The Abolition of Man Themes

The Abolition of Man originated as a lecture series that C. S. Lewis delivered at the University of Durham in 1943, critiquing current methods of teaching English and their implications for broader society. He bases his argument on an English textbook he was asked to review, which he refers to as The Green Book, and he gives its authors the pseudonyms Gaius and Titius. Lewis staunchly attacks Gaius and Titius’s educational approach, because…

After establishing the importance of rightly-formed emotional sentiment in modern education, Lewis develops his underlying principle of the Tao—a concept that must not be confused simply with Taoism, because it is “Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike.” While these various worldviews might seem to defy generalization, Lewis contends that they have a very important principle in common: “It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and…

In his final lecture, Lewis finally arrives at the idea of “the abolition of man.” So far, he has argued for the indispensability of reason-based sentiments in education, the continued validity of objective value, and the emptiness of innovations that are not grounded on traditional principles. Now, in his climactic lecture, he builds on these ideas by describing modern science as an attempt to conquer nature and thereby to mold humanity to the conquerors’ liking…