Neil Shenvi: The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis | The Book Club | PragerU

[Music] welcome back to the book club I'm Michael nolles and this month we are reading one of my favorite books by an author who had an extraordinarily significant role in my life in my reversion in everything and I'm joined by Neil shenvi a home schooling theoretical chemist you are a man of many talents who does many things you're an apologist you are a chemist you are you're a scholar and you're a Christian yes this book abolition of man written by one of the most famous Christians of the 20th century really is not even particularly Christian you certainly don't need to be Christian to appreciate the arguments it it doesn't really rely on scripture or if it it cites scripture maybe incidentally MH in one minute or less can you explain for those who haven't yet read it what this book is sure so abolition of man is Lewis's treatment of modern education and he sees it as a destructive force he thinks that the way we're teaching kids this is back in 1943 he gave these lectures and he thinks that modern education is undermining the doctrine of objective value the idea that there is objective Beauty truth and goodness out there in the world and that how we're teaching kids is undermining their belief in that idea and that will inevitably erode their ability to be virtuous to act virtuously but it will also lead to what he will be totalitarianism that will lead to a state that is trying to engineer a new human nature by undermining what he calls the Dow which is this idea of objective moral values and duties existing out there in the universe so it's a incredibly preent book um and even today when we Face different problems in education I think you can still appeal to his understanding of what he calls the Dow this natural law as as the key to reversing the damage we've done through modern education I I love this term the da because it's very strange you're reading this English Christian writer a medievalist at Oxford and he he refers to the Dow as the stuff that we know that we don't really have to prove that we actually can't prove that just everyone kind of knows that it's wrong to commit murder that you should honor your mother and father that just the stuff that's well some would say inscribed on every human heart and he kind of gives up the game a little later he says the da which you could also call the natural law or which you could call the first principles of practical reason or which and it it made me wonder why does he use this Eastern term when he could use the traditional term which is natural law or first principles or something and it's because you say he's writing by the middle of the 1940s toward the end of the second world war this culture that has largely lost its Faith he's writing he's not referring uh constantly to God and to scripture he's writing to a culture that is atheistic that has become fascinated with the East having abandoned its own Western religion and so he's in a way he's almost tricking them into recovering their lost cultural and intellectual patrimony it shows that actually while we think of these ideas as sort of innately Christian he says they're not they're part of the fabric of reality and thinkers across time and space and and they've recognized these ideas that like you said don't murder don't steal honor your father and mother they're not just found in the Ten Commandments they're found they're part of the moral fabric of the universe and everyone from Confucius to the ancient Egyptians the Babylonians to Christians to Jews to Muslims they all affirm these same ideas and actually there's a similar appendix in a book by Stephen Pinker who's a Harvard atheist psychologist the book is called the blank slate and in his book there's an appendex that has a list of what he calls human universals and it includes many of these same things that Lewis points out and that's so you can go to Lewis you can go to stepen Pinker you can go to the Bible you can go to many of these and find the same injunctions and that's Lewis's point that that da is all of humanity for Millennia Affirmed the existence of these principles these rules um as part of just the furniture of the universe and only today are we saying no we're debunking that we don't believe those things exist anymore so debunking is a huge Target for L here and he uses that word yeah it's funny because now that word is everywhere it's the left debunking the right but it's also the right debunking the left and we all just want to debunk and I'm sure I've been guilty of debunking a little in my life too but I find it unsatisfying just instinctively I find debunking unsatisfying because it it strikes me as akin to demystifying to just making everything plain and ordinary and scientific and dull and lifeless and and Lewis makes much that same point here even all the way from the very beginning of the book he opens up and he says look people now they open up their English composition books you know a grammar book and he says I have this particular book I'm talking about on my on my bookshelf but I won't embarrass the authors let's call them gas and tisus let's say it's called the green book The Green Book says when you approach a a mountain you say you would say the mountain is Sublime but according to the genius Scholars of the 1940s That's Just an Illusion the mountain is not really Sublime your perception of the mountain is Sublime your feeling about the mountain is is Sublime so really when you describe something as beautiful or sublime or awesome or terrifying you're you can't make any objectively true comment about something outside of you you're just kind of describing your own feelings man and CS Lewis says that is a fatal error we think we're making a comment about something out there but really we're only making a comment about our own feelings we think we're saying something very important about something when it's actually just describing our emotions about it but Lewis says no for all of history people believe that objective Value Beauty truth and goodness existed in the universe and as rational creatures our job was to recognize that and in fact conform our emotions to it like we're he said that Aristotle thought we should be trained from birth almost to love the good and to abhor the bad that was part of what it meant to be human only now are we saying no