What was C.S. Lewis’s 1943 book about the loss of objective values?

C.S. Lewis’s 1943 book about the loss of objective values was The Abolition of Man.

The work developed from three lectures Lewis delivered at Durham University in February 1943. He examined moral education, arguing that human beings need to recognize objective values rather than reduce moral judgments to personal feelings or conditioning.

Lewis used the term “the Tao” for a cross-cultural body of basic moral principles. He did not mean the Tao only in the narrow sense of a particular Chinese religious concept; in the book, it names a broad pattern of traditional moral understanding found across civilizations.

The final chapter considers how technological power might reshape humanity. Lewis’s argument is philosophical rather than a prediction about one specific invention. Readers sometimes confuse this book with Mere Christianity, which presents a more accessible case for Christian belief. The Abolition of Man is shorter, more academic, and focused especially on education, moral realism, and the consequences of rejecting objective value.