Old Dog Diogenes's Reviews > The Abolition of Man

If only C.S. Lewis were alive today to write about the bombardment of issues that we are currently dealing with in a post-postmodern world! What would that book have looked like! I think honestly it would have been quite similar to this one, but with more searing details and clarity as it has become increasingly more obvious as time has passed what the fundamental problems with postmodernism are. C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man is addressing what he sees to be some of the main issues with the world of his time which was straddling the line between modern and postmodern, arguably around the birth of postmodernism as the work was published in 1943, and I think it is a testament to exactly how in-tune Lewis was with his times. He is addressing several issues that would be especially relevant to a postmodern world, and he is observing these issues through the education system or the educational writings of his time.

He opens the book observing a couple contemporary educational books. He draws out of these books some concerns that he takes to reflect a stream of thought that has infiltrated the educational system and from there the society at large, principally that of subjectivism. He then exposes the implications that this kind of subjectivism has on morals, and makes the argument for a moral system that is absolutely true, arguing in favor of an objective natural law. Making the case that human inclination and human nature is not the basis for morality, but as Plato, Aristotle and St. Augustine believed that morality must be taught by the education system, the family, and the society at large. Lewis gives an example of himself to prove this point saying that he is generally not fond of children, but understands that to be a flaw in himself due to his moral upbringing. Thus he holds to the view that morality is not subjective, but is in fact an objective system that is reflected in the worlds major religions and philosophies. This objective system of morals he refers to as the 'Tao', his own terminology for a traditional morality that synthesizes everything from Platonism to Hinduism and everything in-between. A universal and objective natural law for all humans.

This is how he sets up the book for the final chapter where he really starts digging into the book's title, The Abolition of Man, and he does it quite brilliantly by pointing out that if man continues on this Nietzschean path of conquering nature and bending it to his own will (as we are trying to do in the case of morality), he will eventually find himself losing his human nature and having that be made into whatever the leading minds of the day wish. In Lewis' own words,

“What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”

“Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them.”

“We have been trying, like Lear, to have it both ways: to lay down our human prerogative and yet at the same time to retain it. It is impossible. Either we are rational spirit obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao, or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own ‘natural’ impulses. Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. 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 progressive ideology uses science as a means to escape nature and to bend nature to it's will, and as technology continues to progress we continue to change our ideas of morality, the last battle will be when humanity finally overcomes humanity itself. When we release man from the jaws of natural consequences and determine for ourselves what human nature is.

“The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have ‘taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho’ and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it?”

A very Huxleyan diagnosis of the future. We will finally be our own Gods, but as Lewis brilliantly points out, man's conquest of nature is ultimately nature's conquest of man.

“Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man. Every victory we seemed to win has led us, step by step, to this conclusion. All Nature’s apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawals. We thought we were beating her back when she was luring us on. What looked to us like hands held up in surrender was really the opening of arms to enfold us for ever. If the fully planned and conditioned world (with its Tao a mere product of the planning) comes into existence, Nature will be troubled no more by the restive species that rose in revolt against her so many millions of years ago, will be vexed no longer by its chatter of truth and mercy and beauty and happiness. Ferum victorem cepit: and if the eugenics are efficient enough there will be no second revolt, but all snug beneath the Conditioners, and the Conditioners beneath her, till the moon falls or the sun grows cold.”

Lewis ends the book and all of these ideas with these beautiful words and warns us not to be blind,

“There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis - incommensurable with the others - and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”