11.24.05
Darwinian Conservatism
Larry Arnhart has a new book. Darwinian Conservatism. His website also has a reply to Herbert Gintis’ Amazon Review.
It is strange that an essentially conservative theory such as Darwin’s is rejected by many conservatives and embraced from the start by many on the left. We know that Marx was initially ambivalent about Darwin’s theory, but with the enthusiasm of Engels and many in the Second Internationale the Darwinization of Marxism was irrestible.
Larry Arnhart’s interesting book on Darwinism and Natural Right nonetheless has a problem. What do we mean by ‘natural right’.
Let us note in passing that students of the eonic effect have a direct case for the evolution of natural right itself, relative to world history, in the eonic sense. How account for the fact that traditions of natural right instantly reflect the rise of the modern, and become ideological support for revolutionary ideologies? Eh? Answer that, ye fine feathered conservatives. The second edtion of World History and The Eonic Effect had only a brief passage on this question, due to the sheer massive amount of things to consider, but take the question more generally. Burke vs. the Revolutionaries. Although the attempts by some lefttists to exploit ideas of ‘fast evolution’ are almost always flawed, the Burkean view of how society develops is itself almost 180 degrees off the mark.
The eonic model forces the discipline of two levels, and won’t allow us to make any direct connection between revolutions and evolution, but once we set that caution we see that the ‘modern transition’ in the sense of the eonic model is chock full of revolutions, so, therefore, there is some connection as long as we distinguish the two levels, the ‘eonic determination and free action’ issue. The point is that while we can’t say that ‘revolutions’ are a dynamic of evolution, we can say, looking backwards, that revolutionary change is strongly correlated with the modern transition. The evidence is overwhelming, from the German Social Revolution in the sixteenth century onward. That most of these revolutions failed is beside the point. This issue requires long and careful study of the eonic model, with a view to the way in which evolution and history overlap and the way in which evolution is brought into the present.
But the conservative hopes for a Burkean view of evolution, Arnhart is quite right, are indirectly championed by a theory such as Darwin’s. The problem is that Darwin is simply wrong, and muddles the whole question of social evolution.
Ever since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859, political and religious conservatives have had an uneasy relationship with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Many conservatives accept the Biblical doctrine that human beings were specially created by God in His image. And some conservatives believe that the living world shows evidence of being the product of an “intelligent designer”. Many of these conservatives fear that the idea of humans evolving naturally from lower animals denies their moral dignity as special creatures of the Divine Intelligent Designers.
Going against this movement, Larry Arnhart aims to persuade conservatives that Darwin is their friend and not their enemy. The author claims that a Darwinian science of human nature supports the moral, political and religious ideas of conservatism. Darwinian biology confirms the conservatives’ realist view of human nature and denies the leftists’ utopian view of human nature as perfectible.