Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Charles Darwin’s moral sense – on Darwin’s ethics of non-violence
of moral relativism – raised, perhaps, by Darwin’s theory – already disturbed numerous
contemporaries. This is not the place to address such questions, however, as they extend
beyond the scope of the collection of essays at hand. For similar reasons, only short
mention can be made of Darwin’s own transformation from a young physico-theologian
to a critic of the notion of godly design in nature and the role which the problem of
theodicy played for this development. Biographic particulars explain the existence of
various “thought-styles” in Darwin’s works and make seeming or real contradictions and
inconsistencies in his line of argumentation comprehensible. It is also not possible to
take into account the intensive and extensive reception of Darwin’s theory during his
lifetime, which Darwin responded to in successive editions of his works. 2
In the first section of my article which now follows, I will begin with a short sketch
of Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species, this being indispensible for an understanding
of his reflections on human morality. It will be necessary to illuminate Darwin’s
notion of nature – which separates him from the still prevalent physico-theology of his
time –, the implications of Darwin’s departure from this position for his ethics, as well as
the various meanings which Darwin ascribed to the term “struggle for existence”. In the
second section, Darwin’s ethics will be presented in the framework of his work on the
descent of man. In the third section, the most important results of the investigation will
be summed up and made fruitful for a short reflection on the general relationship between
biology and ethics.
1. Darwin’s “theory of descent with modification through variation
and natural selection” – mechanisms of the formation of adaptations
and of species
The first edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species, which came out on November 24, 1859
numbering 1,250 copies, was sold out almost overnight, and in 1860, a second edition of
3,000 copies appeared. By 1872, Darwin had published six editions of this work. In 1876,
a reprint of the sixth edition with minor additions and a few corrections came out. In his
autobiography he can proudly announce that by the year 1876, 16,000 copies had been
sold in England and that the book had been translated into almost every European language.
As he reports, every year or two a catalogue or a bibliography on “Darwinism”
was published in Germany (Darwin 1969, pg. 122f). In his autobiography, Darwin refers
to this work as without a doubt the most important he ever wrote. Irrespective of numerous
additions and corrections in the later editions, he maintains that it remained essentially
unaltered.
2 Thus I cite my earlier studies (cf. bibliography) and my forthcoming Darwin monography, which contains
an extensive chapter on Darwin’s ethics. An expansive selective bibliography on Darwin’s reception in the
19th century is to be found in my collection of essays (Engels 1995a, pp. 395-414). For an analysis of Darwin’s
theory by using the terminology of Ludwik Fleck’s philosophy of science (“thought-style”, “thoughtcollective”
etc.) as a tool cf. Engels 1995b.
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
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