objective truth, while acknowledging the proof itself can only be observed, not tested. In the “Abolition of Man” Lewis presents three lectures to make his case. His case is simply that the erosion of objective truth, by the subtle replacement of truth over time with the subjective feeling of man’s base desires, if left unchecked, will lead to our downfall and ultimately the demise of our species.

In Chapter 1, “Men Without Chests”, Lewis shows examples of the how the subtle replacement of objectivity with subjectivity will lead to men of hollow character.

In Chapter 2, “The Way”, Lewis introduces what he believes to be the universal set of truth that has distinguished men from anything else. And those truths are not natural they are opposite to what we would find in nature if our selfish desires emerged.

In Chapter 3, “The Abolition of Man”, Lewis ties it all together, specifically attacking threats to the Tao, such as science, which argues that knowledge of our true self, which in the absence of the Tao, would be no different from the instinct of animals and leads to the elimination of that which makes us men.

Clearly, what makes us men, and what Lewis does not argue directly, and I’m not sure why, is our soul. Lewis is arguing the “The Abolition of Man” is the abolition of our soul. The human species would persist, but akin to animals, versus our unique human-ness, that which makes us human. Most attacks against Lewis thus come in the form that the soul itself is subjective simply because no one can prove it’s existence, therefore Lewis’s entire argument is a contradiction. The existence of a universal Tao, can only be observed, it cannot be proven. This is also subjective. The debate becomes circular and ad infinitum as well as ad nauseam. (I throw a little Latin because one benefit of reading C.S.Lewis is he always throws in a lot of Latin - my favorite of his use of Latin comes early in this book, “pons asinorum”, or a bridge of asses)

There is a poetic beauty in C.S. Lewis’s writing and everyone should read Chapter 3 of this book...the contradiction is what makes it fascinating. Nothing is more poetic than in the third chapter where he builds toward his abolition crescendo taking us through a description of how man’s victories over nature (through science and technology) will ultimately be our downfall. Of course he is speaking of the downfall of our soul. The ironic beauty of this passage is he is describing evolution...more eloquently than any scientist could have at the time...I truly wonder if he understood this while he was writing it. It is through evolution that, although we may lose our souls in the process, we will be rescued as a species. In wildness is the preservation of the world (Thoreau). It would be neat to see C.S. Lewis and H.D. Thoreau debate the “Abolition of Man”. Three Stars...it's not for everyone.

Published in 1947, but YEARS ahead of its time. This guy could see where the natural progression of governments and inventions would lead. It's some heady stuff and required some concentration to follow his words. But I like it.
Here is a sample from chapter 3:

“Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power…for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them…And we must remember also that, quite apart from this, the later a generation comes—the nearer it lives to that date at which the species becomes extinct—the less power it will have in the forward direction, because its subjects will be so few...The last men far from being the heirs of power, will be of all men the most subject to the dead hand of the great planners and conditioners and will themselves exercise the least power upon the future.”
“Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger.
“Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.”

The Abolition of Man is very different from Mere Christianity. The work seeks to rebut the false ideology of ontological reductionism. Lewis opens his work with describing the pitiful state of certain textbooks used in schools. His problem is with the false ideas attributed to value judgments—they are nothing more than statements about feelings. For Lewis, this idea is both novel and detrimental to educating students because there has always been a direct correlation between the universal Moral Law (the Tao) and our sentiments. Building an educational system with that pernicious philosophy leaves educators with two options relating to values: 1) “they must remove all sentiments…from the pupil’s minds or 2) encourage some sentiments for reasons that have nothing to do with their intrinsic ‘justness.’” The outcome is disastrous in Lewis’ mind and opposed to what we see in everyday life. He writes, “You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

The author notes the cause for such a philosophy saying, “They write in order to produce certain states of mind in the rising generation, if not because they think those states of mind intrinsically just or good, yet certainly because they think them to be the means to some state of society which they regard as desirable.” The problem for Lewis is that if value judgments are reduced to mere sentiment, what is truly good about preserving society? Furthermore, an appeal to instinct will not help the situation for people typically lack the instinct to preserve society. They seek however to preserve and protect their own. Lewis believes any attempt to construct a “new morality” will be made from “…fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess.” They are working with stolen, ethical capital which is not native to their system. People object that those who believe in the Tao are merely guilty of a fear-mongering of sorts. Society and man himself will get along quite fine without objective notions of morality. Lewis disagrees.

The final chapter seeks to elaborate on the concerns the author has with a society that reduces value judgments to nothing but mere feelings. Lewis believes that the overarching desire for subjectivity will lead to oppression and abuse. Why? He writes, “There neither is nor can be any simple increase of power on Man’s side. Each new power won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him weaker as well as stronger. In every victory, besides being the general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal car.” Our power to control and subdue nature merely leads to certain men controlling and subduing others. He writes, “For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.” Rejecting the Tao leaves the conditioners unable to produce a good man. “It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artifacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.” Such a system leads to absurdity if consistently followed through to its logical end. Man need not give up his soul for the sake of power. He closes his book rebutting the charge that his lecture is an attack on science. He rightly admonishes that reducing everything will lead to nothing but blindness. He says, “You cannot go on `explaining away’ forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on `seeing through things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to `see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”

Again, Lewis’ work is relevant to our modern-day situation. Because of the influence of certain, progressive ideologies on college campuses, the objectivity of morality is being disdained as a relic of the past. Yet, no one truly lives out such a notion. As Ravi Zacharias pointed out, “no one sleeps with their doors unlocked.” Most clear-thinking people recognize that not burning innocent children because it is wrong is more than “I feel bad about the idea of burning innocent children.” Our intuitive sense of justice needs no argument in its favor. As Lewis said, “If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.” The work does a good job of showing where such wrought subjectivism would lead—not conquering the world but being conquered by other men. This work however is not as readable as Mere Christianity. I found myself having to reread certain paragraphs multiple times to understand the point the author intended.

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was a novelist, academic, medievalist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist who held academic positions at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. He wrote many other books, such as Mere Christianity,Miracles,Problem of Pain,The Screwtape Letters,A Grief Observed,The World's Last Night,The Great Divorce,God in the Dock,Christian Reflections,The Weight of Glory, etc.

The 1947 book contains the three Riddell Memorial Lectures of the University of Durham. The first essay is entitled, "Men Without Chests," then "The Way," and finally the title essay. Although current editions of this book have the subtitle, "How Education Develops Man's Sense of Morality," the original subtitle was, "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools."

He notes in the first essay, "As Plato said that the Good was 'beyond existence' and Wordsworth that through virtue the stars were strong, so the Indian masters say that the gods themselves are born of the 'Rta' and obey it. The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself... The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being 'true.' This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as 'the TAO.'" (Pg. 28-29) He adds, "This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality of the First Princiiples of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value, It is the sole source of all value judgments." (Pg. 56)

He states in the final lecture, "Is it, then, possible to imagine a new Natural Philosophy, continually conscious that the 'natural object' produced by analysis and abstraction is not reality but only a view, and always correcting the abstraction? I hardly know what I am asking for. I hear rumours that Goethe's approach to nature deserves fuller consideration---that even Dr. [Rudolf] Steiner may have seen something that orthodox researchers may have missed." (Pg. 89)

There is also an Appendix, "Illustrations of the Tao," which explains, "The following illustrations of the Natural Law are collected from such sources as come readily to the hand of one who is not a professional historian... It will be noticed that writers such as Locke and Hooker, who wrote within the Christian tradition, are quoted side by side with the New Testament. This would, of course, be absurd if I were trying to collect independent testimonies to the TAO. But (1) I am not trying to PROVE its validity by the argument from common consent. Its validity cannot be deduced. For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it." (Pg. 95-96) He collects various texts supporting principles such as, 'The Law of Mercy,' 'Duties to Children and Posterity,' etc.

This book is much different from Lewis's other, more popular books (even though this one is sometimes packaged with them); not all of his readers may care for it.

[Throughout the years, I have written a number of reviews that have never been published online on the store. These writings comprise two types of reviews: unfinished reviews, abandoned during various stages of composition, and completed reviews that for life reasons were never posted. Of the later type, back in September 2001 I wrote a cache of work, a full sixteen reviews of several different C. S. Lewis books which have never been released. I am publishing these reviews now for the first time, over a decade after they were initially written. Mike London 10-3-2012]

"The Abolition of Man (or) Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of Englihs in the Upper Forms of School" stands as one of the single most eloquent and trustworthy defense of the Tao, the term Lewis uses to describe a universal moral code, as has been written in the twentieth century. He takes to task Alec King and Martin Ketley's "The Control of Language" (1940) and E. G. Biaggini's "The Reading and Writing of English" (1936), both of which suppose values, etc, relative and of no real consequence to the world.

Although the full title sounds more like a little read doctrinal desertation or limited only to education, thsi book is [more beyond] not limited to education matters. "The Abolition of Man", while using educational matters as its springboard, goes far beyond that topic, and focuses on universal morality.

Because they had only recently been published when Lewis was writing this, he concealed their names under ficticous ones, but he does not allow them to, as he says it, build men without chests in the school system. Lewis's terminology is that the chest, the mediator between the head, which houses reason, and the belly, which houses instinct, is vitally important for humanity to have, and by making values relative, essentially we are taking out this important element in humanity.

Lewis describes with great indignation that much of this process is unconscious to the school children who are reading these texts, and, when a few years have passed and this argument comes to his conscious, he will side with those who want to say morality is subjective simply because they have been trained to believe so, even though they do not remember the source from whence this belief came.

Lewis continues in the next to lectures to argue very convincingly against this type of thought, and shows us the great civilization have, strikingly I might add, the same moral ethical concerns, and when they have not become to fallen these civilizations generally agree on the fundamental basis of ethical structure. To any who wish to learn more about the natural law or why morality is not subjective as many of the world would have us believe, this is one of the best written defenses people who champion morality has to offer.

For those looking for additional reading by C. S. Lewis on this matter, you would do well to read "A Case for Christianity", the first part of "Mere Christianity", as well as the novel "That Hideous Strength". "Mere Christanity" sets into a Christian context what Lewis was writing about in "The Abolition of Man", and "That Hideous Strength" is an excellent fictional portrayal of the type of people who were pushing the "all morality is subjective" and why that is so damning.

*(These reviews covered all seven books of "The Chronicles of Narnia", the three novels of "The Space Trilogy", "The Abolition of Man", "The Four Loves", "A Preface to Paradise Lost", a revised version of my 2000 review of "Till We Have Faces", "Surprised By Joy", and "The Screwtape Letters".)

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was a novelist, academic, medievalist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist who held academic positions at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. He wrote many other books, such as Mere Christianity,Miracles,Problem of Pain,The Screwtape Letters,A Grief Observed,The World's Last Night,The Great Divorce,God in the Dock,Christian Reflections,The Weight of Glory, etc.

The 1947 book contains the three Riddell Memorial Lectures of the University of Durham. The first essay is entitled, "Men Without Chests," then "The Way," and finally the title essay. Although current editions of this book have the subtitle, "How Education Develops Man's Sense of Morality," the original subtitle was, "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools."

He notes in the first essay, "As Plato said that the Good was 'beyond existence' and Wordsworth that through virtue the stars were strong, so the Indian masters say that the gods themselves are born of the 'Rta' and obey it. The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself... The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being 'true.' This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as 'the TAO.'" (Pg. 28-29) He adds, "This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality of the First Princiiples of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value, It is the sole source of all value judgments." (Pg. 56)

He states in the final lecture, "Is it, then, possible to imagine a new Natural Philosophy, continually conscious that the 'natural object' produced by analysis and abstraction is not reality but only a view, and always correcting the abstraction? I hardly know what I am asking for. I hear rumours that Goethe's approach to nature deserves fuller consideration---that even Dr. [Rudolf] Steiner may have seen something that orthodox researchers may have missed." (Pg. 89)

There is also an Appendix, "Illustrations of the Tao," which explains, "The following illustrations of the Natural Law are collected from such sources as come readily to the hand of one who is not a professional historian... It will be noticed that writers such as Locke and Hooker, who wrote within the Christian tradition, are quoted side by side with the New Testament. This would, of course, be absurd if I were trying to collect independent testimonies to the TAO. But (1) I am not trying to PROVE its validity by the argument from common consent. Its validity cannot be deduced. For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it." (Pg. 95-96) He collects various texts supporting principles such as, 'The Law of Mercy,' 'Duties to Children and Posterity,' etc.

This book is much different from Lewis's other, more popular books (even though this one is sometimes packaged with them); not all of his readers may care for it.

I am not a huge fan of Lewis' writing style, but he has a habit of dealing with important topics, and he typically does well in the handling of them. Lewis' objective in this book is to diagram a concern that we should all have: the unconscious removal and maligning of fundamental aspect of the human from the world. That is, the dehumanizing of the human. Lewis presents three lectures, in doing so. The first is to illustrate how we are approaching aesthetics in human experience in a way that minimizes value and removes meaning by misplacing it. Ultimately, this entails the embracing of philosophical assumptions that we might not even realize that we are accepting. Lewis' second lecture is on "the way," which is intended to provide some sense of moral foundation and principles of practical living, but in a less than structured way. The goal is to push toward an objective foundation for reality. Finally, Lewis presents his thought that Man's control of Nature will ultimately mean the control of Man, in the sense of behavioral conditioning, eugenics, and so forth.

I thought this book was intriguing and original, and it would probably be of interest to anyone who is a fan of, say, Sir Ken Robinson, Walker Percy, and Robert Pirsig. Lewis' little book is philosophical, but well within the grasp of the practical mind. However, I should warn potential readers that Lewis makes use of a large number of Greek and Latin terms, none of which does he define in the work.

What makes this book exceptionally important is its relevance, today. Nearly every academic philosophical movement either places human perspective in jeopardy of dehumanization, or it is omitted altogether, leaving us with the difficult-to-manage task of figuring out man's place in the world. As Lewis demonstrates, this pops up in all sorts of mundane places, such as an innocent textbook for high school students. The phenomenon is felt by everyone, even if not consciously.

"The Abolition of Man" is not a very large book. There are hundreds of other massive volumes one could select in order to defend objective moral values. But C.S. Lewis wrote like no other, and in this book he clearly spells out why objective moral values and traditional morality, or what he refers to as "The Tao" (The Way") must be protected from forces who wish to warp morality to suit their own devious purposes.

Lewis begins by criticizing a text he refers to as "The Green Book" in which its authors have written in such a way that they will muddle the malleable and vulnerable minds of youth. This confusion will leave lasting impressions on the youth as they move into adulthood and it will make them incredibly skeptical about traditional morality.

Lewis handily deconstructs the progressive ethicist's logic that one can find suitable grounds for a stable morality outside of the Tao. Using examples from ancient Egypt, China, the Vikings, Judaism and Christianity, among others, Lewis demonstrates how all these cultures maintain a uniform standard - children should be cherished, the old should be respected and cared for, thievery is immoral, etc...Lewis remarks that "The Innovator attacks traditional values (the Tao) in defence of what he at first supposes to be (in some special sense) `rational' or `biological' values. But as we have seen, all the values which he uses in attacking the Tao, and even claims to be a substituting for it, are themselves derived from the Tao" (p. 41). That is, progressives that fight vehemently against traditional morality have no independent grounds to do so because they base all their animosity and attacks against traditional morality on ideas taken from the Tao. Lewis also does well in rejecting the argument that "we are just animals so we should follow our impulses", noting that this is obviously not the way that the best society is maintained.

The book is not theologically heavy, but Lewis insists that bare atheism alone isn't enough to create or justify a transcendental moral code like the Tao.

