Chapter 8 Chapter 4 Perspectives on Human and Nature Change-2

Britain: Utilitarianism and the Economics of Free Competition French materialist atheism by no means caught on in England.Political radicalism was increasingly viewed with suspicion at this time, especially during and after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.At a time when [Britain] was struggling to slow down the effects of rapid social change due to the Industrial Revolution, advocating the radical tradition [HTH] was [HTSS] walking a tightrope politically.In this tradition, philosophy and social theory were based on less extreme Enlightenment ideas and adapted to the needs of emerging capitalist entrepreneurs.Radical does not mean advocating revolution, but advocating changes in existing institutions, freeing society from the shackles of hereditary aristocratic rule, so that most people can pursue their own economic interests.The belief that the most efficient social and economic rules can be produced by human interactions based on individual efforts can be linked to the deistic tradition.According to the view of deism, the law of the Creator ensures the balance of 〖HTH〗natural〖HTSS〗.Nature rewards individual effort, a philosophy that many believe is the basis for Darwin's theory of natural selection.However, it was only in the late 19th century that evolutionists' discussion of the "struggle for existence" revealed the downside of this individualistic policy, and the harmonious balance of interests was interpreted as "survival of the fittest." (Regarding 19th-century thinking, See Willey, 1949, 1956; Copleston, 1963, 1966; Mandelbaum, 1971.)

This "radical philosophical" view of human nature came, via Helvetics, from Locke (Halevy, 1955).To explain the plasticity of the human mind, David Hartley (Hartley, 1749) emphasized the principle of "connection of minds" (Oberg, 1976).This principle became the basis of a new science of man once Joseph Prestley stripped it of the religious element (Hartley, 1775).If two sensations are often and obviously repeated, the mind will automatically associate the two, just like a conditioned reflex.This will be used to determine a person's type of thinking, thereby ensuring socially admirable behaviour.In the early 19th century, Jeremy Bentham established the utilitarian school of social philosophy by advocating the study of thinking that ensures the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.The human mind is reduced to a law-bound entity open to rational study and social regulation, but without the danger of obtrusive materialism.

Prestry suggested that this new understanding of human nature opened the way for future human progress, as did William Godwin.Radical philosophers certainly want social progress, but they generally adopt a less enthusiastic caliber.Their aim was to remove obstacles to the free interaction of men with each other; but once this freedom had been achieved, they believed that economic progress could be achieved through the action of natural forces rather than through the deliberate guidance of men.In this way, Bentham connected his utilitarian philosophy to the free competition school of economics founded by Adam Smith.In his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that the generation of wealth depended on the spontaneous activities of individuals, and that any form of state intervention, no matter how well-designed, would hinder the generation of wealth.Bentham intended to use the penal system to punish criminals for social regulation, but he insisted that free enterprise must be economically superior.

Utilitarian philosophy became the "climate" of social and biological thought in the early nineteenth century (Young, 1969).Darwin's decision to view biological species as divergent groups of organisms rather than copies of ideal types certainly reflected the influence of individualism and the schools of free competition.Bentham's concern with the utility of all social actions (that is, whether they are useful for promoting happiness) echoes the natural theology that was so influential to the young Darwin.William Paley (Paley, 1802) explained the adaptation of every biological structure to function as evidence of divine benevolence—God seeks to bring about the greatest happiness in all living things (Le Mahieu, 1976).The contentious nature of Darwin's theory stems from the fact that he drew on much of the harmony of his day and advocated a natural rather than a supernatural interpretation of harmony (Cannon, 1961a).In fact, this is a major change in the trend of thought in the 19th century.Darwin turned Paley's argument on its head by suggesting that it was an adaptive process of nature, rather than a divine decision.His approach was to assume that there is a struggle for survival among the individuals of a species, and to propose that most adaptations are the work of natural selection.It has often been argued that individual struggle is at the heart of the theory of a free and competitive society, and that Darwin simply translated the brutal fads of capitalism into natural principles.This assumption ignores the fact that, for Adam Smith and his followers, the purpose of the principle of free competition was to bring about a state of natural harmony in human interaction that benefits all.

The political economists of this time did not think of individualism as allowing unrestricted competition that would weed out the weakest in all societies.Although they believed that progress would result from the removal of all barriers to economic interaction among individuals, they believed that this did not mean removing the most incompetent, but encouraging everyone to do their best.Although they accept the idea that society is made up of self-seeking individuals, they believe that free competition promotes the advancement of everyone.Assuming that "interests are naturally consistent", then when everyone pursues his own interests, he is automatically making contributions to the whole society.Some people may be worse off than others, but he is worse off if the delicate natural balance in the economy is upset.This view is a return to the old, traditional view that God predetermines the balance of nature, rather than a precursor to Darwinism.We can dismiss the whole point as a justification for their pursuit by those who benefit from it, but we must recognize that the logic of this justification is based on an attempt to reconcile individualism with man as a kind of god. Creation beliefs.

