The Abolition of Man

Why it’s on the list: C. S. Lewis’s three short lectures against “men without chests”: treat the good as mere sentiment and every ideology ends up smuggling its values back in, and the conquest of nature ends in the conquest of human nature by a few conditioners. A hundred pages, written in 1943, that anticipate most of the later argument about technology and human nature.

Where I heard about it

• Photographed in January 2016 (Books photo album)

• Charlie Kirk — on @j_bambrick’s compilation of every book Kirk recommended across his episodes and videos, September 2025.

• Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List (March 2026), in Pursuing the Good Life: Ethics and Personal Growth.

Connections

• C.S. Lewis — the author; this is his philosophical rather than devotional register.
• Moral Relativism — the target of the first two lectures.
• Education — where Lewis says the damage is actually done.
• Human Nature — what the third lecture argues is at stake.
• That Hideous Strength — Lewis’s own novelisation of the third lecture; his preface says the story makes the same point as The Abolition of Man.