The Abolition of Man

Without a doubt, CS Lewis is one of the greatest minds of the last two centuries. The Abolition of Man provides a sobering look at modernism which, in turn, provides an even harsher indictment of postmodernism and its inherent moral relativism. Since everything in this book is antithetical to what's being taught in public schools and universities today, I suppose it's futile to say that this one should be required reading. I will leave it simply that Lewis can fairly be referred to as the Mozart of critical thinking and apologia. I cannot recommend this short but profound read highly enough!

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:

[[ASIN:0830834052 Escape from Reason (Ivp Classics)]], [[ASIN:0830819479 The God Who Is There]], and [[ASIN:084231413X He Is There and He Is Not Silent]]

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.

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.

As of this writing there are already 70 other reviews of this book by C.S. Lewis. Much has been said, and instead of simply reiterating what others have already pointed out to be some of the strengths of this book, I'm going to briefly describe the general points and then suggest some other ways the book might be interpreted.

In "Abolition of Man", Lewis attempts to show how the skeptic relativist mentality so prevalent in the modern West will, when drawn to its logical conclusions, lead to a loss of humanity. His basic point is that when we begin to question the legitimacy of viewing a waterfall as beautiful, for example, we have already implicitly begun to question the reality of an objective standard of beauty. This can be said also for objective standard for what is good, virtuous, etc. In terms of society, then, what has traditionally been seen as bad is no longer so obviously bad. Our whole standard of relating to one another is lost because we've rejected the existence of a moral code of right and wrong. Lewis concludes by essentially asking what is keeping humanity from pursuing such evils as eugenics, which by itself is the end of mankind insofar as people no longer have the right to be who they would be but are rather constructed to be something of a superman.

That is a rough outline of Lewis' argument, and I inserted some words and concepts that he didn't put in the same way. Nevertheless, I'd like to relate "Abolition of Man" to two other works. First, for a fictional account making the same basic arguments as this work I think [[ASIN:0060929871 Brave New World]] is very similar. If I could advise people on reading one before the other I would suggest reading "Brave New World" first and then "Abolition of Man" if only because I think having the mental picture of the former in your head while reading the latter helps the reader understand why this is a big issue for Lewis.

I would also recommend, for those who enjoy "Abolition of Man", the works of Eric Voegelin relating to modern gnostism; see especially [[ASIN:082621245X Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 5)]]. Voegelin provides a more comprehensive philosophical and historical framework that illuminates the basic tenants of "Abolition of Man". In this sense, Lewis' section on human eugenics mimics Voegelin's concern for modern gnostic projects such as Nazism and Communism. In other words, Nazism and Communism are a type of abolition of man.

In any case, "Abolition of Man" is a great short read that provides some basic critiques of modernity. One point I'd like to make in reference to some of the other reviewers is that Lewis is as much a critic of modernity in this work as he is of what some are calling "post-modernity". I would reject the notion that the two are utterly distinguishable; it seems to me (and I think Lewis would support this statement) that what we call "post-modernity" is really modernity of a different flavor. Thus, Lewis calls into question the worldview of Western Civilization that predates his own life by at least several generations.

"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.

I'll admit that some of Lewis's comments left me in the dust, but I did appreciate how well grounded some of his arguments were. If there is not some common shared moral or ethical viewpoint in the mass of humanity, then all will be lost and undoing the teaching of the past is undoubtedly a BIG mistake. If we do dismantle the teaching of the past and build something knew, just what foundation will it be built upon if the moral or ethical foundation is as small and individualized as grains of sand? Certainly some will jump all over this essay published as book (actually it reads more like lecture notes than an actual book or essay), but I found little fault with it other than the parenthetical one mentioned above. Highly recommended.

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.

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.