Jonathan Judaken, "Deadly Ethics?: The Impact of Social Darwinism on Eugenics and Racism in Germany [a review of: Richard Weikart. _From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany]" (2005)

H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [email protected] (June 2005); http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-ideas&month=0506&week=b&msg=iCh%2bs%2bVizNLtLI4/5veoFw&user=&pw=

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
> Published by [email protected] (June 2005) 
> Richard Weikart. _From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany_. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004. ix + 312 pp.
> Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 1-4039-6502-1.
> Reviewed for H-Ideas by Jonathan Judaken, Department of History,
> University of Memphis 
> Deadly Ethics?: The Impact of Social Darwinism on Eugenics and Racism in Germany
> The special tenth anniversary exhibition entitled "Deadly Medicine:
> Creating the Master Race" currently on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a powerful illustration of the Darwin to Hitler thesis
> explored in Richard Weikart's new book. On display are the texts, tools, and techniques used to promote and legitimate science, specifically
> eugenics, as the salvation to the threats that hampered the health of the nation. The exhibit depicts how widespread the mesh of eugenics and racism
> was by the late nineteenth century. It dramatically shows the effects on the real bodies of suffering victims who were forcibly sterilized or
> murdered by the policies of racial hygiene enacted by the Nazis to regenerate the body politic. Richard Weikart's book has the merit of
> directly considering an implicit question within the scholarship upon which the exhibit was based: is there an ethical perspective within
> evolutionary theory that links Darwin to Hitler? 
> For intellectual historians, this question encapsulates other concerns: was Nazism imbued with a coherent moral vision or was it nihilistic and
> opportunistic, animated only by the will to power? Does evolutionary theory have a systematic set of ethical values that underlie its
> scientific and materialistic viewpoint? What are the social implications of Darwin's ideas and how does social Darwinism differ in different
> national contexts? If Nietzsche's _Genealogy of Morals_ is one example of the effort to
> historicize the claim that there are immutable, universal ethical standards, can one conversely write a genealogy of moral relativism? How
> ought intellectual historians write the history of morality and in what ways is their approach different from philosophers? Richard Weikart's book
> on evolutionary ethics has the merit of fore-grounding these issues. The last of them, which is both ethical and methodological, points to the
> shortcomings of a nonetheless important study. 
> In eleven chapters broken down into four parts, _From Darwin to Hitler_ presents the basic tenets of Darwinian evolutionary theory as applied to
> ethics. Weikart focuses "primarily on [the] Darwinian influence on eugenics, euthanasia, racial theory, and militarism in Germany" (p. 9).
> The basic premises that governed social Darwinist positions on these points were clear and coherent. They were encapsulated in the oeuvre of
> Ernst Haeckel, the most famous and influential social Darwinist in Germany from the publication of Darwin's _The Origin of the Species_ (1859) until
> the early twentieth century. Haeckel--and many of the prominent scientists, physicians, psychiatrists, economists, geographers,
> anthropologists and philosophers whose creed was akin to his--believed that everything, including human consciousness, society and morality was a
> function of natural cause and effect. These natural laws could be known through scientific investigation and science was "the arbiter of all
> truth" (p. 13). Since individual subjectivity was a function of the laws of nature, Darwinism implied determinism. It undermined any mind-body
> dualism or the notion of a soul distinct from the physical body. Social Darwinism claimed that human behavior and moral character were the product
> of hereditary forces. The mechanism that drives heredity is natural selection (in particular group selection) and the struggle for existence.
> This struggle has resulted in a variety of moral standards within the human species and over time; Darwinism thus implies moral relativism (p.
> 25). These simple maxims provided a secular, unified, mechanistic, non-theological system that explained the link between the individual, the
> group, the nation and mankind. It thus offered a consistent account of things as diverse as human nature, economics, international relations, and
> warfare. 