In the closing section, Lewis remarks that science, when it was first used, was employed by "those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power" (p. 78). Lewis recognized science as a wondrous body of knowledge where humans could invent things to enhance human well-being, such as medicine, transportation and other forms of technology. But Lewis also realized that many progressive scientists attach with their science their own personal biases and dogma. Science itself is a neutral knowledge; water boils at this rate, photosynthesis occurs through this process. But with evolution especially, scientists and skeptics have attached anti-Christian and anti-traditional biases to this theory so that many feel like they must choose between one or the other. You needn't look farther than the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris' of the world to see that this is plain fact. But as G.K. Chesterton wrote in his timeless classic "Orthodoxy", "If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he was outside time" (p. 24). Chesterton, along with Lewis and many other influential Christian intellectuals, know that science is no threat to the faith, but that men who seek to overthrow God and morality manipulate a neutral knowledge to suit their own nefarious ends. Lewis expands upon this in fictional form in the excellent story "That Hideous Strength". With euthanasia and other issues clawing at the door of public discourse, it's apparent that all of what Lewis said is, sadly, coming true.

This is a short book, but it has a lot of substance, and though C.S. Lewis is a renowned Christian author, The Aboliton of Man is not about Christianity or even Theism. Instead, Lewis makes a case for teaching moral character values, such as integrity, diligence, caring for the elderly and the sick, that are universal throughout various cultures. He calls this set of univeral laws the Tao.

Lewis takes issue with changes in public education, a particular textbook really, which he refers to as the Green Book. He charges that the proposed changes to the use of the English language is really a matter of philosophy and not education. If education removes sentiment from reason, ironically in the guise of reason, humans lose what makes them human and reduces their ability to reason effectively. Under this educational system, when pupils are taught moral concepts it is a product of education and not the motive, and thus creates in the mind's door a vulnerability to controllers and conditioners (of thoughts, feelings, and what is considered acceptable) who will continue to shape, or manipulate, the individuals to the outcome they desire. This is a marked change from old birds teaching the young to fly on their own.

If you take issue with political correctness and question outcome based education and the impact it has on modern society, I think you would find this book interesting. Lewis understands where this train is going as soon as it leaves the station and we are much further down the line now than when he wrote this book decades ago. His insight is astonishing as he spells out the consequences of using this philosphy in education. Lewis is also concerned over man's use of nature to conquer nature, particularly in the area of eugenics. He intelligently expounds that utopia for a few means a dead end for many others.

There must be an end to explaining away and "seeing through" things. What good is a window if the garden and the street are transparent as well? In this short book, C. S. Lewis addresses the problem produced by modern education. Those who are educating the world's youth are stealing the foundation out from under the student in order to build a "better" structure. By eliminating what Lewis refers to as the "Tao," many teachers have replaced the objective for the subjective without realizing it.

Lewis, a confessing Theist, attempts to present a case for even those who do not share like convictions. One manner of doing this is by naming the natural law, or preassigned truth, to the "Tao." There are parts of this natural law found throughout every civilization and culture, and he demonstrates this by presenting the reader with a selection of sayings from various people groups. This allows the reader to see a representation of the teaching of the "Tao" without questioning from where it ultimately comes. The purpose of the author is not to convince the reader from whence comes the "Tao" but rather to express the presence and necessity of it.

In order to substantiate his argument for the abolition of man through modern education, Lewis interacts with two authors of his time who had written a popular educational book. He demonstrates to the reader through their example that the modern educators are treating the student as a poultry farmer conditions a bird rather than an adult bird trains a younger how to fly. The former knows not for what or how he is being conditioned therefore disabling him without his recognition. He is then prone to repeat this very procedure on others.

Lewis not only criticizes the work of the current educators but he also posits a better way. He states that "the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts" (24). His point is that the current trend in education at the time of writing was to disassemble one's belief system instead of fostering it's growth. The goal of the modernist is to educate the mind so that one is able to see the error in their beliefs. The focus of Lewis however is to stress the formation of the heart. He states "the head rules the belly through the chest..." (34). The ultimate outcome of the modernist movement is the paradox that "we laugh at honour and and are shocked to find traitors in our midst" (35), In essence, a generation of "men with chests."

Reading through "The Abolition of Man" one wonders how exactly Lewis understands the "Tao". Is the "Tao" the actually grid by which one must understand the world, or is the "Tao" the outcome of seeing the world through that grid. It is true that these ethical standards are found through cultures from all ages, however, from whence came these statements of good and evil? Is it simply natural? If there is a natural law then who would be the lawgiver? These are questions which the reader is left with following the presentation of Lewis. Obviously it was not the intent of the author to deal with all the factors concerning one's worldview, however one is left to wonder. Is it possible to understand that there is a higher law and actually leave the conversation there?

If the "Tao" is actually the base from which the ethical statements found throughout the world are derived, one is left to question how one goes about teaching it. If the "Tao" is found in one's natural law or morality, does the student trust the nature of the teacher over his own nature? How did that teacher refine his own understanding of the natural law by which he has the right to teach it to others?

Lewis in the later part of his book deals with those who attempt to reason faith away. He argues that although there is a benefit to the exploration and dissection of nature, it comes at a very high price. He contends that when something has been conquered we lose part of it (84-85). Often times that which is lost is its greatest part for an object is not the sum total of its components. As if we could have a man if we were to obtain all the necessary elements in a laboratory test tube. The whole is much greater than the individual parts.

Where does the modernist take man? It takes him to a place where his heart has been torn out in exchange for the enlargement of his head. He has succeeded in providing possible alternatives for faith but has disabled his very soul. Lewis attempts to combat this heartless butchering by appealing to a natural law which much be fostered within the heart of the student by those who have followed it in their own lives.

One would do well to couple this book with a reading of Less Than Words Can Say. Mitchell in his critic on the lack of proper education and use of language postulated that in order for one's worldview to be changed he must change their language. He saw words and language as governing how one views the world. As a culture's language develops so does their ability to understand the world. Lewis however sees a greater law by which a worldview is formed. It is not language which governs one's interpretation of the facts but his understanding of the natural law which is given to each individual.

This book is small - about 113 pages in length, and that includes the notes and comments. But it is rich in thought and insight. It takes concentration to read it, but is well worth the effort.

The book consists of three essays entitled MEN WITHOUT CHESTS, THE WAY, and THE ABOLITION OF MAN. The work was written in response to a book Lewis read about public education, and Lewis takes the book to task. He doesn't mention the real title (he calls it THE GREEN BOOK and names the authors as "Gaius and Titius"). Based on some assertions made by these two authors, he feels that, if followed to their logical conclusions, their views could lead - intentionally or unintentionally - to the idea that there are no true objective standards for our world view, although he doesn't actually accuse them of doing it on purpose.

Then Lewis gives his reasons for believing that there is a basic world view which he calls the TAO (not to be confused with the Tao Te Ching, although that could be a part of it) and he gives what I believe to be a convincing case for seeing a common ground in all faiths.

After these three essays, there is a collection of quotes and statements from philosophers and thinkers from diverse sources - from the ancient Chinese and Egyptians to the Babylonians, Old Norse and Hindu thinkers, among others. He presents these to show that there is more unity than we might have originally thought. By the way - in this book he does not try to present a case for Christianity in particular, but rather that we see a commonality in human beliefs, cultural and detail differences notwithstanding.

Although the book is excellent in its insights and I highly recommend it, it must be read carefully, and it takes a lot of thought and pauses to absorb it completely. I found it to similar to "Book One" in MERE CHRISTIANITY, entitled "Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe." It also is similar to his essay "The Poison of Subjectivism" from his collection CHRISTIAN REFLECTIONS. In my opinion, these two are easier to understand at first reading.

But having said that, I think this book is worth reading and re-reading. It can be read with value by Christian and non-Christian alike.

This is my second time reading this work. But since I can't recall the first time, it doesn't count. A friend and I read this together and discussed it in the end. I was thankful for this as Lewis, while precise and simple in his writing, is often expounding on large and complex ideas. I needed another mind to sort through it with me.
I agree with most of what Lewis says in this book. The idea that one can teach children to be responsible human with the basic values and without the benefit of God is absurd a I think, sadly, Lewis ideas, while sound, will never be accepted or embraced in our modern society. It's too archaic and therefore, condemn by the very people it would most benefit.

Great things come in small packages...I realize this is a trite cliché, but in the case of Lewis's The Abolition of Man, it rings true. I picked this up for a short read while I waited for a few hours for a friend. Three days later I finished the book. This is not something you breeze through in an hour or so.
In C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, Lewis argues for a universal set of values. Regardless of what culture a man or woman comes from, there are certain values (Which Lewis refers to as the Tao) that are similar. Lewis makes a strong case for these values such as virtue, courage, and honor and the need for them in society.
While the book is very short, it will get you thinking, and it may take more than one read. I look forward to reading it again myself. If you enjoy this I would recommend The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, and How Should We Then Live by Francis Schaeffer.

The Abolition of Man is a treaty on the importance of Natural law, --an objective truth or a moral code-- that transcends time and culture. Lewis refers to this as the Tao, a system of truth that is embedded in all cultures throughout history. It is not an American or British truth, or even a western one. There are objective truths that all recognize, whether they follow them or not. As he states, he does not like the company of children, but he recognizes that as a default in him, not in children. This is similar to the color-blind man; my inability to see color says something about me, not about the existence of color.

When we stop teaching children to look for ideas and truths larger than themselves, "we have cut out of his soul, long before he is old enough to choose, the possibility of having certain experiences which thinkers of more authority than they have held to be generous, fruitful, and humane...That is their day's lesson in English, though of English they have learned nothing. Another little portion of the human heritage has been quietly taken from them before they were old enough to understand" (9). This vivisection causes society to produce "men without chests," and we somehow are surprised when people behave poorly, criminally, or, even worse, immorally. As Lewis states, "we remove the organ and demand the function."

We avoid feelings and beliefs as contradictory to the mind, to nature, to science. We seek to conquer nature in the name of progress. However, "man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man" (68). It is interesting that these talks were given during World War II, at the time when Hitler and his cronies were focused on conquering nature via eugenics and other human experimentations. How, Lewis would ask, could you say that he was wrong if there is no overarching moral standard in which torturing humans and killing the innocent are counted as wrong? Conquering nature results in conquering ourselves. The abolition of Man.

Lewis states that this book is not an argument for the existence of a theistic God, but I think it is a clear apologetic for one. How can we have moral laws and objective truths without a lawgiver and one who exists above the laws? While it is not a defense for a Christian God per se, it does point to a designer of a coherent and morally good universe.

This is a difficult work in spite of its 81 pages, but well worth the effort.

This fairly short book has three chapters. The first two are a thoughtful philosophical discussion of the fact that the basic facts about what is right and what is wrong are accessible to the reasoning mind---e.g. that honesty and courage are virtues.

The third chapter at first struck me as strangely far too pessimistic, bordering on paranoia. But let us remember under what circumstances it was written. It was the early 1940s, and Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini were brutal dictators recognizing no human rights and bent on military conquest and enslavement of the world, and no one could be sure of the outcome. Radio was barely 20 years old and movies with sound had been around for less than 15 years, and both technologies were being used as propaganda tools to get people to worship one or another sort of Great Leader. The eugenics movement in Britain and the U.S.A. had seen some success in getting people considered mentally or otherwise deficient sterilized against their wills, without due process of law, by order of people in political office. Lewis feared that biologists would soon develop technologies of the sort now called "genetic engineering", but able to make people value what their designers thought they should value. Those designers would be a small number of people able thus to control billions of people.

North Korea confirms that some of what Lewis feared is possible. As late as the beginning of 1989 few foresaw the fall of most of the communist totalitarian states.

I am somewhat surprised that Lewis thought biology would develop in the way he feared. That one can make designer babies whose values were chosen by the designers seems implausible unless one excises most of their intelligence, so that they're like loyal house pets who can obey when told to "fetch" or "roll over". Lewis understood that intelligence enables people to understand values.

The role of facebook in the Arab uprisings, and the fact that Wikipedia exists, show how mass communications technology can be liberating. Lewis can't be expected to have foreseen those developments, but because of them, we can be more optimistic than he could be.

The Abolition of Man is a series of essays detailing how the deterioration of modern education and communication has led to individuals and communities being uprooted from the moral groundings that have been consistent among cultures for thousands of years. Lewis argues that many men have become "men without chests," that is men who have no moral core and act only to the greatest advantage at any one point.

With man being "abolished", or losing his soul, men and mankind are being reduced to creatures lower than animals, with not even consistent laws and instincts. Lewis believes that any society that accepts what contemporary society teaches in its schools and communication outlets will die.

Lewis begins the work by critiquing a textbook that would have been common to many in Britain in the educated classes during the mid 20th century. He then builds this specific example to talk about common moral laws among all people throughout the world. Finally, Lewis argues that the pretentious claims of man against the world (and by proxy against God) ultimately do not make claims against God or nature, but do nothing more than allow man to turn on himself.

Lewis illustrated the world's common morality by defining all the common moral encouragements and discouragements under the term Tao. While the traditional term has been natural law, Lewis expands his definition of moral laws generally acknowledged to be true because he wishes to expand natural law to its farthest possible point by including all laws from all peoples around the world.

After beginning with a simple textbook review, Lewis to takes on one of the largest tasks anyone could possibly take on, that of calling for objective reality in a world that refuses to believe in t and prefers an increasingly narrow set of subjective thoughts and actions. Lewis is convinced that some men, in claim of defeating nature, actually redefine nature for other men (even at the smallest level between friends) and for those that redefine nature, morality becomes "I want" rather than "I should".

Probably no other book that Lewis wrote had such a direct appeal to the secular world. The Abolition of Man is an early call against post-modernism before it became evident in the popular culture (by use of the textbooks that Lewis read). Totalitarianism, divorce culture, business ethics, bioethics, government entitlements, and much of popular music today are beholden to contemporary thought which has even rejected the claims of the Enlightenment's Modernism. Man, starting from himself, in hopes of finding solutions to the world and how to live within it has collapsed on himself in actions that are manipulative and deceitful to himself and others. Lewis is attempting to get modern man to understand the futility of abject amorality before he even begins to argue for theism or even the redemptive claims of Christ. The Abolition of Man is a work of preevangelism for a postmodern world.

For the modern church, these essays speak words of encouragement and warning. The church in the present world is encouraged that they do hold words of ultimate reality that stand beyond instinct or mere knowledge education. As a word of warning, this book tells the modern church that it lives in a culture of subjective truth, and should respond accordingly, when it points towards objectivity.

Like many reviewers, I have seen a prophetic element to Lewis' apologetics in Abolition.

He offers a deep insight into the nature of man, his ambitions as they relate to science & technology, the cumulative effect of moral relativism, and argues for the existence of an objective Moral Law. He builds his argument slowly on a seemingly unrelated subject - a children's English Language text - but cleverly uses this analogy to show the objectivity of the Moral Law and the slippery ground of moral relativism.

Why the 'Abolition of Man'? Lewis notes that man's 'dominance over nature' is not at all as a species, but is only true for specific groups within the species - these groups define morality according to what is convenient to their purposes, and often to very destructive ends. Lewis envisioned a growing moral relativism that would allow for certain steps to be taken in science - like gene manipulation- and hence some future generation could effectively rob those to follow of their ability to 'be human'. In effect man will become what this 'master' generation decides it should be.

One reviewer criticised this work 'as thinly veiled apologetics', I disagree - it is not veiled at all, nor was it meant to be. It quite pointedly, though with careful thought, deconstructs the idea that man is led purely by instinct as a creature of evolution (though he accepts evolution). Somehow Lewis reached forward to counter many of today's arguments against the existence of God, religion as a product of culture and an overarching 'Tao' or 'Natural Law'.

He ends the book with a collection of teachings from a variety of cultures and beliefs (Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese and Jewish amongst others) to illustrate the universality of specific moral standards like fidelity and obligation to the poor, children and parents among others. I only wish Lewis spent more time exploring more specific arguments against Moral Objectivism, but nonetheless he demonstrates why he is the Master Moralist.

This is a marvelous book for showing the rank and file American college freshman just how he or she may have been unwittingly propagandized in the lower grades. The reigning studenty "philosophy" these days is indistinguishable from classical sophistry's arguments that "everything is relative" and -since everyone has a right to his opinion - that all opinions are necessarily of equal value. I suspect this "philosophy" began its march toward triumph in the first grade when a color blind student, Johnny, misidentified a color, the other students, being naturally cruel, laughed, and the "caring" teacher correctly instructed them not to, but for a cockeyed reason, that "Johnny has a right to his opinion!"

