Rating: 4 out of 5
When I started this title, I had no idea what it would be about. My main reference was that Mr Lewis said in ‘Mere Christianity’ that in his appendix to this book, he compared different cultures and the similarity of their values. This sounded eminently interesting so I added the title to my ‘to read’ list. In the end, it turned out that it really is only an appendix, but rather interesting even so as it collates quite a few different value systems.
But to the meat of this… I admit I was taken aback by how relevant the majority of this title is today when we are both witnessing a biological revolution in really advanced genetics as well as facing the (who can say how successful) attempt to automate (most) human work by AI. Even if the current iteration of this will fail, we need to ask what actually happens to the human in these cases. Mr Lewis would have us ask if a child of eugenics is the outcome of man’s victory over nature or vice versa?
The three lectures that this book is made up of, in addition to the appendix, are rather different in nature though they pursue the same case. The author begins by investigating whether the prevalent trends of his time in reducing emotion to, let’s say, a mere arbitrary whim that should be disparaged or worthwhile really hold true. In many ways, though not as important as the later chapters to what we are currently dealing with, I found this the most worthwhile argument – as well as the easiest to follow – because it is something you can also see today where some people try to lay low any instinctive emotion. I fully disagree with such ideas; where our soul sees beauty, we must say so.
But onwards to the main argument. In simple terms it is as follows: if man uses scientific advances (for example, either biological or artificial) to go and change themselves (or their successors) then we are no longer dealing with man, but something that is less than man. Philosophy – because this is exactly that – is always best from the source so I urge one to read Mr Lewis himself, but all in all I had to give him a point or two on this account.
I enjoyed it, though the title in many ways is more grim than one might want. Nonetheless, these are all things we can act and improve upon.
