01.14.06
Fuller on ‘Darwinian Left’
Peter Singer’s The Darwinian Left struck me as upside down when it came out and I reviewed it critically at Amazon. Here is Steve Fuller on the subject
Singer’s vision of a ‘Darwinian Left’ does little to exploit science’s role as an alternative source of authority to tradition. If anything, his use of Darwin reinforces traditional views and limits the scope for social change. Simply consider the ease with which Singer quotes Dawkins (in the sentence before the one quoted above) who asserts that altruism ‘has no place in nature, [is] something that has never existed in the whole history of the world.’
This essay is an exercise in social epistemology, one of the most effective critical strategies available to the rhetoric of science. In the first instance, I read Singer’s turn from Marx to Darwin as a sign of our times. However, the sharp chord that Singer strikes in other contemporary leftists obscures as much as it reveals. In particular, it hides the conservative roots of Darwinism that, in its first 150 years, has made it such an unreliable fellow-traveler of those concerned with the liberation of traditionally disenfranchised groups in society.