The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics

by Farber, Paul Lawrence

• ISBN13: 9780520213692
• ISBN10: 0520213696
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr on Demand

Summary

Evolutionary theory tells us about our biological past; can it also guide us to a moral future? Paul Farber's compelling book describes a century-old philosophical hope held by many biologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and social thinkers: that universal ethical and social imperatives are built into human nature and can be discovered through knowledge of evolutionary theory. Farber describes three upsurges of enthusiasm for evolutionary ethics. The first came in the early years of mid-nineteenth century evolutionary theories; the second in the 1920s and '30s, in the years after the cultural catastrophe of World War I; and the third arrived with the recent grand claims of sociobiology to offer a sound biological basis for a theory of human culture. Unlike many who have written on evolutionary ethics, Farber considers the responses made by philosophers over the years. He maintains that their devastating criticisms have been forgotten--thus the history of evolutionary ethics is essentially one of oft-repeated philosophical mistakes. Historians, scientists, social scientists, and anyone concerned about the elusive basis of selflessness, altruism, and morality will welcome Farber's enlightening book.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(9)
1. Charles Darwin	10	(12)
2. Darwinian Ethics	22	(16)
3. Evolutionary Ethics: Herbert Spencer	38	(20)
4. Darwinian Critics: Thomas Henry Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace	58	(21)
5. Early Reception and Evaluation of Evolutionary Ethics: 1870-1890s	79	(17)
6. Evolutionary Baroque and Its Furies: 1890-1920	96	(22)
7. Syntheses, Modern and Otherwise: 1918-1968	118	(30)
8. Evolutionary Ethics Since 1975: Dodo, Phoenix, or Firebird?	148	(20)
9. Recapitulation, Lessons, and Queries	168	(9)
Bibliography	177	(30)
Index	207