> If we believe Weikart, the impact of evolutionary theory on ethics was revolutionary. It overturned the moral codes of what he repeatedly calls
> "traditional" Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, legitimating eugenics, "inegalitarianism, scientific racism, and the devaluing of human
> life" (p. 10). The root of this revolution was Darwin's non-theistic explanation for the origin of ethics in _The Descent of Man_ (1871): "He
> pointed out that other animals live in societies and cooperate, and the social instinct producing this cooperative behavior is heritable. In
> humans the social instincts have developed further than in most other species, and, harnessed together with expanded human cognitive abilities,
> produced what we call morality. The mechanism producing the increase in social instincts was, according to Darwin, natural selection through the
> struggle for existence. Those groups with more cooperative and self-sacrificing individuals would out-compete those groups with more
> selfish individuals" (p. 22). This naturalistic account replaced the old moral values with a single standard by which to judge all choices,
> exalting evolutionary progress itself "to the status of the highest moral good" (p. 10). The moral maxim of evolutionary ethics was, as Willibald
> Hentschel, a student of Haeckel's incisively put it on a postcard to Christian von Ehrenfels, a philosopher and proponent of eugenics, "'That
> which preserves health is moral. Everything that makes one sick or ugly is sin'" (p. 43).
> In his painstakingly researched third chapter, Weikart examines the
> institutionalization of evolutionary ethics. His assiduous inquest into the archives, personal papers and even some personal interviews reveal a
> coterie of different ethical societies: the German Society for Ethical Culture; Academy of Physiological Morality and other efforts spearheaded
> and financed by Albert Samson; the Krupp Prize Competition announced in 1900 and completed in 1903; Haeckel's Monist League; the International
> Order for Ethics and Culture; Alfred Ploetz's Society for Race Hygiene; and renowned anti-Semite Theodor Fritsch's German Renewal Community. Each
> of these organizations promoted the separation of ethics from religion and advocated, in different degrees, an evolutionary approach to ethics. This
> resulted in the wide dissemination of an evolutionary approach to moral questions, especially in the medical, scientific and academic milieu.
> The second part of the book focuses on the application of evolutionary
> ethics to a number of concrete moral questions. Weikart's grand claim is that "only in the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth
> century did significant debate erupt over issues relating to the sanctity of human life, especially infanticide, euthanasia, abortion, and suicide"
> (pp. 75, 145). The argument of this section, summarized in its title, is that evolutionary ethics results in "Devaluing Human Life." A key tenet is
> that not all human life is equal. Those deemed unfit or _minderwertig_ in German, often translated as inferior, "but literally meaning 'having less
> value'" could thus be targeted for elimination. In a 1909 speech to the Society for German Scientists and Physicians, the anthropologist and
> eugenicist Felix von Luschan made the dichotomy between the valuable and the inconsequential clear in his response to the question, "Who is
> inferior?" "The sick, the weak, the dumb, the stupid, the alcoholic, the bum, the criminal; all these are inferior,'" von Luschan maintained,
> "compared with the healthy, the strong, the intelligent, the clever, the sober, the pure'" (p. 95). Generally, two overlapping categories were
> expendable: the disabled (especially the mentally ill) and those who were economically unproductive. Non-European 'races', too, were consigned to
> moral oblivion as a result of the contribution of evolutionary theory to racial science.
> What this ultimately permitted, Weikart contends in part three, was
> "Eliminating the 'Inferior Ones.'" Since evolutionary ethics dovetailed with eugenics, it entailed controlling reproduction. A spectrum of
> positions emerged from the shared premise that sexual morality ought to be judged "by its effects on the hereditary health of future generations" (p.
> 144), including sanctioning infanticide, abortion, polygamy, and voluntary and involuntary euthanasia. Condoning these dictums throws into relief the
> difference between Jewish, Christian and Enlightenment precepts and the doctrines that emerged from the new evolutionary credo. While "Christian
> churches explicitly forbade murder, infanticide, abortion, and even suicide," (p. 145), Darwinism undercut the sanctity of human life and
> reduced humans to mere animals. "By stressing human inequality, and by viewing the death of many 'unfit' organisms as a necessary--and even
> progressive--natural phenomenon," Weikart argues, "Darwinism made the death of the 'inferior' seem inevitable and even beneficent" (p. 160).
> Moreover, while it was most certainly not the case that social Darwinism
> created German militarism, it did provide a scientific justification for warmongering. However, while the dominant chord struck by Darwinists
> touted the virtue and necessity of war, it was interesting to learn that during the World War I epoch, social Darwinist arguments were marshaled to
> support both categorical pacifism and what Weikart calls "peace eugenics," which supported the peace movement by opposing wars between European
> nations "where the brightest and best mowed each other down without regard to their biological traits" (p. 181), since this would lead to the
> biological degeneration of Europeans. 