Taking off from such a spot, sophistic relativism invariably before long comes to be embraced by the young with complete uncritical dogmatism, the opposite idea that some judgments are more apposite than others being wholly ignored by "caring" teachers, if not dismissed as patently invidious "judgmentalism." Like Socrates before him, C.S. Lewis here does battle with such lapses in critical thinking, assuming, as did his Greek predecessor, the objective existence of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and offering instances of the recurrent Natural Law drawn from many cultures. Defending the position that values are indeed objective, Lewis aims is to call much needed attention to this bracing alternative to the regnant view that all values are necessarily subjective, and therefore, in fact, trivial. Through his usual combination of shrewd wit, clear thinking and epigrammatic style, Lewis succeeds admirably.

I've been reading many of Lewis' works lately and most have been related to Christian themes. Though this book could be considered Christian, in reality it is a general philosophical work discussing the fact that there are absolute truths recognized by all people and cultures.

This essay starts out as a review of an English grammar book that uses examples of writing to say that illustrate that when a person is claiming something is sublime; that thing is not really sublime, but only the opinion of the speaker. This launches Lewis into his essay on the fact that some things really are good and not subjective. He makes a case that it is our responsibility to teach children that there is a difference between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, etc. He notes that children need to be taught universal truths; they don't necessarily come naturally.

He uses the concept of the Tao, which are the universal moralities of almost all cultures. This universal Tao sounds a lot like what some call the conscience, or in LDS usage the Light of Christ.

I strongly agree with Lewis that there are absolute truths out there, and one of our goals in life is to learn these truths. Any society that does not embrace these truths is in trouble.

I highly recommend this essay. It got me thinking and again made me appreciate Lewis power of expressing profound truths.

In this terse discussion about ethics, specifically how education develops man's sense of morality, Lewis argues that there are indeed objective values, denying the relativistic viewpoint of those who postulate that all values are fictional creations from the subjective mind of mankind. He also convincingly demonstrates how those who educate the young inevitably influence students' views on the matter by the very language used in their schoolbooks. Far from being an abstruse topic that has little bearing on our every day lives, subjective relativism has long term adverse consequences for members of society who come under its influence. Given wide enough application, it could ultimately destroy mankind. The appendix to THE ABOLITON OF MAN is quite helpful, listing examples of common values held by people of many different societies and cultures, pointing to an objective law, or "Tao". It does indeed show that there is a desire for a way of life that is better and more just, for mercy and kindness, which is seen in the different cultures around the globe. If there were not divine law and objective values, then we humans would be - as the animals seem to be - satisfied with any 'ole way of living. This book is just a bit dense in spots (which is why I rate it with a 9 instead of 10), but still readable and quite peritinent to today's western society. For related material in a little less left brained presentation, see Lewis's THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH or MERE CHRISTIANITY.

Mr. Lewis could see where postmodern thinking was leading our world long before many of us recognized it. His work provides a depth of understanding on the topic that is still unmatched after all these years. And what is truly refreshing is his manner of instruction, not condescending and preachy but as a concerned uncle sharing his observations with the next generation. We can listen, or we can reject, but we cannot ignore his concern that we might be grabbing for what seems attractive now at the expense of something priceless. He asks us to think without giving us the answer - letting us discover that for ourselves. Modern authors attempting to convey this message can learn from that example - that it is the still small voice rather than the clanging cymbals and pounding pulpits that give us pause to think. It is a difficult subject for any writer, and I think it may be impossible for any of us to follow in Mr. Lewis' footsteps. Perhaps it is best to not attempt to add to what he has already said and instead just refer back to this standard.

This book has been recently described as not being about general education, but ('rather') about broad politics, religion and philosophy.
It is quite true that politics and philosophy (not religion, though) are central topics of the book. However, Lewis' point in these three lectures (delivered to educators and collected for this book) is that general education often _does_ involve tacit and very powerful philosophical presuppositions that have a direct and practical bearing on politics--and religion, for what it's worth. The 'religious' angle can be easily inferred from TAoM, but Lewis specifically avers from hanging any such weight on his argument. A close read of what he does, will show that Lewis doesn't even argue in favor of the existence of an objective moral standard. He does argue (and powerfully, I think) that the belief in such a standard is a necessity for a healthy society (with healthier individuals)--but that is not the same as arguing for the existence of such a standard. (Lewis restricts any argument in that direction to the simple inclusion of an appendix that illustrates some commonality of ethical principles across society. Even here, he doesn't try to hang much philosophical or religious weight on such commonalities, though. Personally, I am sorry that Lewis never devoted full attention to a rigorous examination of the theistic Argument from Morality. Possibly, this was because he believed it wouldn't serve properly as a primary argument (his use of the AfM in _Miracles: A Preliminary Study_ seems to indicate this). However, it would be misleading to market TAoM as the AfM we might wish Lewis to have written. At best, it can only serve as a tantalizing glimpse, perhaps an opening set of chapters, for such a work.)
As for what this all has to do with public education: Lewis clearly demonstrates in his first lecture, that _other_ people, who _had been_ writing schoolbooks on literature, had already been advancing the philosophy of ethical relativism (perhaps without quite realizing it, as Lewis allows); indeed, in some cases (as he ironically notes) the ostensible 'lesson' in critical appreciation of English literature consisted really of nothing else than training in philosophical relativism. This was already the situation within the British educational system; Lewis (as a respected professor of English literature) is calling attention to the fact, and (as a philosopher) is calling attention to the logical implications. At many different levels, they are implications still worth considering, today.
This, btw, is why Lewis does not report the names of the three authors and two books which he chooses for his examples: he isn't sure whether they consciously intended to make the points he is deriving from them, and doesn't want to vilify them publicly (he says as much on the first pages). Originally he was speaking to other assembled educators who would presumably be familiar with the books in question; thus keeping it 'in the family'. Lewis quite obviously has no problem whatsoever naming names and quoting specific sources, when he believes the scholars he is quoting consciously meant the notions he is attacking. Dr. I. A. Richards (whom he has a healthy respect for in other regards) and Dr. C. H. Waddington are both quoted, and their positions criticized, in this fashion. 'Gaius', 'Titius' and 'Orbilius' are presented as examples of a principle, not as scholars writing with authority (like Richards and Waddington) on the subject in question.
It is true that Lewis speculates, on several levels, about what the intentions of the pseudo-3 might be. But this is legitimate insofar as he is presenting examples of a type, not presenting individuals. This, again, is why he chose to present them pseudonymously; he does not speculate similarly about Richards or Waddington (nor does he present them pseudonymously--this shows he is, as he claims, trying to protect the pseudo-3, while still making use of the examples.)
...P>Much of the bulk of the book ... is devoted to a response to 'serious emotivism'. Nor is Lewis utterly negative about the subject: he specially emphasizes the necessary value of trained emotions, even over against a merely intellectual grasp of ethics (better, he says, to play cards against an ethical sceptic raised to believe 'a gentleman doesn't cheat',than to play against an irreproachable moral philosopher raised among cardsharps! |g|) What he does stress, however, is that emotions are not ethical justifications, nor a substitute for them. Put more shortly, he argues that a person's emotions should be based upon his ethics, and not his ethics upon his emotions. (And he distinguishes this from arguing that ethics are _not_ only a representation of our emotions.)

The book contains three closely related essays on ethical relativism. As different as Eastern philosophy (Chinese and Indian) may be from Western philosophy (Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian), all seriously reasoned and internally consistent systems of ethics (i.e., morality) accept the true existence of an absolute Good. In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis, a thinker deeply versed in philosophy, philology, and ancient literature, calls this universal ethical reference system 'the Tao' (borrowing a generalization from Confucius). He exposes the logical self-contradictions and the human negation of modern dogmas of moral relativism.
From 'Men without Chests': "The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of [students] we only make them easier prey to the propagandist ... a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head."
From 'The Way': "An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut."
From 'The Abolition of Man': "It is not that [propagandists of ethical relativism] are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside of the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artifacts. Man's final conquest has proven to be the abolition of Man."
We accept relativism in modern physics because reason has led us to it. But popularized ideas of relativism in ethics, while sometimes transparently parading as 'intellectualism' (this label attempts to discourage critical examination), must take a course which leads far from consistent logic, and which ultimately turns against itself. This book is an outstanding offering from the wonderful mind of C.S. Lewis.

A timely and prophetic defense of the authority of moral absolutes. (Prophetic not in the sense of foreseeing the future -- though a little of that too -- but of boldly speaking unpopular truths to a culture that sorely needs to hear them.) Just a few months ago Francis Fukuyama actually used the phrase "abolition of man" in a positive way to describe the effect of upcoming advances in genetic engineering and computer technology on the human race. God save us from ourselves.
The Puget Sound reader who, in an otherwise cogent critique, complained that Lewis' use of the word "Tao" to describe traditional morality is "presumptuous," couldn't be more wrong. The word's original non-metaphorical meaning (road or path) was first expanded by Confucius (not Lao Zi), who used it in precisely that sense. ("Our Master's Tao is simply this: conscientiousness and consideration.") In Lao Zi, though some passages can be interpretted as antinomian (if you favor letter over spirit), I think that as with Jesus, it was not goodness Lao Zi meant to rebuke, but people who think they can legislate it. Indeed, the history of Taoism nicely illustrates Lewis' thesis about the universality of the moral code. By the end of the second century, mainstream Daoism was interpreting Lao Zi's attack on moral rules to mean you need to follow the right rules. By the Fifth Century lists of sins appear that could have been written by a Southern Baptist preacher with Sierra Club leanings: "The sin to throw food or drink into fresh water. . . to eat by yourself when among a group. . . to abort children or harm the unborn . . to be nasty to beggars. . . to worship ghosts and spirits." (!) Yes, there are differences, as Lewis admitted, yet the similiarities are not "superficial," but show morality is universal truth rather than an arbitrary convention.
How great is the danger Lewis writes of? I am not sure. But certainly this remains a timely warning against relativism, a reductionist approach to man and to nature, and all the sordid machinations of realpoliticians and social engineers around the world. My only serious complaint is the book too short. ....

In this short book, CS Lewis takes public education for his subject, though the scope of the work goes well into the philosophical and ethical realms. The master Christian apologist is here arguing against what he sees to be the evils of moral relativism. His essay "Men Without Chests," reminiscent of TS Eliot, speaks of just what would happen if we were to lose all sense of good and bad, and chose instead to attempt to see everything in a purely `objective' way, without regard for what has been established as right and wrong.
The rest of the book develops and plays upon this idea, and Lewis examines the possibilities of a civilization who abandons "The Tao" (the name Lewis gives to a widely accepted system of moral values) and tries instead to mold its citizens into whatever form its leaders should decide. Of course, this is exactly what Lewis warns again in his Science Fiction novel That Hideous Strength, and what is also seen in the book 1984.
To me, the highlight of this book was the appendix. Superbly compiled, it is Lewis's definition of "The Tao," and features a number of moral values (such as one's obligation to society and duty to parents). The best part of this, though, is that Lewis quotes from an enormous range of sources, citing everything from Plato to Beowulf to the Bible to Egyptian writings to show that these are values which have been widely accepted throughout history. This is his basis for calling "The Tao" the ultimate system of moral values, and his justification through widespread acceptance is very good indeed.

I believe this is one of CS Lewis's best works, full of inspirational thoughts on morality and warnings against using Science to make man a part of `Nature' and losing all respect for man as a Divine Creation. His book God in the Dock goes along well with this one--many of the essays in that book coincide nicely with those in this one. Once again, CS Lewis has proven himself a master of putting things in a way everyone can understand.

If you are a parent, and worry about the decline of the quality of education in today's society, you must read "The Abolition of Man". Written 50 years ago, and eerily prophetic, CS Lewis railed against the dumbing down of education in the British school systems, from an academic standpoint, but more importantly, from the standpoint of morality and values.
As is evidenced in his other non-fiction (Mere Christianity, for example) Lewis was a believer in the doctrine of Natural Law (held by Catholics and many Protestants). This doctrine recognizes that since man was created in the image of God, traces of that image still remains. The Fall of Man severely damaged the image of God in man, but did not totally destroy it. Thus, throughout human history, integral values systems still maintain cetain laws, customs, beliefs, etc. which cross beyond religious and philosophical boundaries, and are, for the most part, common to all.
This is an example of Natural Law at work -- and this is precisely what the secular education structures, both in Lewis' day, and even more so today, wish to utterly destroy, and replace with the nonsensical notion of a society in which there is no foundational morality; no foundational "right" or "wrong". Lewis saw it happening half a century ago -- and people did not listen. The case is even more grave today. Will people listen today?

Hands down, this is my favorite C. S. Lewis book, "The Screwtape Letters," and "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" notwithstanding. This book discusses moral absolutes, and what would happen if we lose the sense of right and wrong.
This short book is only three chapters long, but, charachteristically, Lewis says more with one letter than some people say their entire lives.
Chapter One discusses MORAL RELATIVISM that is taught in schools, and how the end result of relativism is a dehumanizing process where we become "men without chests," or hearts, humans without a sense of right and wrong, and therfore no longer humans. You see this idea manifested in the varous Varsity and JV Columbine-style shootings that are now en vogue.
Chapte Two discusses this set of moral laws or traditional values, which Lewis calls "the Tao." The Tao is the source of all value judgements and is the source of "traditional morality." When people try to change this morality, they are destroying all sense of right and wrong. "The human mind hs no more power of inventing an new [moral] value than of imagining a new primary color." (p. 56) We need this absolute set of moral laws to survive.
Chapter Three discusses the result of not having any absolute values: what happens is that rightness and wrongness is reduced to appetites, "the emotional strength of [the] impuse" (p.57). These is no law, just rampant and renegade emotions controlling everything. There is no sense of fairness, just a "might makes right" law of the jungle, a la Korihor.
The one appendix contains illustrations of this moral law from differing civilizations. Memebrs of the Church of Jesus Christ would see the Light of Christ behind all of this.
This is a pressing book, and should be read with "1984," "Brave New World," "People of the Lie," and "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" in mind.
Three cheers for C. S. Lewis!

In this brief but excellent philosophical work, Lewis addresses the issue of moral relativism. He begins by evaluating the ideologies implicit in a few examples of English textbooks used in the schools at his time. He shows how these ideologies do not belong in the textbooks because of their falsity and potential to creep into the thinking of the students who use them. Lewis discusses with convincing logic that there is such a thing as objective truth/values, and that this is universally inherent to humanity. He uses the word "Tao" to collectively refer to these values, and elaborates on his intended meaning on pg. 28 of the Third Printing. He states,
"This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. it is the sole source of all value judgements. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory."
The appendix of the book shows a list of possible examples of this natural law, and how it extends across religion and culture. This agrees with the Christian belief that there is a natural order/law established by God and written on the hearts of all humanity (see Jeremiah 31:33, Romans 2:14-15, Hebrews 10:16).
The third chapter of the book offers a startling insight into the progress of science towards "conquering nature." Lewis shows how in the abscence of the natural law or a foundational set of morals, humankind will have found that it's supposed power over nature is really nothing but a certain amount of tyranny over other humans. I think a modern illustration of Lewis' point is the inaccesibility of vaccines and simple medical treatments in third world countries. Altogether "The Abolition of Man" is an excellent work that can be appreciated and enjoyed by Christians and non-Christians alike.

The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947) is unlike anything else I have read by C.S. Lewis. I am familiar with his work in apologetics and fiction. I know that vocationally his speciality was medieval English language, which is not among my interests vocationally or avocationally. I picked up The Abolition of Man presuming it to be primarily apologetic but after reading it I have concluded that is a broadly work of ethics, and particularly a critique of a change in ethics he perceived in the period shortly after World War II, a change which is continuing today.

The Abolition of Man is the published collection of the Fifteenth Riddell Memorial Lectures Lewis gave at the University of Durham. They are titled Men Without Chests, The Way and The Abolition of Man. In them Lewis asserts that there is a movement within society, sometimes subtle and sometimes not, sometimes incidental and unseen and other times being very intentional, with the object, either directly or inadvertently, to pull humanity away from what he considers to be its near-eternal and transcendent moorings. The vagueness of my attempt to describe as his project is that his primary intent is to alert his readers of what is going on, and then trusting them to understand how to respond to the changes in society as they recognize them.

In Men Without Chests he sets our vision on seeing a movement away from the idea that anything can be known objectively, so that everything we see and interact with, the previously objective, now becomes subjective. This is an idea that I think is particularly relevant in our time, i.e. “It may be true for you but it’s not true for me.”

In The Way he then demonstrates how there has long been a number of things that have been held as true, across both cultures and eras, and these truths have determined the values to which both individuals and their societies held to. Regarding the existence and purpose of a relatively universal moral law he writes, “It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory.” (56)

The consequence of denying any objective and universal moral law is not good. In The Abolition of Man he writes, “My point is that those who stand outside all judgments of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.” (78) Such persons, when in positions of power within society, will be guided by their own, independent sense of rationalism, so that “Their extreme rationalism, by ‘seeing through’ all ‘rational’ motives, leaves them creatures of wholly irrational behavior.” (79) And the end result will be humankind’s inexorable self-destruction.

Lewis gave these lectures more than 60 years ago but their themes continue to resonate today. He invites us to think critically about the issues of our day and the consequences of our actions, not merely for our good, but for the greater good. For what has always been the greater good.

Though best-known as a Christian apologist, Lewis' Abolition of Man has an appeal to an audience outside of Judeo-Christianity as well as within.
Lewis takes on those who want to rewrite morality, and for that matter, master and change human nature (hence the title). The various movements for this have changed names and some details, but from David Hume to modern-day sociolobiologists and Peter Singer, we can see a continuity of people who want to proclaim a new moral order (but at the cost of of some aspect of our humanity).
Lewis neatly dissects these would-be revolutionaries and show how any attempt to rewrite human nature must occur within the context of Nature and natural law, and that the new morals that these revolutionaries proclaim are in fact distorted, mutilated echoes of what Lewis dubs the Tao, which is a common morality written in human nature and shared by all the great faiths, philosophies and cultures. In the appendix, Lewis has selections from the great sagas, scriptures and philosophers showing how the Taoist, Confucian, Greco-Roman, Old Norse, Hindu, American Indian, and Judeo-Christian cultures all have a common morality, and while Lewis allows that these ways of life are not identical, they do point to some natural set of laws which humans should follow.
The end result is a beautiful critique of moral relativism and the more dehumanizing philosophers and pundits of modern times. In the 1-2 hours it took to go through this book (though I look forward to returning to it and pondering some parts of the book further), this has become one of my favorite Lewis books.

I am not a Christian, but I find C.S. Lewis to be one of the most rational Christians I have ever read. This is the second book I've read by him, not counting the Narnia books, and I have a sort of conditional love for his work. Here Prof Lewis takes a little story about false values accidentally impressed upon students in public schools, and takes it to a far-spanning level. He goes on to explain that values only work if they are expansions of past values, because human values are all traced back to the primordial Tao. Not every example he makes works. For example, he mentions Nietzsche's morality as an innovation without grounds, when, first of all, Nietzsche DID NOT ADVOCATE MASTER MORALITY, but rather encouraged personal morality; and Nietzsche's ideas all have solid ground in ancient Greek philosophy. Nevertheless, Prof Lewis advocates a fair system, where new ideas are acceptable, but we never forget our roots. After all, without this book, we might end up like in Brave New World. That would be bad!

The Abolition of Man is a stunningly brilliant masterpiece, prophetic in its insight. [....]
[...] apparently thinks that any appeal to right and wrong that doesn't simply quote Bible verses is anti-Christian. Obviously, he would be completely incapable of trying to convince nonChristians that there are universal moral laws that are contravened at our peril -- the very thing Lewis was trying to do. At one point this seeming "fundamentalist" wrote that only scripture teaches right and wrong and things about God. That statement is ironically contrary to scripture itself which says "the heavens declare the glory of God" and that God has revealled His ways and parts of His nature in nature itself and in human consciences (Romans 1). [He]contradicts scripture while trying to defend it. That's a pity. For if he really understood scripture or C. S. Lewis he would know that Lewis is saying what scripture says: God has universal moral laws that He has written into nature that all people can see and that have been generally recognized by major civilizations throughout the ages. Lewis also says it with breath-taking beauty.
[Another person] is even more vacuous than the fundamentalist. (That's typical.) Like the typical leftist, he imagines that he's brilliant while proving that he doesn't have a clue. He thinks he's clever by quoting Lau Tzu on the meaning of "Tao." But if he'd bothered to have really read Lewis or found out the meaning of the Chinese word "Tao", he would know that Lewis was not referring to Taoism but to the much more pervasive use of the idea of "Tao" in Chinese culture: that offered by Confucianism. [He] condemns Lewis for not getting it because he assumes that anyone who disagrees with his leftist ideology is empty-headed. His mindless repitition of Marxist ideology -- that moral systems are the mere fronts for political powers -- shows he's the one who hasn't understood Lewis. [His] statement that Lewis is merely defending "western" morals is absurd to the point of questioning whether he actually read the book -- or whether he's capable of really reading anything that isn't pre-committed to his Marxist politics. Indeed, [he] demonstrates that he's one of those men without chests about whom Lewis is writing while [the previous person]shows why modern conservative Christianity -- so frigthened of innovative communication -- has been so impotent, even though it holds the solution to the cultural problem Lewis diagnoses if only it could get over its reactionary anti-intellectualism and rigidity of mind that [he] exemplifies.

"The Abolition of Man" rejects moral relativism and affirms "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are." This very tiny book makes cogent, witty and eloquent arguments against a nihilistic view of the world that has become the foundation of postmodernist deconstructionism. To proponents of this intellectual pose he says: "...you cannot go on `explaining away' forever...You cannot go on `seeing through' things forever...To `see through' all things is the same as not to see." This book reinforced my basic instinct that the pessimistic nihilism of postmodernism (as well as Jewish post-Zionism) are wrong at some very fundamental level. It's theme was one of the forces driving me to write my own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century".

In this brief book, C.S. Lewis discusses the failing of relativism and affirms the existence of objective moral values. This system of objective values, which Lewis calls the Tao, must be granted if there are to be any values whatsoever. In a long appendix at the end of the book, Lewis shows that all (or almost all) cultures, both past and present, have affirmed some basic moral principles that are part of the Tao. Against the relativist claim that all socieities have their own moral codes, Lewis demonstrates that all humans are guided by an underlying system of objective values which they may or may not recognize.

In the third and final chapter, Lewis foresees a day when men have complete control over the destinies of the next generation. Should men achieve an take advantage of such power, it would not mean that man had finally dominated nature. Rather, it would mean the abolition of man. Unguided by the Tao, man's decisions about what future generations should be like would by guided only by natural impulses. Thus, by destroying the Tao and attempting to dominate nature, man can only succeed in destroying himself.

Like always, Lewis writes with great clarity and intelligence. "The Abolition of Man" is an enjoyable read and certainly worth checking out.

I read this on the advice of one friend and was encouraged by another. It starts out in a very surprising way. But of course! Considering this would be written to be published in 1944 a perspective of this sort on values surprises me only to the extent that it has a target at all. I at first thought the real target must be G.E. Moore but he specifically mentions Nietzsche later in the text. (This resulted in a reading of Moore's "The Refutation of Idealism" leading to a review of some of Berkeley's work...) I found his discussion of the non-dulce character of death (p. 22) interesting in light of what he would later write in "A Grief Observed." (Did anyone ever figure out who he meant by Gaius and Titius? (In response to this question I have received two replies both in agreement that "they are actually King and Ketley -- the authors of The Control of Language." (Thank you Mark) and "the real name of The Green Book is The Control of Language, by Alex King and Martin Ketley (1940). And Orbilius is (again, acc. to my notes) E. G. Biaggini, author of The Reading and Writing of English (1936)."(Thank you Kurt))). I also read a BMR review of The Future of Human Nature by Jurgen Habermas, and noticed that the basic form of most of Habermas' argument followed that of C.S. Lewis in this book. While Habermas (in translation) is concerned with the relationship hypothetical "programmers" would have with the "objects" of their efforts, Lewis refers to the "conditioners" but the reasoning is the same. I suppose this reflects the change from using behaviorism as the tool of control to our more contemporary set of computer metaphors. Notice also that Lewis uses the expression "post-humanity" p. 75. This is revisited in Fukuyama's book "Our Posthuman Future".

Though best-known as a Christian apologist, Lewis' Abolition of Man has an appeal to an audience outside of Judeo-Christianity as well as within.
Lewis takes on those who want to rewrite morality, and for that matter, master and change human nature (hence the title). The various movements for this have changed names and some details, but from David Hume to modern-day sociolobiologists and Peter Singer, we can see a continuity of people who want to proclaim a new moral order (but at the cost of of some aspect of our humanity).
Lewis neatly dissects these would-be revolutionaries and show how any attempt to rewrite human nature must occur within the context of Nature and natural law, and that the new morals that these revolutionaries proclaim are in fact distorted, mutilated echoes of what Lewis dubs the Tao, which is a common morality written in human nature and shared by all the great faiths, philosophies and cultures. In the appendix, Lewis has selections from the great sagas, scriptures and philosophers showing how the Taoist, Confucian, Greco-Roman, Old Norse, Hindu, American Indian, and Judeo-Christian cultures all have a common morality, and while Lewis allows that these ways of life are not identical, they do point to some natural set of laws which humans should follow.
The end result is a beautiful critique of moral relativism and the more dehumanizing philosophers and pundits of modern times. In the 1-2 hours it took to go through this book (though I look forward to returning to it and pondering some parts of the book further), this has become one of my favorite Lewis books.

I am not a Christian, but I find C.S. Lewis to be one of the most rational Christians I have ever read. This is the second book I've read by him, not counting the Narnia books, and I have a sort of conditional love for his work. Here Prof Lewis takes a little story about false values accidentally impressed upon students in public schools, and takes it to a far-spanning level. He goes on to explain that values only work if they are expansions of past values, because human values are all traced back to the primordial Tao. Not every example he makes works. For example, he mentions Nietzsche's morality as an innovation without grounds, when, first of all, Nietzsche DID NOT ADVOCATE MASTER MORALITY, but rather encouraged personal morality; and Nietzsche's ideas all have solid ground in ancient Greek philosophy. Nevertheless, Prof Lewis advocates a fair system, where new ideas are acceptable, but we never forget our roots. After all, without this book, we might end up like in Brave New World. That would be bad!

The Abolition of Man is a stunningly brilliant masterpiece, prophetic in its insight. [....]
[...] apparently thinks that any appeal to right and wrong that doesn't simply quote Bible verses is anti-Christian. Obviously, he would be completely incapable of trying to convince nonChristians that there are universal moral laws that are contravened at our peril -- the very thing Lewis was trying to do. At one point this seeming "fundamentalist" wrote that only scripture teaches right and wrong and things about God. That statement is ironically contrary to scripture itself which says "the heavens declare the glory of God" and that God has revealled His ways and parts of His nature in nature itself and in human consciences (Romans 1). [He]contradicts scripture while trying to defend it. That's a pity. For if he really understood scripture or C. S. Lewis he would know that Lewis is saying what scripture says: God has universal moral laws that He has written into nature that all people can see and that have been generally recognized by major civilizations throughout the ages. Lewis also says it with breath-taking beauty.
[Another person] is even more vacuous than the fundamentalist. (That's typical.) Like the typical leftist, he imagines that he's brilliant while proving that he doesn't have a clue. He thinks he's clever by quoting Lau Tzu on the meaning of "Tao." But if he'd bothered to have really read Lewis or found out the meaning of the Chinese word "Tao", he would know that Lewis was not referring to Taoism but to the much more pervasive use of the idea of "Tao" in Chinese culture: that offered by Confucianism. [He] condemns Lewis for not getting it because he assumes that anyone who disagrees with his leftist ideology is empty-headed. His mindless repitition of Marxist ideology -- that moral systems are the mere fronts for political powers -- shows he's the one who hasn't understood Lewis. [His] statement that Lewis is merely defending "western" morals is absurd to the point of questioning whether he actually read the book -- or whether he's capable of really reading anything that isn't pre-committed to his Marxist politics. Indeed, [he] demonstrates that he's one of those men without chests about whom Lewis is writing while [the previous person]shows why modern conservative Christianity -- so frigthened of innovative communication -- has been so impotent, even though it holds the solution to the cultural problem Lewis diagnoses if only it could get over its reactionary anti-intellectualism and rigidity of mind that [he] exemplifies.

"The Abolition of Man" rejects moral relativism and affirms "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are." This very tiny book makes cogent, witty and eloquent arguments against a nihilistic view of the world that has become the foundation of postmodernist deconstructionism. To proponents of this intellectual pose he says: "...you cannot go on `explaining away' forever...You cannot go on `seeing through' things forever...To `see through' all things is the same as not to see." This book reinforced my basic instinct that the pessimistic nihilism of postmodernism (as well as Jewish post-Zionism) are wrong at some very fundamental level. It's theme was one of the forces driving me to write my own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century".

In this brief book, C.S. Lewis discusses the failing of relativism and affirms the existence of objective moral values. This system of objective values, which Lewis calls the Tao, must be granted if there are to be any values whatsoever. In a long appendix at the end of the book, Lewis shows that all (or almost all) cultures, both past and present, have affirmed some basic moral principles that are part of the Tao. Against the relativist claim that all socieities have their own moral codes, Lewis demonstrates that all humans are guided by an underlying system of objective values which they may or may not recognize.

In the third and final chapter, Lewis foresees a day when men have complete control over the destinies of the next generation. Should men achieve an take advantage of such power, it would not mean that man had finally dominated nature. Rather, it would mean the abolition of man. Unguided by the Tao, man's decisions about what future generations should be like would by guided only by natural impulses. Thus, by destroying the Tao and attempting to dominate nature, man can only succeed in destroying himself.

Like always, Lewis writes with great clarity and intelligence. "The Abolition of Man" is an enjoyable read and certainly worth checking out.

I read this on the advice of one friend and was encouraged by another. It starts out in a very surprising way. But of course! Considering this would be written to be published in 1944 a perspective of this sort on values surprises me only to the extent that it has a target at all. I at first thought the real target must be G.E. Moore but he specifically mentions Nietzsche later in the text. (This resulted in a reading of Moore's "The Refutation of Idealism" leading to a review of some of Berkeley's work...) I found his discussion of the non-dulce character of death (p. 22) interesting in light of what he would later write in "A Grief Observed." (Did anyone ever figure out who he meant by Gaius and Titius? (In response to this question I have received two replies both in agreement that "they are actually King and Ketley -- the authors of The Control of Language." (Thank you Mark) and "the real name of The Green Book is The Control of Language, by Alex King and Martin Ketley (1940). And Orbilius is (again, acc. to my notes) E. G. Biaggini, author of The Reading and Writing of English (1936)."(Thank you Kurt))). I also read a BMR review of The Future of Human Nature by Jurgen Habermas, and noticed that the basic form of most of Habermas' argument followed that of C.S. Lewis in this book. While Habermas (in translation) is concerned with the relationship hypothetical "programmers" would have with the "objects" of their efforts, Lewis refers to the "conditioners" but the reasoning is the same. I suppose this reflects the change from using behaviorism as the tool of control to our more contemporary set of computer metaphors. Notice also that Lewis uses the expression "post-humanity" p. 75. This is revisited in Fukuyama's book "Our Posthuman Future".

This little book had a profound effect on my philosophy of education - that education should be initiation into adulthood, not propaganda that conditions the young for some unexplained use. It's not an easy read, and may require several attempts, but is well worth the effort. A few excerpts, if I may:

"...a hard heart is not protection against a soft head."

"The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it."

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst..."

"Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values: about the values in their own set, they are not nearly sceptical enough."

"To see through all things is the same as not to see."

