
originally published 5/31/2022
Michael Ward, author of After Humanity: A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Word on Fire, 2021), explains why The Abolition of Man is one of Lewis’s most important but also most difficult books. While some readers think that The Abolition of Man is an almost modernist attempt by Lewis to establish absolute value, Ward explains that the book is really much more subtle. Lewis does not deny that we are subjects who experience reality through our own lenses. Instead, says Ward, “All Lewis is denying is that those things are themselves absolute and that they eradicate the possibility of objective knowledge.” Ultimately, Ward explains, Lewis warns that if we embrace radical subjectivism, we are headed toward cultural ruin. This Archive Feature is from Volume 154 of the Journal.
36 minutes
PREVIEW
The player for the full version of this Feature is only available to current members. If you have an active membership, log in here. If you’d like to become a member — with access to all our audio programs — sign up here.
Related reading and listening
- The true places aren’t on any map — Clyde Kilby on C. S. Lewis’s claim that the Gospel is the greatest myth
- Savoring the taste of Reality — C. S. Lewis on the transporting, illuminating capacity of Myth
- When myth becomes fact — In this 1976 interview, Clyde Kilby (1902–1986) discusses C. S. Lewis’s critique of scientism and rationalism, his belief in the primacy of the imagination, and his mythic vision. (37 minutes)
- A great Reality at the core of things — Clyde Kilby on the nature and need for myths
- “A Myth Retold” — Literary critic Thomas Howard explains why he considers C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces to be one of the author’s richest and most rewarding works. (18 minutes)
- Disengagement from the world — Nicholas Carr encourages us to consider how automation technologies impact our ability to engage with the world and whether — like a good tool — they present a more inviting world or close us off from that world. (30 minutes)
- Theology and the imagination — Jeffrey Barbeau explains what made C. S. Lewis an effective “translator” of theology for non-theologians. (21 minutes)
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 166 — FEATURED GUESTS: William Cavanaugh, Kent Burreson, Beth Hoeltke, Jeffrey Barbeau, Jason Baxter, John Betz, and Bruce Herman
- How literature shaped Lewis —
FROM VOL. 155 Jason Baxter explains how reading medieval literature enabled C. S. Lewis to become a “naturalized citizen of the Middle Ages.” (25 minutes) - The “sovereign uselessness of moral reflection” — Calling on the wisdom of St. Augustine, Oliver O’Donovan reminds his listeners that all knowledge participates in the eternal Logos of God and is rooted in love, not disinterested moral judgement.(Lecture 1 of 3; 52 minutes)
- Beyond a reasonable doubt — From a 1980 interview with Ken Myers, Mortimer J. Adler discusses his argument that belief in the existence of God is rational. (14 minutes)
- The Heav’ns and All the Powers Therein — In this extended interview, Michael Ward makes a compelling case that the qualities attributed to the seven planets in the cosmology of antiquity and the Middle Ages are embodied in C. S. Lewis’s seven books about Narnia. (68 minutes)
- Heaven and earth are full of His glory — Gerald R. McDermott examines the typological tradition of the Church, particularly through Jonathan Edwards’s thought, and he argues for a recovery of the Christian understanding of the universe as an “immense Trinitarian symbol.” (61 minutes)
- A false dichotomy — In this conversation from 2009, Dallas Willard (1934–2013) discusses the truth of spiritual knowledge and its epistemological validity. (63 minutes)
- All trees, no forest — Richard Weaver on the attenuating of knowledge
- Christian belief as real knowledge — Dallas Willard on the modern divorce between faith and knowledge
- Humility and moral knowledge —
FROM VOL. 149 Steven L. Porter discusses The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, an unfinished manuscript (which he helped to complete) by the late philosopher Dallas Willard. (22 minutes) - Harbinger of disorder — Mark Mitchell on Michael Polanyi’s recognition of the dangerous dead-end of materialistic reductionism
- Universities as the hosts of reciprocating speech — Robert Jenson on how the Christian understanding of Truth in a personal Word shaped the Western university
- The vice of curiosity — Stanley Hauerwas on the warning from Paul Griffiths about desiring to own knowledge
- University or “utiliversity”? — In this essay, Reinhard Hütter examines in depth John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University and argues that its insights and prescriptions are urgently relevant to the current status of higher education. (87 minutes)
- Thinking Together — Alan Jacobs discusses some principles he’s compiled to help us think well (and charitably) in our cultural context, and he warns us to be attentive to the ways technology displaces previously fixed communities. (53 minutes)
- Students as arbiters of knowledge —
