Search Results

 World War I and After: Godlessness and the Scopes Trial

Kevin M. Schultz

in Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America's Iminent Secularization from the Puritans to Postmodernity

In “Godlessness and the Scopes Trial,” Kevin M. Schultz examines the most famous battle over religion in the 1920s, and perhaps the most famous battle in the entirety of the twentieth century, the ... More

In “Godlessness and the Scopes Trial,” Kevin M. Schultz examines the most famous battle over religion in the 1920s, and perhaps the most famous battle in the entirety of the twentieth century, the Monkey Scopes Trial of 1925. Schultz shows how the two sides that hogged the limelight during the debate—the thankful godlessness of Clarence Darrow and puritanical jeremiads of William Jennings Bryan—have crowded out a third tradition that was burgeoning in the 1920s, a tradition that matured into mainline liberal Protestantism. Schultz also explains that Bryan's fear of evolution had more to do with Bryan's opposition to the then‐respectable tradition of Social Darwinism, and not his fear that the Darwin account de‐centered man in the Biblical story of creation. Bryan's fear, thus, was not the damnation that would result from rising secularism but rather of the effect of exposing America's school children exposed to the dangerous notion that only the fittest will survive—a notion that potentially invalidates any attempt at social welfare.Less

The Twilight of Waspdom

in Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography

This chapter elaborates upon issues touched by Richard Hofstadter in his work Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915. As he searched for a dissertation topic in the late spring of 1940, ... More

This chapter elaborates upon issues touched by Richard Hofstadter in his work Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915. As he searched for a dissertation topic in the late spring of 1940, Richard Hofstadter sensed a fundamental shift in American life. Waspdom was breaking up; however, the subject, and its extraordinary implications linking the Anglo past to the ethnic present, never ceased to interest him. Social Darwinism is much more than a review of capitalist apologia. A product of the 1930s struggle to carve out a new liberal tradition, the book responded to the political and intellectual milieu that shaped its author's youthful interaction with a tumultuous era. Social Darwinism, which Hofstadter completed at the age of twenty six, played nicely to Hofstadter's talent for using irony as a tool for insight. The plutocrats who exploited the nation's uniquely egalitarian principles to make their fortunes, he pointed out, had shown their gratitude by building an industrial regime hostile to future social mobility. The acceptance of Social Darwinism in America relied on more than popular veneration for individual rights, however, and it also tapped into the country's Protestant heritage.Less

“Male and Female He Created Them” (Genesis 1:27): Interpreting Gender after Darwin

Stephen C. Barton

in Reading Genesis after Darwin

Beginning with Darwin's almost religious awe at the wonder of natural selection, this chapter moves to an account of the ambiguous legacy of Darwin's views on gender, including the support they ... More

Beginning with Darwin's almost religious awe at the wonder of natural selection, this chapter moves to an account of the ambiguous legacy of Darwin's views on gender, including the support they offered to a Victorian separate-spheres ideology and to theories and practices associated with Social Darwinism, such as eugenics. It then considers the wider history of gender before and after Darwin, running from the classical tradition through the biblical tradition, Hellenistic Judaism, and early Christianity to the universalizing tendencies of modernity and the postmodern destabilizing of gender in the interests of identity politics as represented by Judith Butler. A final section reflects on the possibility of reading and practicing "male and female" well in the light of this discomforting narrative. A Christological and eschatological hermeneutics is offered as a contribution to performing gender in ways that begin to do justice to the body's grace.Less

BROADENING HORIZONS

Marion Elizabeth Rodgers

in Mencken: The American Iconoclast

In 1908, Mencken was asked to become the new literary critic of The Smart Set magazine. Over the next fifteen years, Mencken would write 182 essays in which he reviewed some 2,000 books. The Smart ... More

In 1908, Mencken was asked to become the new literary critic of The Smart Set magazine. Over the next fifteen years, Mencken would write 182 essays in which he reviewed some 2,000 books. The Smart Set gave Mencken a national venue to express his controversial views on American literature. He also met George Jean Nathan, a theater critic, and the two became fast friends. Mencken worked on his fourth book, Men Versus the Man, where he presents his views on individualism, Social Darwinism, and race.Less