Although this is probably the Lewis book most thick with philosophy, and is a bit difficult to read, it is defnitely my favorite. Since reading this book I have been haunted by Lewis's theory that in attemp to control nature we only gain control over our fellow men.
Lewis proposes that the philosophy of moral relativism, guised as freedom, is actually an archetype for enslavement for both those controlled, and those controlling. If society is reduced to no values, power becomes the only thing worth attaining. Those in power, unchecked by morals, have the ability and freedom to manipulate the subjects in any way they choose. Lewis is saying that man, in his attempt to make progress, learns to control more and more of nature. However, in his attempt to control nature he only gains control over fellow men. In giving up the Tao and allowing himself to do this, man succumbs to cruel nature which, as is obvious by this pattern, he has no control over at all.

Few authors have had as great an influence on Christian thought over the past century as C. S. Lewis. A convert to Christianity from a firm and convinced atheism, Lewis was one of the few exemplary writers who stood alone during the first half of the twentieth-century against the cresting tide of modernism and the deathly undertow of post-modernity. He taught English Literature at Oxford University, and chaired the Medieval and Renaissance English department at Cambridge University. His firm grasp on modern thought and its logical conclusions, along with his understanding of education, gave him great insight into the intrinsic metaphysical and ethical aspects of curriculum used in education.
In Lewis’ concise and oft-overlooked work The Abolition of Man (1943), he attempts to explain the use of education to manipulate the ethical consciousness of following generations. Unlike the majority of his works, this book is not only a defense of Christianity, or one of its doctrines. Rather, it attempts to defend Natural Law from modernism and its unholy offspring: relativism.
Summary and Analysis
In many ways, Lewis sums up this entire work in the opening sentence of his first chapter, “Men without Chests.” Concerning college preparatory textbooks, he states, “I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text-books” [1]. Lewis then describes an English literature textbook in his possession that teaches much modern relativistic philosophy, but very little literature.
Lewis accurately points out that children are most susceptible to assuming a teacher’s or author’s philosophical assumptions when they are least cognizant of being taught:
The very power of [the authors] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all [2].
Because children are so susceptible to influence, Lewis is deeply concerned about the type of curriculum used in educating them. In essence, he is sounding the alarm.
But why be alarmed? In the last two chapters of this three-chapter book, Lewis details the results of this modern philosophy and just how much of a departure it is from all of ancient thought. He quite clearly shows that it denies Natural Law, and to do so one must completely reject all attempts to qualitatively evaluate anything. When adherence to Natural Law is ignored, the only thing left to guide man is instinct. In the end, Lewis concludes that in attempting to abolish Natural Law, man has actually abolished himself.
Lewis excels at attacking each point of an argument clearly and concisely, while also building an impregnable fortress for his position ready for any attack. His approach in The Abolition of Man is no different. In each of the three chapters, he asks the reader to consider a primary point and then evaluates its truthfulness and outworking effects. He concludes each chapter by summing up the failure of modernism to deliver on its promises. He asks modernism to fulfill its decrees, and demonstrates its impotence.
In the first chapter Lewis builds a well-honed argument and finds the core issue hidden amongst all the bluster of modernity. Not wishing to ask his readers to take all of his concern on faith, Lewis buttresses his argument by taking examples directly from an English literature textbook titled The Green Book (a false title given by Lewis to protect the book’s authors). However, he is gracious enough to suggest that the authors may not be intentionally propagating their philosophy [3].
Lewis proposes that The Green Book’s authors may simply have fallen into teaching philosophy rather than literature due to a misunderstanding of literary criticism, or the educational needs of children. But, he states, it may be that these authors (and others like them) actually feel that certain sentiments need to be encouraged, while others are discouraged [4]. Regardless of their intent, the textbook’s effect was to teach children that morals and ideals were a matter of personal, subjective feelings. Lewis points out that this hidden conceptual training is calling for a philosophical and ethical revolt against Natural Law.
To communicate the danger this represents, Lewis explains that Natural Law teaches that man should train, or organize, his emotions to desire that which is virtuous and excellent. According to this traditional understanding of man’s relationship to reality, the mind rules the appetite through organized and well-trained emotions. Lewis then credits Alanus ab Insulis with naming these well trained and ordered emotions. He calls them the “chest” [5]. Thus if modern men desire to deny Natural Law and their need to conform to it, it will make them “Men without Chests” [6].
Critique and Conclusion
Though The Abolition of Man is an excellent book, it may be somewhat inaccessible to the average reader. Lewis assumes the reader has a working knowledge of Natural Law, modernism, relativism, and their interplay. He also references many texts from Eastern and Western literature with which the average modern reader will likely be unfamiliar. The effect can be overwhelming for readers who are not conversant in the vocabulary and forms of philosophical writings and who are unwilling to stretch themselves.
However, The Abolition of Man is an extremely important book for Christians, especially educators. In this 1943 book, Lewis detailed modernism’s use of education to affect the general populace, though his forebodings were not realized in America until the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. In his attempt to alleviate the effects of modernism brought to fruition through the inculcation of the young, he was unsuccessful. Lewis’ failure was not due to lack of trying or inept writing, however, but to the world’s deafness. As Christian parents and educators, let us not display that same deafness, but take seriously the education of our children and students.
_______________________________________
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. (1947, Reprint, New York: Collier Books Macmillan Publishing Company, 1955), 13.
[2] Ibid., 16.
[3] Ibid., 23.
[4] Ibid., 23-24.
[5] Ibid., 34.
[6] Ibid.

"The Abolition of Man" by C.S. Lewis is a somewhat quirky book of philosophy. Bearing the subtitle "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools", it begins with a rather humorous critique of an English textbook. From there, with Lewis' disagreements with the suppositions set forth, it

becomes an examination of values, with particular emphasis on how these values are learned/taught.

This may not be a treatise for everyone. Lewis does not purport to be a historical scholar or even a philosopher, and infuses his message with his belief in Natural Law, or the Tao as he calls it. He argues

that any supposedly new belief actually stems from an older one; it is merely revised for a new generation. The problem arises when one tries to refute these basic suppositions and go against the Natural Law.

"The Abolition of Man" is a quick sketch of how Natural Law plays a role in every aspect of our lives, and in the various religions that abound in the world. It is an examination of how masking opinion as

philosophy can limit instruction and undermine education.

There must be an end to explaining away and "seeing through" things. What good is a window if the garden and the street are transparent as well? In this short book, C. S. Lewis addresses the problem produced by modern education. Those who are educating the world's youth are stealing the foundation out from under the student in order to build a "better" structure. By eliminating what Lewis refers to as the "Tao," many teachers have replaced the objective for the subjective without realizing it.

Lewis, a confessing Theist, attempts to present a case for even those who do not share like convictions. One manner of doing this is by naming the natural law, or preassigned truth, to the "Tao." There are parts of this natural law found throughout every civilization and culture, and he demonstrates this by presenting the reader with a selection of sayings from various people groups. This allows the reader to see a representation of the teaching of the "Tao" without questioning from where it ultimately comes. The purpose of the author is not to convince the reader from whence comes the "Tao" but rather to express the presence and necessity of it.

In order to substantiate his argument for the abolition of man through modern education, Lewis interacts with two authors of his time who had written a popular educational book. He demonstrates to the reader through their example that the modern educators are treating the student as a poultry farmer conditions a bird rather than an adult bird trains a younger how to fly. The former knows not for what or how he is being conditioned therefore disabling him without his recognition. He is then prone to repeat this very procedure on others.

Lewis not only criticizes the work of the current educators but he also posits a better way. He states that "the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts" (24). His point is that the current trend in education at the time of writing was to disassemble one's belief system instead of fostering it's growth. The goal of the modernist is to educate the mind so that one is able to see the error in their beliefs. The focus of Lewis however is to stress the formation of the heart. He states "the head rules the belly through the chest..." (34). The ultimate outcome of the modernist movement is the paradox that "we laugh at honour and and are shocked to find traitors in our midst" (35), In essence, a generation of "men with chests."

Reading through "The Abolition of Man" one wonders how exactly Lewis understands the "Tao". Is the "Tao" the actually grid by which one must understand the world, or is the "Tao" the outcome of seeing the world through that grid. It is true that these ethical standards are found through cultures from all ages, however, from whence came these statements of good and evil? Is it simply natural? If there is a natural law then who would be the lawgiver? These are questions which the reader is left with following the presentation of Lewis. Obviously it was not the intent of the author to deal with all the factors concerning one's worldview, however one is left to wonder. Is it possible to understand that there is a higher law and actually leave the conversation there?

If the "Tao" is actually the base from which the ethical statements found throughout the world are derived, one is left to question how one goes about teaching it. If the "Tao" is found in one's natural law or morality, does the student trust the nature of the teacher over his own nature? How did that teacher refine his own understanding of the natural law by which he has the right to teach it to others?

Lewis in the later part of his book deals with those who attempt to reason faith away. He argues that although there is a benefit to the exploration and dissection of nature, it comes at a very high price. He contends that when something has been conquered we lose part of it (84-85). Often times that which is lost is its greatest part for an object is not the sum total of its components. As if we could have a man if we were to obtain all the necessary elements in a laboratory test tube. The whole is much greater than the individual parts.

Where does the modernist take man? It takes him to a place where his heart has been torn out in exchange for the enlargement of his head. He has succeeded in providing possible alternatives for faith but has disabled his very soul. Lewis attempts to combat this heartless butchering by appealing to a natural law which much be fostered within the heart of the student by those who have followed it in their own lives.

One would do well to couple this book with a reading of Less Than Words Can Say. Mitchell in his critic on the lack of proper education and use of language postulated that in order for one's worldview to be changed he must change their language. He saw words and language as governing how one views the world. As a culture's language develops so does their ability to understand the world. Lewis however sees a greater law by which a worldview is formed. It is not language which governs one's interpretation of the facts but his understanding of the natural law which is given to each individual.

This is easily the most important and prophetic book of the 20th century. It shines a light into the darkness of postmodernism, and reveals how cancerous this ideology is, and how utterly destructive it is of humanity itself. Lewis is always brilliant, but in no other work does his brilliance evoke such a feeling of righteous dread.

Its always difficult to get a good review on a book and thus a feel for what the contents may deliver. Yet, what can we expect from C.S Lewis? sure we may not agree on everything he has to say, but boy, can he write.

This book should be read for its insight, the reader then decides the merits of the arguments. But never have I said that Lewis didn't make me think a little more acutely. Just at an angle offset to the norm, its what he does here.

You can read the book in one sitting. But to take it all in will require another read, and maybe just one more after that.

Others have written much more accurate reviews, I will just use the man himself on my favourite part of the book, aptly titled "Men without chests".

"You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or 'dynamism', or self sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst...We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful" (p.26).

C. S. Lewis uses logic to emphasis the importance of natural law. He argues for absolute, objective, external morality. He highlights the dangers of relativism. He argues that science, taken to its logical conclusion does not give humans victory over nature, but allows humanity's natural urges to control the species' destiny.

I found Lewis' use of logic to be refreshing. Today's discussions are so regulated by law, culture, and political correctness that we have virtually lost the art of no holds barred debates using pure logic. Logic has become associated with intolerance, and without our even realizing it.

Having given Lewis kudos for his logic, I question the conclusions at which he arrives. In 1943 it must have seemed like the world was in a pitched battle for survival and science was the key to it. If science continued to rule human culture, his logic might carry more weight. However, I am not sure that Lewis (in this book anyway) foresaw the worldwide decline of atheism (both in percentage and actual numbers), or the rise of New Age Religion and the intermingling of world religions. Many of his ideas still have an eerie truth about them, but Natural Law (Tao as he calls it) has not been neglected. It is as central to people's search for truth as it ever was, perhaps even more so. Tolerance is in vogue today, but relativism is not as strong. They are not the same.

Nor can Natural Law lose. IF natural law is not external, but cultural, then it already does not exist. Lewis' progression IS natural. IF, however, natural law (or Tao) descibes an intrinsic understanding of morality that comes from an external source (God) it cannot lose. Humans who fail to recognize the significance lose and the period when morality is temporarily forgotten is nothing more than a momentary blip in time.

A word of warning. Logic is difficult for people to digest today. This is a small book, but some may not find it easy.

In a style that is none other that Lewis-ian, the greatest philosopher of our time examines the problem of "Men without Chests." He explores the fact that though we dismiss the "heart" and its role, we are outraged when products of the heart (eg compassion, etc) are absent from society. His brutal examination of this double standard is the much needed hard word this society needs. While too often we fall into haphazard, sloppy "It just feels good" behavior, we also cannot ignore the role of the heart as a part of the tripartite soul. Lewis calls for an active heart that is in sync with and tethered by the head (the logos). This world is greatly lacking of an understanding of cooperation between the two and Lewis examines the impact this sad phenomenom is having on contemporary culture. The Abolition of Man is insightful and profitable for both the Christian and the non Christian--whether your goal is to understand better how to love, how to impact culture, how to understand those around you or how to reverse the "follow your heart" mentality, this book is a must read.

C.S. Lewis wrote this book in 1944, but he could have written it yesterday. In this little gem, C.S. Lewis sees through the modern world view right to the core of where it goes wrong. Most writers would need several hundred pages to explain how modernity differs from the pre-modern world view; and another several hundred pages to explain the dangers of modernity. C.S. Lewis manages it in under one hundred pages. And he even makes it fun.
In a nutshell, his book is on the dangers of moral relativism, a concern which we hear much about these days. Less often do we hear the critiques which he brings to bear on the technological mindset that wants to subject nature to our own whims. The punch line is that when all is said and done, our whims can only come from nature (if we refuse to acknowledge some external source of value.) If all there is in the world is nature, then nature must inevitably win.
Virtually every page offers a fresh insight into our modern-day foibles. That he wrote this highly relevant book more than a half-century ago is testimony to the clarity of his vision.

The Abolition of Man is curious. It begins from a mere germ of an idea, inferred from an unchallenged source, and then slowly balloons until it is a diatribe against eugenics, modern education, moral relativism, egoism, secularism, scientism, Nietzche, Darwin, and Jeremy Bentham.
It's a rather audacious trajectory, and would be ludicrous if it weren't so... accurate. As the saying goes: "I'm not paranoid if they're really out to get me." Lewis makes some bold statements here, extrapolating from a relatively subtle implication in a textbook to a metaphysical humanist conspiracy. But Lewis understands Natural Law, and understand the penalties of disobedience. Consequently, the picture he paints of the evolutionary abolition of anything recognizably human in man is disturbing and all too believable.
Anyone familiar with today's college campus, or today's journalist, will realize the total victory of relativism (unless, of course, he is a relativist). Conditional eugenics, so thoroughly disgraced by the Nazis and the New Deal, is replaced by Genetic eugenics, praised and lauded ala the human genome project. Anyone who sits back and wonders what we'll do "once we crack the code," ought to read The Abolition of Man for his answer... or "Dumbing Us Down" for confirmation.

This is one of his more "scholarly" pieces, written as a diatribe against the destruction of absolutes in English education. It speaks of a deeper loss - that of values and the strength of conviction, especially in men. In the last paragraph of the first chapter ("Men Without Chests"), he writes, "We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." How much more do we see that 70 years after the book was written.
Those who have read "That Hideous Strength" will find the same issues underlying the conflict.

C. S. Lewis makes some good points. While I don't agree with some of his premises, i.e., that anyone who has an open mind about the basic premises of the Tao is an idiot, I think he had useful insights regarding efforts to form man into a certain ideal image. Ultimately, that image is based on someone, or something's, idea of what man ought to be, and that will be based on some kind of utilitarian idea that is also questionable. While we're not quite at the point at which people's bodies are being designed en mass, we have been subjected to mental programming since--forever. First by the tribe, then by religion, now by the Media, Academia, and the state. But what are their criteria based on? What end do our programmers want to achieve? One thing's certain, it wasn't openly discussed with the people, and it isn't based on anything so eternal as the Tao. Mankind stands on the verge of being able to realize Lewis's worst fears. Artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and a monopoly on deadly force will allow some people or entities to mold the minds and bodies and personalities of human beings. Will the molders be angels or demons, scientists or, God forbid, politicians? Human beings will be their slaves, in a sense. What follows may be darker and more dispiriting than any dystopian future ever conceived, and Lewis was farsighted enough to understand that.

