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| The Abolition of Man | 
 enlarge | Author: C. S. Lewis
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  83 reviews
Sales Rank: 17571
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0060652942
Dewey Decimal Number: 370.1
EAN: 9780060652944
ASIN: 0060652942
Publication Date: March 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New & Unread Book with Remainder Marked- May Have Slight Handling Wear From Bookstore Shelf- Instock For Immediate Shipping
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Amazon.com Review
C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man purports to be a book specifically about public education, but its central concerns are broadly political, religious, and philosophical. In the best of the book's three essays, "Men Without Chests," Lewis trains his laser-sharp wit on a mid- century English high school text, considering the ramifications of teaching British students to believe in idle relativism, and to reject "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are." Lewis calls this doctrine the "Tao," and he spends much of the book explaining why society needs a sense of objective values. The Abolition of Man speaks with astonishing freshness to contemporary debates about morality; and even if Lewis seems a bit too cranky and privileged for his arguments to be swallowed whole, at least his articulation of values seems less ego-driven, and therefore is more useful, than that of current writers such as Bill Bennett and James Dobson. --Michael Joseph Gross
Product Description
C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 78 more reviews...
 A Dense Defense of Natural Law and the Validity of Reason October 1, 2008
As far as I can see, there were two main cornerstones in Lewis' thinking:
(1) The ultimate validity of Reason, perhaps best summed up in his essay "De Futilitate": "Unless all that we take to be knowledge is an illusion, we must hold that in thinking we are not reading rationality into an irrational universe but responding to a rationality with which the universe has always been saturated."
(2) The ultimately objective nature of morality, also known as Natural Law and in this book called the "Tao."
The "Abolition of Man" brings both of these aspects together in the most compact manner of all of Lewis' writings. It is so compact that most readers will likely want to read the (very short) book more than once, so as to really get what Lewis is saying.
Readers should be aware that this is not another "Mere Christianity," which was first written as a radio broadcast and addressed to the general public; "The Abolition of Man" is addressed to an academic audience, and without a certain academic level one is likely going to feel pretty lost in the "Abolition."
The POINT of the "Abolition," however, is a similar one as that of the opening chapters of "Mere Christianity": that there is an overarching moral understanding of humanity, and if you abolish this overarching morality - the "Tao" - then you abolish humanity itself, because our human identity is inexorably linked to it.
In the "Abolition," C. S. Lewis does not go as far as to say that Natural Law depends on a Supernatural Lawgiver, but for him, that is clearly the next step in the argument, and is perhaps the direction into which he wants to nudge his academic audience.
I have enjoyed this book more than once, and have been particularly grateful for the appendix, in which Lewis lists a whole row of quotes on morality by various cultures, in order to show that there is such a thing as a Moral Absolute. I have used his selection of quotes more than once in my own lectures.
Jacob Schriftman, Author of The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought About the Greatest Book
Gimongously Interesting! September 25, 2008
Lewis extracts the meaning of modern western schooling trends, that is, he shows logically and religiously what the modern system implies for the future of human thought and behavior. It's fantastic! Much more interesting than my measly review could possibly indicate!
 Biased, religious, and logically flawed. April 28, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
While this is a great piece if you want to step inside a virtue theorist's mind, as an actual philosophical text it is rather poor.
While it is obviously religiously biased, it is Lewis' own circular paradoxes that lead to a flawed system of logic that can not support itself.
How to fix what is broken January 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is a series of three talks where Lewis illustrates the breakdown of education , from a system which embraces natural law, truth, and virtue, to one which embraces much of nothing and feeds back nothing. It is perhaps a bit dated now as teaching methods have moved on (though not necessarily in positive directions), but yet it still has much to say as we contemplate the inadequacy of our present systems and what we need to reclaim to restore them.
Value Galore and Remedial for every epoch December 15, 2007
I was struck with amazement as I read this most beneficial and interesting book! There are so many books to choose from these days for inquiry or answers to the brokenness in our modern day populace, but this one proved to be top-notch in this writer's opinion. The writer's skill conveys keen insights into the mind to understand mankind's condition, including interpersonal relationships from the intellect. Dead hypothesis that would try to excoriate the common sense displayed here in this wonderful little treatise would no doubt fall by the wayside. Can we see the signs of the times from the author's wisdom? Where is the world headed anyway? Read this little book for some answers. I've got a much better perspective on life now due to the dulcet manner of the author; the way he draws on the treasures intrinsic in all of us to begin with. Doubtless you will not find anything insipid within the two covers. A very powerful book indeed! Lewis displays a virtuoso's flair for observing absolutes unequivocally. I will keep one of the copies of two I purchased for my book shelf and the other one for a gift. The Den of IniquityC.S. Lewis: The Signature Classics Audio Collection: The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Mere Christianity
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