One might argue that this optimistic explanation of free competition died down before 1800.Darwin came to the concept of the struggle for existence by reading Malthus's "On Population" (Malthus, 1797, republished in 1959). This book can indeed make people imagine the cruelty of competition.Young (1969, 1985) argued that the Malthusian principle was a challenge to natural theology, thus paving the way for Darwinian struggle interpretations (see also Vorzimmer, 1969a). An Essay on Population was an answer to scholars such as Condorcet and Godwin who claimed that a better understanding of human nature could lead to social progress.Malthus believed that "feelings between the sexes" are too important for human beings to be eradicated, so they must continue to have children.In this way, the number of population may increase according to geometric progression, but food can only increase according to arithmetic progression at most.In this way, the growth of population will always exceed the supply of food, so hunger will always be accompanied by human beings.The view that poverty is natural and cannot be eradicated by social reform made Malthus hated by all subsequent social reformers.He advocated a policy of free competition and opposed the state's support for the poor, arguing that although this would bring misfortune in the short term, it would limit the number of poor people, so it would be beneficial in the long run.

At first blush this view seems to presuppose the Darwinian concept of struggle: without the support of the state, the most powerless will be eliminated by starvation.Clearly, the old optimistic idea of ​​a natural balance has been destroyed, and we now see that all species (including humans) must struggle at all times against the limitations of food supplies imposed by group size.But looking at it this way does not necessarily mean that group pressures must automatically produce Darwinian struggles between the individuals who make up the group (Bowler, 1976b).Malthus himself often used the keyword "struggle for existence" when discussing primitive tribes. Here he realized that the shortage of food would lead to contradictions and make weak tribes eliminated.In discussing his own society, he defies conventional wisdom by declaring that competition is best for everyone, including the poor.They are not poor because they are forced to live in a brutal stratum of struggle, and the rich do not acquire their wealth because of superior ability.Generally speaking, wealth is inherited, not just a reward for achievement, not a due respect for achievement, because wealth is only a way to open up new resources.The inclination of Malthusian thinking is obvious. In fact, in the first edition of "Population", he regards the principle of population as a divine law designed to prevent human beings from working or starving their families. Humans have become lazy.This position was indeed taken by Paley, who reconciled this principle with natural theology.Malthus, however, overlooked the fact that in the end many people would be produced, and even if some of them were willing to work, they would still starve.In later editions of Population, Malthus even suggested that poverty could be eradicated by educating the poor about the dangers of having too many children.Apparently he did not want to challenge the prevailing belief that nature was created by God (Santurri, 1982).

Here we see that Darwin had to go far beyond Malthus to develop the theory of natural selection.He saw that among animals there must be a constant struggle for existence, and that the tendency was to weed out the unfit. Social Darwinists of the late nineteenth century simply used Darwin's theory to claim that progress was only possible when the best individuals struggled to the top at the expense of the least able.This represents a major shift in the perception of social struggle, from a past belief in mutual harmony to a focus on brutal struggle.It was Darwin who paved the way for this attitude by showing clearly that nature is not a harmoniously balanced system, but a mechanism that ensures progress by rewarding the capable and punishing the weak.But it was not he [HTH] who founded 〖HTSS〗social Darwinism; in the Victorian era, people had unconsciously shown identification with brutal struggle (Gale, 1972).Darwin may have borrowed from this attitude and based his theory on it.In doing so, however, he moved beyond those social thinkers who had been active in his youth, who still tried to justify a policy of free competition—that free competition was to the benefit of all—on the basis of old ideas.

It is important to note that the idea of ​​social evolution was conceived by some Victorian anthropologists without being inspired by Darwinism (Burrow, 1966; Stocking, 1968, 1987).The basis of utilitarian philosophy is the belief in the universality of human nature held by people during the Enlightenment.The belief that only one form of society (capitalism of free competition) is "perfect" and that all others are distorted, in which people are ruled by a few, be they nobles or priests , they only pursue their own interests.All social reformers have to do is keep destroying the old barriers to progress, so that society should automatically move toward prosperity.At this time, it was due to the actions of the founders of the empire that European culture was able to communicate with different cultures in the world.Radicals recognized the "backward" nature of these societies, but for the first time were inclined to think that their problems should also be solved by rational, organized reform.As the nineteenth century progressed, it became clear that, despite the educational efforts of the reformers, the peoples of the colonies stubbornly refused to throw off the shackles of the past.The only way to reconcile this situation with the fixed view of human nature is to adopt the view of social evolution.That is, any culture, no matter how primitive, may quickly transform into a higher form of society simply by teaching them the truths of political economy.To reach the highest level, a society must progress naturally through a series of intermediate stages, each with its own form of organization.The barriers to progress which were so easily removed in Europe were fundamental to the organization of "lower" society and could only be removed after a long period of social development.Therefore, people recognize that each social picture is stable in nature, and integrate the framework of development into the picture of the progress of the whole society, and take it as one of the stages of progress. Through each stage of progress, the whole society will evolve.European societies were only more advanced than others, and reached a high level first, perhaps because of the most favorable climatic conditions in the world.

