From Darwin To Hitler

In this work, Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially the view that human life is sacred. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary 'fitness' (especially intelligence and health) to the highest arbiter of morality. Darwinism played a key role in the rise not only of eugenics, but also euthanasia, infanticide, abortion and racial extermination. This was especially important in Germany, since Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles, not on nihilism.

In tracing the history of Darwin’s accomplishment and the trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed by the master’s German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many other topics—including the character of Darwin’s chief principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel Wallace over man’s big brain, the role of language in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his views had in common with Haeckel’s, and the general problem of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler’s atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its boldest.

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.

Amid the eulogies and celebrations commemorating the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth, the darker side of evolutionary theory should not be forgotten. In The Pure Society, Andr Pichot, one of France's foremost specialists in the history of science, excavates the underside of the Darwinian legacy, where the notions of 'race' and heredity became powerful tools of malign political agendas and instruments of social oppression. Pichot examines the relationship between science, politics and ideology through an analysis of specific cases: from Nazism and the concentration camps to the various eugenicist research programmes launched or financed by eminent scientific organizations. Racist eugenic ideas were once prevalent among the scientific community, despite a patent lack of supporting evidence. As today's scientists and writers applaud the advance of science, the egregious mistakes made along the way are too often forgotten. Now, with the mapping of the human genome and rapid advances in gene therapies, Pichot warns that biologists are increasingly emboldened to venture into the realms of public policy and politics. If moral philosophers abandon these fields, it is all too possible that the lights of a misguided science will resurrect the dream of a 'pure society'.

A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!

As genetic manipulation comes to dominate medical science, a timely and trenchant history of eugenics. How did the notions of "race" and "ethnic group," under the cover of scientific legitimacy, get used for political ends? This work retraces the history of biological conceptions of society and their racist and eugenicist applications from the end of the nineteenth century to the post-Second World War epoch. André Pichot analyzes the relationship between science, politics and ideology, through the examination of specific cases: from Nazism to the various eugenicist research programs launched or financed by eminent scientific organizations from the beginning of the twentieth century onwards. And, today, with the mapping of the human genome and rapid advances in gene therapies, he warns that the dream of a "pure society" is in danger of resurrection.

Eminent historian Paul Johnson provides a rich, succinct portrait of Charles Darwin Charles Darwin is arguably the most influential scientist of all time. His Origin of Species forever changed our concept of the world’s creation. Darwin’s revolutionary career is the perfect vehicle for historian Paul Johnson. Marked by the insightful observation, spectacular wit, and highly readable prose for which Johnson is so well regarded, Darwin brings the gentleman-scientist and his times brilliantly into focus. From Darwin’s birth into great fortune to his voyage aboard the Beagle, to the long-delayed publication of his masterpiece, Johnson delves into what made this Victorian gentleman into a visionary scientist—and into the tragic flaws that later led Darwin to support the burgeoning eugenics movement. Johnson’s many admirers as well as history and science buffs will be grateful for this superb account of Darwin and the everlasting impact of his discoveries.

Bergman takes a fresh look at Germany's most influential Nazi leaders to provide compelling evidence that the rising influence of Darwinism, eugenics, and race theory in early-20th-century society set the foundation for the Nazi pursuit of engineering a German "master race" and exterminating European Jews, gypsies, Blacks, most Slavs, and the Christian religion.