Farber, Paul Lawrence. The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics.   University of California Press:  Berkeley, CA, 1998.

Although the book is a good read and an excellent overview of the history of evolutionary ethics, it does, in my opinion, fall somewhat short of living up to its title. This failure, however, is more a failing on the part of the contemporary reader than the author. The temptations are not what one who is familiar with the perversions of evolutionary theory of the last century would consider to be those that we as a culture truly need to be on the lookout for: Social Darwinism, Eugenics, the medicalization of social behaviors, the idea of the Master Race. Rather, the temptations that Farber discusses are the more modest, though perhaps no less vital, philosophical attempts to derive a system of ethics from evolutionary theory. As he puts it — this work is an attempt to understand "the use of evolution in the Anglo-American world as a foundation for ethics." [p.6]

The approach he takes is largely a review of most of the key authors and essayists on both sides of the debate on evolutionary ethics. As such it is an excellent source of brief overviews of the ideas of many of these individuals.

The problem with an evolutionary approach to ethics is, in its simplest form, that evolution is a theory that explains how we got here, not why we got here or what we are supposed to do now that we are here. Therefore, evolutionary ethics is usually nothing more than an apologist argument for the maintainence of the status quo, based on the social and economic conditions of the author of the work. Thus, it is of some interest to historian such as Farber as to how it is that the idea of evolutionary ethics has clung so tenaciously to the development of Western Culture over the last century, in spite of providing nothing but a series of dead-ends toward the development of any ethical structure that can be used to measure the social worth of behavior.

Part of the problem is that evolutionary ethics is a useful descriptive tool, but does not translate well into a prescriptive tool. It is a way of describing "is," but cannot bridge the gap to address "ought."

Farber puts the history of evolutionary ethics into three phases. The first runs from the publication of the work to World War I. This phase is the response of philosophers and natural scientists to the theory of evolution and to the new social problems created by the Industrial Revolution. It is also a response to the Spiritual Crisis in the late 19th Century, as Western society began to feel that Christian traditions did not meet the ethical and moral needs of a modern industrial society. The question was, given that evolution defined origins, could it also define destiny? Two of the biggest names from this time, significant enough that their own ideas are often confused with those of Darwin himself, are Thomas Henry Huxley and Herbert Spencer.

Much of the current debate on evolutionary ethics is clouded by a mixing up of evolutionary ethics, eugenics, and Social Darwinism; as well as conflicting definitions of "progress" and "selection." Admittedly, these confusions started as soon as people started to address the topic, and helped to make the Victorian morality what it was, but the confusion that has held on with more tenacity than the original views themselves. This book sets out to rectify that.

The second phase begins around World War I and mixes the theory of evolution with the New Psychology and anthropological Functionalism. The notion of social context becomes a greater issue in the idea of evolutionary ethics, leading to a dialectic between relativism and progression. This phase, as part of an attempt to develop a naturalistic foundation for progressive social views, yielded a fair number of authors who thought that evolutionary ethics was an ethic of mutual cooperation. Perhaps the biggest name from this period was Julian Huxley.

The third phase begins in the 1970s, with the development of sociobiology and the attempt to medicalize human behavior. The defining moment is, in Farber's view, the publication of Edward O. Wilson's book, Sociobiology in 1975. The approach which describes this phase is centered around the genetic components of behavior. These views range from those who believe us to be driven by our genes to those, such as Richard Dawkins, who believe that humans may be unique in being able to rationally escape the dictates of their genetic heritage. In this approach, culture units are inherited in the same ways genes are, but are faster and more flexible in their ability to adapt (c.f., Richard Dawkin's memes).

Some salient quotes:

At issue in applying scientific knowledge to aid us in constructing a political or moral vision is the question, to what extent can biology explain human culture. [p.2]

The study of nature may provide insight into psychological constraints, the sources of emotional energy, and the dynamics of interpersonal interaction, but can it provide a guide for human action and human values? [p.5]

It was this belief in progress that took the sting out of evolution and for that matter, out of the enormous social dislocation that was taking place. [p.16]

Natural selection was to be the master-key of the universe; we expected it to solve all riddles and reconcile all contradictions. Among other things it was to give is a new system of ethics, combining the exactness of utilitarianism with the poetical ideals of the trascendentalists. [p.23]

Middle-class intellectuals, particularly those who helped mold Victorian society in the latter decades of the nineteenth-century by combining elements from the seemingly unlikely traditions of evangelicalism and rationalism, found in Darwin's writings a valuable key in their quest to formulate a new worldview. [p26]

[Leslie Stephen:] The conscience is the utterance of the public spirit of the race, ordering us to obey the primary conditions of its welfare, and it acts not the less forcibly though we may not understand the source of its authority or the end at which it is aiming. [p.34]

[Herbert] Spencer claimed that we were justified in holding a commonsense realism because it was the result of a long evolutionary process of successive adaptations whereby the mind adapted to its environment. [p.45]

In Spencer's mind the outcome of social evolution was clear: a utopian, industrial society in which mutual aid replaced competition as the motive social force and in which the greatest individual freedom possible prevailed. [p.49]

Human instincts may have had an adaptive value for earliest man, but human history, according to Huxley, was a story of man's efforts to go beyond his animal legacy. [p.61]

All to0 often today the nineteenth century debate over evolutionary ethics is lumped together with associated but distinct topics and treated as merely one element in a general program of secularization that typified the new Industrial culture of the Victorian period. [p.81]

[Thomas Hill Green:] Our individual consciousness was a part of an eternal consciousness that gradually realized itself through humans. [p.93]

[Samuel Alexander:] Although values were relative to men, they were not arbitrary but founded in the nature of things. They did not have a separate Platonic existence but were embodied in natural objects or their relations. [p.106]

[William James:] The entire modern deification of survival per se, survival returning into itself, survival naked and abstract, with the denial of any substantive excellence in what survives, except for more survival still, is surely the strangest intellectual stopping place ever proposed by one man to another. [p.112]

[John Dewey:] The location of the historical origins of the moral sentiment was not necessarily the discovery of a foundation for an ethical system. [p.114]

[C. Lloyd Morgan:] Evolution was part of a cosmic process that partly explained human advancement. Human values came from the contemplation of that process and an understanding of its greater purpose. [p.123]

[Wilfred Trotter:] The ethical self transcended the herd. Its development was based on the rational judgments of a well-consolidated ego with an appreciation of and respect for its relationship to the herd. [p.126]

[Julian Huxley:] Cumulative transmission of experience had given humans the ability to communicate knowledge beyond one generation. This ability allowed for cultural evolution, which proceeded at a rate much faster than biological evolution. [p.130]

[...] it was by the increase of aesthetic, spiritual, and intellectual satisfaction that Huxley judged human evolution. And it was in the formation of values for their own sake that the future of progress was to be realized. [p.131]

Like many of the attempts since Comte to use science to go beyond religion but still maintain the sense of religious awe, Huxley's naturalism assumed the vision it pretended to discover. [p.136]

[Theodosius Dobzhansky:] Man is like to prefer to be free rather than to be reasonable. [p.141]

Emphasis on human hereditary traits in understanding human nature carries with it an accumulated historical baggage of uncritical, often irresponsible, ideas on genetic determinism, eugenics, and race hygiene. [p.150]

Sociobiology's relevance for ethics is analogous to that of the psychoanalytic movement or of cultural anthropology. It provides a description of influences on individuals, pressures exerted by groups on moral development, and unconscious motivation, all of which need to be understood in assessing individual action. [p.156]

[E. O. Wilson:] Human behavior -- like the deepest capacities for emotional response which drive and guide it -- is the circuitous technique by which genetic material has been and will be kept intact. Morality has no other demonstrable ultimate function. [p.158]

To choose one set of values over another is to commit oneself to a vision of human society, a concept of what justice is, and a vision of reality that goes far beyond mere survival. [p.159]

Traditionally, accounts that reveal origins chart destiny. [p.172]