An analysis of the ideological influence of Social Darwinists in Europe and America.

This original and wide-ranging study clarifies the meaning of Social Darwinism and demonstrates its relevance through a study of European and American social and political thinkers. It is the only study of Social Darwinism that combines the study of individual thinkers with the distinctive ideological themes (e.g., eugenics) and does so in a comprehensive historical and comparative framework. A wide spectrum of academic readers will enjoy Dr. Hawkins' lucid and subtle analysis and find it a useful guide through a difficult and complex subject.

In tracing the history of Darwin’s accomplishment and the trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed by the master’s German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many other topics—including the character of Darwin’s chief principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel Wallace over man’s big brain, the role of language in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his views had in common with Haeckel’s, and the general problem of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler’s atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its boldest.

This is an intellectual biography of Benjamin Kidd, a leading Social Darwinist in the years before World War I, and a social prophet in the tradition of Comte and Spencer. His first book Social Evolution, published in 1894, was an immediate and enormous success around the world. In it, Kidd developed a collectivist form of Social Darwinism in tune with the values of Progressivism in America and the 'new liberalism' in Britain. By many it was regarded as the basis for a properly scientific sociology, and the combination of its claims to scientific methodology, with an emphasis on non-rational forces as the agents of progress accurately caught the temper of its times. Launched on his career as a writer, Kidd's subsequent books and journalism continued to exercise extraordinary influence. His 'social imperialism', linking a bio-political defence of empire with a programme of social reform, won currency in the Anglo-American world at a time of expansionary fervour.

This scholarly and penetrating study of eugenics is a major contribution to our understanding of the complex relation between science, ideology and class.

Internationalism and Its Betrayal was first published in 1995. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. A new world order, proclaimed Western leaders after the cold war, could extend liberal democracy and human rights around the globe. Yet the specter of nationalism once again haunts the world, threatening to extinguish the spirit of internationalism. Although internationalism is typically understood to be diametrically opposed to nationalism, Micheline Ishay argues to the contrary, maintaining that internationalism often incorporates an individualist element that manifests itself as nationalism during critical periods such as war. For example, the new liberal internationalism invoked after the cold war is now revealing its limits-as reflected by the UN's inability to interfere promptly to stop ethnic and nationalist conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, and elsewhere. Internationalism and Its Betrayal explores the tensions and contradictions between ideas of nationalism and internationalism, focusing on the major political thinkers from the early modern period into the nineteenth century. Ishay examines the writings of Vico, Grotius, Rousseau, Kant, Paine, Robespierre, Burke, Fichte, de Maistre, and Hegel. She speaks to an audience of individuals interested in the spread of democracy, students of human rights and international relations, historians of the French Revolution, and political theorists. Micheline Ishay was born in Tel Aviv, and raised in Israel, Luxembourg, and Brussels, Belgium. She is currently assistant professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Denver University, where she is also serving as director of the human rights program and executive director of the Center on Rights Development. She is coeditor of The Nationalism Reader (1994). Craig Calhoun is professor of sociology and history and director of the University Center for International Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the editor of the Contradictions of Modernity series for the University of Minnesota Press.

Publisher description

In this work, Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially the view that human life is sacred. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary 'fitness' (especially intelligence and health) to the highest arbiter of morality. Darwinism played a key role in the rise not only of eugenics, but also euthanasia, infanticide, abortion and racial extermination. This was especially important in Germany, since Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles, not on nihilism.

Leading historians introduce the most influential trends in thought which originated or developed in the nineteenth century.

A theoretical study dealing chiefly with matters of definition and clarification of terms and concepts involved in using Darwinian notions to model social phenomena.