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Title: From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany
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Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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| From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Palgrave Macmillan Darwinisms Sinister Secrets | | I have just finished reading this brilliant book and was given a first rate educational experience by Dr. Weikart. From Darwin to Hitler is amazingly will researched and documented. The book clearly demonstrates the influence Darwinism had on German scholarship, education, and medicine in the days preceding Nazi Germany. I believe Dr. Weikart conclusively proves that Hitler could not have escaped Darwin's influence. After reading it the only honest conclusion one can make is that Darwinism was profoundly influential, if not responsible, for the Holocaust. This book should be required reading in ever public school in America. | | From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Palgrave Macmillan So far, this book is great, BUT BE WARNED . . . | | I have only started into reading this book and can't yet say anything about its ideas. Content-wise, I am expecting it will have a five-star rating. However, I feel compelled to issue a WARNING about the typeface, which is etoliated, fine, faint, dinky, small, light, dainty, skinny, and of insufficient contrast on the off-white pages. Why in the world would a publisher issue a book in such an off-putting format? | | From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Palgrave Macmillan History as it is! | As an undergrad history major I stumbled upon this book preparing for a paper. I have to admit that I found this book to be uncommonly interesting. Richard Weikart is most definitely a prolific historian. There are few things that need to be stated in correction. Some of the reviewers of this book believe that Weikart is blaming the entire holocaust on Darwin alone. In fact, Weikart is not blaming everything on Darwin. He recognizes that Darwin would have been aghast at how far his theory was taken. He is merely showing how that evolution evolved paving the way for nazi ideology. Weikart is not merely blaming Hitler's Germany on one ideology. Every historian knows that there are always numerous factors involved with every world event. Weikart accepts nationalism, economics, militarism, conservatism, etc as other things contributing to the main event. Weikart is merely concentrating on the ideological aspect of Hitler's Germany.
He traces a number of developments starting shortly after Darwin's origin of species. He draws from the major scientists and philosophers that impacted German thinking before the outbreak of WWI. Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects is Carneri's diagram that shows the skull shapes of advanced men and those who are more primitive.
The connection to Hitler is elusive because Hitler would have never have openly allied himself with this thinking. For one he liked to mouth a lot of stuff much of which was a plain contradiction. However, it is apparent that Hitler's roots lie deep into German social Darwinism. A reading of Mein Kampf and the standard rhetoric of Hitler shows his thinking is deeply rooted in the ideals of Germany's philosophers.
I do not blame Darwin for the ills of the world and neither does Weikart. Weikart merely draws the lines and allows the readers to come to their own conclusion. It is impossible to imagine that the world would not have headed to disaster without Darwinism. It is also equally hard to imagine that this ideology had no effect or consequences. This is a great book for liberal open-minded people. | | From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Palgrave Macmillan Materialism + Science = Destruction | As the wars over what is taught in the science classroom wage on, it is worthwhile to consider the effects of scientific beliefs on philosophy and social science. _From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany_ links the materialism inherent in non-theistic evolution with the eugenics movement and ultimately with what happened in Nazi Germany.
Throughout the book, Weikart repeatedly states that Darwinism did not *have* to lead to Nazism, nor was it the only factor that led to the rise of the Nazi regime. This is *very* important to understand, again, given the emotional nature of the issue at hand in education today. Nevertheless, it is apparent by the end of the first chapter of the book that Darwinism translated into philosophical discussions and later into social practices effectively deconstructed the entire moral system espoused by the West since the rise of Christianity. When man is reduced to an animal and the notion of the soul is dismissed, we are on very shaky ethical grounds--as the social Darwinists quickly discovered.
Darwinism's mantra, of course, is "the survival of the fittest." As such, applied to ethics and society, Darwinism presupposes constant struggle--between people--for the sake of progress. It also holds that said progress is the ultimate good; therefore, whatever moves the "species" toward "progress" is also good. Hence, morality is not fixed but adapts to suit the progressive situation of the time in question.
Since, however, improvement of the species (a nebulous concept, by the way) is the ultimate good, it follows that the weak and the infirm are of less value--an ethical position that flies in the face of traditional morality. While not all Darwinian ethicists advocated destroying the weak outright, the Christian virtue of compassion was effectively called into question and "scientifically" debunked.
