{"id":425,"date":"2019-03-19T23:52:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T03:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/?p=425"},"modified":"2019-03-19T23:53:45","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T03:53:45","slug":"a-year-of-reading-lewis-the-abolition-of-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/2019\/03\/19\/a-year-of-reading-lewis-the-abolition-of-man\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year of Reading Lewis: The Abolition of Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>L. A. Smith of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/lasmithwriter.com\/\">A Traveler&#8217;s Path<\/a> <\/em>has kindly agreed to let us take a look at some of her thoughts on Lewis!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/A Year of Reading Lewis: The Abolition of Man\"><span style=\"font-family: 'comic sans ms', sans-serif;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-426 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/cs-lewis-recording-300x166.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"403\" height=\"223\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/cs-lewis-recording-300x166.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/cs-lewis-recording.jpg 615w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 403px) 100vw, 403px\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have never read\u00a0<em>Abolition<\/em>\u00a0before. I knew it was an important work, but its subtitle,\u00a0<em>Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools,<\/em>\u00a0didn\u2019t inspire me much. In my research on \u00a0C.S. Lewis\u2019 third book of his Space Trilogy, I discovered that\u00a0<em>That Hideous Strength was<\/em>\u00a0often touted as the working out in fiction of the philosophical argument proposed in\u00a0<em>Abolition of Man<\/em>. So, while the\u00a0<em>That Hideous Strength<\/em>\u00a0was still fresh in my mind, I figured I would tackle\u00a0<em>Abolition<\/em>\u00a0at last.<\/p>\n<p>The influential\u00a0<em>National Review<\/em>\u00a0ranked\u00a0<em>The Abolition of Man<\/em>\u00a0#7 on its list of the\u00a0<em>100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0I felt quite intimidated by it, but I needn\u2019t have been. Yes, it was a mental workout, but an invigorating one, not an impossible slog. It felt good to get my brain thinking, to follow along with Lewis in the presentation of his arguments. I forgot just how readable Lewis can be, especially when he presents big ideas.<\/p>\n<p>Not to say that this is easy reading, or fluffy. Far from it. And I\u2019m sure that my understanding of it only scratches the surface. But I did get food for thought out of it, and a whole new appreciation for C.S. Lewis\u2019 unique genius.<\/p>\n<p>The book, originally three lectures given in February of 1943, \u00a0was inspired by a textbook on English that Lewis was sent for review, which he titled,\u00a0<em>The Green Book<\/em>, in order to disguise its true name, which was\u00a0<em>The Control of Language, A Critical Approach to Reading and Writing.<\/em>\u00a0In reading the textbook Lewis found something alarming: the authors were not only attempting to teach critical reading and writing, but in doing so, were imparting a subtle but deadly philosophy, one which states that\u00a0there are no objective\u00a0values (ones which are true in and of themselves) and that students should consider statements of value as ones of subjective feeling instead. e.g. \u201cThe waterfall is sublime\u201d means only that \u201cI have sublime feelings about the waterfall.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lasmithwriter.com\/2015\/06\/26\/a-year-of-reading-lewis-the-abolition-of-man\/\">Read more of this thoughtful essay&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>L. A. Smith of A Traveler&#8217;s Path has kindly agreed to let us take a look at some of her thoughts on Lewis! I have never read\u00a0Abolition\u00a0before. I knew it was an important work, but its subtitle,\u00a0Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools,\u00a0didn\u2019t inspire me&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,12],"tags":[94,93,82],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-l-a-smith","category-lewis","tag-abolition-of-man","tag-c-s-leiws","tag-l-a-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}