> Mowing down the racially inferior degenerates outside the European order was, however, almost universally authorized. It was social Darwinist
> arguments that provided the counterpoint to the liberal "civilizing mission" by maintaining that the "lower races" were doomed to their
> inferiority. Europeans, and the new German colonizers in particular, could thus legitimate the most uncivilized barbarity. Weikart illustrates this
> in his brief exposition of the Herero genocide in German Southwest Africa (1904-6), where General Trotha "explicitly justified racial annihilation
> using Darwinian concepts" (p. 205). Having thus laid the stage for the final scene, Weikart concludes the book with a discussion of "Hitler's
> Ethic," arguing that he was the ultimate embodiment of "an evolutionary ethic that made Darwinian fitness and health the only criteria for moral
> standards. The Darwinian struggle for existence, especially the struggle between different races, became the sole arbiter for morality" (p. 210).
> But was Hitler's ethics defined only by evolutionary principles? And does
> this mean that racism and anti-Semitism were subsumed within an evolutionary credo by the Weimar period? Or was it the case, as I would
> suggest, that evolutionary discourse and scientific racism were grafted onto the multiple branches of anti-Semitism and volkish ideology in which
> Nazism was rooted? Indeed, Weikart is at pains to show that most social Darwinists and eugenicists directed their fear and concern about racial
> degeneration not at Jews, but at non-Europeans: American Indians, Australian aborigines, Africans and East Asians. As he says, "some social
> Darwinists even opposed anti-Semitism, and some German and Austrian Jews ([Ludwig] Gumplowicz, for example) justified racial struggle and racial
> extermination, just as other German thinkers did" (p. 204). Weikart also indicates that while Haeckel and a number of other social Darwinists held
> anti-Semitic views (an issue only sporadically addressed throughout the book), they differed from the redemptive anti-Semitism of Hitler (p. 217).
> In fact, the extent to which there was a cross-fertilization of Darwinism and anti-Semitism is never adequately addressed.
> Certainly one of the merits of the book is that Weikart presents lots of
> countervailing evidence to support his own more nuanced version of the Haeckel-to-Hitler thesis. He aptly summarizes its simplified form (and
> cites its key exponents, who he takes to task): "Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary
> progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some
> eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial
> competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent
> anti-Semitism, and?there you have it: Holocaust" (p. 3). While he includes many caveats and disclaimers, this is ultimately the general thrust of the
> book. But Weikart also itemizes the variants of Darwinism and eugenics ideology as they were applied to ethical, political and social thought and
> is aware of the many roots of Nazi ideology, thus clearly refusing any monocausal explanations of Nazism. There were many twisted roads that
> converged at Auschwitz: Darwinism, Wagnerism, Nietzscheanism, volkish ideology, fascism, nationalism, racism and
> anti-Semitism. The question for the intellectual historian is to weigh the elements and cultural and contextual specifics that led individuals and
> movements to the crossroad. This is the Achilles heal of Weikart's account.
> This is a work of intellectual history methodologically two generations
> old, written in the vein of Arthur Lovejoy. Weikart follows what Lovejoy called the "unit ideas" of social Darwinism in Germany, tracing their
> variations in a number of individual thinkers and their works. The result is often repetitive, since the core premises of these men are pretty
> clear. It is also repetitious in the structure of the presentation. Most chapters open with Darwin's position on the point at hand, then discusses
> Haeckel's incorporation into Germany, and continues with the elaboration or
> modification by what becomes a slightly changing cast of characters after the first chapter (Bartholomaus von Carneri, Alexander Tille, academic
> philosophers Georg von Gizycki and Friedrich Jodl, eugenicists Friedrich Hellwald, Wilhelm Schallmayer, and Ludwig Buchner, psychiatrists like Hans
> Kurella and Emil Kraepelin, and anthropologists like Felix von Luschan). On several occasions Weikart expresses the same point in different
> chapters using exactly the same verbiage. He even uses the same quotation by Theodor Fritsch (translated slightly differently!) to illustrate the
> same point in two different chapters (see pp. 55 and 69). 