Now this is the problem with the book: Lewis wants us to believe that there is such a thing as the Tao, the eternal truth upon which all morality is founded. But I'm not convinced that there is a Tao, in his sense. I think morality has less-than-eternal foundations. While there are some near-universals, such as "don't murder," (note that I didn't say "don't kill") there is a lot of disagreement about basic morality even within the traditional religious systems. I am a non-believer. It seems more likely to me that morality springs from more mundane considerations. It's bad to murder because none of us wants to be murdered; it's wrong to steal because we want to keep our property; don't sex up your neighbor's wife (or wives) because we want our children to be of our own bodies. Right or wrong, it's easy to see the practical reasons for these things. The same can't be said for not eating shrimp or worshipping cows.

It's the awareness of the weakness of his own ideas that leads Lewis to denounce the questioner of the Tao as an idiot. But Lewis is right: if you keep asking "why should I?" long enough, the foundations of any moral system show cracks, and worse.

While reading C.S. Lewis I often get that wistful feeling of "I so wish I had thought of that". This short collection of essays is not an exception. Subtitled "Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools", Lewis uses an elementary English text to illustrate the insinuation of moral relativism to all levels of modern society. The first essay contemplates our society filling young minds with knowledge but leaving out all sense of objective truth or value - we produce "Men Without Chests". "You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."
His second essay concerns one of his preoccupations - Natural Law or what he calls the "Tao", that sense of fair play that runs through all of us. The appendix contains bits of that Tao - culled from Old Norse, Ancient Chinese, Babylonian, Roman texts that lay down moral laws that appear to be accepted across thousands of years and widely diverse civilizations by common consent.
The final essay "The Abolition of Man" addresses the future of mankind in light of his attempts at "innovation". When the last frontier is man's own nature, the successful conquest will be man's abolition. This is frightening considering the willingness of modern liberals to play fast and loose with life, cloning, and soon, gene manipulation.
This short book is more relevant today than when Lewis wrote it and is essential reading for Christians.

I read this after devouring many other works by Lewis - including his philosophically oriented "Four Loves". In comparison to his masterful fiction and eminately readable Christian apologetics, this falls short of the mark. Discussing the Tao of life, I struggled to make heads or tails of the premise. Lewis explores the commonalities across some major world religions and provides an ethical philosophy that is tough to digest.

I read this book after a few different sources mentioned it as a book that deals with moral relativism. After reading the book, I don't know if I can honestly agree with many of the other reviewers. I have read two other books by C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity," and, "The Screwtape Letters," so I think I have some idea what his approach is. I can only hope that I am failing to grasp his ideas or that I am misunderstanding him.
Definitions: moral relativism: The position that there are no moral absolutes, no moral right and wrongs. The philosophical position that all points of view are equally valid and that all truth is relative to the individual.
moral objectivism/absolutism: The position that there are universally binding moral principles that apply to all persons, at all places and at all times.
The book discusses the consequences of moral relativism and shows the difficulty of replacing absolute ethics with relative ones. However, I don't come away from the book thinking, "All right. I know how I can show moral relativism is false in a debate. I now know how to defend absolute ethics against objections." Perhaps this simply was not the objective of the book.
The first essay (it was originally a lecture) titled, "Men Without Chests," was probably the best in my opinion. Lewis examined a common elementary level school English textbook and looked at the philosophy that it taught. The implication of the wording and the subtle way in which relativism was communicated is prophetic. This same analysis could no doubt be applied to our current trends of political correctness.
In his essay titled, "The Tao," Lewis provides much argument to show that a moral system cannot be based on instincts. However, much of his argument seems to reduce to: moral objectivism is axiomatic. He argues that there are simply moral first principles, analogous to the three laws of logic, which cannot be denied. However, I think there are many people who would deny that moral objectivism is self-evident. If I were a moral relativist, I would hardly be convinced by Lewis' arguments here.
The last section is titled, "Illustrations of the Tao." Lewis calls natural law or moral objectivism the Tao. This section simply provides excerpts from different books around the world (e.g. ancient Egyptian, ancient Chinese, Roman and Jewish) to show the universality of certain ethics.
I would have liked a book that looked at the founders of moral relativism and their opponents. Then, a point-by-point analysis of their position followed by some examples of how moral relativism fails. I would much prefer the rigorous argumentation of Dr. William Lane Craig to this. I just honestly think that relativism is false but this book does not show that fact. I am going to read and review, "Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air," by Francis J. Beckwith, Gregory Koukl; I think this book may be better at refuting relativism.

While a short book (my copy has only 121 pages) this book is about teaching and learning and how we pas our culture from generation to generation. But the reality of the book is that education is used as a foil for talking about how and why we transmit culture from one generation to the next. Because ultimately, that's what education is about, and why it's so important: because in educating children, we are telling them and ourselves about what is important, and why. A fine book, deceptively easy to read, but taking a long time to digest and reason through.

This book shows Lewis at his best and at his worst. At his best, he is a sharp social critic, a lucid expositor, and a man with an uncanny ability to get right down to the heart of the spiritual perplexities and self-deceptions that vex us in our daily lives, and open them up to the light of reason. I'm one of many people who owe a deep debt to this man, and I revere him as much as any one of the 5-star reviewers here.
But Lewis, as a writer, had serious faults as well. Though he was a generous reader, he was not a generous arguer: his idea of a good argument was to seize upon some poor schmo who epitomized some (then) current silliness and beat him senseless (with wonderfully powerful, clear, simple prose.) The spectacle is always fun, but it sometimes feels like watching Muhammed Ali boxing Peewee Herman -- you've always wanted to see it, but you have an uneasy feeling that what you're watching is not real boxing.
So to read this book properly, you need to understand two things. First, it is not a work of academic philosophy, and it won't stand up as such. That is to say, Lewis did not go out and look for the primary exponents of moral relativism of his time and wrestle them to the ground. He doesn't "survey the literature." He doesn't take on the important relativist philosophers. Instead he seizes this poor anonymous English textbook-writer by the collar and thrashes him soundly, and then goes on to pile up a sort of "everyone says so, so it must be true" defense of traditional moralities. Academic philosophers will no doubt recoil from this book in horror. It is not their sort of book, and it doesn't play by their rules.
Lewis is speaking to a different audience, and he has a different goal in mind. He's not speaking to people who have read lots of difficult philosophy: he's speaking to people who have picked up little bits of fashionable modernist dicta and have fashioned a pseudo-philosophy out of them. He wants to demolish -- not serious, reasoned relativism, but popular, stupid relativism. The person who says that "Einstein proved all things are relative, so there can't be any such thing as absolute right or wrong" -- that's the person Lewis wanted to drop on the mat. And he succeeds in that brilliantly.
The second thing you need to understand, to read this book properly, is that it is attempting to recreate some of Lewis's own journey out of relativism. And here we get to another of Lewis's faults: he wrote too fast. His pile of examples of universal morality could be mistaken for an attempt to prove that there are universal moral principles and all thoughtful moral people have always known it and stuck to them. As such, it would stand as one of the shoddiest jobs of argument ever presented. But that's not really what he's up to, though he really ought to have explained what he was doing more carefully. What he is doing is presenting, in a few pages, the experience he himself had of years of voracious reading in various traditions -- the experience of discovering that the surprising thing about the moral principles of various civilizations is not how various they are, but how similar they are. It's not an argument, really: it's just a distillation of experience.
Which is why to point out glaring omissions (where is Buddhism? What about Wittgenstein? What about the 19th-Century and the Modern theologians?) is to miss the point of this book. If you want to go find the real arguments, go read the philosophers -- you'll find that many of the serious philosophical questions about the nature of morality were not addressed, let alone settled, in this book. This book is, in fact -- though Lewis would have hated the idea -- an extremely personal one. In it you can see Lewis recreating his own progress out of nihilism and relativism. And for those whose early paths resemble his, this book can be -- as I can testify -- wonderfully illuminating, even liberating.
So don't take this book for what it is not -- a philosophical treatise, or a definitive answer to relativism. Instead, take it what it is -- a popular answer to popular "philosophy," and a report on how one man worked his way out of some of his own foolishness by clear thinking and wide reading. Lewis chose in this book to engage people where they actually live, rather than where they wish they lived: he knew that the philosophies we actually live by are much cruder than those carefully thought out and argued by professional philosophers.

The Abolition of Man is a stunningly brilliant masterpiece, prophetic in its insight. Several of the other reviewers here who gave the book is plainly deserved five stars have done a fine job of reviewing its contents. Let me respond briefly to the fundamentalist (rousaswgnr) in Campsville, CA and the leftist bigot in Vancouver, WA. Both fail to scratch the surface of the book for opposite reasons.
The reviewer in Campsville (rousaswgnr) apparently thinks that any appeal to right and wrong that doesn't simply quote Bible verses is anti-Christian. Obviously, he would be completely incapable of trying to convince nonChristians that there are universal moral laws that are contravened at our peril -- the very thing Lewis was trying to do. At one point this seeming "fundamentalist" wrote that only scripture teaches right and wrong and things about God. That statement is ironically contrary to scripture itself which says "the heavens declare the glory of God" and that God has revealled His ways and parts of His nature in nature itself and in human consciences (Romans 1). The reviewer rousaswgnr contradicts scripture while trying to defend it. That's a pity. For if he really understood scripture or C. S. Lewis he would know that Lewis is saying what scripture says: God has universal moral laws that He has written into nature that all people can see and that have been generally recognized by major civilizations throughout the ages. Lewis also says it with breath-taking beauty.
The leftist from Vancouver, WA is even more vacuous than the fundamentalist. (That's typical.) Like the typical leftist, he imagines that he's brilliant while proving that he doesn't have a clue. He thinks he's clever by quoting Lau Tzu on the meaning of "Tao." But if he'd bothered to have really read Lewis or found out the meaning of the Chinese word "Tao", he would know that Lewis was not referring to Taoism but to the much more pervasive use of the idea of "Tao" in Chinese culture: that offered by Confucianism. The humanist from Vancouver, WA condemns Lewis for not getting it because he assumes that anyone who disagrees with his leftist ideology is empty-headed. His mindless repitition of Marxist ideology -- that moral systems are the mere fronts for political powers -- shows he's the one who hasn't understood Lewis. The Vancouver, WA leftist's statement that Lewis is merely defending "western" morals is absurd to the point of questioning whether he actually read the book -- or whether he's capable of really reading anything that isn't pre-committed to his Marxist politics. Indeed, the Vancouver leftist demonstrates that he's one of those men without chests about whom Lewis is writing while the fundamentalist from Campsville shows why modern conservative Christianity -- so frigthened of innovative communication -- has been so impotent, even though it holds the solution to the cultural problem Lewis diagnoses if only it could get over its reactionary anti-intellectualism and rigidity of mind that the reviewer exemplifies.

This book is a series of three talks where Lewis illustrates the breakdown of education , from a system which embraces natural law, truth, and virtue, to one which embraces much of nothing and feeds back nothing. It is perhaps a bit dated now as teaching methods have moved on (though not necessarily in positive directions), but yet it still has much to say as we contemplate the inadequacy of our present systems and what we need to reclaim to restore them.

This is one of those books that really gets more relevant every year. The more conversations that I have with college students, the more I realize that the assumptions that he attacks here are only growing stronger and more entrenched in the places where culture is formed. He's got a good view of how the human becomes inhuman. In the last 50 years, Western cultural institutions more and more openly speak of humans as objects that can be manipulated with impunity. This is a must-read.

The writings of CS Lewis are a gift in a self-satisfied culture of secular lunacy. Virtually our entire society has lost the ability to take a notion or "feeling based" idea to its logical (and universally destructive) conclusion. The media keeps us hypnotized with sex and violence and political theatre, while the fertile soil of faith from which all our advances in science were made - are poisoned with communist and materialist and atheist thought.

CS Lewis does not want the world to be flat. He points out the Ogres in man's ideas, the Trolls in our assumptions, and the shining white castle that we ought to defend to our dying breath. Apologetics is a poor name for a fight for our very souls.

This book will not be easy for everyone, but it will be rewarding to engage with it, even if you disagree with Lewis' thinking. The series of lectures known as _The Abolition of Man_ (TAoM), which are presented here as essays, are not intended to be thorough or in-depth refutations of the positions which Lewis takes issue with. So people who complain that he doesn't successfully refute things like emotivism in this work are right - but he didn't intend to launch into that in depth. These lectures were meant to paint a portrait, to explore a perspective, and to breathe a few whispers of supporting argumentation within the space afforded. Judge his work according to what he intended to accomplish by it, and don't knock it simply because you demand more - or less - from it than what he expected to offer by it.

Many people seem to think that Lewis' is arguing, in the first section, against "Moral Relativism" (MR). While MR is an aspect of what Lewis is here concerned with, it is not what he directly addresses. Morality, popularly used, merely refers to "rules for behavior," whereas what Lewis is talking about is not directly behavior, nor rules for it, although there are behavioral implications to what he is talking about.

What he _does_ address is the problem evidenced in the grammar textbook he quotes from, that students are being taught to think of their own sentiments/value judgments as 'merely' their own emotions having nothing to do with the objects or events upon which they are passing judgment. Once, he says, you teach a student in one instance to sunder their evaluation of a thing from the thing itself (i.e., to teach that when I say that a waterfall is sublime, I'm not saying anything about the waterfall, but only about my own emotions: I'm really saying "I am having sublime feelings," not "the waterfall is such that the most proper response from me is to feel that it is sublime"), the result is that you train the student to snap any perceived link of the correspondence between their sentiments/value judgments and the world. Lewis is claiming that there are qualities intrinsic to objects and events themselves that ought to call forth proper responses in us. Furthermore, he claims that the correspondence between our sentiments/value judgments are more or less true by virtue of their conformity to an Order that roots reality, and Order which, in relation to proper sentiments/value judgments, we perceive intuitively and kinesthetically, if at all (he calls this Order "the Tao" for convenience, and demonstrates that ancient civilized cultures were quite familiar with such an experience and understanding of the world). This Tao is what we try to articulate in all of our moral principles (our moral principles, therefore, may be provisional - if we discover that the Tao is better articulated by a competing principle, we are not abandoning the Tao by discarding our old principle to embrace the one we have just come across. We are simply claiming, then, that our older principle was an inferior articulation of the Tao, and thus corresponded less perfectly with it). This is a much subtler point than what I understand many to have in mind when they rail against MR.

The final section of the book was an interesting and haunting perspective on where Lewis sees these new habits can lead if left unchecked. For any interesting related reads on education, morality and such, feel free to fire me off suggestions and/or to pick my brain, if you think it's worth picking.

C.S. Lewis's masterpiece, THE ABOLITION OF MAN, is a great work not only because it challenged the thinking of readers 50 years ago and continues to challenge our thinking today, but because it is one of the most visionary books of its time.
Here Lewis discusses not only the issue of "objective vs. subjective" truth in a fascinating (if not definitive) manner, he also brings to bear philosophical questions about the nature and epistemology of scientific research and the ethics of genetic programming and evolutionary biology. In doing so Lewis was at least 30 years ahead of his time: his answer to the question of whether ethics could possibly be the product of evolutionary forces, a current hotspot in philosophy, has been reformulated and perhaps improved upon but not yet challenged. And while his book is a tour de force on the necessity of believing in objective truth, his question about whether empirical research is inevitably "a basilisk that kills what it sees and only sees by killing" has been echoed over and over by constructionist philosophers of science in recent years.
You may not be persuaded by Lewis's arguments, but you will certainly be intrigued by the questions he raises.

Definitely the most controversial C.S. Lewis title I have read to date. He argues against relative morality and in favor of absolute morality with no stops in between. Compelling arguments, though debatable. Most interesting part of the book (for me) was the appendix with "illustrations of the Tao," which included teachings from ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Native American, and Chinese manuscripts.

During the past few centuries within discussions of philosophy there has been what might be called a revitalization of skepticism. This skepticism, what many deem free inquiry or free thought, has come to question everything, such that during the early Twentieth Century G.K Chesterton wrote that: "It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself."

