Which 1943 C.S. Lewis book argues that moral values are objective realities?

The Abolition of Man is the 1943 C.S. Lewis book that argues moral values are objective realities. It developed from three lectures delivered at the University of Durham in February 1943.

The book responds to educational ideas that Lewis believed reduced moral judgments to expressions of personal feeling. He argued that traditions across cultures recognize a common moral order, which he called the Tao. For Lewis, rejecting this order would not simply liberate humanity; it could undermine the qualities that make human judgment and virtue possible.

The work is divided into three chapters: “Men Without Chests,” “The Way,” and “The Abolition of Man.” Its final chapter examines how technological control over nature might become control over human beings themselves.

The title does not mean the physical disappearance of humanity. It refers to the possible reduction of people into products shaped by other people’s preferences and techniques. The book is often discussed alongside Lewis’s educational criticism and remains distinct from his later science-fiction novel That Hideous Strength.