actually all of those are sentimental values their emotionalism and what he says is that now the author's guen titious he thinks are doing that accidentally they're not intentionally trying to undermine our belief in all value he thinks but he inevitable that he'll do that because if you can explain away in his words all sentiment all emotion as irrational childish immature what are you left with because you can play that game with any set of values you know you love your mother oh you're you're just evolutionary programmed to love your mother that's for babies you got to be more you know calculating and utilitarian and not care about your mother or your kids is that you going to do with kids is teach them that all of their emotions are based on Illusions that's dangerous but then I think that is the predominant view probably in pop culture today is is look all of our ideas about value are fake and illusory and they might serve some purpose and in as much as they're Universal and common to human nature it's just how we've evolved to propagate the species so it's not really true but we just kind of pretend it isn't the ignorant people they really believe it so then Lewis asks all right well what about this idea DOL Atri it is sweet and seemly to die for your country that's something that fathers used to teach their sons today basically no father would teach would teach that to his son someone else's kid has to go fight and die for his country not not you so why can't we end up the situation that the modern people suggest which is we say look it's the ideas of values come from biology and we know the secret but let the other people have their Illusions what's wrong with that so one thing is that if you don't have these Illusions you can't actually act virtuously so Lewis makes a comment that he he'd rather play Cards Against a man who's very skeptical about ethics but was bred to believe that a gentleman doesn't cheat right then against a man who is an irreproachable moral philosopher was brought up by sharpers by card sharks right his point is that your affections your your emotions how you feel about things good or bad beautiful or ugly will shape your behavior much more than your intellect will and he gives an example of on a battlefield what will keep you at your Sentry post when the when the bullets are flying is it like just knowing in your head only that I should stay here or having a love for your fellow soldiers for your country that was what will keep you in the thick of the fight and he he brings it to Aristotle and he says you know our modern idea of education is that you just cram someone's head full of facts but Aristotle's notion of education is that you actually have to cultivate tastes you have to cultivate desires so that students yearn for that they desire the good the true and the Beautiful if you don't do that if you don't begin with this base set of affections and tastes the the students never going to go anywhere right yeah and and he says at the end this is the first chapter is called men without chess uh the now Lewis uses is that you have a head your intellect and you have a belly that's your appetites your desires but they're mediated by the chest which is the seat of your trained emotions and his point is yes your head should govern your appetites but it does so through the chest through these trained sentiments and feelings and emotions without that he said the the head's too weak to to master the powerful appetites that will otherwise control you so if we don't have these stable uh affirmations of what is good and beautiful we truly believe that's how we gain control over our actions right because if it's all just biological and you know those smart Among Us who figure this out well it's it's not that we've expanded man's domain of power it's not that we've liberated ourselves well if we have we've liberated ourselves from ourselves he points out that well if it's all just illusory and unreasonable and we're all just writing elephant we don't really have any control over anything we haven't empowered man we've abolished man right that he he points out that as man attempts to conquer nature every conquest of nature gives another Conquest to Nature this becomes a matter of cost and benefit until CS Lewis predicts what is now called the transhuman movement the movement to turn us into I don't know cyborgs or upload our or live forever says at that point actually you all Harari thein leftwing intellectual he he wrote a whole book called homodeos he says we're going to evolve past Homo sapiens we're going we are going to consciously choose to end Homo sapiens by by making ourselves into gods and uh but of course then that greatest final Conquest for man is the abolition of man right so Lewis points out that every conquest of nature so Man's power over nature is really the power of some men over other men yeah right so you know I we have the power of the atom well that means that some people with nuclear weapons have power over the people that don't right or or reproductive technology as they're called now he he makes a wonderful point about contraception which you know even many conservatives today would support artificial contraception the mackerel snapping papists Among Us still don't like it and uh number of Christians of other varieties but he says regardless of your moral views of contraception you are now that you are empowered to choose not to have kids you are also depriving that future generation of all sorts of power of existing of existence right yeah take a a less controversial example would be like Eugenics yeah right uh today it's like 90% of down syndrome babies are aborted so so the power of reproductive technology reproductive technology is actually power over those kids I can choose them they don't have to exist even so his point is all power all of Man's power is really some men's power over other men with nature as its instrument he says but what happens when we begin to treat not just uh you know plants and animals but humans and human nature itself as part of nature something that we can control and shape for our own ends and so he imagines what he imagines is some set of what he calls conditioners people who have stepped outside of the Dow outside of traditional morality saying I know how the trick works I know how you get a conscience it all comes from these chemicals it comes from these neurons so I as someone outside of the Dow am going to engineer what the future Generations are going to feel in their conscience maybe I'll make them ruthless actually I think Hitler has a scary quote about how he's going to engineer a generation of kids that are remorseless without consciences that was his desire now he didn't have the technology to do it but Lewis worries about a day in which this omnicompetent government and the powers of science will be put in the hands of a small set of 100 people who are going to raise up a new kind of human being with a new kind of human nature and that will be the abolition of man yeah yeah so he foresees all of this yeah which does appear to be coming to pass almost exactly as he predicted and so we can all name these aspects of the Dow I just named some a few few moments ago honor your father and mother and don't don't commit murder and but for our skeptical age for our scientific age how do you persuade people that this is real how do you prove for instance that you should honor your father and mother his point in the book actually is that you can't pick and choose so you'd say well how can I have some parts of the doubt because I like some things like don't murder I like that one and I like the idea of keeping the vulnerable safe protecting the vulnerable I like those parts of the doubt but I don't like the whole like you have to be faithful to your spouse I don't like that part of that so I'll just I think so his point is that modern people like guen titious they want to keep some parts of the Dow but leave other parts but his point is first of all you can debunk all values the way you debunk the ones you don't like so you could say well we're programmed to be faithful to our spouse evolutionarily but that's for for educated people like us we can discard that maybe you're programmed to love your parents or you're programmed to keep the vulnerable safe so why not debunk those two you either have to accept the fact that there is a moral universe and all of it is there we have to Simply conform our Wills to it or reject all of it yeah you can't pick and choose he actually says the rebellion of the new ideologies against the da is the rebellion of the branches against the tree the branches and the the tree analogy is really good because they are there even to allow for reasoning so when when he points out that that the da is synonymous with the first principles of practical reason he he he observes that you need to begin with certain premises even just to think so you you have to believe that your faculties of reason are reliable for instance a mathematical analogy maybe is is easier mathematics rests on certain axioms a equals a A plus b equals B plus a a number of axioms you can't prove the axioms in fact you can only prove anything by assuming the axioms you can't prove anything without premises we don't we don't come from nothing you know we don't you you have to have some kind of building blocks here so if you if you debond and abolish all of those values that you start from in the process you've abolished reasoning itself the closing paragraph of this book is really famous it says you can't go seeing on through things forever you can't go seeing through things forever yeah to see through everything is not to see it's good that you can see through the window because there's a guard Garden there you can't see through you can see the garden then but if you can see through the garden you can see through everything then you're blind suddenly then then it's the same as to say you can't see you can't see so everyone goes back to some axioms some things are just taken for granted yeah and his point is that well if we live in a universe that is just there we have a moral universe that's just there we have to accept it all or reject at all we can't pi and choose that idea of Simply accepting the reality of the morality of the universe The Da goes against a spirit of both magic and science he said and this is a great passage where he says that the serious magical Endeavor and the serious scientific Endeavor were twins yes because we think in supposed enlightened modernity that science is really the the contrary it replaced magic it's the replacement for magic and he says you know the Middle Ages they think the Middle Ages were magical and the modern ages scientific he says there actually wasn't a lot of magic in the Middle Ages actually magic only really begins to to come about in the late 15th century the 16th and the 17th century and so as as you point out the the scientific and the Magical Endeavor are twins so what does that tell us about science well he wouldn't so he keeps saying I'm not anti-science because I people going to read me as anti-science I'm not anti-science but he's anti is idea that U that we that human the human will takes precedence over reality so he has a great quote explaining what is criticism is the Cardinal problem was how to conform the soul to reality and the solution was knowledge self displine and virtue to applied science and Magic alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the will of man and the solution is a technique in other words in the past you'd say you know here's some problem that I have how can I shape my own views my own uh how can I shape my own character to either confront this problem to to to accept it to change what I can to accept what I can something like that it's an internal inward Focus but to science and magic the solution is either wave this wand or press this button right problem solved fix reality don't fix yourself now sometimes that's great if you have a disease you want it cured yeah other times you're like well I'm I'm I'm not sure why I'm depressed I'll just take this pill not let's look in inside maybe I'm not viewing reality properly but to us we instantly look for that button to press to solve our problems and he's criticizing that this isn't only a problem for the left you know we sometimes push these scientistic and uh secular pathologies we say it's a problem of the left but the right sometimes does this too when we want to dominate nature when we want to you know merely impose our will uh on all of reality rather than live in accord with nature you see this especially with the natural environment you know the difference between a conservative conservationist right and someone who just wants parking lots and factories every here which which you know