Customer Reviews

The Abolition of Man

5 star:		(74)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

. . . but written when Rorty was still in diapers. This is by far the most prophetic, and the most disturbing, of Lewis' works. Starting with a deceptively simple observation - that modern (now postmodern) philosophy tends to reduce all statements of value to mere statements of subjective feeling - Lewis goes on to demonstrate the corrosive and ultimately fatal effect of this line of thinking on any civilized culture.

Lewis accurately predicts the parallel development of two trends: (1) the loss of any objective transcendent moral standards; and (2) the ability of a scientific or political elite, through social conditioning and/or genetic manipulation, to affect the thinking of successive generations of the rest of us - the great unwashed. The ascendancy, during the last decade, of moral relativism and the political correctness movement demonstrate how far down these parallel tracks we have come (i.e., Rorty: truth is what gets us what we want; truth is what my peers will let be get by with saying; Christians are "the natural constituency of Hitler").

While he's at it, Lewis refutes the postmodern, and generally unexamined, truism that the historic moral principles of Western Civilization are fundamentally different from other cultures' norms, and thus are arbitrary and nonbinding. In a lengthy appendix, Lewis shows that the great moral principles are timeless and have been generally accepted by all civilized societies, at all times (until ours).

So where will it end? In an ironic conclusion, Lewis predicts that what will be hailed an man's ultimate victory over Nature (such as human cloning?) will actually be Nature's ultimate victory over man. This will occur when we can fully control the kind of people the next generation will be (i.e., how they think), but in the absence of moral standards, this choice will be made arbitrarily; that is, according to purely Natural impulses - thus we have the Abolition of Man as man and the ascendancy of man as animal.

I must take issue with the reviewer who referred to the book as a "disguised apologetic" for Christianity. While Lewis openly acknowledges his Christian beliefs, he takes great pains to establish that the existence of objective moral standards is transcultural; that it is "trans-" any specific religious or ethical system other than relativism. Those who insist otherwise are simply out of touch; controlled by their own hermeneutic of suspicion, they see closet Christians lurking behind any and all moral absolutes.

A final point - I must also disagree with the reviewer who referred to the book too difficult for the average reader. I'm an accountant, I have no training in philosophy, and I'm definitely not a candidate for MENSA membership - but I had no trouble "getting it." Light reading it's not, but, hey, it's short, the type is large, the book is cheap, and it's written in Lewis' inimitable conversational style. Don't be intimidated, the stakes are too high!

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.

Attack on the idea of universal truth and the values that derive from it is stronger now than in 1944 when this book was written. Yet, despite many rhetorical defenses of universal truth and values launched in the "culture wars," this remains one of, if not the best, defenses of universal truth and values.

Lewis believes in Natural Laws - laws of morality, such as duty to children, parents, elders, the "golden rule," mercy, magnanimity, justice - which have been accepted both throughout history and by varied cultures. Lewis calls these laws "the Tao."

The problem as Lewis outlines it, is that if nothing is self-evident (i.e., true), then nothing can be proven. And, if nothing is obligatory because it is self-evident, then nothing is obligatory for its own sake, i.e., because it is true. If nothing is obligatory, then rules of conduct are subject to pleasure or whim and are enforced only by power of some over others. Ultimately, this robs of us our humanity. Lewis says, "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."

The consequence of rejecting the idea of universal truth, or "the Tao," is the destruction of the society which rejects it. This is, as Lewis says, tragically comical because "we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible."

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.

The Abolition of Man is a series of lectures wherein C.S. Lewis debunks the debunkers of virtue and values. Pulling no punches, Lewis successfully charts their "belief system" from beginning to bankruptcy. They suppose that the value of a thing is only what we perceive it to be, thus there is no true good, there is no true bad. Nothing is truly of value. Though written decades ago, we see traces of this in our non-judgemental society, in our lowering of expectations, in the race to dumb everything down, make everything equal, where nothing is inherently bad and nothing, it seems, inherently good.

Beyond the fact that, by their own definition, this nihilistic approach has no intrinsic value but what we perceive it to have, we find that the successive devaluation of everything leads to the value of nothing - including ourselves. And this, Lewis has it, is the abolition of Man. We may see evidence of this abolition in many current debates to include euthanasia, abortion, gender selection/eugenics, and embryo farming. When we have no value, but what we perceive, then there may be hell to pay when those perceptions change. Auschwitz is a remarkable example. Bioethicists with the ethics of swine are another.

As usual, C.S. Lewis slings well-honed arrows that hit their mark with ease. What Lewis provides best is clarity such as very few writers can. 5 stars.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."