FROM VOL. 94 Tim Clydesdale discusses the experience of freshmen year at college, suggesting that by that time students have been effectively inoculated against a love of knowledge. (21 minutes) - Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 165 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jeffrey Bilbro, Daniel McInerny, Joseph Minich, Carl Elliott, Nadya Williams, and Don W. King
- Pathways of the Mind: The Joy of the Essay — Alan Jacobs thinks Christians should embrace the potential in the literary form of the essay, because of the way it corresponds to the navigation and journey of a Christian life. (48 minutes)
- In the Image of Our Devices — Nicholas Carr considers how automation technologies impact our ability to engage with the world. (66 minutes)
- Art and whateverism — Jed Perl on why great art is triumphantly intolerant
- A mixed reception —
FROM VOL. 162 Mark Noll discusses early critical reception of C. S. Lewis’s work in America. (29 minutes) - How paintings convey meaning —
FROM VOL. 121 Theologian Walter Hansen and painter Bruce Herman question contemporary conceptions of meaning that confine it to the verbal or consider visual and verbal meaning to be completely exclusive. (20 minutes) - “A man after reality” —
FROM VOL. 30 Clyde Kilby discusses C. S. Lewis‘s critique of scientism and rationalism, and his belief in the primacy of the imagination. (15 minutes) - Two versions of Shadowlands —
FROM VOL. 10 Marjorie Mead examines two film portrayals of C. S. Lewis, noting which best captures Lewis’s jovial personality and the nuances of his faith. (4 minutes) - Moral knowledge of reality — Oliver O’Donovan argues that admiration is the fundamental form of knowing the world, as we cannot know fully those elements of reality (“bare facts”) that contain no significance for us. (Lecture 2 of 3; 55 minutes)
- The recovery of an integrated ecology — In this essay, Michael Hanby unpacks the summons of Laudato si’ to an ecological way of life based on a proper understanding of creation in its fullness and integrity. (57 minutes)
- Sacramental Poetics — Poet and Eastern Orthodox believer Scott Cairns explains how a good poem functions like an icon: it assists the process of our becoming aware of what is real, and it is generative in the ways it keeps opening up new understandings. (56 minutes)
- “The Emersonian elixir” —
FROM VOL. 20 Robert Richardson and Roger Lundin discuss how Ralph Waldo Emerson’s legacy lingers in American culture. (18 minutes) - The personal element in all knowing — Mark Mitchell connects key aspects of Michael Polanyi’s conception of knowledge with Matthew Crawford’s insistence that real knowing involves more than technique. (34 minutes)
- Making contact with reality —
FROM VOL. 139 Esther Lightcap Meek discusses the realism of philosopher and chemist Michael Polanyi. (23 minutes) - Knowing the world through the body —
FROM VOL. 76 Professor Martin X. Moleski explains why Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) left his career in science to become a philosopher. (16 minutes) - Steward of knowledge vs. autonomous knower —
FROM VOL. 66 Esther Lightcap Meek challenges the modernist view of knowledge, which prefers the figure of the autonomous knower to the figure of a steward of knowledge acquired in part from others. (15 minutes) - The collaboration of bodies and minds — F. C. Copleston on Aquinas’s confidence in the embodied nature of knowledge
- Wonder, being, skepticism, and reason —
FROM VOL. 135 Matthew Levering talks about the long and rich tradition of reasoning about God. (23 minutes) - The need to recollect ourselves as whole persons — In this 2016 lecture, John F. Crosby explores key personalist insights found in the thinking of John Henry Newman and Romano Guardini. (60 minutes)
- Eugenics and the rise of “evolutionary ethics” —
FROM VOL. 70 Richard Weikart describes evolutionary ethics and examines the ties between national racism and the eugenics movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (16 minutes) - “A sign of contradiction” — In this lecture, Daniel Gibbons compares and contrasts understandings of sacramental poetics proposed by Augustine, Aquinas, and Sydney. (36 minutes)
- Nature’s intelligibility — In this lecture, Christopher Blum argues that scientists need to regain a full appreciation of nature’s intelligibility, as they are apt to lose sight of reality due to the reductionism produced by their theories. (31 minutes)
- Submission to mathematical truth — In this lecture, Carlo Lancellotti argues that integration of the moral, cognitive, and aesthetic aspects of mathematics is needed in a robust liberal arts mathematics curriculum. (25 minutes)
- “Prophet of holiness” — Timothy Larsen discusses a new edition of George MacDonald‘s Diary of An Old Soul, a slim book of poem-prayers to be read daily as a devotional aid. (30 minutes)
- Embodied knowledge —
FROM VOL. 121 James K. A. Smith advocates for a return to some pre-modern conceptualizations of the human body. (18 minutes) - Aslan, the Christ-figure of Narnia — Alex Markos explores the transformational power of Aslan as the Christ figure in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. (31 minutes)
- Touch’d with a coal from heav’n — Daniel Ritchie finds in the poetry of William Cowper (1731–1800) an anticipation of Michael Polanyi’s epistemology