The Abolition of Man
C.S. Lewis (The abolition of man)
This book is a collection of three essays titled "Men without chests", "The way" and "The abolition of man". I think this is my favorite of Lewis’ writings. For me it is also the deepest and most compelling. I will try to summarize the arguments, but it will help me if I approach it from a slightly different way than Lewis did.
I recall watching ‘Star Trek’ as a child and young man and being intrigued by the character of Spock. I wondered how a person or society could be based entirely upon logic. Take a particular more: murder should be punished. Why? Well, to discourage murder. Why discourage it? Well because life is valuable. Why? Because it is. No matter what question of conduct I could come up with, I eventually ran into some place at which the questioning had to stop and there was no logical reason to justify it. I concluded that logic was insufficient to provide value.
By the same token, science can provide observations and render some aspects of nature subject to human control but it cannot tell us what our values are. We can learn to heal disease, fly to the moon or build an atomic bomb, but science by itself cannot tell us why health is better than sickness, or why we would want to go to the moon or bomb someone.
There is a traditional body of wisdom common to mostly all surviving societies. Everyone has restrictions on the taking of life unauthorized. Everyone has restrictions on sexual behavior. Everyone teaches to honor parents, family and country. Everyone teaches to be kind to strangers. Everyone teaches against deception. Lewis calls this common body of moral wisdom, ‘the Tao’. He explores the trend and the possibility that science could succeed in analyzing and debunking all traditional morality and rendering human nature, so defined, subject to reworking into whatever fashion is desired. He then asks the question of what basis of values would we have for such a re-fashioning of human nature once we had destroyed the basis for value itself?
I think the questions are important to ask. If we are, in fact, in the process of recreating humanity and human nature, we need to ask on what basis we are doing so. Unlike Lewis, I don’t see that departing from traditional wisdom will necessarily result in disaster unless we substitute in its place, as Lewis fears, the whims of the ruling class.
One problem I have with the postulate of the ‘tao’ is that, while most societies have some kinds of writing advocating morality, they also have writing and actions advocating its opposite. Further, there is evidence that many ancient peoples did not follow the morality of their holy books. Are we to take the writing or the behavior as the ‘true’ morality or wisdom of the ages?
A third issue is that the ‘tao’ which Lewis defends is that system of values that got us to where we are today, which includes wars, destructions, poverty etc. It was the ‘tao’ of honor and loyalty which triggered the various web of alliances that started WWII and it was patriotism which was used as justification for the German and Japanese aggressions of WWII. At one point Lewis asks how you can ask a person to die for his country if you don’t ask from within the tao? Without the set of ‘tao’ prescribed values, you are really just asking him to die for you or for your whims. Perhaps the new system of values we are creating will not ask anyone to die for anyone else. Can we really argue that a world in which no one would take up arms to fight at the command of a leader is a worse world than the one we are in?
It is insanity to expect different results while continuing to do the same things and it is recklessness to do anything so long as it is different. The ‘tao’ of traditional values may need to be abandoned, but we should not do so carelessly.
This book is a collection of three essays titled "Men without chests", "The way" and "The abolition of man". I think this is my favorite of Lewis’ writings. For me it is also the deepest and most compelling. I will try to summarize the arguments, but it will help me if I approach it from a slightly different way than Lewis did.
I recall watching ‘Star Trek’ as a child and young man and being intrigued by the character of Spock. I wondered how a person or society could be based entirely upon logic. Take a particular more: murder should be punished. Why? Well, to discourage murder. Why discourage it? Well because life is valuable. Why? Because it is. No matter what question of conduct I could come up with, I eventually ran into some place at which the questioning had to stop and there was no logical reason to justify it. I concluded that logic was insufficient to provide value.
By the same token, science can provide observations and render some aspects of nature subject to human control but it cannot tell us what our values are. We can learn to heal disease, fly to the moon or build an atomic bomb, but science by itself cannot tell us why health is better than sickness, or why we would want to go to the moon or bomb someone.
There is a traditional body of wisdom common to mostly all surviving societies. Everyone has restrictions on the taking of life unauthorized. Everyone has restrictions on sexual behavior. Everyone teaches to honor parents, family and country. Everyone teaches to be kind to strangers. Everyone teaches against deception. Lewis calls this common body of moral wisdom, ‘the Tao’. He explores the trend and the possibility that science could succeed in analyzing and debunking all traditional morality and rendering human nature, so defined, subject to reworking into whatever fashion is desired. He then asks the question of what basis of values would we have for such a re-fashioning of human nature once we had destroyed the basis for value itself?
I think the questions are important to ask. If we are, in fact, in the process of recreating humanity and human nature, we need to ask on what basis we are doing so. Unlike Lewis, I don’t see that departing from traditional wisdom will necessarily result in disaster unless we substitute in its place, as Lewis fears, the whims of the ruling class.
One problem I have with the postulate of the ‘tao’ is that, while most societies have some kinds of writing advocating morality, they also have writing and actions advocating its opposite. Further, there is evidence that many ancient peoples did not follow the morality of their holy books. Are we to take the writing or the behavior as the ‘true’ morality or wisdom of the ages?
A third issue is that the ‘tao’ which Lewis defends is that system of values that got us to where we are today, which includes wars, destructions, poverty etc. It was the ‘tao’ of honor and loyalty which triggered the various web of alliances that started WWII and it was patriotism which was used as justification for the German and Japanese aggressions of WWII. At one point Lewis asks how you can ask a person to die for his country if you don’t ask from within the tao? Without the set of ‘tao’ prescribed values, you are really just asking him to die for you or for your whims. Perhaps the new system of values we are creating will not ask anyone to die for anyone else. Can we really argue that a world in which no one would take up arms to fight at the command of a leader is a worse world than the one we are in?
It is insanity to expect different results while continuing to do the same things and it is recklessness to do anything so long as it is different. The ‘tao’ of traditional values may need to be abandoned, but we should not do so carelessly.
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