Independent of the rise of Darwinism was European racism. The valuing of other groups as inferior to one's own is a phenonemon as old as time. But with the emergence of Darwinian science, the racism that ultimately drove the Nazi party to kill millions of people had seemingly received the imprimatur of the scientific community. Given a society as otherwise advanced and scientifically superior as Germany was, the horrors of the Nazi regime begin to lose their demonic appearance and start to look more rational *based on the Darwinian ethics in question.*
I would highly recommend this book as a reflection on the power of science--good or bad--to drive a culture that accepts only material reality. | | From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Palgrave Macmillan Darwin's Moral Horizon Described | This study is a worthy addition to the literature on Social Darwinism, eugenics, and the origin of Nazi `social hygiene'. Weikart's starting point is recognition that the interpretation of human nature as animal-the core premise of evolutionary anthropology-denies the sense of life's sacredness. This is a truism. But truisms of great moment can be obscured by the confusion of culture wars. It may be argued, for example, as some animal liberationists do, that the demolition of belief that humankind is made in the image of God opens a new moral horizon in which care and sympathy are extended to all creatures. But one may equally argue, as the Nineteenth Century Nihilists did, that the death of God means that everything is permitted, including celebration of chaos and violence. When evolution theory asserts that change is driven by natural selection, or survival of the fittest, yet another horizon emerges: Social Darwinism. Here universal compassion for all our animal kin is replaced by the opposite belief that our kind, like all creatures, are natural born killers and must persevere in our vocation if we are to survive and prosper (a revival of homo lupus). Weikart's book is thorough, dispassionate examination of the career of Social Darwinism in Germany 1860-1920. The authors and literature examined are little known in the Anglophone culture, partly because of the language barrier, but also because (as I know from my own experience), much of the literature may be accessed only from specialized libraries. For that reason I strongly commend this study to anyone interested in the historical or philosophical themes pursued here. That said, a few critical remarks.
1. The author's attention to the literature critical of Social Darwinism, which must be brief, is a little too abbreviated. For example, he notes only in passing the clash between arch-Darwinist Ernst Haeckel and the eminent cellular biologist/physical anthropologist Rudolf Virchow. This deserves a page or two, since Virchow challenged the dogmatism of the Darwinian world view as an attempt to pass off an error-infested philosophy as science. In this he was seconded by the equally eminent biologist Emil duBois-Raymond, author of the `ignoramibus' statement of the seven issues critical to a scientific biological philosophy where ignorance of the facts defeats the closure that dogmatics claimed.
2. Weikart's trace of the influence of Social Darwinist writers on Hitler's world view in conducted, as it should be, with careful attention to the principal alternative interpretations. His sifting of the evidence, and evaluation of probabilities, leads to the conclusion intimated by his title that Hitler indeed assimilated the true sense of Germany's leading scientific exponents. In particular he shows convincingly that Hitler, and Nazi propaganda, made a clean break with Christian morality. This is a conclusion of fundamental importance in an age when the appropriation of the science imprimatur for social policy figures prominently in political contests. It is not a novel outcome, but Weikart assembles the evidence with a new force and clarity. My criticism? The author relegates to footnotes evidence assembled by German scholars showing in detail how Darwinist opinion favoring abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization of the unfit infiltrated Germany's state-of-the-art public health service, and indeed even church-supported health service (Catholic Caritas), during the Twenties. Since this outlook infiltrated our own health services and law courts from the early Seventies, it deserves prominent notice. Another similarity is that the advocates of these progressive positions contrast them aggressively with the irrationality of the religious affirmation of life's sanctity.
3. The thread from Darwin to Hitler is evolution by natural selection, or survival of the fittest. Darwin's apologists would cut the thread at the root, affirming that the only thing Darwin had in common with Social Darwinism was the name. In particular, James Rachels, whom the author briefly acknowledges, has assembled arguments that Darwin's teaching on morality lead to vegetarianism and animal liberation through the moral instinct of sympathy (see Rachels' Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism). Weikart has in effect responded to Rachels by his alternative interpretation of Darwin's statements on morals and social instincts, integrated into the Social Darwinism literature, which Rachels doesn't acknowledge. Why, one may ask, did the animal libbers of Darwin's time (`anti-vivasectionists' in those days) not see this connection? Why indeed did Darwin defend vivisection? This said, I am not satisfied with Weikart's evaluation of Darwin's position. He attributes consistency to it when in reality it is a smorgasbord of conventional, inoffensive but inconsistent opinions with no indication of how they are supposed to make a system. His sketch of how human moral instincts evolved from animal instincts is utterly incomplete (it could not be otherwise) and invokes evolutionary mechanisms, such as group selection, what Darwin elsewhere firmly rejects. But the grandest inconsistency of all, unmentioned by Weikart and Rachels, is Darwin's appeal to Kantian morality. He subscribed, in the Descent of Man, to the `supreme' moral maxim that `in the words of Kant, I will not in my own person violate the dignity of humanity.' This is followed by a statement of a difference of kind between humans and animals--the capacity to compare `his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity.' Having imported Kant to infuse moral sentimentality with moral rectitude, Darwin declares: `Thus the reproach of laying the foundation of the most noble part of our nature in the base principle of selfishness is removed'. Wow! If we ascribe to these pronouncements the weight that they prima facie claim, Darwin has renounced his evolution premise in favour of Kantian ethics! No one, to my knowledge, has ever proposed such an interpretation. Indeed, I know of no acknowledgement of his astonishing departure from the moral views otherwise so prominent in the Descent. But this is my point: Darwin's mature writings yield no consistent position.
Does this mean that the thread connecting Darwin to Hitler is after all broken? Not quite. It means that to make the connection, one must ignore Darwin's inconsistencies.
| | From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany by Palgrave Macmillan Product Description | From Darwin to Hitler elucidates the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality throughout history. This book is a provocative yet balanced work that addresses a wide range of topics, from the value of human life to sexual mortality, to racial extermination.
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