The Abolition of Objective Value Matt Young College

C.S. Lewis begins The Abolition of Man by considering the implications of a particular children’s textbook. The issue with the textbook, according to Lewis, is its philosophy of a subjectivism of value. The specifically noted passage that warrants this criticism mentions multiple predicates of value attributed to a waterfall (via Coleridge’s example) and then asserts that all such predicates of value are merely products of a subjective assessment of one’s own emotions elicited by the stimulus (in this scenario, the waterfall). This seemingly minor example is a prelude to a much larger issue: the widespread and pervasive quality of such a subjectivist mindset. Lewis aims to address this issue by defending a “doctrine of objective value” (18). To defend objective value, he demonstrates in The Abolition of Man in its three distinct chapters that subjectivism leads to the parallel destructions of society, ethics, and Man.

In the first part of the book, “Men Without Chests,” Lewis explores the destructive effects on society brought about by subjectivism. He echoes Aristotle’s view that “the aim of education is to make a pupil like and dislike what he ought” (16). The imbuing of a proper ordo amoris (Latin for “order of love,” with...