by richard weikart the darwinian worldview and ethics

byRichard Weikart

THE DARWINIAN

WORLDVIEW AND

ETHICS

From Darwin to Hitler:Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism

in Germany

by

Richard Weikart

Implications of Darwinism for Devaluing Human Life

1. Animal ancestry of humans

Pithecathropus alalus, imaginary missing link,

inErnst Haeckel,

Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte

(1911 ed.)

Implications of Darwinism for Devaluing Human Life

1. Animal ancestry of humans

2. Denial of body-soul dualism

3. Moral relativism undermining human rights

One “can have for his rule of life, as far as

I can see, only to follow those impulses

and instincts which are the strongest or

which seem to him the best ones.”

Darwin, Autobiography

Implications of Darwinism for Devaluing Human Life

1. Animal ancestry of humans

2. Denial of body-soul dualism

3. Moral relativism undermining human rights

4. Human inequality

From psychiatristHans Kurella,Die Grenzen derZurechnungsfähigkeit und die Kriminal-Anthropologie (1903), showing allegedlyape-like features of an Italian criminal

Frontispiece toErnst Haeckel, Natürliche

Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868)

Magazine cover (1916)

Caption:

“Our captives

in the West.

‘Man, you’re bringing him to Hagenbeck, aren’t you? He can’t catch

better gorillas in Africa than we can on the Western Front!’ ”

Implications of Darwinism for Devaluing Human Life

1. Animal ancestry of humans

2. Denial of body-soul dualism

3. Moral relativism undermining human rights

4. Human inequality

5. Human struggle for existence

Title:

The Threat of the Subhuman

Shows criminals

reproduce much faster than

average and educated

Germans

Caption: “Spaniards allow their dogs to rip up Indians”Friedrich Hellwald, Kulturgeschichte (4th ed., 1896)

Implications of Darwinism for Devaluing Human Life

1. Animal ancestry of humans

2. Denial of body-soul dualism

3. Moral relativism undermining human rights

4. Human inequality

5. Human struggle for existence

6. Death as progress

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly

follows.”

Darwin, Origin of Species

Ian DowbigginA Merciful End:

The Euthanasia Movement in Modern America

Nick Kemp

Merciful Release:

The History of the British Euthanasia Movement

“There is a place in humanity for murder, that is to say by killing the unfit.”

--Havelock Ellis, British physician

“Chloroform unfit children. Show them the same mercy that is shown beasts that are no longer fit

to live.”

--Clarence Darrow, defense attorney at Scopes Trial

Nazi Poster:

60,000 marksis what this

mentally ill person costs the national

communityin a lifetime

Comradesthis is

your money, too

“Because of the present limits of such detection methods, most birth defects are not discovered until birth. If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice...the doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a

lot of misery and suffering.”

James D. Watson (1973)

From Darwin to Hitler:Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism

in Germany

by

Richard Weikart