The Abolition of Man is C.S. Lewis' answer to this same thought, his answer to the skepticism which has once again begun to run rampant throughout all philosophy and all society since the beginning of modernity. Despite being a well-known Christian writer, in this particular text Lewis is not arguing distinctively for a religious system, but is simply addressing the question of objectivity and first principles.

In short, Lewis' argument is in favor of what he terms the `Tao`, that is, the "practical principles known to all men by Reason" or in other words "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false." In rejecting this Tao Lewis argues that mankind has created "men without chests." They have done away with basic axioms of morality and virtue in attempt to create their own system.

Yet for Lewis this is impossible, stating that "neither in any operation with factual propositions nor in any appeal to instinct can the Innovator find the basis for a system of values." In short, in rejecting objective values the `Innovator' has placed themselves in position in which they can have no values at all, and which any attempt to create values is simply a contradiction in which they draw upon the objectivity which they reject. This phenomena, combined with man's attempts at conquering nature (first through doing away with old moralities and then through more physical means) paradoxically results in the state which the title describes, the abolition of man. Through skepticism they have done away with value and all obligation, leaving only the impulse of nature: "They are not men at all: they are artifacts. Mans' final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man."

Perhaps the summation of Lewis' argument can be found here:

"If you will not obey the Tao, or else commit suicide, obedience to impulse (and therefore, in the long run, to mere `nature') is the only course left open. At the moment, then, of Man's victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely `natural' - to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammeled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man's conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature's conquest of Man."

In the final analysis The Abolition of Man is a powerful argument for first principles, those basic and universal values which are shared by mankind, standing as self-evident and thereby forming the only foundation upon which anything - even any argument - can be based, for without axioms no progress can be made and nothing can be proven. Finishing out at a nice 81 pages the book can easily be read in one sitting and serves as wonderful food for thought while pondering the basic questions of morality and values.

Memorable Quotes:

-"No emotion is, in itself, a judgment; in that sense all emotions and sentiments are alogical. But they can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it."

-"It is no use trying to `see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To `see through' all things is the same as not to see."

-"If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is of real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary color..."

-"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

Specific Criticisms

Perhaps my only criticism of this text is that I think Lewis sets out on a futile task by denying himself the argument for theism, specifically Christianity. Granted, he does state that "In order to avoid misunderstanding, I may add that though I myself am a Theist, and indeed a Christian, I am not here attempting any indirect argument for Theism. I am simply arguing that if we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity... Whether this position implies a supernatural origin for the Tao is a question I am not here concerned with."

Personally, I don't believe that it is possible to address whether there are "ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason" without discussing (directly or indirectly) whether or not these have a supernatural origin; not only this, but sufficing to refer to these as simply the results of `Practical Reason' is to do somewhat of a disservice to the creator who put them in place. There is no basis for Practical Reason outside theism. Perhaps one might dismiss this as attempt to gain a neutral ground with his audience, designating these axioms as natural reason and using a third party term (Tao) when speaking of them. This may be a valid case, though it still encourages the autonomy of man in such cases (where it is the this rebellious autonomy which is the true issue).

More reviews at ellipsisomnibus.wordpress.com

I just finished reading this book for the fifth time; it is quickly becoming my favorite. Lewis traces how mankind will by means of poor education, faulty logic, and scientific/technological advances ultimately destroy itself, though certainly not in an apocalyptic fashion.
Lewis details how an improper education denies mankind that which makes us human, our virtue, our "Chests." By our heads we are mere intellect and spirit, and by our bodies we are mere animal and appetite; but where these two meet, the chest, is where we find our humanity.
"The Tao," which Lewis attributes an entire chapter to, is the undeniable universal laws govern and have always governed the lives of all humans (he offers evidence of the Tao from nearly every ancient religion/moral code at the end of the book). The Tao offers us the transparent window or lens with which we are able to experience this world. Those who try to step outside the Tao to criticize it, like those who accuse morality as being the construct of a power-hungry priestly ascetic caste (sound like Nietzsche?)and insist that the burden of proof lie with the accused (morality), speak utter nonsense. Thinkers like Marx and Nietzsche (whose philosophy was so paradoxical it drove him insane, he renounced all philosophy before him, including the ancient Greeks, and used logic to disprove logic), who reject the Tao, reject humanity. (I do no justice to Lewis's arguments; read the book.)
From this point we examine how mankind's conquest of Nature is really only the conquest of some men by other men. We are like the magician who surrenders more and more to Nature in return for power until he surrenders himself. We believe we are progressing, becoming more powerful, but we are not. We fail to factor in time to our equations, and fail to forsee its consequences. For example we are able to control posterity by means of contraceptives and abortion, something man has been unable to do in all of history, until now. We do not understand our own limits. We build too high on too shallow of a foundation, and our own building comes crashing down upon us.
Like Marx's notion that elements within bourgeoisie society are responsible for its destruction, Freud's notion that we all have a "death drive," Nietzsche's idea of a "will to nothingness," Derrida's wish to "transcend man and mankind," and Binswanger's observation that the artists who transcend their own captivity are eventually going to experience a lethal fall, Lewis understands that, from his beginnings, Man has sought his own destruction. But before now we had not the means, the leaders, or the ignorance to go through with it.

I was a bit frustrated with this book. Now, according to C.S. Lewis in "The Abolition of Man", there were some educators in his time who, by an extension of their teachings, would say that because I found this book frustrating, I am actually saying that I am frustrating myself. C.S. Lewis would argue (and does argue in the first lecture in this three lecture book) that that's not the case. It's nice to know.

There are some really nice points in this book, particularly in that first lecture, and it helps you understand why some characters in C.S. Lewis' book "That Hideous Strength" (an Earth-bound sci-fi that feels like George Orwell in some parts) are the way they are.

On the other hand, I found it to be a difficult book. They'd argue I'm therefore a difficult person, those educators C.S. Lewis mentions. C.S. Lewis would argue against that as well. That's nice too. It's a short piece, "The Abolition of Man", but I got through it rather slowly. There's more big words than in any other C.S. Lewis book I've read. But that isn't probably the problem, new words can be fun. No, I felt a lot of fear, and something that could be called duty in C.S. Lewis' arguments, and some of it, some of it felt a little pushy. He also mentions what I believe is a belief in evolution. He speaks of some people he doesn't agree with as "trousered apes" and when talking about man's struggle against "nature", he mentions that it has been going on for millions of years. Now, I'm a Christian, and I was a bit shocked at this, even though I kind of figured that C.S. Lewis believed this sort of thing from some comments in "Reflections on the Psalms". A lot of people, who believe in creation, quote books like "Mere Christianity" all the time. Who knew, you know?

Anyway, I was reading the "Tao Te Ching", the text close to the heart of Taoists (which C.S. Lewis alludes to in "The Abolition of Man"), and I came across something interesting in the 11th chapter/poem there.

It said:

"If you hold ever fast
To that most ancient Way,
You may govern today.
Call truly that knowledge
Of primal beginnings
The clue to the Way."

Now, "The Abolition of Man" is about education, and of the value of things, both morally and of ancient and, for want of a better word, archetypal things. It is also about those who lead, who govern and adminsiter said education.

Jesus said, according to at least one of the gospel accounts that he was the Way, the Truth and the Life. This is only a theory, but maybe C.S. Lewis, being familiar with the Tao, was investigating knowledge of "primal beginnings" as "a clue to the Way" (i.e. Christ) in his dabbling with the theory of evolution. I mean, to really know you'd have to ask him.

If you're interested in C.S. Lewis' views in this book (regarding values and such), "That Hideous Strength" (which was also written during the second world war, as "The Abolition of Man" was) is a very vivid and enjoyable revelation of them. If you're after my recommendation, I'd read that before this one. Enjoy this one though.

This is a book by C.S. Lewis. What more needs to be said? Lewis never did write one bad book, whether he was writing about fantasy, sci-fi, philosophy, criticism, or whatever. In this small book (less than 100 pages) Lewis examines what is wrong with modern education and what will be the end result of the current (even today) trend: the abolition of man. Enlightening and prophetic reading.

After reading this essay I have been introduced to a new way of thinking. I can see what my responsibility as a Believer is. When I reach heaven I want to hear these words, "Well done my good and faithful servant". God has things he wants us to learn and through this book I believe many will receive a lot of insight into living as a true believer.

The Weight of Glory is a book that is made up of a group of essays. Although they are unrelated, they bring much clarity to the way we think as Christians. These essays will provide encouragement, joy and peace to those who read it. Lewis focuses on what it means to be children of God. He shows that while cultures and nations are all mortal things they will come to an end. It is humans that are truly immortal in that we will live with God long after this world is gone.

"The Weight of Glory" expresses an emotion that is described as "our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off." Lewis writes this through his many excerpts about different aspects of the church, family and Christian living. In the piece titled "Membership," he explains the meaning of the term through biblical texts. One in particular is "one body with many parts", as opposed to the more modern idea of membership as all people being equal.

Overall this book was worth the time to read. It is filled with insights that I had never understood or seen before. "The Weight of Glory", is a thoughtfully crafted book of essays filled with scripturally based logic. It is the definition of a "must read" book.

A classic analysis of our educational and ethical decline. "We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gelding be fruitful." Read this book. Share it with your friends.

Why such a foreboding title for a book on education? Lewis starts his book with a critique of a textbook for elementary schoolchildren on English, but goes on to draw conclusions from the book's authors' worldview about the ultimate end of the quest for subjective ethics. It is Lewis' thesis that ethics do not come from man, and any attempt to create a "new" ethic starting from man will inevitably result in the annihilation of both ethics and the human race. In the light of Western society's journey through modernism and into post-modernism, this little book just gets more and more timely with every passing day. It also contains a helpful appendix, Illustrations from the Tao, which shows that the basic principles of ethics are universal: common to all cultures and all times.

Lewis is truly prophetic in understanding the trajectory of modernism worldviews and it's impact on culture and society. Huxley in Brave New World and Lewis in The Abolition of Man start from very different places but arrive at the same place. I strongly recommend this as an opportunity to take your presuppositions about life and examining them through a new lens.

Absolutely great- a series of radio lectures on the demise of culture . Notable ; Society is growing "men without chests". Should be required reading for teacher training programs ,and in t both secondary and college classrooms..

I would recommend this title for either of two types of reader. The academic minded reader who has neither the time nor patience for fiction or allegory will find a concise treatment covering most of Lewis' core thinking. Lewis fans of a less intellectual bent may find this an excellent introduction to the academic disciplines. Here are all the same concepts introduced in Lewis' children's books and science fiction but rendered for the Oxford crowd. Being familiar with the concepts you may find the process of translation much more manageable than you have found with other scholarly texts. Of course the basic problems of critical thinking and moral responsibility are as timeless as ever. With a careful reading I believe you will find more challenging questions than pat answers.

A perfectly reasoned defence of morality and natural law, and one of the few books quite indispensible for anyone who wishes to be morally-educated in the modern world. It does not preach or push a particular line, but simply proves certain facts about morality by logic. A short work, it is written is a clear lucid style and anyone who finds it "difficult" is obviously of such low intellect that they should take up a metally-undemanding trade.

Abolition of Man, dealing with a fundamental question as it does, also has suggestions about Lewis's feelings towards Dr. Rudolf Steiner's work -- namely Anthroposophy. In a way this is more fundamental than the question of the Abolition of Man -- in that Lewis's friend, Owen Barfield, spent many years studying and applying Anthroposophy which Lewis in various ways throughout his life contested. (cf. Pilgrim's Regress, by Lewis) Lewis says in the Abolition that Dr. Steiner may indeed have seen what he claims. This is a curious remark of his -- and I would be interested to know if anyone knows more about this apparent change of heart. For Lewis to begin to affirm Anthroposophy goes much further than the argument of the book to point a direction of restoring Man to the world.

This book offers three essays: Men Without Chests, The Way, and The Abolition of Man. The first two form a coherent whole. They should lead logically to the third, which I prefer to consider separately. At their core, these first two 1944 essays address a cultural attitude that had been building at least since the 1920s, and that came to the forefront in the later part of the century. That attitude has many variations and names including post-modernism and post-structuralism, which hold at their core the rejection of any social or esthetic theory as inherently superior to another. I find it easy to dismiss by applying its logic to itself, but Lewis gives a clear and well-developed argument for the vacuity of such nihilism. That foundation lies in Lewis's Way, a kind of law of human nature that can be found across nearly all cultures and all centuries that have left records. Although he borrows from Eastern tradition in using the term 'The Way,' most of his historical support lies within the Western canon. Then within this body of thought, he demonstrates how deconstruction not only collapses through internal inconsistency, it goes against the grain so empirically visible in all of human doings.

The third essay, from which the book gets its title, I find less compelling. Although he claims not to be anti-scientific, he seems to find little worth salvage in the intellectual exercise of understanding the physical world, especially the living portions of that world. Lewis appears to lack the scientists' experience of wonder, awe, and underlying unity that come from deeper understanding, experiences that can be profoundly moving and motivating. Based on his own lack, Lewis assumes that there is no such awe, so that understanding must somehow omit or even run counter to the feelings and values that make us human - an error of ignorance that C.P. Snow's essay on The Two Cultures (Canto) drew into sharp relief.

Lewis then observes that any technological advance gives power, in particular power over other people. By way of example, he asserts that contraceptive technology gives absolute power over people who would otherwise have been born, condemning them to nonexistence. This makes sense only in a predestined world where every human that ever will live has already been placed on the future time line, and where technology somehow stands outside this predetermined universe and corrupts it. It also ignores the life-saving technologies that allow more people to survive to reproduction, so that their otherwise-impossible children and grandchildren add to that predestined universe.

Then using the language of 1940s eugenics and psychological conditioning, Lewis imagines a world in which technocrats define the bodies and minds of the entire generation after their own, and therefore of all future generations. Since 1940s-style eugenics could only remove alleles from the species genome, and since conditioning can only block choices that would otherwise have been open, Lewis gets away carried envisioning the losses that would necessarily ensue. Although he might be horrified by some ramifications of recent biotechnology, Lewis's argument does not admit the possibility of broadening the definition of humankind or the abilities possible to our species. A genetic increase in intelligence would not eliminate alternatives, as Lewis fears, but increase them. Lewis's concerns about the motivations of those implementing any such change remain valid, and I think changes in popular culture identified as "dumbing down" bring his fears to life. Short of nuclear annihilation of the species, however, his fears seem like hysteria about hypotheticals.

As much as I respect Lewis's reasoning and humanity, I find this book of limited value. It offers some positive suggestions about maintaining a strong, humane culture. Unfortunately, the title chapter undermines any good I found in it.

-- wiredweird

With this book, C.S. Lewis became a prophet. A great deal of the things that have transpired in education and society in the last 40-50 years were predicted here. I exhort educators as well as all those concerned with the current state of western civilization to read this book and take its lessons to heart.

The Abolition of Man is a clear exposition on how a lack of critical thinking is a the root of the multitude of problems the plague both modern academia and today's scientific establishment. In a reasoned and lucid way that is pure Lewis, this book lays bare the intellectual sources of this infection (mainly subjectivism and relativism). His argument for objectivism is very convincing. This is a great read. So read it.

This book was recommended to me by my grandson. C.S. Lewis is a brilliant writer and is sometimes hard to follow for
many people. I enjoyed reading and had to reread several portions to get the ideas.
I think his conclusion is right on, namely, as I understood it, man left to himself will self-destruct.

Lewis extracts the meaning of modern western schooling trends, that is, he shows logically and religiously what the modern system implies for the future of human thought and behavior. It's fantastic! Much more interesting than my measly review could possibly indicate!

Lewis does an outstanding job exposing the current school of thought and its destined direction. Unfortunately, we have not heeded his warning and are already headed at full speed in the exact path he exposed. In my opinion, this is Lewis's best non fictional work.

In The Abolition of Man C.S. Lewis was well ahead of his times. He foresaw the development of postmodernism and deconstructionism.
His answer was not restricted to the wisdom of Western Culture. Rather he drew on cultures across the spectrum of time to demonstrate the existence of a Tao--a unifying body of moral knowledge.
Personally, I am going to require this for reading in a doctoral seminar.

I'm a fan of Lewis, both his fiction and his nonfiction. But I think in this work he was focused too heavily on operating within his secular vocation as an educator. I think he does a good job of explaining what things are NOT the objective source of morals (for example, "From the statement about psychological fact 'I have an impulse to do so and so' we cannot by any ingenuity derive the practical principle 'I ought to obey the impulse'.") but he doesn't go as far as stating what IS to be our source, which I found puzzling since the existence of such objectivity (referred to throughout as "the Tao") was so central to his argument. The closest he comes is in the inclusion of an appendix listing prohibitions and commandments from various moral codes (the Code of Hammurabi, the Torah, et al), and displaying commands which the various codes have in common. However, these codes contradict in other commandments, and as he notes, commonality would not prove their objective value anyway. So what IS to be our source? I think he should have made a case for all we know about morality being revealed to us in the Bible. He comes close in places, but I think it's overall a sadly confused and muddled window into the topic.

Lewis provides much food for thought, and I agree that he is prophetic in many ways. However, I object to his continual use of human "nature" as synonymous with selfish desires. Human beings have always been social creatures, and our survival depends not just on satisfying individual drives but also working together and caring for each other. This could be why some form of the Golden Rule is found throughout the world's cultures. Whereas Lewis personally ascribes the origin of morality to God, or at least an abstract Tao, in fact kindness, compassion, truthfulness, etc. may have evolved as a keys to our survival.

Even ants are hard-working, cooperative, solicitous of their young, protective of their Queen, defensive of the colony, and self-sacrificing. Why do we need to ascribe these characteristics to only spiritual creatures?

The Abolition of Man is a superb short work. Written in the '40s, C.S. Lewis projects the ultimate result of extending the logic of contemporary secular progressive philosophy on mankind.

The Great Divorce is a C.S. Lewis classic deeply probing concepts of heaven and hell. It is a wonderful study in mankind's self absorption and the spiritual blindness that engenders.

Peter Kreeft, one of my favorite authors, suggests reading "The Abolition of Man" together with Huxley's "Brave New World". What a great combo. My copy of "The Abolition of Man" is all marked with passages I contuine to go back and reread. A must read.

I am a huge C.S. Lewis fan. I have read most of his works and I think they are great. This one is, on a scale from 1 to 10 in ease (1 being Dr. Suess and 10 being a Neurologists formal report) about a 9. Much more in depth than his other works I have read. A lot of backround knowledge is required. If you are a beginner I would suggest something easier and more fun to read such as "The Screwtape Letters" or "Out of the Silent Planet", for intermidiate I would suggest "The Great Divorce" or "The Four Loves". If you are advanced then go ahead and buy this one, I'll be puzzling over it for the next month.

Few authors have had as great an influence on Christian thought over the past century as C. S. Lewis. A convert to Christianity from a firm and convinced atheism, Lewis was one of the few exemplary writers who stood alone during the first half of the twentieth-century against the cresting tide of modernism and the deathly undertow of post-modernity. He taught English Literature at Oxford University, and chaired the Medieval and Renaissance English department at Cambridge University. His firm grasp on modern thought and its logical conclusions, along with his understanding of education, gave him great insight into the intrinsic metaphysical and ethical aspects of curriculum used in education.
In Lewis’ concise and oft-overlooked work The Abolition of Man (1943), he attempts to explain the use of education to manipulate the ethical consciousness of following generations. Unlike the majority of his works, this book is not only a defense of Christianity, or one of its doctrines. Rather, it attempts to defend Natural Law from modernism and its unholy offspring: relativism.
Summary and Analysis
In many ways, Lewis sums up this entire work in the opening sentence of his first chapter, “Men without Chests.” Concerning college preparatory textbooks, he states, “I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text-books” [1]. Lewis then describes an English literature textbook in his possession that teaches much modern relativistic philosophy, but very little literature.
Lewis accurately points out that children are most susceptible to assuming a teacher’s or author’s philosophical assumptions when they are least cognizant of being taught:
The very power of [the authors] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all [2].
Because children are so susceptible to influence, Lewis is deeply concerned about the type of curriculum used in educating them. In essence, he is sounding the alarm.
But why be alarmed? In the last two chapters of this three-chapter book, Lewis details the results of this modern philosophy and just how much of a departure it is from all of ancient thought. He quite clearly shows that it denies Natural Law, and to do so one must completely reject all attempts to qualitatively evaluate anything. When adherence to Natural Law is ignored, the only thing left to guide man is instinct. In the end, Lewis concludes that in attempting to abolish Natural Law, man has actually abolished himself.
Lewis excels at attacking each point of an argument clearly and concisely, while also building an impregnable fortress for his position ready for any attack. His approach in The Abolition of Man is no different. In each of the three chapters, he asks the reader to consider a primary point and then evaluates its truthfulness and outworking effects. He concludes each chapter by summing up the failure of modernism to deliver on its promises. He asks modernism to fulfill its decrees, and demonstrates its impotence.
In the first chapter Lewis builds a well-honed argument and finds the core issue hidden amongst all the bluster of modernity. Not wishing to ask his readers to take all of his concern on faith, Lewis buttresses his argument by taking examples directly from an English literature textbook titled The Green Book (a false title given by Lewis to protect the book’s authors). However, he is gracious enough to suggest that the authors may not be intentionally propagating their philosophy [3].
Lewis proposes that The Green Book’s authors may simply have fallen into teaching philosophy rather than literature due to a misunderstanding of literary criticism, or the educational needs of children. But, he states, it may be that these authors (and others like them) actually feel that certain sentiments need to be encouraged, while others are discouraged [4]. Regardless of their intent, the textbook’s effect was to teach children that morals and ideals were a matter of personal, subjective feelings. Lewis points out that this hidden conceptual training is calling for a philosophical and ethical revolt against Natural Law.
To communicate the danger this represents, Lewis explains that Natural Law teaches that man should train, or organize, his emotions to desire that which is virtuous and excellent. According to this traditional understanding of man’s relationship to reality, the mind rules the appetite through organized and well-trained emotions. Lewis then credits Alanus ab Insulis with naming these well trained and ordered emotions. He calls them the “chest” [5]. Thus if modern men desire to deny Natural Law and their need to conform to it, it will make them “Men without Chests” [6].
Critique and Conclusion
Though The Abolition of Man is an excellent book, it may be somewhat inaccessible to the average reader. Lewis assumes the reader has a working knowledge of Natural Law, modernism, relativism, and their interplay. He also references many texts from Eastern and Western literature with which the average modern reader will likely be unfamiliar. The effect can be overwhelming for readers who are not conversant in the vocabulary and forms of philosophical writings and who are unwilling to stretch themselves.
However, The Abolition of Man is an extremely important book for Christians, especially educators. In this 1943 book, Lewis detailed modernism’s use of education to affect the general populace, though his forebodings were not realized in America until the cultural revolution of the 1960’s. In his attempt to alleviate the effects of modernism brought to fruition through the inculcation of the young, he was unsuccessful. Lewis’ failure was not due to lack of trying or inept writing, however, but to the world’s deafness. As Christian parents and educators, let us not display that same deafness, but take seriously the education of our children and students.
_______________________________________
[1] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. (1947, Reprint, New York: Collier Books Macmillan Publishing Company, 1955), 13.
[2] Ibid., 16.
[3] Ibid., 23.
[4] Ibid., 23-24.
[5] Ibid., 34.
[6] Ibid.

This was an ok read. I kind of understand what Lewis is talking about in general and I think he's very predictive over what is now occuring or has occured with post-modernism thinking. I think the problem is me and other readers who come into the book without knowing background. It makes it a little harder to get through. I definately suggest that you first read some background on this book to get a historical perspective on it. Final Grade - C

While the premise of the book is true, I found Lewis' writing style difficult to follow. I cannot recommend it to the average reader. Perhaps it would make a good supplement to a university level philosophy course.

I have no qualms with anything concerning C.S. Lewis. I do, however, have issues with the quality of this book. The paper is rough and seems fragile. The cover looks like it would shred if I sneezed on it. I would have paid up to $3.00 and not felt ripped off. At $9.95, I'm REALLY feeling taken advantage of.

I am not a CS Lewis fan. I doubt his true conversion to Christianity in the biblical sense though I do not doubt that he had intellectually turned to a Christian worldview due to WWII. Each person will have to determine for themselves if they agree with his allegorical viewpoints.

C.S. Lewis is a very fine writer, but I believe many of his conclusions in this book are wrong. Certainly it would be nice if some absolute scale of values and ethics existed. It would also be nice if human life meant something on a cosmic scale. It would make things a lot simpler. Unfortunately, just because something would be nice doesn't mean that it is true. However, just because these things are not true does NOT mean that human beings can have no ethics and must be miserable, as Lewis believes. I am an atheist myself. I personally find that life is good. I enjoy behaving well and trying to improve the lives of other people. Having to bring in some outside tao or being to decide for me what is good and right strikes me as intellectual laziness. It's like saying that my life would only have meaning if Carl decides that it should have meaning. Why should I should I rely on anyone else to tell me what meaning my life has?

As to why human beings generally desire to behave ethically and to help one another, evolution strikes me as a perfectly adequate explanation. Imagine a group of humans in which parents did not care for children, or in which anyone felt free to murder anyone for any reason. Such a group would die out very swiftly. On the other hand, a group of humans whose morality did not include the possibility of killing enemies in battle is equally likely to be eliminated. Ethics is more situational than Lewis would like to believe. Is it wrong to kill a deformed infant? What if that infant would probably die anyway in a few days? What if the costs involved in saving the infant could be used to save thousands of others? What if the community is starving and that infant would put it over the brink and wipe it out entirely? What if the community is not starving now but would starve if the population doubled? The fate of the inhabitants of Easter Island, who destroyed the resources their society depended on and wiped themselves out, is sobering. The complexities of human behavior and society are not easily reduced to a few simple rules.

Lewis is of course correct that traditional morality should not be discarded lightly. Traditional morality evolved for a purpose in many cases. We should keep in mind, though, that circumstances change. Many tenets of traditional morality originate in the need to ensure the survival of as many children as possible in a day when keeping any children alive was tough. Today the enormous increase of human population is overshooting the capacity of the earth. This threatens the survival of all people alive today, not to mention our descendants. In my opinion, one of the main problems with traditional morality is not what it includes, but what it fails to include--like a concern for population stability.

While the premise of the book is true, I found Lewis' writing style difficult to follow. I cannot recommend it to the average reader. Perhaps it would make a good supplement to a university level philosophy course.

I have no qualms with anything concerning C.S. Lewis. I do, however, have issues with the quality of this book. The paper is rough and seems fragile. The cover looks like it would shred if I sneezed on it. I would have paid up to $3.00 and not felt ripped off. At $9.95, I'm REALLY feeling taken advantage of.

I am not a CS Lewis fan. I doubt his true conversion to Christianity in the biblical sense though I do not doubt that he had intellectually turned to a Christian worldview due to WWII. Each person will have to determine for themselves if they agree with his allegorical viewpoints.

C.S. Lewis is a very fine writer, but I believe many of his conclusions in this book are wrong. Certainly it would be nice if some absolute scale of values and ethics existed. It would also be nice if human life meant something on a cosmic scale. It would make things a lot simpler. Unfortunately, just because something would be nice doesn't mean that it is true. However, just because these things are not true does NOT mean that human beings can have no ethics and must be miserable, as Lewis believes. I am an atheist myself. I personally find that life is good. I enjoy behaving well and trying to improve the lives of other people. Having to bring in some outside tao or being to decide for me what is good and right strikes me as intellectual laziness. It's like saying that my life would only have meaning if Carl decides that it should have meaning. Why should I should I rely on anyone else to tell me what meaning my life has?

As to why human beings generally desire to behave ethically and to help one another, evolution strikes me as a perfectly adequate explanation. Imagine a group of humans in which parents did not care for children, or in which anyone felt free to murder anyone for any reason. Such a group would die out very swiftly. On the other hand, a group of humans whose morality did not include the possibility of killing enemies in battle is equally likely to be eliminated. Ethics is more situational than Lewis would like to believe. Is it wrong to kill a deformed infant? What if that infant would probably die anyway in a few days? What if the costs involved in saving the infant could be used to save thousands of others? What if the community is starving and that infant would put it over the brink and wipe it out entirely? What if the community is not starving now but would starve if the population doubled? The fate of the inhabitants of Easter Island, who destroyed the resources their society depended on and wiped themselves out, is sobering. The complexities of human behavior and society are not easily reduced to a few simple rules.

Lewis is of course correct that traditional morality should not be discarded lightly. Traditional morality evolved for a purpose in many cases. We should keep in mind, though, that circumstances change. Many tenets of traditional morality originate in the need to ensure the survival of as many children as possible in a day when keeping any children alive was tough. Today the enormous increase of human population is overshooting the capacity of the earth. This threatens the survival of all people alive today, not to mention our descendants. In my opinion, one of the main problems with traditional morality is not what it includes, but what it fails to include--like a concern for population stability.

Unless we teach our children that waterfalls are sublime, civilization is doomed and tyrants will reign. That's the argument in a nutshell. The waterfall's sublimity represents to Professor Lewis the "doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false...." (29) He maintains that a "dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery." (84-85)(Page cites are to an earlier printing of this book.)

Lewis calls his collection of objective values the Tao. He finds the Tao in such varied sources as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a hymn to the Babylonian sun-god, the sayings of Confucius, Old Norse poems, Greek philosophy, Roman law, Hindu proverbs, and the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The Tao is "the sole source of all value judgments." (56)

Lewis' game-plan to save civilization is all offense and no defense. Though he marshals strong arguments against modern subjectivist thought (our postmodernism), he claims that the Tao is beyond questioning. Regarding challenges to traditional morality based on objective values, he writes, "The direct frontal attack 'Why?'- 'What good does it do?' - 'Who said so?' is never permissible; not because it is harsh or offensive but because no values at all can justify themselves on that level." (60-61)

An open mind is not allowed when it comes to the Tao, and those who question it are demonized. Lewis writes: "An open mind about the ultimate foundations ... is idiocy." (60) Those who stand outside the Tao are "corrupted" men. (59) They have nothing important to say and, in fact, should not be heard at all. According to Lewis: "If a man's mind is open on these things let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else." (60)

Lewis' Tao has two serious flaws. First, as a doctrine of objective value it is internally incoherent, that is, it incorporates logical contradictions. Second, the Tao is ultimately derived from subjective experience and, consequently, its claimed objectivity is an illusion.

As the Tao is a compilation from conflicting cultures past and present, it contains many contradictions and even absurdities. Lewis admits this and calls for "some criticism, some removal of contradictions, even some real development..." (57) Remember, this is supposed to be "objective truth" we are talking about. Evidently, there is a higher truth by which the objective truth of the Tao may be corrected. At this point, Lewis abandons reason altogether and resorts to mysticism. Lewis indicates that higher truth is found in the spirit realm but only by adepts in the Tao: "Those who understand the spirit of the Tao and who have been led by that spirit can modify it in directions which that spirit itself demands. Only they can know what those directions are. The outsider knows nothing about the matter." (59)

So Lewis is content to have the Tao ultimately determined by a clique of mystics who cannot be questioned. A doubtful source for objective truth if ever there was. For a better response to postmodernism that appeals to reason and does not depend on the mystical intuitions of an inner circle for objective truth, I recommend Francis Schaeffer's trilogy:

Escape from Reason (Ivp Classics),The God Who Is There, and He Is There and He Is Not Silent

Just read Dan Lawler's 2 star review and the subsequent conversation he has with Wessexman. It's better than the book. Lewis basically rips apart a book called "The Control of Language: A Critical Approach to Reading and Writing" but changes the name of the book and it's authors as if he didn't want you to read it for yourself and come to your own conclusions. Shame on Lewis.

While this is a great piece if you want to step inside a virtue theorist's mind, as an actual philosophical text it is rather poor.
While it is obviously religiously biased, it is Lewis' own circular paradoxes that lead to a flawed system of logic that can not support itself.