Which 1943 C.S. Lewis book argues that humanity can be dehumanized by rejecting objective values?

The Abolition of Man is C.S. Lewis’s 1943 book arguing that rejecting objective values can dehumanize humanity.

The work grew from three lectures Lewis delivered at the University of Durham in 1943. He criticizes an approach to moral education that treats value judgments as merely subjective emotional reactions. Against that view, he defends objective moral principles, which he calls the Tao.

Lewis argues that technological power without moral formation could ultimately diminish the very human nature that technology seeks to control. The book is not a novel and does not present the same kind of imaginative story found in Narnia or the Space Trilogy.

Its three chapters are titled “Men Without Chests,” “The Way,” and “The Abolition of Man.” The final chapter gives the book its title and develops the consequences of attempting to reshape human nature without limits.