[Nettime-ro] \\ From Darwinism to Hitler

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_http://darwiniana.com/2009/05/19/from-weikarts-book-from-darwin-to- 
hitler/#
more-25173_
(http://darwiniana.com/2009/05/19/from-weikarts-book-from-darwin-to- 
hitler/#more-25173)

Yesterday we had a discussion of Weikart’s book: _Rereading Weikart’s  
From
Darwinism to Hitler_
(http://darwiniana.com/2009/05/18/rereading-weikarts-from-darwin-to- 
hitler/) .
I think anyone who wants to discuss Darwinism needs to read this book  
and
not  let the loudmouths defendiing the Paradigm scare them away.  
First: the
brouhaha  a while back from Darwin defenders was obviously generated  
by many
who had  barely read the book. They must have misread the title and  
opened
fire. The  endless vituperative denunciations of Weikart for blaming  
Darwin
for Hitler were  uttered by people who clearly hadn’t read the book.  
Weikart
was very careful in  what he said.
The title is, From Darwin to Hitler, and the discussion follows  the  
title:
a history of social darwinist thought from Darwin to Hitler,with one   
short
chapter on Hitler, and his eugenic thinking. And it is a sobering  tale.
Clearly the Darwin establishment is afraid of people reading this book,
not because it has much about Hitler, but because it shows how so many
intellectuals and academics were rank eugenicists and social  
Darwinists. And it
brings out the confusions of theory, the inability to get straight  
the issues
of  ethics, and much else, including the obvious influence of  
Darwinism on
the  racial extermination policies of many colonialists. There is no
escaping that  charge, given the subtitle of Darwin’s book.
We need to be wary of those who,  with liberal good intentions, wish to
sanitize Darwinism, and make us forget how  the theory was taken in the
generations after Darwin.
Here is a short scanned  passage from Weikart’s book. It gives the  
flavor
of the book, with a few remarks  about Hitler tacked on at the end.
Those Darwinists who made the evolutionary process the new criteria for
morality radically altered the way that people thought about  
morality. Since
they generally affirmed that good health and  intelligence were key  
factors
in the upward march of evolution, improving  physical vitality and  
mental
prowess–especially of future generations-became  the highest moral  
virtue. The
greatest sin was ro contribute in some way to  the decline of  
physical life
or intellectual ability. This kind of  evolutionary ethics flew in  
the face
of Christian morality, in which one’s  health, vitality, and mental  
faculty
play no role in determining moral or  immoral behavior. While Christian
morality demands a relationship of love  toward God and one’s  
neighbor, which
involves self-sacrifice, evolutionary  ethics focussed on breeding  
better
humans, even if it meant sacrificing other  people in the process. In  
some
places the old and new morality might  intersect, and indeed many  
proponents of
evolutionary ethics carried a lot of  baggage from traditional ethics  
into
their “new morality.” However, the  foundations had shifted. This new  
stress
on evolutionary progress and health  as the norm for behavior spawned  
the
eugenics movement around the turn of the  twentieth century, which  
was overtly
founded on Darwinian  principles.
Darwinism also contributed co a rethinking of the value of  human  
life in
the late nineteenth century. In order to make human evolution   
plausi¬ble,
prominent Darwinists argued chat humans were not qualitatively   
different from
animals. Also. the significance of the individual life did not  seem all
that great considering the mass death brought on by the Darwinian   
struggle
for existence. Multitudes necessarily died before repro¬ducing, and   
this was
the key ro evolutionary progress. Death was no longer a foe, as
Christianity caught, bur a beneficent force. Also, Darwinism  
stressed  biological
inequality, since evolution could not occur without significant   
variation.
Humans were no exception, argued many Darwinists, so egalitarianism   
must be
misguided.
These views on human inequality, the primacy of  evolutionary  
progress, and
the beneficence of death in furthering that process  produced a  
world¬view
that devalued human life. Many used Darwinian arguments  to assign some
humans to the category of “inferior” or degenerate. Generally  they  
considered
two main categories of people “inferior”: the handicapped and  non- 
European
races. Since they were “inferior,” and since the death of the  less  
fit in
the struggle for existence will result in biological improvement,   
why not
help evolution along by getting rid of the “inferior”?
To be sure,  some Darwinists and eugenicists retained enough moral
influence from their  upbringing to resist the move to kill the  
“inferior.”
Instead, they often  promoted a variety of measures of reproductive  
control to
achieve their ends.  Eugenicists could not agree on the best concrete  
reforms co
improve the  biological health of future generations, but they generally
agreed that  Christian sexual morality must be abandoned. Some proposed
marriage reforms,  others preferred free sex, while a few even  
supported polygamy.
They agreed,  however, that sexual morality must be subservient to  
the goal
of increasing  biological health and thus promoting evolution.
Following the lead of  Haeckel, a number of Darwinists and  
eugenicists cook
these ideas in even mote  radical directions. They forthrightly promoted
the killing of the handicapped  and those of “lower” races. They  
rejected the
dominant Christian attitude that  placed value on the lives of the weak,
the sick, and the handicapped. They  denied that “lower” races could be
elevated to the status of civilized people.  Rather than allowing  
such people to
drain the precious, limited resources of  the earth, it would be  
better co
kill them to make space for the healthy,  vigorous, and intelligent co
flourish.
Many Darwinists also believed that  moral characteristics were  
heredi¬tary.
They thought normal Europeans were not  only physically and mentally,  
but
also morally, superior to the handicapped  and non-Europeans. Thus  
