What 1943 C.S. Lewis book examines the dangers of human pride and ideology?

C.S. Lewis’s 1943 book The Abolition of Man examines the dangers of human pride and ideology.

The Abolition of Man developed from three lectures Lewis delivered at the University of Durham in February 1943. The book is a compact work of moral philosophy, not a novel, and it responds partly to educational theories that Lewis believed treated moral judgments as merely subjective emotions.

Lewis argues for an objective moral order, which he calls the Tao. He warns that attempts to reshape human nature through unchecked technological power could ultimately destroy the qualities that make people human. The argument leads to the book’s striking title: abolishing humanity would mean eliminating the very standards by which human purposes are judged.

The work is often paired with That Hideous Strength, the final novel of Lewis’s Space Trilogy, because both address technocratic control and the manipulation of humanity. It is distinct from The Problem of Pain, which focuses more directly on the theological problem of suffering.