by richard weikart the darwinian worldview and ethics
TRANSCRIPT
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
