Hillsdale College freshmen come from a variety of backgrounds. Some were homeschooled, others attended public schools. Some come from Christian families, others are agnostic. But most have something in common: they won’t spend the summer reading “Nicomachean Ethics” and “Founding Father,” the two books Hillsdale requires students to read.
Both of the current required texts demand significant time to be read well, and “Ethics” is particularly hard to understand without the guidance of a teacher. Hillsdale should require instead freshmen to read C.S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man” before arriving on campus. It would give them an understanding of the purpose of education and the modern corruption of it. The book provides a map that might help students understand the college’s mission and the vital role of education. It is also a short read, meaning more students will actually read it.
“The Abolition of Man” fits well with Hillsdale’s mission. The college’s mission statement says that it seeks to “develop the minds and improve the hearts” of its students. Lewis illustrates that education is not simply about learning facts, but about forming persons. He shows how powerful education is as well as its potential danger.
Lewis looks to man’s nature to understand what a good man is. He claims that it is man’s spirit, his “middle element,” that makes him uniquely human, “for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by appetite mere animal.” Lewis shows that true education then is not just about instructing the intellect but cultivating virtues in man so he responds correctly in his will and actions.
He explains how modern education is destroying man by rejecting objective morality and not promoting virtue: “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” The moral decay of man begins with denying that man can objectively understand what is right and wrong. Educators have to create their own values to impose on students. They, however, don’t use reason to guide the spirited part of man and morality is reduced to animal instinct and emotional response. When reason is denied, man only has his natural appetites to control him. Man ends up being controlled by the nature he set out to conquer. He is no longer man because he has submitted to the lowest aspect of his nature.
Although many Hillsdale students may believe in an objective morality, this book lays a clear argument for its necessity in a society that grows increasingly relativistic. Instead of trying to tear man to pieces and to reconstruct him on whim, students ought to seek to understand the end of man and to live accordingly. Lewis argues that we shouldn’t try to see through first principles. “If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see,” Lewis wrote.
“The Abolition of Man” is also an excellent foundation for a liberal arts education because its goal is to cultivate students as a whole and to help them pursue truth. Lewis advocates a new natural philosophy in which students would remember the personhood of man when trying to understand him. He would not reduce him to mere experimentation like he does with the rest of nature. “When it explained it would not explain away. When it spoke of the parts it would remember the whole.” This would allow man to understand himself without destroying himself.
Reading “The Abolition of Man” would attune incoming students to Hillsdale’s mission. They would understand the vital role of education in the improvement of both mind and soul. And perhaps they would actually read the book.
