Book Review: The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
The 1943 book The Abolition of Man, originally a collection of three lectures delivered by C. S. Lewis at King's College, Newcastle, is a masterful piece of literature intended to defend the existence of objective value and Natural Law (or, the Tao) from the threats of moral subjectivism and supposed innovators of value who wish to "debunk" it. Combining sound reasoning with clear articulation while taking the tone of a concerned observer urging restraint, Lewis provides a compelling case for the preservation of the Tao, something that only from within that "we can speak of Man having power over himself in a sense truly analogous to an individual's self-control".
Divided into three chapters, with one for each lecture, The Abolition of Man begins with Chapter 1: Men without Chests. In it, Lewis starts with an analysis and critique of an excerpt (Coleridge at the waterfall) from "The Green Book", an English book for the "boys and girls in the upper forms of schools," for its treatment of values as mere emotional states, arguing that the authors have taken a philosophical position instead of a literary one and as such failing to properly educate the students. As the chapter progresses, Lewis presents to the reader the Tao, a term that Lewis uses to encompass the concept of alignment with the universe (our emotional reactions being "congruous" or "incongruous" with it) present in many forms around the world. Concluding on the attempt by "The Green Book" to "rationally" ground value, Lewis remarked that
"The Green Book... is to produce… Men without chests... It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so."
In Chapter 2 (The Way), Lewis explains how what the authors of "The Green Book" are attempting to achieve, that being to derive moral oughts without invoking the Tao, is impossible. After establishing that both pure reasoning and blindly following human instincts, the primary arguments for subjectivism, were both unable to derive said oughts without using bits and pieces of the Tao, Lewis declares Natural Law the "sole source of all value judgments" and develops the idea of advancements within the Tao. However, at the end of the chapter, Lewis mentions the possibility of denying the concept of value altogether, of mankind simply denying their "imagined" values and "choosing their own destiny". Pointing out that this approach is not outright self-contradictory, Lewis sets out to address it in his final lecture.
As such, he considers the result of it to be that "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 chapter (The Abolition of Man), Lewis takes it upon himself to tackle "Man's conquest of Nature." Using the inventions and utilities that modern humans enjoy, such as the airplane, as examples, Lewis shows that what is considered to be Man's power over Nature is merely Man's power over other men, using Nature as their instrument. This is because of the ability of some men to withhold the power gained through science from others. Along with this, Lewis believes that "all long-term exercises of power…must mean the power of earlier generations over later ones." With regards to replacing the Tao with humanity's own values, that being the conquest of human nature, Lewis is skeptical of the morality that the "Conditioners" of that new human society will create, raising concerns that when 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." As such, he considers the result of it to be that,
"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 my personal opinion, The Abolition of Man is a pretty interesting read and food for thought for the philosophers among us. It's a short read, and the ideas in it are relatively straightforward. So if you're interested in building a deeper understanding of the moral objectivist position, I would highly recommend this book.
–Wenyu Wang