In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 323-344 [Access article in PDF] Darwinism and Death: Devaluing Human Life in Germany 1859-1920 Richard Weikart The debate over the significance of Social Darwinism in Germany has special importance, because it serves as background to discussions of Hitler's ideology and of the roots of German imperialism and World War I. 1 There is no doubt that Hitler was a (...) Social Darwinist, viewing history as a struggle for existence among unequal races. All Hitler scholars agree on this point, and it is too obvious to deny when one reads Mein Kampf. 2 Whether Social Darwinism contributed to imperialism and militarism is less clear, though some have argued it did, at least as a justification for them. 3 Some Anglo-American writers during and immediately after World War I blamed Social Darwinism for inflaming German militarism. 4 [End Page 323]This discussion over both Social Darwinism in general and its German form in particular has reached something of an impasse lately. While some scholars insist that Darwinism contributed to or at least reinforced a competitive ethos in European political and social thought, others have stressed the varieties of Social Darwinism. 5 The latter remind us that, although some Darwinian social thinkers stressed competition, socialists were also avid Darwinists and saw it as support for their vision of a more cooperative socialist society. 6 Some scholars focus so much on the cooperative and peaceful thrust of Darwinian thinkers that one might think that Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid had carried the day in the late nineteenth century. For example, Paul Crook argues that Darwinism produced pacifist inclinations more than it did militarism. 7Another important debate in Darwin scholarship concerns the compatibility or incompatibility of Darwinism with other world views, especially traditional religion. The warfare thesis, which sees religion and science in perpetual conflict (often with science heroically winning the battle), has largely been abandoned by historians of science, who now see greater complexity in the interactions of science and religion. 8 Reacting against the warfare thesis, some have emphasized accommodation, showing how science and religion often work in harmony. As applied to Darwinism the accommodationist view stresses the receptivity of many Christians, including prominent evangelical pastors and [End Page 324] theologians, to evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century. 9 While the warfare thesis was clearly a crude caricature, an overemphasis on accommo-dationism can render the intensely emotional debates over Darwinism in the nineteenth century unintelligible and ignores the polemical uses of Darwinism by materialists and positivists in their fight against religion. 10This essay will attempt to make a contribution to both these debates by focusing on aspects of Darwinism that have been insufficiently explored to date—not the issues of competition vs. cooperation or capitalism vs. socialism or explicitly on religion, as is usual in the discussion over warfare or accommodation, but how Darwinism impacted thinking about the value of human life and the significance of human death. Indeed Darwinism, in harmony with the growth of materialism and positivism, helped alter many people's views on matters of life and death. Many prominent German Darwinists urged their society to reevaluate its stance on what today is known as biomedical ethics—infanticide, euthanasia, suicide, abortion, etc. By focusing on these issues, we will see that leading Darwinists invoked Darwinian science to undermine traditional Judeo-Christian ethical values; this went far beyond merely dismissing the Genesis creation story or even rejecting the supernatural.The scientists and physicians most important in embracing, developing, and popularizing Darwinism in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany vigorously argued that Darwinism did have important implications for religion, ethics, and social thought. Darwinism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced a significant shift in the world views of many who embraced it, and leading Darwinists insisted that their newly-found world view undermined traditional ways of thinking, including traditional ideas about religion and ethics. Ernst Haeckel, the most famous German Darwinist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, believed the most important aspect... (shrink)

This important new study is an intellectual history exploring the reception of Darwinism by prominent German socialist theoriests: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engles, Friedrich Albert Lange, Ludwig B chner, August Bebel, Karl Katusky, and Eduard Bernstein. It relies not only on published books, articles, and speeches by these men, but also on some unpublished correspondence. In addition, one chapter covers the anti-socialist stance of prominent Darwinian biologists, including Charles Darwin and the foremost champion of Darwinism in Germany, Ernst Haeckel. Darwinism's effect (...) on German socialism's view of eugenics, race and religion are also discussed. (shrink)

In this book, Weikart helps unlock the mystery of Hitler ’s evil by vividly demonstrating the surprising conclusion that Hitler ’s immorality flowed from a coherent ethic. Hitler was inspired by evolutionary ethics to pursue the utopian project of biologically improving the human race. This ethic underlay or influenced almost every major feature of Nazi policy: eugenics, euthanasia, racism, population expansion, offensive warfare, and racial extermination.

