Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T01:18:35.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Comment on Peter Corning's “Evolutionary ethics”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

C. Fred Alford*
Affiliation:
Department of Government and Politics University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742 USA [email protected]
Get access

Extract

One can see the appeal of evolutionary ethics today. Throughout the Western world, and nowhere more than the United States, individualism is rampant. Some argue that greed is good; too much social and political theory idealizes individual freedom and choice as the highest values. How gratifying it is to learn that greed and selfishness are not natural, or at least not any more natural than cooperation, self-sacrifice, and altruism. Trouble is, most of the truly horrible acts in this world have been committed not by selfish individuals but by ordinary men and women following orders. We must consider whether evolutionary ethics adequately addresses this problem. Can evolutionary ethics discover the sources of resistance to malevolent authority?

Type
Harrison Symposium III
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Milgram, Stanley, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper and Row, 1974).Google Scholar
2.Browning, Christopher, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper-Collins, 1992).Google Scholar
3.Arnhart, Larry, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 265.Google Scholar