From Darwin to Hitler, Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany

Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. 312. $59.95.

It has long been customary to make a respectful distinction between Darwinian theory in its original form and its misappropriation by over-zealous thinkers like Herbert Spencer and other champions of "Social Darwinism." This distinction implies a distance not only between theory and its applications, but invites a strict separation of the designations "scientific" and "pseudo-scientific." Thus, Darwinism, as a scientific theory, was and is spared association with ruthless ideologues who held to Darwinian principles, and created eccentric programs to identify biological misfits, or cleanse society of them outright. Richard Weikart asks us to reconsider this distinction by tracing the development of a specifically Darwinian ethic from the 1850s until the Nazi period.

Weikart's narrative focuses on Darwinist intellectuals engaged in distilling a new morality from biological principles. Indeed, it is one of Weikart's successes to have discovered or rediscovered the ambitious forays of several prominent German Darwinists into ethics. On the level of this discourse, Weikart ably presents a non-linear but nevertheless mounting trend toward the devaluation of individual lives against the claims of the species (or race) at large.

From Darwin to Hitler, therefore, enters...