Scarcity, Biology, and the Rational Actor

Herbert Hovenkamp

in The Opening of American Law: Neoclassical Legal Thought, 1870-1970

In the late nineteenth century two powerful and very different ideas changed the course of American legal thought. First was Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which quickly migrated from ... More

In the late nineteenth century two powerful and very different ideas changed the course of American legal thought. First was Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which quickly migrated from biological evolution to theories about the evolution of norms. The evolved theories took the forms of Social Darwinism and Reform Darwinism.The second idea was marginalist rational actor assumptions that undermined classical political economy by making economics’ theory of value more forward looking and, eventually, more individualistic. Although both movements were driven by an assumption of resource scarcity, they approached the problem in mutually inconsistent ways that few people other than legal scholars were able to harmonize.Less

Katō Hiroyuki: Turning Nature into Time

Julia Adeney Thomas

in Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology

This chapter examines the views of Japanese politician Katō Hiroyuki about nature. It explains that in 1881 Hiroyuki turned decidedly in favor of autocratic control, relying in large part on Social ... More

This chapter examines the views of Japanese politician Katō Hiroyuki about nature. It explains that in 1881 Hiroyuki turned decidedly in favor of autocratic control, relying in large part on Social Darwinism, and that he claimed that oligarchic rule was the correct form of government for Meiji Japan according to the dictates of natural evolution. The chapter discusses the opposition of Baba Tatsui, Ueki Emori, and others who found in nature a tool against Hiroyuki and against oligarchic power, and suggests that the 1881–1883 debate was a contest over definitions of nature, with all sides seeking to assert nature as they defined it.Less

Social Un-Darwinism

Douglas Allchin

in Sacred Bovines: The Ironies of Misplaced Assumptions in Biology

It is time to rescue Darwinism from the dismal shadow of Social Darwinism. According to this now widely discredited doctrine, human society is governed by “the survival of the fittest.” Competition ... More

It is time to rescue Darwinism from the dismal shadow of Social Darwinism. According to this now widely discredited doctrine, human society is governed by “the survival of the fittest.” Competition reigns unchecked. Individualism erodes any effort to cooperate. Ethics and morality become irrelevant. Some contend that social competition is the very engine of human “progress,” and hence any effort to regulate it cannot be justified. Others accept competition as inevitable, even though they do not like it or endorse it. They seem persuaded that we cannot escape its presumed reality. Natural selection, many reason, is … well, “natural.” Natural, hence inevitable: what recourse could humans possibly have against the laws of nature? Thus even people from divergent backgrounds seem to agree that this view of society unavoidably follows from evolution. Creationists, not surprisingly, parade it as reason to reject Darwinism outright. By contrast, as resolute an evolutionist as Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog,” invoked similar implications even while he urged his audience to transcend them morally. Yet the core assumptions of so-called Social Darwinism are unwarranted. Why does it continue to haunt us? The time has come to dislodge this entrenched belief, this sacred bovine: that nature somehow dictates a fundamentally individualistic and competitive society. Unraveling the flawed argument behind Social Darwinism also yields a more general and much more important lesson about the nature of science. The historical argument seems to enlist science to portray certain cultural perspectives as “facts” of nature. Naturalizing cultural ideas in this way is all too easy. Cultural contexts seem to remain invisible to those within the culture itself, sometimes scientists too. The case of Social Darwinism—not Darwinism at all—illustrates vividly how appeals to science can go awry. We might thus learn how to notice, and to remedy or guard against, such errors in other cases. Ironically, the basic doctrine now labeled “Social Darwinism” did not originate with Darwin at all. Darwin was no Social Darwinist. Quite the contrary: Darwin opened the way for understanding how a moral society can evolve (essay 6). Less

Greece, India, and Race among the Victorians

Partha Mitter

in African Athena: New Agendas

The paper traces the process leading to the repudiation of the Afroasiatic roots of Greek civilization in the 19th century. Comparative philology, physical anthropology and biology melded language, ... More