ridding
the world of these “inferior” people would  actually result in the
advancement of morality. Of course, they failed to  notice that  
Darwinism offered no
criteria by which morality could be judged,  but they nonetheless  
affirmed
the superiority of European morality (while  ironically rejecting the  
very
basis of that morality).
Some might object  that Darwinism was not the sole factor producing this
change of attitudes  about morality and the value of human life. To  
this I
heartily agree. Indeed,  it is difficult to know what contributed  
most to the
devaluing of human  life-the naturalistic world view in general or
biolog¬ical evolution and  Darwinism in particular. One could make a  
persuasive
argument that it was  philosophical materialism and monism that  
devalued human
life rather than  Darwinism. After all, the eighteenth-century French
materialist Julien de La  Mettrie called man a machine long before  
Darwin arrived on
the  scene.
However, why do we need ro choose between Darwinism and  philosophical
naturalism to explain the devaluing of human life? Surely both’  were
influential. The thinkers we have examined in this work saw Darwinism  
as  an
integral-indeed often as the foundational-aspect of their entire  
worldview.
Certainly their view of the human condition relied heavily on their  
Darwinian
understanding. Further, Darwinism played an integral role in the rise of
materialism and positivism in the late nineteenth and twentieth   
centuries.
This study is important, not only because it shows the  intersection of
Darwinian biology and ethics in the past, especially the way  that  
Darwinism
influenced thinking about the value of human life, but also  because  
these
debates are still with us today. In the late twentieth and early   
twenty-first
centuries sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are making  similar
claims about the implications of Darwinism for ethics and morality.   
Often these
scientists and philosophers seem oblivious to the many earlier   
attempts to
wed Darwinism to ethics. Also, many bioethicists today are  articulating
positions quite similar to the views of the figures in this  study.  
Peter
Singer and James Rachels, for example, are contemporary  philosophers  
who argue
that Darwinism has effectively undermined the  Judeo¬-Christian  
doctrine of
the sanctity of human life, thereby making  involuntary euthanasia
permissible in some circumstances, such as in the case  of a severely  
handicapped
infant.
Another reason this study is so important  is because it gives further
insight into the roots of Hitler’s worldview and  his genocidal  
mentality. It
also helps explain why so many educated Germans  would cooperate with  
the
Nazis and participate in the Holocaust, including  many medical  
personnel. When
he embraced eugenics, involuntary euthanasia for  the handicapped, and
racial extermination, Hitler was drawing on ideas that  were  
circulating widely
among the educated elites. Klaus Fischer has rightly  stated, “Adolf  
Hitler’
s racial image of the world was not simply the product  of his own  
delusion
but the result of the findings of ‘respectable’ science in  Germany  
and in
other parts of the world, including the United States.”] These  ideas  
were
not dominant in German society, but they were reputable and   
mainstream in
scholarly circles, especially among the medical and scientific  elites.
It would be foolish to blame Darwinism for the Holocaust, as though
Darwinism leads logically to the Holocaust. No, Darwinism by itself  
did not
produce Hitler’s worldview, and many Darwinists drew quite different   
conclusions
from Darwinism for ethics and social thought than did Hitler.   
Eugenics and
scientific racism were prominent in scholarly circles in many  European
countries and also in the United States, but obviously in none of   
them did
Darwinism lead to the Holocaust. It did lead, however, to the   
compulsory
sterilization of hundreds of thousands in the United States,  Sweden,  
and other
countries in the mid-twentieth century. As a result of the   
resurgence of
eugenics in the late twentieth century, China passed the  Maternal  
and Infant
Health Law, which required premarital health exams and  strongly  
encouraged
sterilization for those deemed unfit to reproduce (while  the  
sterilization
measure was theoretically voluntary, Dikotter points out  that in  
practice
the Chinese government usually gets its way).2 Darwinism also   
spawned debate
on euthanasia and infanticide, and even though these are still   
illegal in
most countries (the biggest exception is the Netherlands), they are
practiced more widely than many suspect.3
To deny the influence of  Darwinism on Hitler would also be foolish,
however, especially since almost  all scholars of Nazism acknowledge  
it. Richard
J. Evans highlights the  importance of social Darwinist discourse not  
only
for Hitler, but also for  those cooperating with
Hitler took .u~ this rhetoric and used his own  version of the  
language of
social Darwinism as a central element in the  discursive practice of
extermination …. The language of social Darwinism in  its Nazi  
variant had come to
be a means of legitimizing terror and  extermination against deviants,
opponents of the regime, and indeed anyone who  did not appear to be
wholeheartedly devoted to the war effort. The language of  social  
Darwinism helped to
remove all restraint from those who directed the  terroristic and
exterminatory policies of the regime, and it legitimized these   
policies in the
minds of
those. who practiced them by persuading them that  what they were  
doing was
Justified by history. science. and  nature.4
Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without   
Darwinism,
especially in its social Darwinist and eugenics permutations,  whether
Hitler or his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scien¬tific
underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one  
of the.
world’s
greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy. Darwinism-or at   
least
some naturalistic interpretations of Darwinism¬succeeded in turning 
 
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