August 3, 2005
-
Epiphany Term
“In Epiphany Term, 1942, C.S. Lewis delivered the Riddell
Memorial Lectures… in….
the University of Durham…. He
delivered three lectures
entitled ‘Men without Chests,’ ‘The Way,’ and ‘The
Abolition of Man.’ In them he set out to attack and
confute what he saw as the errors of his age. He started by
quoting some fashionable lunacy from an educationalists’
textbook, from which he developed a general attack on moral
subjectivism. In his second lecture he argued against
various contemporary isms, which purported to replace
traditional objective morality. His final lecture, ‘The
Abolition of Man,’ which also provided the title of the
book published the following year, was a sustained attack on
hard-line scientific anti-humanism.The intervening fifty years have largely vindicated Lewis.”
– J. R. Lucas, The Restoration of Man
