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New Foundations for an Evolutionary Ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
Contemporary bio-ethics shares with the ancient tradition of natural theology the characteristic of assuming, in the face of the advances of a fundamentally materialist science, an opportunistic function, which is that of the adaptive rescue of spiritual values. Bioethical humanism exists only in the process of this perpetual movement of repossession, and its effort, established to this effect, leads back incoherently to the interminable dualistic confrontation between science and conscience, having failed to take upon itself the task of constructing a rationally-informed thinking on the relationships between the order of development of positive knowledge and the order of development of moral feelings, both in human evolution and in the history of societies. These matters hardly concern today's fashionable philosophers, whose dominant preoccupation seems to be to find a still-unfilled job - something between an esoteric magus and a preacher in vogue - on the great stage of the inessential upon which inconsequential thought is exhibited.
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- Copyright © 1995 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
Notes
1. See esp. Misère de la sociobiologie, Paris, 1985, part II; the discussion "Introduc tion à l'anthropologie darwinienne" in: Marx et le problème de l'idéologie, Paris, 1987; Darwinisme et société, Paris, 1992 (first lecture); Dictionnaire du darwinisme et de l'évolution, Paris, 1996 (article on "Malthus" and the Summary).
2. La Pensée hiérarchique et l'évolution, Paris, 1983.
3. See H. Spencer, Autobiographie, edited by P Tort, Paris, 1987, pp. 87-91.
4. See J.-M. Goux (ed.), Darwin. Autobiographie. La vie d'un naturaliste à l'époque vic torienne, Paris, 1985.
5. See C. Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed., London, 1882, p. 618: "Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned, there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion &c., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense." This concluding passage echoes an idea developed earlier in chapter V (ibid., p. 137): "With civilised nations, as far as an advanced standard of moral ity, and an increased number of fairly good men are concerned, natural selec tion apparently effects but little; though the fundamental social instincts were originally thus gained."
6. F. Cordon, "Interprétation évolutionniste de la biochimie. Les avantages sélec tifs qui opèrent dans l'origine et le développement évolutifs du métabolisme cellulaire," in: P. Tort (ed.), Darwinisme et Société (Paris, 1992), pp. 449-59.
7. P. Tort, "L'effet réversif de l'évolution. Fondements de 1'anthropologie darwini enne, " in: idem (note 6), pp. 13-46.
8. A. Lalande, La Dissolution opposée à l'Evolution dans les sciences physiques et morales, unpubl. PhD. thesis Paris, 1899, published in 1930 under the title Les Illusions évolutionnistes.
9. P. Tort, "La synthèse organiciste. Spencer et l'évolutionnisme," in: idem (note 2), pp. 329-431.
10. See C. Darwin (note 5), p. 123: "Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is, humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions."