The Abolition of Man
First edition
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| Author | C. S. Lewis |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Value and Natural law |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
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Publication date
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1943 |
| Media type | hard⁓ & paperback |
| Preceded by | A Preface to Paradise Lost |
| Followed by | Beyond Personality |
The Abolition of Man is a 1943 book by C. S. Lewis. It is subtitled "Reflections on education with special reference to the teaching of English in the upper forms of schools," and uses that as a starting point for a defense of objective value and natural law, and a warning of the consequences of doing away with or "debunking" those things. It defends science as something worth pursuing but criticizes using it to debunk values—the value of science itself being among them—or defining it to exclude such values. The book was first delivered as a series of three evening lectures at King's College, Newcastle, part of the University of Durham, as the Riddell Memorial Lectures on February 24–26, 1943.
Lewis begins with a critical response to “The Green Book”, by “Gaius and Titius”, i.e. The Control of Language: A Critical Approach to Reading and Writing, published in 1939 by Alex King and Martin Ketley. The Green book was used as a text for upper form students in British schools.
Lewis criticises the authors for subverting student values. He claims that they teach that all statements of value (such as "this waterfall is sublime") are merely statements about the speaker's feelings and say nothing about the object. Lewis says that such a subjective view of values is faulty, and, on the contrary, certain objects and actions merit positive or negative reactions: that a waterfall can actually be objectively praiseworthy, and that one's actions can be objectively good or evil. In any case, Lewis notes, this is a philosophical position rather than a grammatical one, and so parents and teachers who give such books to their children and students are having them read the "work of amateur philosophers where they expected the work of professional grammarians."
Lewis cites ancient thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle and Augustine, who believed that the purpose of education was to train children in "ordinate affections," that is, to train them to like and dislike what they ought; to love the good and hate the bad. He says that although these values are universal, they do not develop automatically or inevitably in children (and so are not "natural" in that sense of the word), but must be taught through education. Those who lack them lack the specifically human element, the trunk that unites intellectual man with visceral (animal) man, and may be called "men without chests".
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