Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Charles Darwin’s moral sense – on Darwin’s ethics of non-violence
up and which he felt an affinity for despite his rejection of the physico-theological argument
from design, rather than on scientific approaches and theories. To be sure, in Darwin’s
eye the conditions under which our moral faculties emerge are rooted in the natural
history of mankind. And yet this history supplies neither every necessary nor every sufficient
condition for the emergence, manifestation and realization of morality which for
him constituted the specifically human aspect not to be found among animals. Darwin
answers the question as to whether and to what degree an investigation of the natural
history of animals can illuminate the origin of the highest faculty of man, i.e. his capacity
to develop a moral sense, by maintaining that in the course of his evolution, man inherited
social instincts from animals which constituted the necessary condition for the formation
of his moral sense. Any human being who did not carry any traces of such instincts
would be an “unnatural monster”, Darwin says. (Darwin 1877, pg. 116). Despite
this heritage, which derives from natural history, – one which connects us with other
living organisms –, the moral faculty in a genuine sense of the word is an exclusive trait
of man. Although Darwin posits that there are only gradual differences in the cognitive
faculties of animals and man, these differences become qualitative differences in the
context of his reflections on ethics. The compelling question as to whether we are dealing
with a real or merely seeming inconsistency is investigated in another study. (cf.
Engels 2006). Man’s moral sense distinguishes him from all other animals and invests
him with a special status. The fact that in Darwin’s view, moral progress also expresses
itself in moral consideration of animals, makes his position interesting from the perspective
of present-day animal ethics. Adopting its terminology one can say that in Darwin’s
eye, only human beings can be “moral agents”, but animals are also to be recognized as
“moral patients”.
2) Darwin does not advocate an evolutionary ethics in a descriptive-explanatory or
normative sense, as one might possibly expect. 11 As I showed, he neither claims to provide
a sufficient description and explanation of human morality by means of the mechanisms
of evolution identified by him and drawn from his knowledge of the course of
evolution, nor does he derive any normative conclusions for morality and ethics on this
basis. Darwin’s ethics does contain certain evolutionary elements, however. For one, he
offers an explanation of our social instincts based on the theory of natural selection, and
secondly, he puts forth the assumption that moral progress emerged in the course of
human development through group selection insofar as groups made up of virtuous and
cooperative individuals asserted themselves over others.
3) Darwin does not subscribe to Social Darwinism. The widely held view that the expression
“struggle for life” which he used in his writings primarily or even exclusively
refers to the exertion of force by one against the other or the egoistic assertion of individual
interests is misguided. On the contrary, Darwin advocates the view that mutual
support, cooperation among members of the same community to ensure survival in the
face of threats from nature and foreign groups, can constitute a foundation in the struggle
for existence. Cooperation does not stand in the way of the struggle for existence. On
the contrary, it promotes the survival of individuals and species. Moreover, for Darwin
11 Nicola Erny’s line of argumentation goes in this direction (Erny 2003).
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
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