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Title: The Abolition of Man
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Manufacturer: HarperOne
List Price: $11.95
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| The Abolition of Man by HarperOne Biased, religious, and logically flawed. | While this is a great piece if you want to step inside a virtue theorist's mind, as an actual philosophical text it is rather poor.
While it is obviously religiously biased, it is Lewis' own circular paradoxes that lead to a flawed system of logic that can not support itself.
| | The Abolition of Man by HarperOne How to fix what is broken | | This book is a series of three talks where Lewis illustrates the breakdown of education , from a system which embraces natural law, truth, and virtue, to one which embraces much of nothing and feeds back nothing. It is perhaps a bit dated now as teaching methods have moved on (though not necessarily in positive directions), but yet it still has much to say as we contemplate the inadequacy of our present systems and what we need to reclaim to restore them. | | The Abolition of Man by HarperOne Value Galore and Remedial for every epoch | | I was struck with amazement as I read this most beneficial and interesting book! There are so many books to choose from these days for inquiry or answers to the brokenness in our modern day populace, but this one proved to be top-notch in this writer's opinion. The writer's skill conveys keen insights into the mind to understand mankind's condition, including interpersonal relationships from the intellect. Dead hypothesis that would try to excoriate the common sense displayed here in this wonderful little treatise would no doubt fall by the wayside. Can we see the signs of the times from the author's wisdom? Where is the world headed anyway? Read this little book for some answers. I've got a much better perspective on life now due to the dulcet manner of the author; the way he draws on the treasures intrinsic in all of us to begin with. Doubtless you will not find anything insipid within the two covers. A very powerful book indeed! Lewis displays a virtuoso's flair for observing absolutes unequivocally. I will keep one of the copies of two I purchased for my book shelf and the other one for a gift. The Den of IniquityC.S. Lewis: The Signature Classics Audio Collection: The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Mere Christianity | | The Abolition of Man by HarperOne "The Needed Antidote" | This is a marvelous book for showing the rank and file American college freshman just how he or she may have been unwittingly propagandized in the lower grades. The reigning studenty "philosophy" these days is indistinguishable from classical sophistry's arguments that "everything is relative" and -since everyone has a right to his opinion - that all opinions are necessarily of equal value. I suspect this "philosophy" began its march toward triumph in the first grade when a color blind student, Johnny, misidentified a color, the other students, being naturally cruel, laughed, and the "caring" teacher correctly instructed them not to, but for a cockeyed reason, that "Johnny has a right to his opinion!"
Taking off from such a spot, sophistic relativism invariably before long comes to be embraced by the young with complete uncritical dogmatism, the opposite idea that some judgments are more apposite than others being wholly ignored by "caring" teachers, if not dismissed as patently invidious "judgmentalism." Like Socrates before him, C.S. Lewis here does battle with such lapses in critical thinking, assuming, as did his Greek predecessor, the objective existence of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and offering instances of the recurrent Natural Law drawn from many cultures. Defending the position that values are indeed objective, Lewis aims is to call much needed attention to this bracing alternative to the regnant view that all values are necessarily subjective, and therefore, in fact, trivial. Through his usual combination of shrewd wit, clear thinking and epigrammatic style, Lewis succeeds admirably. | | The Abolition of Man by HarperOne Brief and Engaging | In this brief book, C.S. Lewis discusses the failing of relativism and affirms the existence of objective moral values. This system of objective values, which Lewis calls the Tao, must be granted if there are to be any values whatsoever. In a long appendix at the end of the book, Lewis shows that all (or almost all) cultures, both past and present, have affirmed some basic moral principles that are part of the Tao. Against the relativist claim that all socieities have their own moral codes, Lewis demonstrates that all humans are guided by an underlying system of objective values which they may or may not recognize.
In the third and final chapter, Lewis foresees a day when men have complete control over the destinies of the next generation. Should men achieve an take advantage of such power, it would not mean that man had finally dominated nature. Rather, it would mean the abolition of man. Unguided by the Tao, man's decisions about what future generations should be like would by guided only by natural impulses. Thus, by destroying the Tao and attempting to dominate nature, man can only succeed in destroying himself.
Like always, Lewis writes with great clarity and intelligence. "The Abolition of Man" is an enjoyable read and certainly worth checking out. | | The Abolition of Man by HarperOne Product Description | C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society. | | The Abolition of Man by HarperOne Amazon.com | | C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man purports to be a book specifically about public education, but its central concerns are broadly political, religious, and philosophical. In the best of the book's three essays, "Men Without Chests," Lewis trains his laser-sharp wit on a mid- century English high school text, considering the ramifications of teaching British students to believe in idle relativism, and to reject "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are." Lewis calls this doctrine the "Tao," and he spends much of the book explaining why society needs a sense of objective values. The Abolition of Man speaks with astonishing freshness to contemporary debates about morality; and even if Lewis seems a bit too cranky and privileged for his arguments to be swallowed whole, at least his articulation of values seems less ego-driven, and therefore is more useful, than that of current writers such as Bill Bennett and James Dobson. --Michael Joseph Gross |
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