Which C.S. Lewis book presents a fictional debate about the abolition of objective values?

The Abolition of Man presents C.S. Lewis’s fictional debate about the abolition of objective values.

Published in 1943, The Abolition of Man began as a series of three lectures delivered at the University of Durham. Lewis responded to approaches to education and moral judgment that, in his view, treated values as merely subjective emotional reactions. He argued that education should cultivate reason and character rather than simply produce cleverness or technical power.

The book is structured in three parts: “Men Without Chests,” “The Way,” and “The Abolition of Man.” Lewis uses the term “the Tao” for a cross-cultural tradition of basic moral principles, not as a narrowly defined reference to one philosophical school.

The work is nonfiction and philosophical, unlike Lewis’s novels and children’s fantasy. Its title does not mean the literal disappearance of humanity; it refers to a future in which technological control and moral skepticism could reduce human beings to manipulated products.