The paper traces the process leading to the repudiation of the Afroasiatic roots of Greek civilization in the 19th century. Comparative philology, physical anthropology and biology melded language, physical features and culture to create the myth of an original white Aryan race. This racial doctrine was encapsulated by Gobineau: physical beauty (Apollo Belvedere) determined language, culture and intelligence; racial inequality in physical strength, intellect and morality was inherent. Social Darwinism proclaimed that European global domination was proof of the survival of the fittest. The paper finally takes the case of India, the hub of the Aryan Myth. Max Müller located India within Hegelian world history: though they were the original Aryans, Indians failed to progress unlike Europeans. Colonial writers constructed further racial binaries in India – Aryan versus Dravidian or Turanian – two antagonistic races forever separated by colour, cranium, caste and culture, an idea authoritatively employed by James Fergusson in his study of Indian architecture.Less

The Acculturation of Japanese Nature

Julia Adeney Thomas

in Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology

This chapter explores a hiatus in nature's overt political presence in Japan after around 1890 and until the Russo-Japanese War. It argues that the Social Darwinian concept of nature proved so ... More

This chapter explores a hiatus in nature's overt political presence in Japan after around 1890 and until the Russo-Japanese War. It argues that the Social Darwinian concept of nature proved so detrimental to nationalistic aspirations that it was disregarded during the 1890s, and describes the development of a more nationalistic and useful concept of nature related to Japanese culture. The chapter contends that Japan's twentieth-century sense of nature was a new creation configured in reaction against Social Darwinism and in conformity with the requirements of national pride.Less

Social Science as History

Andrew E. Barshay

in The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modernist Traditions

The theme of Japan as the only successful modernizer or “power” in Asia has been endlessly played out since the 1890s. Japanese elites undertook a forced march to industrialization and military ... More

The theme of Japan as the only successful modernizer or “power” in Asia has been endlessly played out since the 1890s. Japanese elites undertook a forced march to industrialization and military strength based for some decades on the relentless taxation of peasant production. This effort was initially supported by a somewhat freewheeling Anglophilia, with the appropriation of American and French models in various domains as more or less significant subthemes. Social Darwinism, the theory of progress, and an ethic of individual and national advancement, formed the keynote of systematic Westernizations. Japan, in short, had modernized through, not despite, tradition; a new, neotraditional mode of modernization had emerged on the world historical stage. However, success brought frustration and anxiety.Less

National Character

Paul Gilbert

in Cultural Identity and Political Ethics

This chapter investigates the idea of national character deriving from Herder. This, it contends, is the now discredited forerunner of the notion of cultural identity but plays a similar role in ... More

This chapter investigates the idea of national character deriving from Herder. This, it contends, is the now discredited forerunner of the notion of cultural identity but plays a similar role in securing identification with fellow group members and justifying political claims, in the case of national identity to separate statehood for the nation. Both subjectivist accounts like Renan's and objectivist ones, as in Social Darwinism, are examined, together with the idea's relation to racism and the reasons for its subsequent decline after World War 2.Less

Boas

W. Underhill James

in Humboldt, Worldview and Language

This short chapter stresses the importance of Franz Boas’ empirical field research for the study of languages and anthropology, and especially for doing away with the idea of ‘primitive’ languages. ... More

This short chapter stresses the importance of Franz Boas’ empirical field research for the study of languages and anthropology, and especially for doing away with the idea of ‘primitive’ languages. It questions the idea that language ‘limits’ thought, and suggests that Boas tended to see grammatical and linguistic forms as ‘channels’ offered up to thinking individuals. Boas believed cultures found different ways of expressing themselves, and that thinking-in-language remains flexible in all cultures.Less

“Love of Nature Leading to Love of Man”

Robert M. Ryan

in Charles Darwin and the Church of Wordsworth

Wordsworth influenced the reception of Darwinian theory in its socio-economic as well as its scientific dimensions. As the ideology we now call Social Darwinism emerged from Malthusian theories of ... More

Wordsworth influenced the reception of Darwinian theory in its socio-economic as well as its scientific dimensions. As the ideology we now call Social Darwinism emerged from Malthusian theories of population control, Wordsworth gained attention as a champion of the rights and dignity of the poor and a severe critic of laws that regarded them as parasitic members of the human community. While much of the Anglican clergy were embracing Malthusian principles of political economy, Wordsworth championed an older Christian ethic of social justice. Resisting the application to human society of the biological laws governing survival in the natural world, the poetry’s alternative vision of nature and the moral lessons to be learned from it acted as a surprisingly potent counterforce to current economic theories and practices.Less

