The Abolition Of Man

[marycatelli]

The Abolition Of Man by C. S. Lewis

Start with a book of lit-crit intended for school children.  End with a dystopia future of misery.  What amazing development of ideas one can get.

Though, actually, Lewis points out fairly quickly that the authors didn't deliver on the lit-crit side of things.  Instead, they were offering amateur philosophy, bent on debunking sentiments.  And for all practical purposes, all sentiments -- including loyalty, patriotism, and the like.  And what, in due consequence, results, with some considerable debunking of other techniques of reestablishing such sentiments as they like.

And the perfectly engineered, with eugenics and conditioning, future that would be the logical consequence of abandoning them all.

Comments

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

An excellent book! My favorite part is the Appendix.

[marycatelli]

And an interesting collection that Appendix is.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

It fascinates me. It's like a dance or a game. Goals and boundaries. "The old pagan ring fence."

Give greatest kindness to those closest -- but don't be unfair to outsiders.

Do social welfare -- but not by causing anyone to weep.

There was a lot of discussion on this on alt.books.cs-lewis. We called it "the 813" or "the 8/13" because that's how many headers he had. Do you have any idea where in ERE those names came from?

[marycatelli]

'fraid not.