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1 results

  • Myth 22 - That Darwin’s Hatred of Slavery Reflected His Beliefs in Racial Equality

  • Edited by Kostas Kampourakis, Université de Genève
  • Book:
    Darwin Mythology
    Published online:
    30 May 2024
    Print publication:
    06 June 2024, pp 250-261

  • Summary

    Social scientists recently claimed Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) is a racist text; that Darwin’s racism blinded him, impacting his science. Biologists and philosophers countered that Darwin’s work should be championed because it undercut slavery-justifying polygenism (independent origins for human races). Others extol Darwin for his emotional condemnation of slavery when he first encountered it on the Beagle voyage. This essay systematically explores Darwin’s views on human race expressed in Descent and then digs through a half-century of Darwin’s correspondence with prominent scientists to answer the question: what were Darwin’s views not just on the human torture involved in the enslavement process but on human race more broadly?