> What this approach cannot explain is why Darwin, "a typical English liberal" supported laissez-faire economics and opposed slavery! Nor why
> Darwin "like most of his contemporaries   considered non-European races inferior to European, but he never embraced Aryan racism or rabid
> anti-Semitism, central features of Hitler's political philosophy" (p. 3). Nor why Herbert Spencer's views on war differed from most of his German
> contemporaries. Nor why French social Darwinist Georges Vacher de Lapouge and French racial theorist Arthur Comte de Gobineau's biological racism
> had greater resonance in Germany than in France. To explain the very different conclusions reached from shared axioms, Weikart would have to
> delve into what the generation of intellectual historians after Lovejoy (Peter Gay, H. Stuart Hughes, Carl Schorske, George Mosse, etc.) explored
> as the social dimensions of thought and the specificity of different national histories and cultural traditions.
> But Weikart is categorical that while he recognizes "the influence of
> political, social, economic, and other factors in the development of ideologies in general and Nazism in particular" he claims that "these
> topics are outside the scope of this study" (p. 5). The result is a weak account of many important contextual forces that shaped Weikart's story,
> including his pale version of the moral crisis of the fin-de-siecle, which is never really located in its epoch (p. 59). There is no flesh on the
> bones, no heart and soul to the characters we are introduced to that explains their divergent itineraries. After all, there were social
> Darwinists who opposed infanticide, abortion, euthanasia, and militarism on evolutionary grounds.
> Weikart also fails to follow the rich nuances of the discourse/practices
> and institutions that have preoccupied the contemporary generation of intellectual historians, who have paid attention to the continuities and
> ruptures within systems of thought. So his presentation of racism, for example, reiterates a rationale that does not stand up to the critical
> scrutiny of intellectual history. He consistently claims that Christian and Enlightenment principles (especially the former) "militated against
> some of the worst excesses of racism. Christian theology taught the universal brotherhood of all races, who descended from common ancestors"
> (p. 103). When indicating what theological tradition he is referring to, Weikart's repeatedly has recourse to the term "traditional," which is a
> reductive notion that intellectual historians should always inveigh against. He uses the common nomenclature of "Judeo-Christian" when no such
> tradition exists--there have been more than one Christian tradition, all with a supercessionist theology and wholly different Jewish traditions.
> Does the theological tradition to which Weikart refers include the Spanish inquisition, with its juridical designation of "limpieza de sangre," which
> was the basis for the persecution of Jewish converts and constitutes an important kernel in modern conceptions of racial discourse? Is Martin
> Luther's _On the Jews and their Lies_, which signaled the theme of _Verjudung_ or "Jewification" as a major threat to Luther's quest for a
> purity of faith and spirit and called for Germans to take practical measures to guard against "Judaizing," including burning all Jewish houses
> of worship and forcing Jews into labor camps, an aberration of Christian theology? What of the Hamatic myth, which reads racism into and out of the
> Bible? Not to mention Voltaire's anti-Semitism, the first development of systems of racial classification in the eighteenth century by Buffon and
> Linne, and the development of the first racial sciences, phrenology and physiognomy, by Johann Lavater and Franz Gall, all of which were firmly
> entrenched within central strands of the Enlightenment. Similar criticisms could easily be developed for Weikart's claims that Christian ethics were
> a necessary limit to evil, including imperialism or genocide. The more interesting question, it seems to me, is how Christianity could endorse
> racism, imperialism, anti-Semitism and genocide or at the very least, why "Christianity failed in practice to stop the extermination of many tribes
> and peoples" (p. 185) given its prima facie principles. 
> These criticisms aside, Weikart has written a significant study because it raises key ethical questions in broad terms that have contemporary
> relevance. His historicization of the moral framework of evolutionary theory poses key issues for those in sociobiology and evolutionary
> psychology, not to mention bioethicists, who have recycled many of the suppositions that Weikart has traced. Along the way, we are offered a
> number of interesting side currents, including a discussion of Nietzsche's embrace and resistance of evolutionary theory (pp. 46-49), as well as
> interesting tidbits of what Wiekart covered in his book, _Socialist Darwinism_ (pp. 90-94). Ultimately, however, Weikart's desire to write a
> complex version of the twisted roads taken on the journey from Darwin to Hitler would require a methodology that can better integrate the roads not
> taken, as well as an appreciation that some of those byways had traffic moving in opposing directions.
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> Miami University,
> Department of Philosophy 
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Jonathan Judaken, "Deadly Ethics?: The Impact of Social Darwinism on Eugenics and Racism in Germany [a review of: Richard Weikart. _From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany]" (2005)

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