Culture

Ben Bradley

in Darwin's Psychology

The concepts of civilization and culture play a structuring role in Descent’s discussion of human agency. The evolutionary history Darwin described found continuity between animals and proto-humans. ... More

The concepts of civilization and culture play a structuring role in Descent’s discussion of human agency. The evolutionary history Darwin described found continuity between animals and proto-humans. Thereafter, human history took on the idealized form of a single stairway rising in stages. Despite his enlightened opposition to slavery, Darwin placed on the stairs’ bottom step ‘the lowest savage,’ pictured in a disturbingly derogatory way. On the top step were certain nineteenth-century Europeans. Descent does not hold the progress of civilization to be inevitable, however. Indeed, Darwin holds natural selection to play a subordinate role in shaping contemporary human agency. While the foundations of human action are laid by our descent from animals, agency is specified—for good or ill—by the social customs and institutions which structure the development and group-life of a given individual: evolution proposes, culture disposes. This formula is fleshed out through Descent’s discussions of language use, moral agency, religious belief, virtue, and aesthetics. Resonances are explored with perspectives on social organization in Social Darwinism, Evolutionary Psychology, and theories of cultural evolution.Less

Ultranational Nature: Dead Time and Dead Space

Julia Adeney Thomas

in Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology

This chapter describes the ultranational nature of wartime Japan and traces the origins of this concept to the decade after the Russo-Japanese War. It argues that twentieth-century Japan did not ... More

This chapter describes the ultranational nature of wartime Japan and traces the origins of this concept to the decade after the Russo-Japanese War. It argues that twentieth-century Japan did not inherit its concept of nature nor did it choose nature as such against the onslaught of Western culture. The chapter explains that a particular concept of nature was crafted in the early years of the twentieth century partly in reaction to foreign ideas such as Social Darwinism and events such as the Russo-Japanese War, partly in reaction to domestic threats to oligarchic power, and partly through the creative use of past images and current philosophies.Less

Was Darwin a Social Darwinist?

Douglas Allchin

in Sacred Bovines: The Ironies of Misplaced Assumptions in Biology

Are humans inherently selfish brutes? Skeptics and critics of evolution routinely denounce the ghastly specter of society “red in tooth and claw” as an unacceptable consequence of Darwin’s concept ... More

Are humans inherently selfish brutes? Skeptics and critics of evolution routinely denounce the ghastly specter of society “red in tooth and claw” as an unacceptable consequence of Darwin’s concept of natural selection. They equate Darwinism with so-called Social Darwinism, a belief in ruthless social competition and unmitigated individualism. Many evolutionists, too—even staunch defenders of Darwinism, from Thomas Henry Huxley to Michael Ruse—seem to concur that the natural history of humans leaves an ethical void. Darwin himself, by contrast, had a well-developed interpretation of the evolution of morality. Others since have deepened our biological understanding of human and cultural origins. Perhaps, then, we are ready to challenge this entrenched assumption, this sacred bovine: that belief in evolution entails forsaking any foundation for morality. Many scientists disavow any role for biology in addressing ethics. They retreat behind the shield of the fact/value distinction or invoke the threat of the fallacy of deriving values from nature. Yet morality is an observable behavior, a biological phenomenon. We might well document it in other species. For example, empathy has recently been observed in both mice and, ironically perhaps, rats. The rats will even forgo chocolate to help a cage mate escape restraint. Morality deserves a biological explanation, especially for those who wonder about the status of humans in an evolutionary context. There are important limits, of course. One does well to heed philosophers who warn that we cannot justifiably derive particular values or moral principles from mere description. Many have tried, and all have failed. “Oughts” do not arise from “ises.” Values and facts really do have different foundations. Yet why or how we can express values at all, have moral impulses, and engage in ethical arguments are all psychological or sociological realities, susceptible to analysis and interpretation. Indeed, an understanding of human evolution may well be incomplete without addressing these very important human traits. One may begin, of course, as one often does with evolutionary topics, by returning to the source: Charles Darwin. How did Darwin regard culture? Less

