Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T17:17:29.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Darwin and the Declaration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

S. Adam Seagrave
S. Adam Seagrave*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Department of Political Science, 217 O'Shaughnessy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556. [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Does the prima facie contradiction between the Declaration of Independence's description of the separate and unique “creation” of human beings and Darwin's evolutionary account indicate a broader contradiction between theories of human rights and Darwinian evolution? While similar troubling questions have been raised and answered in the affirmative since Darwin's time, this article renews, updates and significantly fortifies such answers with original arguments. If a “distilled” formulation of the Declaration's central claims, shorn of complicating entanglements with both theology and comprehensive philosophical doctrines, may still be in contradiction with Darwinian evolutionary theory, this should be cause for substantial concern on the part of all normative political theorists, from Straussians to Rawlsians. Despite the notable recent efforts of a few political theorists, evolutionary ethicists and sociobiologists to establish the compatibility of Darwinian evolutionary theory with moral norms such as the idea of natural or human rights, I argue that significant obstacles remain.

Keywords

Darwinnatural rightshuman rightsDeclaration of Independencemoral senseThomas JeffersonLarry Arnhartutilitarianismdistilled Declaration
Type
Research Articles
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 2 - 16
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. Holloway, Carson, The Right Darwin? Evolution, Religion and the Future of Democracy (Dallas: Spence Publication Company, 2006).Google Scholar
2. Arnhart, Larry, Darwinian Conservatism (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2005).Google Scholar
3. Zycinski, Jozef, God and Evolution: Fundamental Questions of Christian Evolutionism, trans. Kemp, Kenneth W. and Maslanka, Zuzanna (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006).Google Scholar
4. Wolfe, Christopher, Natural Law Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 24–43, 217–247.Google Scholar
5. Schaefer, David L., Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007), pp. 315–336.Google Scholar
6. “Darwin, Aristotle and the biology of human rights,” Social Science Information 1984, 23: 493–521.Google Scholar
7. Richardson, John, Nietzsche's New Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).Google Scholar
8. Small, Robin, Nietzsche and Ree: A Star Friendship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9. Ruse, Michael, ed. Philosophy After Darwin: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 103–112, 152–155.Google Scholar
10. Becker, Carl, The Declaration of Independence (New York: Random House, 1942).Google Scholar
11. Arnhart, Larry, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).Google Scholar
12. Arnhart, Larry, “The new Darwinian naturalism in political theory,” American Political Science Review, 1995, 89: 389–400.Google Scholar
13. McShea, Robert, Morality and Human Nature: A New Route to Ethical Theory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
14. Wilson, E.O., Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975).Google Scholar
15. Masters, Roger D., “Evolutionary biology and political theory,” American Political Science Review, 1990, 84: 195–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16. Ruse, Michael, Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1998).Google Scholar
17. Ruse, Michael, “Evolution and ethics: The sociobiological approach,” in Ethical Theory, ed. Pojman, Louis P. 2nd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994).Google Scholar
18. Singer, Peter, A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
19. Wilson, James Q., The Moral Sense (New York: The Free Press, 1993).Google Scholar
20. Desmond, Adrian and Moore, James, Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).Google Scholar
21. Adam Seagrave, S., “Self-ownership vs. divine ownership: A Lockean solution to a liberal democratic dilemma,” American Journal of Political Science, 2011, 55: 710–723.Google Scholar
22. Darwin, Charles, On the Origin of Species (New York: Mentor, 1958).Google Scholar
23. Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man (London: Penguin, 2004).Google Scholar
24. Home, Henry, Karnes, Lord, Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, ed. Moran, Mary Catherine (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), pp. 102–103.Google Scholar
25. Adam Seagrave, S., “How old are modern rights? On the Lockean roots of contemporary human rights discourse,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 2011, 72: 305–327.Google Scholar
26. Tierney, Brian, “Historical roots of modern rights: Before Locke and after,” Ave Maria Law Review, 2005, 3: 23–43.Google Scholar
27. Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Peter H. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).Google Scholar
28. Hutcheson, Francis, An Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises, ed. Leidhold, Wolfgang (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004).Google Scholar
29. Zuckert, Michael, Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002).Google Scholar
30. Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Schneewind, J. B. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983).Google Scholar
31. Wills, Garry, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1978).Google Scholar
32. The Essential Jefferson. ed. Yarbrough, Jean M. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006).Google Scholar
33. Zuckert, Michael, The Natural Rights Republic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), pp. 32–34.Google Scholar
34. Arnhart, Larry, Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).Google Scholar
35. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).Google Scholar
36. Aristotle, Categories , in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. McKeon, Richard (New York: Random House, 1941), 1.4.Google Scholar
37. Arnhart, Larry, Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2003), pp. 180–186.Google Scholar
38. Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), II. vol. 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar