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² Although the question is still controversial, there is strong evidence linking evolutionism, via the ideas of Ernst Haeckel, with National Socialism. See Gasman, Daniel, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel and the Monist League (New York: Elsevier, 1971).Google Scholar

³ Most obviously, the so-called “naturalistic fallacy.” See sMoore, George E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903).Google Scholar See also Taking Darwin Seriously, ch. 3.

⁴ See Richards, Robert, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Wilson, Edward O., On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google ScholarPubMed; Wilson, Edward O., Biophilia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Alexander, Richard, The Biology of Moral Systems (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1987)Google Scholar; Mackie, John, “The Law of the Jungle,” Philosophy, vol. 53 (1978), pp. 553–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hume's Moral Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979); Murphy, Jeffrie, Evolution, Morality, and the Meaning of Life (Totowa: Rowan and Littlefield, 1982)Google Scholar; but see Kitcher, Philip, Vaulting Ambition (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Midgley, Mary, Evolution as a Religion (London: Methuen, 1985).Google Scholar

⁵ Ruse, Michael, Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense? (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979).Google Scholar

⁶ London: John Murray.

⁷ I discuss these points, in depth, in my Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1982).

⁸ Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought (New York: Braziller, 1959)Google Scholar; Russett, Cynthia, Darwin in America: The Intellectual Response, 1865–1912 (San Francisco: Freeman, 1976)Google Scholar; Jones, Greta, Social Darwinism and English Thought (New York: Braziller, 1980).Google Scholar

⁹ See especially his Social Statics (London: Chapman, 1851).

¹⁰ See Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. In this paper, I will not offer an extended treatment of Spencer's work, partly because I do not think he is in the first rank of moral philosophers, but more particularly because I have and am giving detailed discussion elsewhere. See Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously, esp. chs. 2 and 3, and Ruse, , Molecules to Men: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

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¹⁵ Ruse, , Sociobiology: Sense or Nonsense? (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979).Google Scholar

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¹⁷ Hamilton, William D., “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour. I,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol. 7 (1964), pp. 1–16CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour. II,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol. 7 (1964), pp. 17–32.

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²¹ Isaac, Glynn, “Aspects of Human Evolution,” ed. Bendall, D.S., Evolution from Molecules to Men (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 509–43.Google Scholar

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²⁵ Even though I have separated biological altruism from literal altruism, without further clarification of the latter term the discussion may seem intolerably flabby. But in line with my comments at the beginning of this discussion, I see as a major aim of this paper precisely to clarify what an evolutionist might mean by moral (literal) altruism, by playing off the idea against the thoughts of the great moral philosophers. I will return to definition at the end of this paper. For the moment, however, I will stress that more is meant than just good feeling. There has to be at some level a sense of obligation.

²⁶ Trivers, Robert L., Foreword to Dawkins, R., The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. v–vii.Google Scholar

²⁷ “Does Evolutionary Biology Contribute to Ethics?”, Biology & Philosophy, vol. 4 (1989), pp. 287–302.

²⁸ Chimpanzee Politics (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982). Although I stress that mine is an empirical position, I shall say no more here about the evidence, primarily because I have looked at such issues in detail elsewhere. See Ruse, , Taking Darwin Seriously; The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989)Google Scholar; Ruse, Michael and Wilson, Edward O., “Moral Philosophy as Applied Science,” Philosophy, vol. 61 (1986), pp. 173–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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³⁰ Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior.

³¹ Murphy, Evolution, Morality, and the Meaning of Life.

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³³ Ruse, Molecules to Men.

³⁴ Mackie, Hume's Moral Theory.

³⁵ ibid.

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³⁸ ibid., p. 47.

³⁹ ibid., p. 40.

⁴⁰ Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Rawls, John, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77 (1980), pp. 515–72.Google Scholar

⁴² ibid., p. 519.

⁴³ As Rawls, , Theory of Justice, pp. 502–3Google Scholar, notes, evolutionary biology is a godsend to any Kantian or social contract theorist. Instead of having to make up stories about a fictional first parliament or a hypothetical original position, you can let the genes do the work for you.

