Evolutionary ethics

Under Evolutionary Ethics (also: (rather pejorative) evolutionist ethics or evolutionary ethics theory ) refers to an ethics which, starting from the paradigm that moral behavior in humans is the social behavior a special form, the laws of this social behavior (only) by evolutionary Mechanisms explained and justified. Evolutionary ethics is understood as an attempt to scientifically justify ethics from Darwin's theory of descent . It stands in the tradition of sociobiology , but deliberately distinguishes itself from social Darwinism , which artificially (i.e. socially authoritarian) wanted to increase the pressure of selection that was believed to be lost. Evolutionary ethics has flourished again since the mid-1970s.

Evolutionary ethics is "one of the most important variants of ethical naturalism ".

The main statement of evolutionary ethics can be presented as follows: Man, including all of his mental abilities, came into being through Darwinian evolution and therefore his moral behavior is also subject to an evolutionary selection process. Consequently, all moral ideas must be designed in such a way that they bring a (survival) advantage either to the individual organism , the gene or meme that generates the behavior, or - according to another view - to a group ( kin selection ).

history

Herbert Spencer is seen as one of the most important precursors - if not the founders - of evolutionary ethics. The term was first coined in 1893 by Thomas Henry Huxley with his book Evolution and Ethics (English Evolution and Ethics ). Other representatives are the American historian of science Robert J. Richards , Edward O. Wilson with his main work Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) and Richard Dawkins with The Selfish Gene (1976). The best-known German representative of evolutionary ethics is Gerhard Vollmer .

Philosophical criticisms

Because of its exclusive claim to explanation, evolutionary ethics is counted among the biological currents and has met with violent opposition.

Evolutionary ethics presupposes a naturalistic metaethics and is therefore exposed to the same arguments as ethical naturalism in general: as a disregard of Humean law and as a case of a naturalistic fallacy (the latter only if an ethical realism is taken as a basis).

It is objected that equating “evolutionarily successful” with “ethically good” is counterintuitive. More clearly: An evolutionary ethics can hardly escape its social Darwinist implications: in the logic of evolutionary ethics, a militarily successful genocide , because evolutionarily successful, is an ethically good genocide, and the murderer, because evolutionarily more successful, is ethically better than the murdered person.

A fundamental philosophical critique of evolutionary ethics aims to reduce it to a special form of relativism .

Altruistic behavior, which is often raised as an objection to evolutionary ethics, is explained by evolutionary ethics by an advantage of the altruistic behavior for a whole (related) group ( kin selection ). To what extent this explanation can explain all altruistic behaviors in humans is highly controversial.

literature

Eve-Marie Engels : Evolutionary Ethics , in: Handbook Ethics . Ed. V. Marcus Düwell, Christoph Hübenthal and Micha H. Werner, Verlag JB Metzler: Stuttgart, Weimar 2002, 341–346
Bernd Gräfrath : Evolutionary Ethics? Philosophical programs, problems and perspectives in sociobiology. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin 1997. Book advertisement
Thomas Henry Huxley : Collected essays . 9 vols. Vol 1: Methods and results ; vol 2: Darwiniana ; vol 3: Science and education ; vol 4: Science and Hebrew tradition ; vol 5: Science and Christian tradition ; vol 6: Hume, with helps to the study of Berkeley ; vol 7: Man's place in nature ; vol 8: Discourses biological and geological ; vol 9: Evolution and ethics, and other essays , London: Macmillan 1893-94
Volker Sommer : The nature of morality. Evolutionary Ethics and Education. Hirzel, Stuttgart 1999. Book advertisement
Michael Quante: Introduction to General Ethics. 4th edition. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24595-6 , pp. 114–124.
Wilhelm Vossenkuhl : Evolutionist Ethics , in: Otfried Höffe : Lexikon der Ethik. 7th edition. Munich, Beck 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56810-7

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Michael Quante: Introduction to General Ethics. 4th edition. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24595-6 , p. 114
↑ In detail Michael Quante: Introduction to General Ethics. 4th edition. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24595-6 , pp. 121–123.
↑ Michael Quante: Introduction to General Ethics. 4th edition. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24595-6 , p. 124
↑ See also Wilhelm Vossenkuhl : Evolutionistische Ethik , in: Otfried Höffe : Lexikon der Ethik. 7th edition. Munich, Beck 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56810-7 : Survival is neither a reason for the assumption that "the morally best living being survives, nor, conversely, for the fact that moral criteria are conditions of survival at all."

[1] Michael Quante: Introduction to General Ethics. 4th edition. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24595-6 , p. 114

[2] In detail Michael Quante: Introduction to General Ethics. 4th edition. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24595-6 , pp. 121–123.

[3] Michael Quante: Introduction to General Ethics. 4th edition. Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24595-6 , p. 124

[4] See also Wilhelm Vossenkuhl : Evolutionistische Ethik , in: Otfried Höffe : Lexikon der Ethik. 7th edition. Munich, Beck 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56810-7 : Survival is neither a reason for the assumption that "the morally best living being survives, nor, conversely, for the fact that moral criteria are conditions of survival at all."