The Abolition of Man

If C.S. Lewis was living nowadays, I would make sure I was his neighbor, or his student, or his best friend or something. I've only read I think three of his non-fictional books, but I plan to read more. But what I've read is fascinating.
Among these three books is the Abolition of Man. I wrote a paper (or outline) on this one too. I dont know why I should put this up, but I dont know why I shouldn't, either. So behold:

Isaac Middleton

Bible 11/12

October 15, 2009

The Abolition of Man

I. In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis expresses the importance of values such as valor, courage, and honor, proves that by the means of education and scientific progress men are destroying these values, and expresses the consequences of this destruction.

A.Chapter One- Men Without Chests
1.Lewis spends much of his time with The Green Book (1), an English textbook meant for the education in the upper forms of school. While this book intends to teach English grammar, it also has an agenda to undermine value judgments such as “the waterfall is sublime,” saying that sublime does not modify waterfall but instead modifies the feelings that one has towards the waterfall (3). “The schoolboy who reads this passage in The Green Book will believe two propositions: firstly, that all sentences containing a predicate of value are statements about the emotional state of the speaker, and secondly, that all such statements are unimportant” (4).

2.Lewis informs the reader that “the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought” (16).

3.Lewis also states that such objects as waterfalls merit responses, whether good or bad, from the observer. He also presents the Tao (similar to that of Taoism, but Lewis brings his own definition to the word). The Tao is “the doctrine of objective value.” For example, “those who know the Tao can hold that to call children delightful (a value judgment) or old men venerable is not simply to record a psychological fact about our own parental or filial emotions at the moment, but to recognize a quality which demands a certain response from us whether we make it or not” (19).

4.Lewis then states that the aim of educators, like the writers of the Green Book, is to do away with the Tao altogether, thus making “men without chests” (26).

B.Chapter Two- The Way
1. Lewis states that the “practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it” (27). This foreshadows what is talked about in chapter three on the abolition of man.
2.In the educators’ opinion, their purpose for this destruction is for the good of society. Yet, they cannot maintain that ‘good’ simply describes their own emotions about it, because the purpose of their book is to teach the reader to share their approval. “And this would be either a fool’s or a villain’s undertaking unless they held that their approval was in some way valid or correct” (29). They are caught in their own logic, picking and choosing parts of the original Tao for their own use.
3. “Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else” (48). To say “value is invaluable” is in itself a value judgment which uses the Tao to criticize it.
C. Chapter Three- The Abolition of Man
1.Lewis talks about “Man’s conquest of Nature” (53). He is speaking of all the scientific victories, such as the contraceptive, airplanes, and walkie-talkies. He proves that “man’s power over nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument” (55). He goes on to say that this power can also be exercised over those in the future. Since it is man’s power over other man, he proves that every victory for man is also the defeat of man as well; contraceptives, for example, exercise men’s victorious power of the present over the future helpless men who as a result never exist (57). Therefore, the race of man gets weaker with every generation (58).
2. Lewis states, “for the power of man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please” (59).
3.Another way for man to make other men what he pleases is by the practice of The Green Book. While traditional education is “but old birds teaching young birds to fly” (61), the new educational system “produces conscience and decides what kind of conscience they will produce” (61). The educators are outside and above the new Tao, making a new artificial Tao. These educators, as Lewis says, “are not men at all. They are…men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘humanity’ shall henceforth mean” (63). The educators destroy humanity and make it to be whatever they would like. This, along with the scientific victories mentioned earlier, is the Abolition of Man.

II.Analysis
A.Quality of Writing
1.By viewing the cumbersome vocabulary and excessive amount of complex sentences, along with the topic being that which sparks the interest of educators, it can be concluded that the target audience was perhaps the educators of his day. Words such as ‘pillory, superfluity, neophyte (61), syllogisms (24), liaison, magnanimity (25), filial (19), and disparage (53), forces the average teenage reader to slide the dictionary off the shelf. Many references are made to words in different languages, including Latin (64-65, 68, 75) and Hebrew (27). The following sentence is but a representation of the reading difficulty: “We must therefore either extend the word Reason to include what our ancestors called Practical Reason and confess that judgments such as society ought to be preserved (though they can support themselves by no reason of the sort Gaius and Titius demand) are not mere sentiments but are rationality itself; or else we must give up at once, and forever, the attempt to find a core of ‘rational’ value behind all the sentiments we have debunked” (45). Though understandable after being read more than once, the reading becomes tiresome after many pages. But for the intended audience and subject, the sentence structure and word choice is appropriate. Despite the tediousness of the writing, the subject spoken of is enthralling, and keeps the reader’s attention.
2.He is interesting because of his mind-boggling logic, finding loopholes in other’s arguments, such as their criticizing of the Tao (48). He is also direct and to the point; the reader does not get lost in unimportant tangents. The first sentence of each chapter (for example, “I doubt whether we are sufficiently attentive to the importance of elementary text books” (1)) opens with a call to awareness. And by the end of each chapter, the reader is informed and aware.
B.Worldview or Phliosophy
1.C.S. Lewis states, “I myself am a Theist, and indeed a Christian” (49).
2.In a sentence, at least according to the context of this book, he values value (49).
3. The book has no plot, therefore evil does not triumph, nor is good rewarded. It simply expresses a situation. Christianity is only mentioned once, when C.S. Lewis refers to himself as being a Christian. In fact, he clearly states, “I am not attempting any indirect argument for Theism” (49). Yet he is arguing for doctrine that Theists do not object to (i.e. value judgments are important). Only within the Tao does life have meaning.
4.I recommend this book to those who have a broader vocabulary than I do, such as teachers and college students. I recommend this because I believe the topic that C.S. Lewis touches on is vital for those in the field of education to be aware of.
5. Though I do not understand some of his logic, I agree with that which I understand (i.e. the disparage of value statements is destroying humanity). (1,257)

I know I do a terrible job of representing what C.S. Lewis actually means (I think everyone would be insufficient at this job, except Lewis himself). But I think I got the gist of it.