C.S. Lewis and Objective Value

Photo: Caleb Woods, 2017 (Unsplash).

by Joel D. Heck

C. S. Lewis once wrote about the objective nature of goodness, truth, and beauty in The Abolition of Man. He called this concept the Tao, choosing a Chinese term to make the point that these values are not the exclusive property of Christians but are universally held values. The Tao is “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 kind of things we are.” Lewis argued that the Tao is a common core of values to be found in the ethical teachings of all major cultures throughout history, a fact that supports the validity of those values.

Fact vs. Opinion

Too often, however, people confuse an opinion about something with that something’s actual nature. In an exercise designed to show the difference between fact and opinion, or between raw data and values, Mark Roberts constructed a critical thinking exercise (see Michael Matheson Miller’s essay in The Magician’s Twin).

Roberts asked students to identify which of the following six statements were facts and which of them were opinions:

1. Mozart was born in Salzburg.

2. Mozart wrote beautiful music.

3. John Paul II was the Pope for over twenty years.

4. John Paul II was a good Pope.

5. Bell-bottoms were popular in the 1970s.

6. Bell-bottoms are cool.

All six statements are facts, Roberts indicates, but only the odd-numbered statements are easily understood as facts. Statements 2 and 4 deal with beauty and goodness, and both beauty and goodness have definite criteria for excellence. In the field of music, for example, melody, form, harmony, and rhythm enable us to determine if a piece of music is well-written, or beautiful. For the characteristic of goodness, we can say that integrity, keeping one’s promises, fairness, generosity, and helping rather than harming are objective criteria for goodness.

Michael Miller goes on to include two additional statements:

1. Murder is the intentional killing of an innocent person.

2. Murder is bad.

Once again, both statements are facts, but, surprisingly, the latter statement seems to many people to be only an opinion. If values are purely subjective, then “Murder is bad” is merely an opinion. To move such concepts as hope, justice, friendship, wonder, and courage to the realm of opinion is to weaken the chest, as Lewis would say, and disconnect the mind from the affections. As Michael Miller writes, “His intellect has been dulled and his humanity impoverished.” We need reasonable sentiments to engage in public and private life. When we see the appreciation of art and music as mere opinion, we also become more willing to cut them from the curriculum when the budget is tight.

Christina Hoff-Sommers once asked first-year philosophy students if they would universally condemn as morally wrong “Torturing a child, starving someone to death, humiliating an invalid in a nursing home. Their reply is often, ‘torture, starvation, and humiliation may be bad for you or for me, but who are we to say they are bad for someone else?’” When our focus is on “inappropriate” rather than “wrong” behavior, we dehumanize and assist in the creation of what Lewis calls men without chests—that is, people lacking developed sentiments—and we end in justifying incredibly evil behavior.

The Abolition of Man

Lewis first delivered The Abolition of Man as three lectures at the University of Durham in Newcastle, England, from February 23-25, 1943. The Riddell Memorial Lectures were founded in 1928 by Sir Walter Riddell in memory of his father Sir John Buchanan-Riddell. The lectures explored the relation between religion and contemporary thought. Like his father, Sir Walter was a devout Christian, active throughout his life in public affairs.

The Abolition of Man is one of Lewis’ most important, most prophetic, and most enduring works. A 2013 National Review poll rated it the seventh most important work of non-fiction of the past century. John West has called Abolition “the best defense of natural law to be published in the twentieth century.”

Most people also know that Abolition is difficult to comprehend in all its facets and difficult to teach. Fortunately, Michael Ward’s 2021 book After Humanity has made the message of Abolition much more accessible, and his discussion questions lead readers into the text.

As a college professor teaching the life and writings of C. S. Lewis, I often spent one class period introducing the book—its content, context, and purpose—while discussing the book’s most enduring image, that of Coleridge at the waterfall. Which adjective, “pretty” or “sublime,” best describes the waterfall is a matter of objectivity. That waterfall was objectively sublime, Coleridge claimed, not merely pretty.

Goodness, truth, and beauty (ethics, rationality, and aesthetics) are not in the eye of the beholder. Lewis himself writes, “Good is indeed something objective, and reason the organ whereby it is apprehended.” This idea, most clearly articulated in Abolition, is so central to Lewis’ thought that Ward claims, “Abolition might even be described as the philosophical theme of Lewis’s output and his other works as its variations.” Lewis writes, “The idea… that Christianity brought a new ethical code into the world is a grave error.” Ethical codes have existed from the beginning of time and all over the world. The Abolition of Man can help us to recover ethical norms. It could be that the survival of our species—rather than going the way of the “trousered ape”—depends upon restoring the views that Lewis expressed in this important book.

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Rev. Dr. Joel D. Heck is Interim President of Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Edmonton and a noted scholar on C.S. Lewis. A fuller version of this article will appear in the 2024 issue of Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal.

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