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Chapter 14 - Instinctive Moral Actions

Darwin and the Ethics of Biology

from Part III - Humanism after Darwin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2022

Devin Griffiths
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Deanna Kreisel
Affiliation:
University of Mississippi
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Summary

This chapter demonstrates ways in which Darwin challenged aspects of Enlightenment thought, including racial and sexual hierarchies, gendered stereotypes and androcentric perspectives. In doing so, he called into question Cartesian dualism—the separation of mind and body—and its colonial implications in configuring the body as unruly and in need of subjection to a scientific control that was masculine and European. Situating Darwin’s work in relation to contemporary political debates over race, slavery, and sex, it explores the forceful argument against innatism presented by Darwinian evolution, which undid biologistic arguments for biologically determined roles or behaviors, and shows that while he is often assumed to have occupied a separate and opposing camp to John Stuart Mill, which foregrounded biology rather than ethics, Darwin and Mill in fact shared notable common ground. It argues that, in a climate emergency and at a time of devastating and rising global poverty, Darwin’s strong sense of interdependence and interrelations counters authoritarian disregard for the vulnerable and disadvantaged.

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After Darwin
Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century
, pp. 178 - 198
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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