Talk:The Abolition of Man

Why the name?

Interesting article, but it doesn't explain the book's title. (Why "The Abolition of Man"?)

Does the latest addition help? --Lavintzin 14:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this has been resolved now. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 00:01, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Outline

Does a detailed outline like that CleverOaf inserted belong in this article? My own reaction is that probably not. It could be posted elsewhere and linked to. What do the rest of you think?

If it is to remain, there are a number of changes I would propose.

A less detailed outline might be helpful, though to some extent it would recapitulating information already in the article.

--Lavintzin 17:18, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

The Intercollegiate Review ranked this work at #2 of the Best Books of the 20th Century [1]--Billymac00 20:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute material has been included. Not sure what the 'outline' is, but I am content with the synopsis we have as of this date. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 00:00, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

It's political correctness gone crazy, I tell you.

The section headed "Lewis' relevance to the present" seems very politically biassed: it is pretty hard to see a connection between "political correctness" (whatever that means) and Lewis's "conditioners." There is indeed a UK government body called the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (it's job it to licence new pharmeceuticals) but what this has to do with the fictitious organisation of devil-worshipping scienntists in "That Hideious Strength" I can't quite see.

Andrew Rilstone

This "relevance to the present" seems to have disappeared, and rightly so, as it doesn't sound particularly encyclopaedic. The academic and cultural significance of the work are covered off in their own sections. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 00:03, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Lewis's relevance to the present?

I've removed this section from the main article, since I doesn't appear to have a NPOV. DLWormwood 20:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

a distant future in which the values and morals of the majority are controlled by a small group who rule by a perfect understanding of psychology, and who in turn, being able to "see through" any system of morality that might induce them to act in a certain way, are ruled only by their own unreflected whims. The controllers will no longer be recognizably human, the controlled will be robot-like, and the Abolition of Man will have been completed Perhaps not such a distant future? In many ways Lewis's 'dystopia' appears to relate to developments in contemporary western societies - in particular the replacement of all traditional values in every possible area by new, invented 'values' which are essentially decreed by the ruling political, cultural and intellectual minority, and the control of public perceptions through the media. Certainly phenomena such as so-called 'political correctness' would seem to fit Lewis's nightmare vision perfectly. In 'That Hideous Strength' there is a government organisation in Britain involved in enforcing these new 'values' called N.I.C.E. No doubt this was a Lewisian joke - a euphemistic acronym concealing something very nasty indeed, but unthinkable in reality. Except that there actually *is* now an organisation called exactly that!

And in the same country too. That is a scary, scary coincidence. The book certainly is very relevant to the present but not because of the real life N.I.C.E. but because of the "Green Book" style philosophy that is still overwhelmingly the philosophy of mainstream academia. --Nerd42 (talk) 20:53, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I remember a science fiction story that went something like this: A government agent in a spacefaring society asks a person intending to travel why he didn't use a description of a capital city on another planet and he explains it like this:: What is the name of nth planet of y star? The agent replies that he doesn't know. The man replies, What if I told you To Go To Hell. and once the agent had sufficiently recovered from the shock explained that it was the name of the planet he identified. So no, it is not a scary coincidence except to such people who have a lack of something I have difficulty putting into words. Also, while the current philosophy bears a pale similarity to what C. S. Lewis described, I wonder if he misunderstood the nature of the book as he seems to have no sense of the concept of moral relativism as described in the Wikipedia article. I don't know how much less developed the area of moral relativism was then compared to how developed it is today, but one person said that if a person said morality was subjective he would punch them and punch them until they admitted that morality was objective, to which my response is that while morality is subjective a number of people with the same sense of morality regarding someone punching a person like that in this part of the world have decided that they want to appoint a special group of people to force a person punching another person to stop punching the other person unless they were acting in defense, and the situation given is not one of acting in defense. Hackwrench (talk) 00:04, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

"Popular" culture

I submit that it is a lot harder to write a notable book on Christianity which survives for 60 years than to fashion a rock band that is out of fashion a few years after it starts. The book was around a long time before "popular" music and may survive into other genres. The presence of the bands here is an attempt at WP:PR and is WP:SPAM for them here. They may be notable in their own right, but if they were to write a song about Barack Obama, it should not be placed under his article IMO. That would be merely an attempt by a band supporter to derive publicity for an otherwise failed song. Student7 (talk) 23:29, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

I checked the sources, and they are relevant to the specialist area of hip hop music and whatnot. So, while surprising and a bit odd, it's legitimate material. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 00:05, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Image

Hey, I'm new to all this editing business, and I don't really know how to add an image to a page. Anybody? RGRIV (talk) 04:29, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Upper forms

I posted something in the Wikipedia forms entry but between the current state of both articles "upper forms" as used here is not clearly defined. If C. S. Lewis meant the equivalent of High School, then why does he go on about things that I might expect the students to have learned in the lower grades? Hackwrench (talk) 23:31, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

"Rankings"

I think it's worth pointing out that the misleadingly titled organization the "Intercollegiate Studies Institute" that ranks this book as the 2nd most influential book of the past century on its own website calls itself, among other things, the birthplace of the modern american conservative movement. It's a bias that might be worth pointing out to readers who might assume this book is more generally influential or valued than it actually is, academically or otherwise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:4A0:2D:0:0:0:0:4 (talk) 07:56, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

A good suggestion, and I have made the change accordingly. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 00:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Original Research?

it looks like there is original research in footnote three.

https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Man#cite_note-3

"um ACTUALLY if you look carefully you'll see that C.S. Lewis didn't understand the book." a bit of editorializing going on there, unless I've misunderstood wikipedia's policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.161.114.172 (talk) 22:16, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

While retaining the footnote, I have removed the opinion-like language. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 00:14, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Impact among public intellectuals

As discussed on another page, @Sir awesomness, have had a shot at developing the cultural and intellectual impacts of the work. Please add or improve! MatthewDalhousie (talk) 08:49, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Great! Thank you, I've added a paragraph on Michael Ward and democracy. It was quite a challenge to write it! Feel free also to add or improve on it. Sir awesomness (talk) 06:32, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Yep, that's great. I've given that para a lead in sentence. Am starting to think that the real significance of his essay is the renewal of natural law, which for a long time was a purely Catholic idea, but today is quite common in Reformed thought as well. I have the sense that Lewis is the bridge between those two movements, but have no source for that. Will be good to stay involved in this page. Hope other editors join in too. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 00:23, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, yes that seems pretty significant in Christian thought. Both Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity dive into natural law, and the latter is certainly highly influential across denominations.

This source is littered with references to C. S. Lewis and is titled "CALVINIST NATURAL LAW AND THE ULTIMATE GOOD":

https://www8.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/WAJurist/2014/5.pdf Sir awesomness (talk) 05:50, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Great find @Sir awesomness, have added a sentence you can see here, about legal theorists picking up on some of the ideas from the essay, pertaining to Natural Law. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 06:50, 6 August 2024 (UTC)