Racism, Nationalism, and Nazism

Tabish Khair

in The New Xenophobia

This chapter stops to look at forms of ‘old xenophobia’: racism, nationalism, and Nazism, in particular. It shows that old xenophobia—in keeping with the production-based character of capitalism ... More

This chapter stops to look at forms of ‘old xenophobia’: racism, nationalism, and Nazism, in particular. It shows that old xenophobia—in keeping with the production-based character of capitalism until well into the twentieth century—was largely defined materially and physically, and hence insisted on tagging the body of the stranger and positing physical (‘racial’, etc.) demarcation, even as various abstract elements came to play a part, too, given the abstracting nature of capitalism. This chapter also shows how power works and places, among other things, slavery within a particular kind of hierarchy of power relationships. It ends by stressing that xenophobia entails the construction of a stranger or a strangeness to be detested and feared in ways that enable or sustain an institutionally uneven power relation.Less

American Concerns: Trade and Trusts; Enriched and the Rich

John Kenneth Galbraith

in Economics in Perspective: A Critical History

This chapter examines the American preoccupation with money. While there was little concern in the United States for the central themes of classical economics or for the Marxian and other forms of ... More

This chapter examines the American preoccupation with money. While there was little concern in the United States for the central themes of classical economics or for the Marxian and other forms of criticism against it, there was an intense discussion of various practical economic topics such as tariffs, monopolies, and questions relating to money. The chapter first considers the debate over tariffs and tariff protection in nineteenth-century America involving figures such as Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, and Henry Carey before discussing issues pertaining to trade, monopolies, trusts, and competition. In particular, it looks at the Sherman Act and other antitrust legislation. It also analyzes the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer that provided a defense of the classical ideas in the United States. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the contributions of Henry George and Thorstein Veblen to the debate on classical economics.Less

Boxers and Bannermen: Peking 1900

Anne Witchard

in Lao She in London

Born an impoverished ethnic Manchu in the declining days of the Qing dynasty, Lao She grew up at a time when anti-Manchu resentment from Han Chinese nationalists was rife. In the course of the 1911 ... More

Born an impoverished ethnic Manchu in the declining days of the Qing dynasty, Lao She grew up at a time when anti-Manchu resentment from Han Chinese nationalists was rife. In the course of the 1911 Revolution thousands of Banner people fell victim to the xenophobia that had been a defining element of revolutionary rhetoric for a decade. Nevertheless Lao She was very much part of the May Fourth Movement and its brief flowering of utopian and cosmopolitan ideals. As a schoolmaster he was involved in the pedagogic applicationof diverse models of meaningful citizenship. The schools under his jurisdiction served as experimental workshops, testing a variety of borrowed foreign and retooled indigenous ideas and practices in order to educate the New China. This chapter outlines the place of Christian thinking among radical Chinese nationalists at this time in order to understand Lao She's attraction to the Christian Church, his practical involvement at grass-roots level in building the New China, and his move to London in 1924. It also accounts for the negative portrayals of missionary officials in his fiction which have led some readers to the erroneous conclusion that Lao She must have been a ‘rice Christian’.Less

Introduction: Morality

Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell

in A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How it Made us Human

Darwin’s understanding of evolution by natural selection changes our view of nature and our place in it. It allows us for the first time to see clearly who we are and why. In particular, Darwinian ... More

Darwin’s understanding of evolution by natural selection changes our view of nature and our place in it. It allows us for the first time to see clearly who we are and why. In particular, Darwinian evolution explains why we are moral creatures. Arising through gene-culture co-evolution, the moral mind is anchored in moral capacities for emotion, norms, and reasoning that together make possible successful interdependent living. In modern humans, the pluralistic moral mind is shaped by social institutions like family, politics, and religion. This account is distinct from “just-so stories” that lack adequate empirical evidence and from Social Darwinism that mistakenly deduces moral truths from descriptions of evolutionary processes. But evolution can inform a theory of rational moral progress and resistance to moral regress. Empirically demonstrated feedback loops among the moral mind, complex social structure, and knowledge gained in interactive reasoning advance moral inclusivity and equality.Less