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Deconstructing Social Darwinism - Part I
In this series it is my goal to raise some questions about the usefulness of social Darwinism and the way it has been applied. This is a history that is full of contradictions (as history often is) and I encourage people to both challenge and offer suggestions as I develop these ideas. : The Primate Diaries
The Evolution of Morality : The Primate Diaries
Morality is the final domain that theists cling to in order to justify the existence of God. They argue that, without a supernatural deity (or deities), there would be no reason for people to be kind with one another and we would be constantly at each other's throats. The view of Darwinian evolution as "nature, red in tooth and claw" is pervasive and theists perceive that the absence of God is the absence of moral sense. However, this façade is cracking around its very foundation as a steady flow of observational evidence reveals it to be one more bit of fallacious reasoning.
The Pure Society: From Darwin to Hitler
In this review Simon Underdown disagrees with the premise that racism is part of evolution, rather than a crime
Browne on Social Darwinism
Janet Browne: Darwin's Origin of Species, A Biography
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006.
[excerpt]
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a struggle for existence among nations and races
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the notorious doctrine of 'social Darwinism' took
the idea of success to justify social and economic policies in which struggle
was the driving force - 12 more annotations...
Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism
"The only consistency between the right’s attack on Darwinism and embrace of social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. " (Reich)
Sterilized by the State
In his startling new book Three Generations, No Imbeciles (Johns Hopkins University Press), Georgia State University law professor Paul A. Lombardo looks at the Supreme Court’s notorious 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell, which upheld a Virginia law permitting the forced sterilization of the “feebleminded and socially inadequate.” (Reason Magazine)
Natural selection fails with Man - W. R. Greg
Greg is the father of social "Darwinism". What is Darwin's response? First he spends a dozen or so pages showing that in fact civilised human beings are still subjected to (different but active) selection pressures. Then he argues that this neither leads to progress nor decline. (Evolving Thoughts)
Social Darwinism: Darwin’s ideology (?)
At its most extreme, what came to be known as "social Darwinism" was invoked to defend the practice of eugenics: enhancing the "quality" of the human race by weeding out – through sterilisation, even extermination persons deemed feeble of mind, body or both.
Social Darwinism
"Social Darwinism is a belief, popular in the late Victorian era in England, America, and elsewhere, which states that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit should be allowed to die. The theory was chiefly expounded by Herbert Spencer, whose ethical philosophies always held an elitist view and received a boost from the application of Darwinian ideas such as adaptation and natural selection."
Evolution and Philosophy: Social Darwinism
"Another such view is 'Social Darwinism', which holds that social policy should allow the weak and unfit to fail and die, and that this is not only good policy but morally right."
William Graham Sumner-- Social Darwinism and neo-liberalism in defense of laissez-faire capitalism
Social Darwinists like Sumner argued that social existence was a competitive struggle among individuals possessing different natural capacities and traits.
US Political Thought, Lecture 12
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Add Sticky Note
- But the application of human ingenuity is a natural process. Human societies are natural. (Of course, it's not clear what 'natural' is supposed to mean here.) - on 2009-01-19
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economically
acquisitive individual - 9 more annotations...
Spencer: Social Darwinism, 1857
"Herbert Spencer (18201903) was thinking about ideas of evolution and progress before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859). Nonetheless, his ideas received a major boost from Darwin's theories and the general application of ideas such as "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" to social thought is known as "Social Darwinism". It would be possible to argue that human evolution showed the benefits of cooperation and community. Spencer, and Social Darwinists after him took another view. He believed that society was evolving toward increasing freedom for individuals; and so held that government intervention, ought to be minimal in social and political life. Here Spencer specifically discusses race and class." (Modern History Sourcebook)
Eugenic Statecraft in the Operating Room
In his recent book, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell, Lombardo investigates the history behind the 1927 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a Virginia law allowing state-mandated sterilizations for citizens deemed “socially inferior.”
Too Awful to Read? Susam Jacoby on Herbert Spencer
"I don't know what it is about Herbert Spencer that brings out the worst in cultural historians; but the tendency to recycle the same bizarre, age-old smears against him, without ever checking the facts, remains firmly entrenched. Spencer, it seems, is a ready-made scapegoat, attacked because others have made it fashionable to attack him; and few bother to read what the man actually wrote, because "everybody knows" that his ideas, whatever they were, were inhuman and worthless. " by Roderick T. Long
The Unfortunate Case of Herbert Spencer: How a libertarian individualist was recast as a social Darwinist
"A hit upon publication, the book helped make Hofstadter's name, doing much to secure him his prominent perch at Columbia University, where he taught until his death in 1970. But there's a problem with Hofstadter's celebrated work: His claims bear almost no resemblance to the real Herbert Spencer." (Reason Magazine)
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