(1998). Laissez‐faire Social Darwinism and individualist competition in Darwin and Huxley. The European Legacy: Vol. 3, On Social Darwinism, pp. 17-30.

Darwinian Evolution and Classical Liberalism brings together a collection of new essays that examine the multifaceted ferment between Darwinian biology and classical liberalism.

Several scholars and many religiously conservative thinkers have recently charged that Hitler’s ideas about race and racial struggle derived from the theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), either directly or through intermediate sources. So, for example, the historian Richard Weikart, in his book From Darwin to Hitler , maintains: “No matter how crooked the road was from Darwin to Hitler, clearly Darwinism and eugenics smoothed the path for Nazi ideology, especially for the Nazi stress on expansion, war, racial struggle, (...) and racial extermination.” In a subsequent book, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress, Weikart argues that Darwin’s “evolutionary ethics drove him [Hitler] to engage in behavior that the rest of us consider abominable.” Other critics have also attempted to forge a strong link between Darwin’s theory and Hitler’s biological notions. In the 2008 film “Expelled,” a documentary defense of Intelligent Design, the Princeton trained philosopher David Berlinski, in conversation with Weikart, confidently asserts: “If you open Mein Kampf and read it, especially if you can read it in German, the correspondence between Darwinian ideas and Nazi ideas just leaps from the page.” John Gray, former professor at the London School of Economics, does allow that Hitler’s Darwinism was “vulgar.” Hannah Arendt also appears to have endorsed the connection when she declared: “Underlying the Nazis’ belief in race laws as the expression of the law of nature in man, is Darwin’s idea of man as the product of a natural development which does not necessarily stop with the present species of human being.” Put “Darwin” and “Hitler” in a search engine and several million hits will be returned, most from religiously and politically conservative websites, articles, and books. (shrink)

Written across the disciplines of art history, literature, philosophy, sociology, and theology, the ten essays comprising the collection all insist on multidimensional definitions of evil. Taking its title from a moment in Shakespeare's Tempest when Prospero acknowledges his responsibility for Caliban, this collection explores the necessarily ambivalent relationship between humanity and evil. To what extent are a given society's definitions of evil self-serving? Which figures are marginalized in the process of identifying evil? How is humanity itself implicated in the production (...) of evil? Is evil itself something fundamentally human? These questions, indicative of the kinds of issues raised in this collection, seem all the more pressing in light of recent world events. The ten essays were originally presented at the First Global Conference on Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness, held in March 2000 in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. (shrink)

The theory of action underlying Immanuel Kant's ethical theory is the subject of this book.

This book offers students a philosophical introduction to the ethical foundations of business management. It combines lessons from Kant with virtue ethics and also touches upon additional approaches such as utilitarianism. At the core of the book lies the concept of the nexus of imperfect managerial duty: building and reinforcing the virtuous managerial team, engaging in reasoned discourse among all stakeholders, and diligently pursuing business responsibilities, including the creative efforts necessary for modern organizations. Case illustrations of these applications are presented (...) throughout the book, including chapter appendices. Ancillary videos, test and answer banks and sample syllabi are available online via the author’s website. (shrink)

Within each of the great religions there is a well established doxastic practice (DP) of taking experiential inputs consisting of apparent direct perceptions of God (M experiences) as giving prima facie justification, subject to defeat by overriders supplied by that religion, for belief outputs that God exists and is as he presents himself. (This DP is abbreviated as "MP.") William Alston's primary aim in his excellent book, Perceiving God, is to establish that we have epistemic justification for believing that MPs (...) are reliable in that for the most part their belief outputs are true and moreover true of an objective or experience independent reality, unlike the belief outputs of the DPs based on sensations and feelings, along with the introspective DP whose intentional accusatives, although existing independently of being introspected, fail to be objective because they are themselves conscious states. (shrink)

Highlighting key writings from Professor Richard Pring's international career in education, the texts in this book provide a historical perspective in relation to current debates about philosophy of education in the UK and internationally, drawing attention to issues of current concern. The text explores key themes such as critical realism, teachers as researchers and a way forward for policy through carefully selected examples from Richard Pring's writings. A short introduction is provided for each chapter to help readers to (...) understand the significance of what is presented and how this relates to other chapters in the book. (shrink)

First things -- Emanuel Bach and the allure of the irrational -- Between enlightenment and romance -- Beethoven : confronting the past -- Fragments -- Death masks.

