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What it argues
The Abolition of Man is a short book Lewis published in 1943, adapted from three lectures he gave at the University of Durham. It is, by his own account, the most important book he wrote — more so than his fiction or his popular apologetics. The argument is simple in outline: there are objective values, Lewis calls this the Tao, and modern education is systematically training young people to debunk and dismiss them. The result, if the project succeeds, will be the destruction of humanity's capacity for moral feeling — the abolition of the human being as traditionally understood.
Lewis opens with a critique of a specific school textbook, which he calls The Green Book and whose authors he calls Gaius and Titius. The textbook, commenting on a passage about the sublime, tells students that when someone calls a waterfall grand, they are saying something about their own feelings, not about the waterfall. Lewis thinks this is both philosophically wrong and culturally dangerous. Taught as obvious and uncontroversial, it shapes students to regard all value claims as merely subjective — as statements about internal states rather than features of reality.
What it gets right
- 1.
Lewis argues that objective values — what he calls the Tao — are real and shared across human cultures. Teaching students to regard all value claims as merely subjective undermines the possibility of moral reasoning.
- 2.
The Tao is not the exclusive property of any one religion or culture. Lewis's appendix demonstrates that its core prohibitions and obligations appear in Greek, Roman, Christian, Hebrew, Chinese, Babylonian, and indigenous traditions.
- 3.
You can criticize and refine the Tao from within, but you cannot step outside it entirely. An 'innovator' who rejects all traditional values still relies on some values to make the rejection — and those values come from the Tao.
What it covers
Who wrote it
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) was a British writer, scholar, and lay theologian who held chairs at both Oxford and Cambridge. He is best known for The Chronicles of Narnia and his popular apologetics, including Mere Christianity and Surprised by Joy, but he considered The Abolition of Man his most important work. He was a trained literary scholar whose work ranged from medieval allegory to science fiction. He converted to Christianity in 1931 after years of atheism. He died on November 22, 1963 — the same day as Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy.
