A New Idea on The Abolition of Man

An educator's reflections on a new idea concerning C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man

On Lewis' The Abolition of Man

A New Idea

C. P. Christian

Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. San Francisco, CA. Harper Collins, 2001. 113 pgs. paperback. ISBN 0060652942.

Using the following provided reflection questions:

• What new thought(s) or idea(s) did you encounter in this reading?

• How does this book speak to the fact that there is a givenness to the universe? How does knowing this impact how we teach our students?

• How will the content of this book transform your teaching practices?

Before addressing the particular questions tasked of our reflection "in this reading," of C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, it is perhaps pertinent to first address some of the circumstances of this reading. For myself, this was the third time reading the work through. I was already familiar with the nature of the work from undergrad work in a college course on American governance, as Lewis' The Abolition was a required text. My copy is the same copy I first read in college some twenty or so years ago. The second reading was after graduate school in my first few years of full time teaching some thirteen years ago for a similar endeavor to what we are doing with the reading now.

This is the third reading, which occurred as part of a reading group for this very writing and reflection piece. I provide this so that I can safely assert that there were not really any new ideas encountered in this reading from the two readings before, but rather, there were new pieces of evidence to support much of Lewis had to declare concerning the state, purpose, and nature of what was and still is happening to education from his day forward, even here in America, and certainly throughout the West since the Second World War. The ideas drawn are .. pretty much all the same. But there is now very solid evidence to support what Lewis was ultimately concerned would or could happen if education and subsequently, the society reared within this education, strayed and then subsequently stayed into and upon the path of the Enlightenment that had begun to permeate all levels of Western society and Western thought most definitively, and even very radically in some parts, of the West in Lewis's day.

I propose therefore a new idea not subsequently found within the book, but rather that the book itself supports, or better said, perhaps prophesies, namely, that in many ways the West has arrived at the point of implosion concerning the path the powers within education have sought to follow. One could say the idea is found then because of the book. Lewis warns in the book that if this were to happen, then the society that follows a path of "rebellion against the Tao" would ultimately destroy itself. As Lewis puts it : " The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves." ¹ By this Lewis means that if the powers that be within the bounds of education, and the influencers of any given society, continue down the path of rebellion against the given nature of the universe, which he labels Tao, then they are doomed, or that which they wish to create is doomed at the very least.

I assert, in my own new idea, developed because of reading the book for a third time and being older and having seen the books' assertions borne out, that this is now the case, or that it is very near. The "new ideologies" within our current era of postmodernist-oriented ideology are at the cusp of implosion, and because of this, this "new ideology" makes little coherent sense even to or amongst the people that follow it. This of course is not stopping it. That would mean a fundamental acknowledgment by a vast host that .. they .. are .. wrong. And that's a toughie...

What will happen from now on is the question and connects to the second reflection question directly, in that our teaching should hold regard for the givenness of the universe, namely that there is or are "platitudes of Practical Reason"² as Lewis puts it, that there is an absolute nature to the world and that societies must have a fundamental basis of right, wrong, true, and false. The student of any of our teaching must be taught essentially what Lewis himself was and is teaching within the book via his central argument: "I am simply arguing that if we are to have values at all we must accept the ultimate platitudes of Practical Reason as having absolute validity: that any attempt, having become skeptical about these, to reintroduce value lower down on some supposedly more 'realistic' basis, is doomed."³ Subsequently our teaching is impacted in that we should make certain that these truths are taught, and that there has been and continues to be "a rebellion" against them. There can and probably also should be lessons on what this rebellion looks like when it manifests itself within societies and what destruction it has wrought whenever or wherever it has been waged.

Lastly, the third reflection item of how this reading will transform our teaching. My teaching. I am not sure that the goals or nature of what I teach or how I teach what I teach are to be that much more transformed from what they were when I originally began. I teach history and logical thinking primarily. As a lay out to my students, my purpose is to preserve the West, its Judeo-Christian heritage, Values, and Story as much as I possibly can by sharing it truthfully. Their task after mastery of some keys to this Story is to determine what to do with this heritage. I articulate my preference of course, but ultimately, the nature of the truth that Lewis expounds has not been unknown to me since even before the first reading some twenty years ago in college. If my teaching is to be transformed, I would say it should now place much more emphasis upon the nature of how the rebellion is occurring today in connection with how it was being developed throughout our past in the Western world, and perhaps also share much more thoroughly what they can and should look for in the present for signs and characteristics of how these rebellions against the givenness of our universe manifest themselves typically.

1 Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins. 2001. 113 pgs. paperback. ISBN 0060652942. 44.

2 Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins. 2001. 113 pgs. paperback. ISBN 0060652942. 49

3 Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins. 2001. 113 pgs. paperback. ISBN 0060652942. 49.