The notion of a "person" is in deep philosophical trouble. And this has posed a deepening crisis for believers: Christian beliefs are, after all, irreducibly about persons. In response to this situation, Prust proposes a new way to reason about persons, one based on identifying persons as characters of action. Employing a phenomenology of action he calls "character logic," he develops a powerful new tool for thinking through some of the intractable dilemmas that have long befuddled belief: - Can we (...) avoid being arbitrary and parochial in claiming that God is the only source of moral value? - Can we reconcile natural evil in the world with God's absolute power? - Can we continue to honor the historicity of faith-based claims in the face of critical history? - Can our personal life be eternal when neither timeless nor everlasting life is conceivable? - Can we accept our personal mortality and still affirm our destiny as eternal? Wholeness: The Character Logic of Christian Belief argues that character logic shows us a reasonable way to think about persons, one that puts theology on a new footing and gives affirmative answers to all these questions! (shrink)

Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature (Series Editors: Kathleen Coleman and Richard Rutherford) introduces individual works of Greek and Latin literature to readers who are approaching them for the first time. Each volume sets the work in its literary and historical context, and aims to offer a balanced and engaging assessment of its content, artistry, and purpose. A brief survey of the influence of the work upon subsequent generations is included to demonstrate its enduring relevance and power. All quotations from (...) the original are translated into English. Plato's Symposium tells of a dinner party at a crucial point in Athenian history at which the guests decide that they will each in turn deliver a speech in praise of love. The humorous and brilliant work that follows points the way towards all Western thinking about love. The Symposium is also one of Plato's most sophisticated meditations on the practice of philosophy. This book introduces the literary and historical context of Plato's work, surveys and explains the arguments, and considers why Plato has cast this work in a highly unusual narrative form. A final chapter traces the influence of the Symposium from antiquity to the modern day. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that while (...) none of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory for the study of religion. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, including Foucault, Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism and Buddhism are taken for granted, and shows us how religion needs to be redescribed along the lines of cultural studies.

This is the third edition of a classic book first published in 1960, which has sold thousands of copies in two paperback edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. Popkin's work ha generated innumerable citations, and remains a valuable stimulus to current historical research. In this updated version, he has revised and expanded throughout, and has added three new chapters, one on Savonarola, one on Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, and one on Pascal. This authoritative treatment of the (...) theme of scepticism and its historical impact will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history now as much as ever. (shrink)

This article outlines how the international push for inclusive education cannot be aligned with current education systems centred on neoliberal ideals of individualism, measurement, and competition. The way that these systems are organised means that a proportion of (usually marginalised) students are necessarily excluded. In order to meaningfully address the global education crisis, that sees millions of children and young people either out of school or unengaged with learning, this ontological misalignment must be acknowledged, and discourse and engagement around it (...) must be promoted. Drawing from the work of Donella Meadows, I argue that ‘high leverage points’ (information flows, rules, system goals, mindsets) are crucial places to intervene in education systems. Intervention at such points, while challenging, has the potential to lead to transformational and sustainable change; change that current ‘low leverage point’ initiatives fail to produce. I conclude with a call for further discourse and research into an examination of ‘high leverage points’ within education systems, how they interact, and how the development of an associated framework would be beneficial for researchers and development partners. (shrink)

Few philosophers have been as widely misunderstood as Nietzsche. His detractors and followers alike have often fundamentally misinterpreted him, distorting his views and intentions and criticizing or celebrating him for reasons removed from the views he actually held. Now available in paper, Nietzsche assesses his place in European thought, concentrating upon his writings in the last decade of his productive life. Nietzsche emerges in this comprehensive study as a philosopher of considerable sophistication who diverged sharply from traditional and ordinary ways (...) of thinking, but whose criticism, departures, and alternative views and strategies deserve to be given the most serious attention by philosophers. (shrink)

A selection of speeches and essays from the author's second decade as president of Yale University.

Ducklings were placed either singly or in pairs on a platform at two different heights. Both height and pairing influenced performance: More ducklings descended from the platform at low heights, and more single ducklings descended than paired ducklings. The social factor, pairing, made behavior more cautious and decreased the number of distress calls. A similar trend for pairing to influence performance was shown on the visual cliff. Without its peers, the duckling is a distressed animal. Previous careless behavior by ducklings (...) on the visual cliff may be ascribed to testing the ducklings outside their normal social environment. (shrink)

The book begins with an overview that introduces the Theorem and the issues surrounding it, and explores how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of those issues.