Download Social darwinism - PD Dr. Dirk Solies

"Man is but a worm"
Argumentative reductionism:
– "morning star→ evening star → Venus":
– statement of identity
– ampliative (gehaltserweiternd) in a subjective, not in an objective way
Man → worm
or
man → ape?!
Social darwinism:
Not "transfer / application" of
biological laws
sociopolitical
of evolution
questions
but legitimatory reductionism
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Thesis
Social Darwinism
Misconceptions / exploitations
Pullback after 1945
Boom of a new type of Cultural Darwinism
Transplantation of argumental patterns
Social Darwinism
Cultural Darwinism
• Economic liberalism
• Evolutionary Epistem.
(19th / 20 th century)
• Cultural reductionisms
(Genes → Memes)
– intra-social Selection
– inter-social Selection
• "Eugenics",
"Race hygiene"
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Darwinist Differentiations
"Evolution as a biological theorem"
"Popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism
which is certainly a Myth"
C. S. Lewis: The Funeral of a Great Myth
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Title of the first German
translation:
Entstehung der Arten
im Thier- und PflanzenReich durch natürliche
Züchtung, Erhaltung der
vervollkommneten
Rassen im Kampfe um‘s
Daseyn
(Bronn, 1860 – Hervorh. hinzugef.)
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Two "darwinian" catch phrases
and their popular German adaptation
(1) "Struggle for life" / "for existence"
"struggle", not "fight" / "war"
"strong connotations" (Pörksen)
(2) "Survival of the fittest" (Spencer → Darwin)
fit, not strong!
not individuum but population
Socio-morphous concepts in popular evolutionism
highly suggestive
leads to misconceptions
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Socialist criticism of Social Darwinism: F. Engels
Darwinist doctrine as a transformation
from Hobbe‘s bellum omnium contra
omnes and the civic doctrine of
competition as well as Malthus‘ theory of
population from society into the living
nature.
"After having accomplished this feat, it is
very easy to re-transform this doctrine
from history of nature into history of
society. And it is all too strong a naivety to
claim to have proven these claims as
eternal laws of nature ".
(Letter to Lawrow, 11/15/1878)
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Socialist criticism of Social Darwinism: F. Engels
Social Darwinism in continuation of
materialism widely seen as "threat
of humanistic values":
Kühne-Bertram (2000: 165)
"In our opinion the specific
Darwinism (from which Lamarck
compilations are to be excepted) is
a piece of brutality which is
targeted against humanity.
(Engels: Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der
Wissenschaft MEW Bd. 20, S. 29)
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Nietzsche‘s "Anti-Darwin"
"Fight for Life" as "exception":
"The total aspect of life is not the
situation of misery, the situation of
hunger but rather the richness, the
opulence, even the absurd waste of
resources – wherever a fight is being
fought, it is about power…
One should not confuse Malthus to
nature. – "
Götzen-Dämmerung, KSA 6, 120f.
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Nietzsche‘s "Anti-Darwin"
The species do not grow in perfection:
the weak creatures repeatedly
dominate the strong ones – because of
their greater number, they are also
smarter… Darwin has forgotten about
the Geist ("mind ") (– that is english!)
The weak creatures have more Geist…
One must be in need of Geist in order
to get Geist – one loses it if not
needed anymore.
Götzen-Dämmerung, KSA 6, 120f.
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Nietzsche‘s arguments towards Darwinism
+ Darwin as a protagonist of a philosophy of becoming rather
than being (like Lamark and Hegel!)
- Power, not self-preservation („Selbst-Erhaltung")
- Endogenous Evolution, not evolution by chance
(„Entwicklung" instead of „Evolution")
→ „Lamarck instead of Darwin"
- No perfectionism of species
(Dennett‘s „pan-adaptionism")
- „Geist" (mind) as a counter-principle of evolution:
The weak individuals outperform the stronger ones
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
"science will teach us nothing"?!
popularism and the "Ignorabimus" debate
"In face of the physic world‘s mysteries
the scientist
„The mergence
of theisseeming contradictions, and with it
long ago accustomed to speak out
‚Ignoramus‘
with
thehis
progress
towards
the solution of the fundamental
manly austereness (Entsagung).world
[...] mystery, is putted closer to us by the ever-growing
But in face of the mystery, how *…+
materiaof
and
power
knowledge
nature.
are to be thought, he has to enunciate
his verdict
So we may
hope that the beginning 20th century will
Emil DuBois-Reymond
– 1896) clearErnst
(1834 –and
1919)
‚Ignorabimus‘
once and for (1818
all." increasingly
theseHaeckel
contradictions
will, by
Emil
du
Bois-Reymond
(1872):
Über
die
Grenzen
des
Naturerkennens
Physiologist
„The
Germanspread
Darwin“:
forming of the pure
monism,
thephysician,
desired unity of
theoretical physician,
Zoologist,
world-view (Weltanschauung) in wide circles of society.
invented the experimental electrocomparing
Anatomist
Haeckel (1899): Die Welträthsel.
Gemeinverständliche
Studien über Monistische Philosophie
physiology
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Darwinian
theory elements..
... and their socio-political
potential of provocation
•Variation by chance
•Materialism as an
allegation
•Heredity of these
Variations
•"Lamarck instead of Darwin"
•Transformationism
•Dissolution of "natural" (god
given) species boundaries
•Selection through
competition
(Malthus)
•Social / Cultural Darwinism
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
The dark side of Darwinism and
the radical break in the 20th century
• "Positive eugenics" / "positive race hygiene":
"improvement" of the genetic material
through breeding
• "Negative eugenics" / "neg. race hygiene":
elimination of "bad" genetic material in favor
of future generations → "euthanasia"
• Projection
biological results → socio-political targets
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
Cultural Darwinism:
a small phenomenology
 "The selfish gene"
Personalized / automatized concept of information
 "The God Delusion" / "Breaking the spell"
Naturalization of deism
 Evolutionary epistemology
increasing "fitness" (Passung) of knowledge
"Pan-Adaptionism" (Dennett)
 Biology of cooperative behaviour
"The cooperative gene" (Bauer)
Biology of prosocial behaviour
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz
The status of "classical" Darwinism
1. Nomothetic Status of Darwinism:
– No law (missing predictablity!) but
– (Well proven) hypothesis:
"Nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of
evolution." (Dobzhansky)
2. "The" Darwinism and implied principles (Lewontin):
(1) Principle of phenotypic variation
(2) Principle of differential fitness
(3) Heritability of fitness
Lewontin, Richard C. (1970), The units of selection. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 1, S. 1-18
PD Dr. Dirk Solies, Prakt. Philos., JGU Mainz