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Darwinism and Sociopolitical Thought

Jan Sapp

in Genesis: The Evolution of Biology

This chapter discusses how Darwin succeeded in capturing a wide audience of scientists and non-scientists. Darwinian theory was used to support all types of political and ideological positions, from ... More

This chapter discusses how Darwin succeeded in capturing a wide audience of scientists and non-scientists. Darwinian theory was used to support all types of political and ideological positions, from the most reactionary to the most progressive, including racism, militarism, laissez-faire economics, unfettered capitalism, Marxism, and anarchism. Laissez-faire economic theory, social Darwinism, application of Darwinism in international relations, political left's embrace of Darwinian theory, and debates over whether Darwin himself was a social Darwinist.Less

 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

An Uneasy Engagement: Chinese Ideas of Global Order and Justice in Historical Perspective

Rana Mitter

in Order and Justice in International Relations

Mitter's study argues that until the late Qing, concepts of international order and justice were alien to China's imperial rulers. Subsequently, however, in the nineteenth and early twentieth ... More

Mitter's study argues that until the late Qing, concepts of international order and justice were alien to China's imperial rulers. Subsequently, however, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, China perceived itself to be the victim in an unjust world of aggressive, powerful, Western states. Contemporary Chinese perceptions of a just international order have been shaped by such past experiences and encompass a strong element of restitution. Its justice claims start with the Chinese state itself rather than with the needs of a broader global community.Less

The Cost of Self in Two Alcott Utopias

Katherine Adams

in Owning Up: Privacy, Property, and Belonging in U.S. Women's Life Writing, 1840-1890

This chapter traces developments in U.S. privacy discourse from the antebellum period, through Reconstruction, and into the 1890s. Taking ... More

This chapter traces developments in U.S. privacy discourse from the antebellum period, through Reconstruction, and into the 1890s. Taking Louisa May Alcott's novels Little Men (1871) andJo's Boys (1886) as its focus, it contrasts the romantic nationalism of early privacy discourse against the conception of privacy that emerges with laissez-faire and social Darwinist ideology. Heavily marketed for their autobiographical content, Alcott's novels exploit the public taste for private disclosure while also thematizing that very act by depicting the production and circulation of life narrative within Plumfield School. Like her father, the failed communitarian Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott is concerned with the conjunction of privacy, property, and market capitalism—particularly as this implicates female authorship. But she theorizes the experience of a priori unity as an effect, rather than a casualty, of self-publication and mass consumption. In her earlier work Alcott presents this view with great optimism, imagining the marketing of privacy as the basis for a just and racially integrated polis. At the end of her career, however, this same interarticulation of symbolic and material economies is portrayed as exclusionary and oppressive.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

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

Psychoneuroimmunology and Religion: Implications for Society and Culture

HOWARD L. KAYE

in The Link Between Religion and Health: Psychoneuroimmunology and the Faith Factor

This chapter discusses the biochemical pathways by which spirituality and religious practice exert their influence on health and their implications for medicine, society, and culture. It addresses ... More

This chapter discusses the biochemical pathways by which spirituality and religious practice exert their influence on health and their implications for medicine, society, and culture. It addresses important and sometimes difficult questions, including how physicians and health care systems should utilize such information in their care of patients, and draws comparisons with social Darwinism and the eugenics movement of the 19th century. The chapter expresses concern about the utilitarian use of religion to improve health or immune functioning. Although the medical, philosophical and cultural implications of psychoneuroimmunology research into the impact of religion on health would appear to be vast and wholly beneficial, it is important to exercise caution whenever we speak of science's human implications.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

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

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

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

A Darwinian Naturalist's Perspective on Altruism

Michael Ruse

in Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue

Evolutionary ethics or “social Darwinism” is a powerful and wide-ranging doctrine or set of beliefs. In ethics and morality, it is useful to make a twofold distinction between “substantive” or ... More

Evolutionary ethics or “social Darwinism” is a powerful and wide-ranging doctrine or set of beliefs. In ethics and morality, it is useful to make a twofold distinction between “substantive” or “normative ethics” and “metaethics.” Darwin himself drew attention to the fact that more organisms are born than can possibly survive and reproduce and that this leads to what Darwin called a “struggle for existence.” Humans cooperate for biological ends, namely that they are “altruists” for their own biological ends.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

Nature Historicised

Frank M. Turner

Richard A. Lofthouse (ed.)

in European Intellectual History from Rousseau to Nietzsche

Evolution became the single new idea that permeated deeply into virtually all areas of intellectual endeavor at the turn of the twentieth century. More than any other scientific or intellectual ... More

Evolution became the single new idea that permeated deeply into virtually all areas of intellectual endeavor at the turn of the twentieth century. More than any other scientific or intellectual development, evolution led to conceiving the world and human nature in terms of a process which implied that nature itself, like humankind, had a history. This chapter discusses the immense amount of confusion generated by the idea of evolution; its acceptance by large number of non-scientists; the influence of the work of geologist Charles Lyell on Darwin; and the emergence of social Darwinism among critics and commentators on society. Social Darwinism may be said to refer to a competitive version of society in which the imperative to intense competition is based on the idea that society should copy or emulate nature. If nature is characterized, as Darwin said, by a struggle for survival, then society is similarly structured. The chapter also considers the fact that the chief critic of social Darwinism was Thomas Huxley, who had done more than any other single person to foster the acceptance of evolution by the English public.Less

Ethics, Science, and Society

Erik J. Hammerstrom

in The Science of Chinese Buddhism: Early Twentieth-Century Engagements

Describes Buddhists’ ethical criticisms of science. In the early twentieth century, both science and progressive thought in China were closely associated with social evolutionism. Wrongly referred to ... More

Describes Buddhists’ ethical criticisms of science. In the early twentieth century, both science and progressive thought in China were closely associated with social evolutionism. Wrongly referred to as “social Darwinism,” this ideology had roots in the thought of British sociologist Herbert Spencer. Buddhists identified this as the guiding ethic of modern science, and they rejected it. They pointed to the massive destruction of human life wrought by new technologies of war in Europe during World War 1, and they argued that peace and human life could only be preserved by using the ethical system of Buddhism to restrain and guide science. In their discussions they offered the Buddhist idea of pingdeng, or equality, as a cure for the violent struggle they saw around them.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

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

Introduction

Jan Breman

in On Pauperism in Present and Past

The introductory chapter lays out the blueprint of the study along with methodological and field details. Pauperism and pauperization are widespread phenomena in India today. This observation will be ... More

The introductory chapter lays out the blueprint of the study along with methodological and field details. Pauperism and pauperization are widespread phenomena in India today. This observation will be empirically substantiated in this chapter, through a collection of case studies based on spells of fieldwork recently conducted by the author in rural and urban locations or at sites in between. At the bottom of economy and society in India a huge mass has become disembedded from their earlier habitat in village or city. To the author, they are a vast army of reserve labour at the heart of the predatory capitalism that emerged so virulently on the subcontinent of South Asia in the second half of the twentieth century. Remaining footloose and being prepared for shorter or longer sorties nearby or far away is not conditioned by an innate inclination to vagrancy, of which paupers stand accused, but rather propelled by the dire need to scratch around for work hoping that the return will net enough for sheer survival.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