Which C.S. Lewis book was published in 1943 as a critique of moral relativism?

The Abolition of Man was published in 1943 as C.S. Lewis’s critique of moral relativism.

The book developed from three lectures Lewis delivered at the University of Durham in February 1943. He examined educational theories that, in his view, treated value judgments as merely subjective emotional responses. Against that approach, he defended objective moral values and a shared human moral tradition.

Lewis calls this objective moral order the Tao, using a term borrowed from Chinese philosophy but applying it broadly to a cross-cultural tradition of basic moral principles. The book’s final chapter warns that attempts to conquer nature through technology may ultimately become attempts by some humans to control other humans.

The title does not mean that Lewis wanted humanity literally eliminated. “The abolition of man” describes the loss of distinctly human moral agency if education and technological power sever people from objective value. The work is often read alongside Lewis’s later essays on education, science, and ethics.