Darwin as Epicurean
An Interview with Benjamin Wiker
Benjamin Wiker is a lecturer in theology and science at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. His new book, Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists, was published by InterVarsity Press in July. Wiker was interviewed about the book by InterVarsity Press editor Gary Deddo.
Gary Deddo: Darwinism is usually associated with biology and the debate over evolution. What happened that led you to see the connection between moral issues and Darwinism?
Benjamin Wiker (BW): Well, that’s a rather long story, but most immediately, it was reading Darwin’s Descent of Man, which is less well known than his Origin of Species, but should always be read with the Origin.
In the Origin, Darwin set forth his famous arguments concerning the power of natural selection to create all biological forms, but he was very careful not to mention how it all applied to human beings. In the Descent, which came out about a decade later, Darwin did apply his arguments about natural selection directly to human beings. It is only then that we see that Darwin’s evolutionary account had direct and immediate implications for morality.
Morality, according to Darwin, is just one more evolved trait caused by the mechanism of natural selection. I should say that in the plural—moralities—to be accurate. Many different moralities arise—or better, evolve—among human beings at different times and places, no one of them ultimately better than any other (any more than a certain length of finch beak is better or worse than another). Although Darwin tried to assert that evolution was somehow aiming at a kind of morality of sympathy, his efforts were undercut by his own argument. Evolution is absolutely non-teleological. It can’t aim at anything.
Not only did Darwin relativize morality, but (little known to many) he drew out the immediate eugenic implications of natural selection: too many of the “unfit” human beings survived, and the “fittest” weren’t breeding enough. In fact, Darwin says so much that is shocking in the Descent that anybody reading it can immediately see the essential connection between Darwinism and the kind of moral views being touted today as “cutting edge.”
Some don’t appreciate making that kind of connection. How have you responded to that objection?
BW: Well, I know there’s a well-worn objection that divides Darwin the scientist who formulated the principles of natural selection from the use that later Darwinists made of his arguments—such as to provide a foundation for Social Darwinism or eugenics—but that division is arbitrarily drawn. Like it or not, it is quite clear when you read his Descent of Man that Darwin himself was the first Social Darwinist and the father of the modern eugenics movement. Social Darwinism and eugenics are derived directly from his principle of natural selection.
I think the real reason for people objecting to someone making connections between Darwinism and things like eugenics is that they don’t want the theory to be tarnished by its moral implications. But the implications are there, not only in the text, but as evidenced in the social and moral effects Darwinism has had in the century and a half since it appeared.
What helped you see the connection between Darwinism and our present moral state of affairs?
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