would have there was a time when William Blake would refer to those as dark satanic Mills we before we came to worship materialism and and dominating reality too so this this problem of modernity really involves all of us just as the Dow involves all of us too if we're going to be really living in accord with uh with our our human nature so then where does this leave us in 1945 or or 2024 yeah I think the big difference so obviously there's tons here that is very precient and relevant today like you said like the wh well these big organizations there are people out there you know a cabal of people maybe existing who are thinking how can we engineer Humanity but I but personally I think the bigger threat doesn't come from this small cabal of scientists and politicians that Lewis really feared um I think the push towards soft totalitarianism comes from the True Believers that are in the sort of the woke movement yeah so earlier in the book he says that he criticizes gas and tius for for worrying that the main problem is excessive sentiment it's a problem that most students have today is too much emotion and therefore they're debunking all that stupid emotion and I want to look at him and said but I think today maybe that is a problem and in that because because Lewis says the problem is a dir of sentiment they don't really feel anything yeah they're vulgar their sentiments are just like their bellies basically which is also a problem still but I would argue that what we're looking at today in large swads of our culture uh in in the woke movement is actually what he would call a new ideology yeah the idea and that the so he talks about how new ideologies are really just one fragment of the Dow ripped from its context in the whole and swollen to Madness in its isolation so you take one principle it's true then it becomes the only principle when when Lewis wrote that it immediately made me think of another British philosopher Michael oot who in rationalism and politics he says this this definition of ideology so stuck with me I memorized it that ideology is the formalized rment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition and it struck me when I reread abolition of man because that's exactly the definition the ement that's the key is you take one true piece but then becomes the only piece and everything it's oriented around that so for Lewis actually what he was worried about in a lot of his novels was the idea that the preservation of the human race became the only good and everything else whether it love for your parents love for your children uh justice Mercy all these other things became subservient to preserving the human race but I think today we have one of these ideologies that LE didn't foresee which is again this critical theory stuff and the one principle is protecting the vulnerable that becomes the only virtue keeping people safe from their from oppressors and overthrowing oppression that's the only virtue everything else gets thrown out sexual morality uh justice fairness so Lewis is right to say hey these new ideologies take one piece that's correct and make it the only thing that's that's dangerous monomaniacal um but he worried about eventually these conditioners abolishing all value I don't think we're there yet I think most people are dealing with that that new ideology of saying the only thing that matters is oppression and Liberation and everything get viewed through that lens and we're so today we're not teaching kids to debunk all values you go into a classroom you the yard signs they don't say all values don't exist the yard signs say what no in this house we believe this this this this this and they all boil down to protect the vulnerable and again that principle of keeping the vulnerable safe is you find in the da right but there are other things you find in it too and and that the Dow also doesn't it's not just written in stone and is lifeless Lewis points out there can there can be moral advancements to go from do not do to others what you would not have them do to you to the Golden Rule from our Lord Lord which is do unto others as you would have them do to you Lewis says this represents a moral advancement and a moral advancement is different from an innovation right he says the the the moral development and actually the Catholics have this idea of the development of Doctrine not changing not innovating but developing and Lewis is articulating the same idea here which is it it it comes from within the Dow that's the difference whereas the innovation of the Modern Masters of the Universe the conditioners they're coming from outside of the D they're trying to grab a hold of the D radically change it which is never going to work yeah he Compares it to a man who says you like vegetables moderately fresh why don't make them yourself and get them completely fresh so someone who says just throw out those vegetables and eat bricks yeah and bugs the conditioners want us the nian view he's like that's not that's such an innovation that's not a development a natural development such a brand new idea that's completely at variance with the doubt yes he he even you know you mentioned uh prop the species like the modern person would ask and legitimately is asking now why is it good that the human species can propagate I mean there are people who are anti-al that's right movement people who want to replace babies with puppies or whatever and why why is it good that the that the human race persists Lewis says you you can't really prove it you know you have to you have to begin with that and he says there's there's even we have this sense of imperative statements you know don't murder that person person don't do this don't do that but we we can't in modernity we can't really derive those imperative statements from the Bland scientific facts that we observe about the world something a little bit more is required which the the modern scientific mind just can't this called Humes Guillotine you can't go from an is to an ought right there's things they are true but should they be true it's like saying I often compare it to physical facts you have a physical fact like you know the Earth orbits the Sun that is true but you would never say therefore it should be true what does they even mean it should be true it just it it's a fact but you can't go from it to to what you then should do with that fact or I could say it is true I'd be very