The Abolition of Man

Three short lectures against what Lewis calls men without chests. The first attacks a schoolbook that teaches students to hear every value judgement as a report on the speaker’s feelings; the second argues that once you treat the good as mere sentiment you cannot derive any practical conclusion at all, so every ideology ends up smuggling one in; the third argues that the conquest of nature terminates in the conquest of human nature, at which point a small number of conditioners decide what everyone after them will be. His counter is what he calls the Tao — the moral first principles he claims every tradition converges on and none can step outside of to judge.

Why it’s on the list: A hundred pages that anticipate most of the later argument about technology and human nature, written in 1943 with nothing more technological than a schoolbook in front of him.

Where I saw it: On @j_bambrick’s September 26, 2025 compilation of every book Charlie Kirk recommended across his episodes and videos.

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.