C.S. Lewis on divergent views on values

In the short work The Aboltion of Man C.S. Lewis speaks of the Tao, an Eastern concept that he uses in a shorthanded fasion ("for brevity" in his words) that encompass other philosophical traditions. It is "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitutdes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are" (18). With this definition in mind, Lewis turns his attention to values:

"The Tao admits development from within. There is a difference between a real moral advance and a mere innovation. From the Confucian, 'Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you,' to the Christian, 'Do as you would be done by,' is a real advance.

The morality of Nietzsche is a mere innovation. The first is an advance because no one who did not admit the validity of the old maxim could see reason for accepting the new one, and anyone who accepted the old would at once recognize the new as an extension of the same principle. If he rejected it, he would have to reject it as a superfluity, someting that went too far, not as someothing simply heterogenous from his own ideas of value.

But the Nietzschean ethic can be accepted only if we are ready to scrap traditional morals as a mere error and then to put ourselves in a position where we can find no ground for any value judgements at all. It is the difference between a man who says to us:

'You like your vegetables moderately fresh; why not grow your own and have them perfectly fresh?' and a man who says, 'Throw away that loaf and try eating bricks and centipedes instead.' (45-46)

Lewis continues, describing almost prophetically the coming of postmodernism:

[Speaking from the point of view those who challenge the Tao]

"You say we shall have no values at all if we step outside the Tao. Very well: we shall probably find that we can get on quite comfortably without them. Let us regard all ideas of what we ought to do simply as an interesting psychological survival: let us step right out of all that and start doing what we like. Let us decide for ourselves what man is to be and make him into that: not on any ground of imagined value, but because we want him to be such. Having mastered our environment, let us now master ourselves and choose our own destiny."

[Lewis speaking]

"This is a very possible position: and those who hold it cannot be accused of self-contradiction like the half-hearted sceptics who still hope to find 'real' values when they have debunked the traditional ones. This is the rejection of the concept of value altogether. I shall need another lecture to consider it." (51)