Rating: 
Summary: C.S. Lewis's best non-fiction work
Review: This is the best non-fiction work by an engaging master of English prose who cares deeply about language and ethics and has a great love for nature. His larger argument is the crucial consideration of our age. (Note: Those readers like me who happen to not share with C.S. Lewis his religious views should not be put off. This is by no means a book about Christianity or religion in general.)
Rating: 
Summary: This one extraordinary book!
Review: This book goes deep into the human mind. It poses questions to long taught knowledge. Makes you re-think everything you've ever learned. It also makes you queston human nature and human drives. Whether humans have instincts or not? I suggest reading the Tao before the first chapter.
Rating:
Summary: Short But Powerful Commentaries
Review: C.S. Lewis' scholarly writings seem to take a break from all-out Christianity as he comes up with some very intelligent and before-their-time comments on education, and what it takes to make an education. Short but sweet, an excellent work.
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Summary: Lewis affirms Dr. Rudolf Steiner's work in this book
Review: Abolition of Man, dealing with a fundamental question as it does, also has suggestions about Lewis's feelings towards Dr. Rudolf Steiner's work -- namely Anthroposophy. In a way this is more fundamental than the question of the Abolition of Man -- in that Lewis's friend, Owen Barfield, spent many years studying and applying Anthroposophy which Lewis in various ways throughout his life contested. (cf. Pilgrim's Regress, by Lewis) Lewis says in the Abolition that Dr. Steiner may indeed have seen what he claims. This is a curious remark of his -- and I would be interested to know if anyone knows more about this apparent change of heart. For Lewis to begin to affirm Anthroposophy goes much further than the argument of the book to point a direction of restoring Man to the world.
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Summary: How Education Develops Man's Sense of Morality
Review: In this terse discussion about ethics, specifically how education develops man's sense of morality, Lewis argues that there are indeed objective values, denying the relativistic viewpoint of those who postulate that all values are fictional creations from the subjective mind of mankind. He also convincingly demonstrates how those who educate the young inevitably influence students' views on the matter by the very language used in their schoolbooks. Far from being an abstruse topic that has little bearing on our every day lives, subjective relativism has long term adverse consequences for members of society who come under its influence. Given wide enough application, it could ultimately destroy mankind. The appendix to THE ABOLITON OF MAN is quite helpful, listing examples of common values held by people of many different societies and cultures, pointing to an objective law, or "Tao". It does indeed show that there is a desire for a way of life that is better and more just, for mercy and kindness, which is seen in the different cultures around the globe. If there were not divine law and objective values, then we humans would be - as the animals seem to be - satisfied with any 'ole way of living. This book is just a bit dense in spots (which is why I rate it with a 9 instead of 10), but still readable and quite peritinent to today's western society. For related material in a little less left brained presentation, see Lewis's THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH or MERE CHRISTIANITY.
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Summary: Modern Relevance of his Criticism of 1940's English schools
Review: Lewis' profound criticism of the English educational system in the 1940's is amazingly relevant to the problems and needs in the 1990's in America's educational system. The type of book that requires putting down for a few minutes to allow for digestion of the content.
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Summary: Why subjective ethics is a fore-doomed endeavor.
Review: Why such a foreboding title for a book on education? Lewis starts his book with a critique of a textbook for elementary schoolchildren on English, but goes on to draw conclusions from the book's authors' worldview about the ultimate end of the quest for subjective ethics. It is Lewis' thesis that ethics do not come from man, and any attempt to create a "new" ethic starting from man will inevitably result in the annihilation of both ethics and the human race. In the light of Western society's journey through modernism and into post-modernism, this little book just gets more and more timely with every passing day. It also contains a helpful appendix, Illustrations from the Tao, which shows that the basic principles of ethics are universal: common to all cultures and all times.
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Summary: Flawed logic lends to Lewis's demise.
Review: Lewis makes in this book, once again, a failed attempt to validate Christianity as the proper way to view the world. The entire book is reminiscent of the time when Lewis called himself an atheist because he was "mad at God for not existing." (One cannot be angry at something in which one does not believe-such a thought is illogical. Should I be mad at the Bogeyman for scaring me as a child?) The author tries to lump all philosophies together in one all-encompassing Tao, and then proceeds to remark, with some amount of amazement, that the Tao cannot be rejected. This is yet another example of Lewis's flawed logic. He makes philosophy an all-or-nothing choice. One can either accept all philosophies as being valid by accepting the Tao, or one can reject all of them. There seem to be no in-betweens with Mr. Lewis. Lewis seems to have a fascination with worst case scenarios. He unfortunately failed to realize that his armageddon will in all probability be avoided. He failed to recognize the critical flaws in his theory of the Tao. He saw the worst that man could endure, but he failed to see the best that man could create. In his overall objectives, he simply failed.
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Summary: Lewis discusses what man is becoming and what he should be
Review: Lewis universalizes the morals of different societies,
discusses his three parts of man, and talks about instincts
and the "Toa." He delves into the nature of man, what has
gone wrong with man in modern times and describes what balance
man should strive for. An interesting book that will make
you think about the nature and actions of man in a different
light.
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Summary: What happens if a person loses a sense of right and wrong?
Review: Hands down, this is my favorite C. S. Lewis book, "The Screwtape Letters," and "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" notwithstanding. This book discusses moral absolutes, and what would happen if we lose the sense of right and wrong.
This short book is only three chapters long, but, charachteristically, Lewis says more with one letter than some people say their entire lives.Chapter One discusses MORAL RELATIVISM that is taught in schools, and how the end result of relativism is a dehumanizing process where we become "men without chests," or hearts, humans without a sense of right and wrong, and therfore no longer humans. You see this idea manifested in the varous Varsity and JV Columbine-style shootings that are now en vogue. Chapte Two discusses this set of moral laws or traditional values, which Lewis calls "the Tao." The Tao is the source of all value judgements and is the source of "traditional morality." When people try to change this morality, they are destroying all sense of right and wrong. "The human mind hs no more power of inventing an new [moral] value than of imagining a new primary color." (p. 56) We need this absolute set of moral laws to survive. Chapter Three discusses the result of not having any absolute values: what happens is that rightness and wrongness is reduced to appetites, "the emotional strength of [the] impuse" (p.57). These is no law, just rampant and renegade emotions controlling everything. There is no sense of fairness, just a "might makes right" law of the jungle, a la Korihor. The one appendix contains illustrations of this moral law from differing civilizations. Memebrs of the Church of Jesus Christ would see the Light of Christ behind all of this. This is a pressing book, and should be read with "1984," "Brave New World," "People of the Lie," and "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" in mind. Three cheers for C. S. Lewis!
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