The Abolition of Man part 1
"We laugh at honor and our shocked to find traitors in our midst"
Welcome to the systems of philosophy blog! If you find yourself dissatisfied with much of the philosophy and politics that you read online then this is the place for you. The self stated goal of the blog is to use simple diagrams in order to explore different philosophical and political ideas. As we find ideas that are interesting I attempt to link them together in order to build up new philosophical frameworks.
In order to build these new philosophical frameworks we need to be drawing from a number of different sources. So in an ongoing series on this blog I will be going over various books that I think deserve our attention. I will use diagrams in an attempt to pull out some key lessons and link those lessons to other posts on the blog.
The abolition of man by CS Lewis is a small book, only about a hundred pages, but it is in my opinion one of the more underrated philosophy books of the last century. In it Lewis argues for the objectivity of values such as ‘honor’ and criticizes philosophies that advocate for such values being relative. His arguments in the abolition of man have impacted me immensely and it serves as an almost foundational text for the type of thinking that I explore in this blog.
In the first part of this series we will go over chapter one where Lewis examines a English book that he believes is undermining the concept of objective values. This chapter is largely setting up arguments for chapter 2 by beginning to unpack the can of worms that undermining objective values unleashes. But he also dives into the problems that undermining objective values presents in education and how these problems grow from problems with an individual to problems with the state of society.
I will summarize chapter one and insert some diagrams to help further clarify Lewis’s arguments. I recommend picking up a copy to read along with this blog.
Chapter 1: Men without Chests
Chapter one starts by examining an English book that Lewis calls “The Green Book”. The Green Book is notionally an English textbook teaching literary criticism but Lewis believes the book is causing unintended intellectual harm. The authors of the book start by discussing a literary piece about “Coleridge at the waterfall” where Coleridge corrects a tourist who calls a waterfall ‘pretty’ instead suggesting the the waterfall is ‘sublime’. The authors of the Green Book correct this judgement telling the reader “When the man said this is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall . . . Actually . . . he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings.” They go on to say that we often think we are making important statements about things but we are only making statements about our own feelings. Lewis warns that students reading this lesson will generalize this assumption to mean that all statements of value are simply a reflection of the speaker’s emotional state and ultimately unimportant. Statements of value or ‘Sentiments’ as Lewis refers to them, can be correct or incorrect as explained by Coleridge correcting the tourists comments about the waterfall.
The traditional way of thinking as taught by previous generations of English writers like Coleridge and Lewis.
The author of the green books object to the previous diagram and propose there own explanation for what is happening, represented in the diagram above.
The authors of the green book attempt to show the utility of there way of thinking by debunking a misleading advertisement for a Caribbean vacation. The poorly written advertisement says that those who go on the Caribbean cruise will go “across the western ocean where drake of Devon sailed”, “adventuring after the treasures of the indies” and “bring home themselves a treasure of golden hours and glowing colors”. The Authors then proceed to debunk the writing by pointing out that “The luxurious motor vessel won’t really sail where Drake did, that the tourists will not have any adventures, that the treasures they bring home will be of a purely metaphorical nature”. Lewis objects to this way of thinking on the grounds that the same way of thinking could be used to debunk truly great pieces of literature. He agrees that the advertisement is terrible but argues that the better approach would be to take the advertisement and put it side by side with a well written piece of literature so that the student could understand the bad from the good. This would be a proper education were the student learned to be “above” such misleading advertisements like the vacation ad. As Lewis puts it “ There are two men to whom we offer in vain a false leading article on patriotism and honor: one is a coward, the other is the honorable and patriotic man.” A student trained only on the green book will not only be unaffected by emotional propaganda but they will also be unaffected by great works of art or literature. This process of debunking ‘sentiments’ can be applied to all statements of value not just the poorly made ones. Lewis provides the example of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude where he talks about the antiquity of London first descending on his mind with “Weight and power, power growing under weight.” This piece of classic literature could just as easily be debunked using the Green book’s way of thinking.
In the following paragraphs Lewis seeks to examine why the authors of the book might have fallen into this trap. He assumes that they do not intentionally want to make such philosophical waves but have done so for a few reasons. One being that to do real literary criticism is very hard while debunking something on the basis of commonplace rationalism is relatively easier and within anyone’s reach. The second is that the authors of the green book misunderstand what is needed of teachers, they may want to protect against ideological capture of there students and so attempt to inoculate them against sentimental thinking. Lewis asserts that the opposite problem faces the society of his day. That what students need is to be taught the right sentiments or as he puts it “ The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” Lewis proposes that its possible the authors of the green book might, like himself, actually want to create some sentiments in there students that they view as “just” while destroying others they deem “unjust”. But without the concept of objective value how one can create ‘just sentiments’ becomes a difficult question. In order to explain the conundrum facing the Green Book authors Lewis digresses to explain his conception of the “Tao”.
The “Tao” or “the way” is Lewis’s catch all term for the concept of objective value and morality. Lewis pulls from multiple different religious and philosophical traditions to build up the idea that certain emotional reactions can be either congruous or incongruous to the Tao. In the first chapter of the green book when Coleridge is calling the waterfall sublime it is because certain emotions are more appropriate than others. This is unlike the authors of the green book who believe that Coleridge is only stating something about his own feelings toward the waterfall. Lewis quotes Aristotle who says “that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.” This again serves to contrast the “debunking” of the green book with the doctrine of objective value. Lewis admits that readers might consider his conception of the “tao” quaint or magical but holds that this doctrine of objective value is undisputable. There are some things that are truly more right or more just than others and that these are entirely separate from our internal emotions. It is indeed possible for someone to have emotions that are incorrect. Just as someone might be colorblind someone might have incorrect emotions, a tourist who did not find the waterfall beautiful would have to admit this as a defect in themselves.
But for the green book the authors have excluded this idea of emotional state being out of sync with reason. To say that an emotional state is out of sync with reason implies that there is something else other than the emotion. The authors of the green book have already stated that when talking about something like the waterfall that we are really only saying something about our own emotions, not about anything objective in the world. So the educational task for Lewis and those who follow the '“Tao” is different than those who do not. For those within the “Tao” the task is to teach the pupil about responses are appropriate in life. For those without it the task is very different, if they are logical then all sentiments are equally irrational. So therefore they must either remove all sentiments from there pupils mind or else encourage certain emotions for reasons that have nothing to do with their intrinsic ‘justness’.
In Lewis’s conception of the ‘TAO’ it is possible for someone’s emotions to be out of sync with reason. Just as someone can be colorblind or deaf.
With the Green Book’s preclusion of objective value, the concept of emotional states being out of sync with reason no longer makes sense.
Lewis provides a concrete example of the differences in philosophies by examining a roman passing on values to his son. When a roman father told his son that is was a “sweet and seemly” thing to die for his country, he believed what he said. The father was honestly communicating his values about what he believed to be a noble death. He was giving his son the best he had and attempting to humanize him as he had had done to him. But for the authors of the green book this is problematic, there own method of debunking disputes this claim that it is noble to die for ones country. It will not feel “sweet and seemly” when it happens and “noble” is just some emotion people might feel when they think about the soldiers death. So the authors of the green book have two alternatives, they can debunk the sentiment completely or they can attempt to produce this sentiment through some other way because it is useful to the survivors of a society that there young men feel it. This would turn the propagation of morality into mere propaganda. Lewis commends the authors of the green book for “being better than there principles” and attempting to avoid this path of direct propaganda. Lewis instead intuits that they have a vague notion that valor and justice could be commended on ‘rational’ or ‘biological’ grounds without the need for objective value.
The problems of survival across time and the generation gap were explored on our previous blog on time and scale
The idea that we can establish honor on some other more rational ground rather than on objective value is explored in chapter 2 of abolition of man. We will cover it in part 2 of this blog on the book.
Even if higher virtues could really be justified with no appeal to objective values, no justification of virtue can lead a man to be virtuous. Lewis says that the man must have trained emotions and offers the anecdote that he “ would sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that a gentleman does not cheat, than against a irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.” All the rationalization about morality in the world isn’t as helpful as the vaguest sentimentalism about a flag or a country. The authors of the green book are creating as Lewis calls it, “men without chests”. People who don’t actually believe in the emotions that they claim to desire. The chapter ends by pointing out how we are always calling for more ‘drive’ or ‘creativity’ in our society, all while undermining the very values that would support this. As Lewis eloquently puts it “ we laugh at honor and our shocked to find traitors in our midst”.
Key Takeaways
Key lessons from part one
Time continues to be an essential piece of good philosophy. By adding in the dimension of time the question of how you pass down values is brought to focus. This then forces authors of the Green book and other moral relativists to attempt to answer this question by appealing to ‘rational’ or ‘biological’ grounds for those values they wish to encourage. Lewis’s arguments about how values are passed down was discussed in our blog on time and scale. Time will continue to be a important dimension in Chapters 2 and 3 of abolition of man.
Rationalizations for morality are not sufficient to produce individuals who act morally. you actually need to train individuals in the proper responses to things, “Sentiments” as Lew puts it. The FTX scandal comes to mind as an example of a situation where the participants could recite all the rational reasons to be moral and yet didn’t act that way. I find the line “we laugh at honor and our shocked to find traitors in our midst” just as compelling as it was during Lewis’s day. I distinctly remember one my college professors telling our class how there was no such thing as patriotism or citizenry, we had nothing in common with our fellow citizens. He would then the next day complain about politicians being greedy and how they should be looking out for there constituents more. There was no self reflection to realize he was undercutting the very beliefs that would be required for the behavior he expected out of people.
We see again ‘the attention problem’ from our blog on Free Will. The Green book authors have made an argument that they believes solves a problem but they are only paying attention to there narrow area. There argument actually opens up another cans of worms entirely.
The mental mechanisms that are used to argue against X stay with you and might be used against Y. The authors of the green book developed a mental mechanism that attempted to protect there students from propaganda, but it also protected them for having appreciation for great art as well. The key takeaway here is that your arguments and how you structure them actually do matter. You can arrive at the right point with poor arguments that will lead to bad thinking over time.
Lewis starts the book by worried about the impact of textbooks on students and wondering about what kind of individuals those textbooks will produce. Do we spend any time thinking about this today? Most articles I read about the state of education today always just speak of “improving education” with no actual explanation of what that means as an outcome. Its not self explanatory what kind of individuals we want our schools to produce and we don’t really discuss that as Lewis does in abolition of man.
Lewis’s recommendation to not just ‘debunk’ things but rather compare bad examples with good examples is a better way to examine topics. I will try to do that in future topics on this blog.
Next Chapter
In the next blog we will go over chapter 2 of abolition of man. In it Lewis takes on the proposition that there might be a ‘rational’ or ‘biological’ grounds for values like ‘honor’, without the need to appeal to objective value.