The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis

The Abolition of Man by C.S Lewis, brilliantly breaks down the modern culture and examines some of the crises our society encounters. He breaks down the book into three sections, beginning with "Men Without Chests." Lewis takes a traditional elementary school book written about two characters, whom he renames Gaius and Titius, and extrapolates the intentions and underlying feelings from both within the story. Lewis argues that the author is not simply writing a school textbook to teach language and writing. He states that the author implicitly instills philosophies and doctrines within children to establish mindsets based on subjectivity rather than objectivity. In modern culture, he believes children should be taught objectivity before subjectivity. Lewis subsequently introduces the Chinese term "Tao," which he identifies as the pinnacle of humanity, that "certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are" (Lewis, 16). In the second portion of the book, "The Way," he expands on the Tao. He emphasizes that the educational system must include the Tao rather than a free-for-all in conceiving new objectivity.

Furthermore, he ends the book by explaining that the absence of Tao is fundamentally the "abolition of man." Humans' objective/rational and subjective/emotional sides are both forgotten, and the sense of humanity is lost. Lewis concludes that our modern view of humanity cannot be without the Tao; if we create a new form of humanity that is "transparent" and "invisible," it is not living and seeing as we ought.