⁴⁴ Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Smith, N. Kemp (London: Macmillan, 1963).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ruse, Michael, Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Singer, Peter, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 3 (1972), pp. 229–43.Google Scholar

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⁴⁸ Ruse, The Darwinian Paradiam.

⁴⁹ Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously, esp. ch. 6.

⁵⁰ Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, Selby-Bigge, L.A. ed., 2d edn.Nidditch, Peter H. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 176.Google Scholar

⁵¹ ibid.

⁵² ibid., p. 469.

⁵³ ibid., p. 469.

⁵⁴ ibid., p. 477.

⁵⁵ ibid., p. 477.

⁵⁶ ibid., pp. 577–78.

⁵⁷ See Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior.

⁵⁸ Ruse, Michael, “Darwinism and Determinism,” Zygon, vol. 22 (1986), pp. 419–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶¹ This is not to deny that some, like Lumsden, Charles and Wilson, Edward O., Genes, Mind & Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, suggest that the genes track culture much more closely than we imagine.

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⁶³ ibid., p. 581.

⁶⁴ ibid., p. 571.

⁶⁵ Williams, B., Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana, 1985)Google Scholar; MacIntyre, A., After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).Google Scholar

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⁶⁹ ibid., 1098al, 7–17.

⁷⁰ Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Paradigm.

⁷¹ I am not claiming that the Aristotelian and the Darwinian overlap entirely. There is a built-in teleology to the former's position quite lacking in the latter. Nevertheless, there may be a direct link between the positions via Cuvier. See Ruse, Michael, The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).Google Scholar

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⁷⁴ ibid., 1253, 7–18.

⁷⁵ Wilson, , Sociobiology, p. 379.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ ibid., p. 384.

⁷⁷ Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, 1130b, 30–31al.Google Scholar

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⁷⁹ Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, 1130b, 30–31al.Google Scholar

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⁸¹ ibid.

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⁸⁷ Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously.

⁸⁸ John Mackie, “Law of the Jungle,” is the best discussion thus far in ‘literal altruism’ (a term he does not use), and Mackie, , Hume's Moral Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979)Google Scholar, is the best discussion on “objectification” (a term he does use).

⁸⁹ Rawls admits explicitly that he speaks of a closed “well-ordered” society, leaving “questions of justice between societies,” admitting that “to what extent the conception of justice for the basic structure will have to be revised in the process, cannot be foreseen in advance.” Rawls, John, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77 (1980), pp. 515–72.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Hume, , Treatise, pp. 483–84.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Remember: “we blame a person, who either centers all his affections in his family, or is so regardless of them, as, in any opposition of interest, to give the preference to a stranger, or mere chance acquaintance.” Hume, , Treatise, p. 489.Google Scholar

⁹² For full discussion of this point, see Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously, esp. chs. 5 and 6.

⁹³ See Lumsden and Wilson, Genes, Mind, and Culture.

⁹⁴ Most expressly as found in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, reprinted in ed. Wollheim, R., Hume on Religion (London: Collins, 1963).Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Reynold, Vernon and Tanner, R.E.S., The Biology of Religion (London: Longman, 1983)Google Scholar; Wilson, Edward O., On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978).Google ScholarPubMed

⁹⁶ Lumsden and Wilson, Genes, Mind and Culture.

⁹⁷ Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff, “Kipsigis Bridewealth Payments,” in Betzig, L.L., Mulder, M. Borgerhoff, and Turke, P.W. (eds.) Human Reproductive Behavior: A Darwinian Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 65–82.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Boyd, R. and Richerson, P., Culture and the Evolutionary Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Cavalli-Sforza, L. and Feldman, M., Cultural Transmission: A Quantitative Approach (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)Google ScholarPubMed; Lumsden and Wilson, Genes, Mind & Culture.

⁹⁹ See, for instance, Laura, Betzig, Monique, Borgerhoff Mulder, and Turke, P.W. (eds.), Human Reproductive Behavior: A Darwinian Perspective.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Perhaps he notion of ‘supervenience’ would help here. In a somewhat different context, see Rosenberg, Alexander, The Structure of Biological Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar