Which C.S. Lewis book was adapted from the 1943 Riddell Memorial Lectures?

The Abolition of Man was adapted from C.S. Lewis’s 1943 Riddell Memorial Lectures.

Lewis delivered the lectures at the University of Durham in February 1943. The book, published later that year, examines education, moral judgment and the idea that objective values exist. Its three chapters are titled “Men Without Chests,” “The Abolition of Man” and “The Inner Ring.”

The work argues against reducing moral responses to mere personal feelings or social conditioning. Lewis uses the term “the Tao” for a cross-cultural framework of basic moral principles, while warning that an attempt to eliminate objective value would ultimately undermine human nature itself. The book is philosophical and cultural criticism rather than a novel or a conventional devotional work.

It is sometimes confused with Mere Christianity because both emerged from Lewis’s wartime public work. Mere Christianity grew from BBC talks, whereas The Abolition of Man came from an academic lecture series.