happy if I ate a gallon of ice cream that's a fact therefore I should eat a gallon of ice cream it's like well you can't get from an is to an A but but then and Lewis insists on that point in the book but but of course Aristotle would say well I I can see that you have eyes and I can conclude that the eyes are full seeing right and so there and I can conclude that you ought to see through your eyes and I'm using a less laid appendage than maybe some ethical um imperatives come from so in In classical philosophy people don't fret so much about this is au distinction because he has an idea of Telos of purpose so AIS I mean this everyone did before mity but Lewis would actually agree that they're not smuggling in but assuming there is purpose and Darwin really was one who undermine the idea of purpose in anything in at least in nature we can have purposes humans have purposes but Nature's purposeless once you assume that then it is fair to ask well just because it is true that you have eyes that can see but ought you to use them to see why can't I pluck them out right so again Lewis points out that the ancient people just thought that way yeah of course things have purposes but we've in modernity separated these two things and he would argue that yes they are distinct and but they they are connected because we live in a moral Universe on this point of purpose MH and the ends of things I would be remiss if I didn't mention an extraordinary coincidence which I learned about about five minutes before we started filming I mentioned this is this is one of my favorite books it's probably I think my favorite of Cs lewis' books uh just judged on the book itself but the the CS Lewis book most dear to me and the most important for my particular life is uh Mere Christianity and it's because I was a college student I was practically an atheist I might have actually been an Atheist at the time this was this would have been 2008 2009 somewhere around there and I was walking by The Commons now called the schwarzman center right right big prominent building at Yale and there was a guy with a table of books giving them away and I didn't believe in God or I wasn't Christian certainly but I was and remain a Frugal cheap skate so I like free books and I saw he had a few books there and one of them was was CS Lewis's Mere Christianity and I just took it said thanks nice guy uh didn't read it right away took it home for the summer sat out on my in my little yard in my home like true white trash I was sitting there with a you know a lawn chair like a beach chair and a cigar and I'm reading CS Lewis and I got to the end of Cs Lewis's Mere Christianity and I said by God he's right wow and it and it it was one of the pivotal moments in my life I top five certainly you know in in maybe top three in in my reversion and uh I mentioned I said oh you you know you were at Berkeley and you were at Princeton you were at Yale right and you mentioned that you were at Yale we overlapped for two years and you said yeah you know as a as a matter of fact you know that building Michael you know the comments yeah friend and I would uh we'd stand out there and we'd hand out books yep I was at Yale I was at The Book Table I don't know if you were the one people one of the people that I saw there but we were handing out CS books in Tim Keller's reason for God and now why was I there this is the other part of the story I was at the table because when I was an undergraduate at Princeton there was a campus Crusade for Christ a crew book table in front of my dining hall and I was also a cheapskate and I was not a Christian and they were handing out their Christianity screw tape letters and the Bible and I said no Bible thanks but I can buy these books for free because I recognized his name from Chronicle Narnia I picked them up and that was one of the top three moments in my life life when I became a Christian and then when I went to went to Yale as a postto years later I got involved with that book table and I told the other students that were with me handing out books I said this is how I became a Christian so you never know what one of one of these books will do what God will use it to do so yeah I I don't think I don't think it was you that gave me the book okay you mentioned a friend of yours yeah and I Googled him and I'm I'm almost positive it was that guy I've thought about that guy for 10 years now because I thought this guy doesn't realize that standing at this table with these books radically changed my life the fact that you had look that coincidence alone is crazy that you were at Yale and you were involved the fact that then you had virtually the exact same experience it we are only sitting here right now because of a modern person would say a chance encounter probably a Christian would say a provial encounter uh that led us to be discussing the that specific author in question CS Lewis and it's a point I make because you know I certainly care about the souls of our uh viewers on this show but but also just a point on books the whole the whole point of this show is we live in a culture where people don't pay attention to important things and we don't we don't Avail ourselves of the great cultural patrimony which and the purpose of which is not just to Delight us for a brief period but to make us really understand objective reality and to come to know ourselves and come to come to live as we ought to live and live in accord with nature and the God who created nature just one little book can change a life radically or two lives for two people who end up a decade more than a decade later sitting down talking about the very same author Before I Let You Go yeah what's your latest book critical dilemma co-authored with Dr Pat Sawyer and it's all about one of these new ideologies critical theory and the social justice movement so if you want to pick it up uh we have endorsers who are both atheist and Christian if you want to get a handle on um critical theory today it's a great resource it might well be a book that could change your life I'm Michael nolles I'll see you next month on the book club thank you so much for watching this episode of the book club on prageru prageru is a 501c3 nonprofit organization so we rely on donations from viewers like you to keep this content on the air please consider making a tax deductible contribution today to help keep this content coming thank you very much