The attitude of anthropologists who propose such a theory of social evolution may appear sanctimonious, but such a theory need not be based on the belief that other races are biologically inferior.The use of biological evolution to explain the arrangement of the human race is essentially a product of the late nineteenth century, the earliest pioneer of which was Herbert Spencer (Greene, 1959a; Peel, 1971).Spencer grew up in the competitive environment of the Industrial Revolution, and he strongly advocated free competition.While he wasn't really a Darwinian, he was the one who invented the term for natural selection - "survival of the fittest".In the 1850s, before Darwin's teachings became generally known, he had embraced the idea of ​​human social progress and the idea of ​​biological evolution.In Spencer's view, Malthus' population principle is the dynamic driving force of social development, which can continuously promote the economic progress of society in order to get rid of the pressure of resource constraints.At the same time, he accepted Lamarck's theory of evolution and realized that it was possible to establish a "synthetic philosophy" that unified all aspects of natural evolution and human evolution according to the same laws.

Already before Darwin's theory came into being, Spencer had begun to promote his view that the universe was essentially progressive, according to which social development was a necessary continuation of the biological process by which man had in fact evolved from produced in lower animals.According to this system, it is possible to propose that the technological and social achievements of the Caucasians are not only the product of a more developed cultural evolution, but are characteristic of a higher biological stage of development of a human "advanced" race.Social progress is actually improving human nature, so that those other races left far behind by European progress have become living fossils, doomed to extinction.Spencer believed that competitive capitalism was the highest form of society because it allowed everyone to contribute to the collective to the best of their abilities.The problems in Western society are due to the fact that human nature has not caught up with the evolution of society, and the pressure of competition requires everyone to adapt to the new situation as quickly as possible.The hopeful support for free competition would be to encourage self-help rather than weeding out the unfit, but Spencer's view of evolution leading to race and social hierarchy would become the basis of "social Darwinism" in the late 19th century. Germany: Romanticism and Idealism If utilitarianism is a continuation of 18th century thought, there are other philosophies that strongly oppose the spirit of the Enlightenment.John Stuart Mill (Mill, reprinted 1950) identified Jamie Bentham and Samuel Taylor Coleridge as the main exponents of the difference: Bentham was a utilitarian, while Coleridge made explicit his support for Romanticism in his poetry.The true home of Romanticism, however, was Germany, where J. W. von Goethe and his followers resented the ruthless materialism expressed by the likes of Holbach during the Enlightenment.Romantics hope to regard 〖HTH〗spirit〖HTSS〗 as a kind of force that can affect the rules and purposes that naturally arise.This element has existed in German thought for a long time, going all the way back to the alchemical age and the mystical writings of Jacob Boehme in the seventeenth century (Boehme, English translation, 1912).Behme insists that God is the "soul" of the world, and that God endeavors to manifest his presence by exerting spiritual effects on nature.This process of self-improvement develops through the resolution of opposing orientations or forces, paving the way to a dialectic.At this time, in order to express their dissatisfaction with the materialism of the Enlightenment period, German thinkers began to develop this view into a new philosophy around 1800 (Coppleston, 1963; Jordan, 1967; Mandelbaum, 1971). Goethe, through his novels, came to place greater emphasis on a spiritual understanding of human beings against their chains; but Romantic views can also be seen in formal philosophy through the idealist movement.David Hume pointed out the sensationalists' dilemma: if all knowledge comes from sensations, we would have no absolute knowledge of the causes of sensations.We recognize that our sensations are regular and call them laws of nature, but we cannot always secure this regularity.Immanuel Kant solved this problem by arguing that the mind is active.He proposes that we don't just receive sensations; our minds organize them so that they become synthetic.In his views on morality, Kant also, like Rousseau, opposed the utilitarianism of the Enlightenment, and proposed that a moral sense or moral awareness allows people to know our responsibilities without knowing pleasure or pain (Cassirer, 1945).Some idealists, such as J. G. Fichte and F. W. J. von Schelling, accepted this view and insisted that, at its most true, sensations create the world of sensations.In Schelling's work, the individual is interpreted as the universal will, striving to express itself in the phenomenal world.For G.W.F. Hegel, this universal will, the Absolute, became the driving force of the universe, propelling our human history all the way to its final destination. Hegel's philosophy of history (Hegel, English translation, 1953) proves that idealism is developed on the basis of inheriting the predecessors.According to the materialists, progress is nothing but the product of natural processes, since the laws governing the behavior of things are always the same.Society progresses as knowledge about people and the world accumulates.Idealists, on the other hand, hold that history progresses through a necessary sequence of definite stages, driven by universal spiritual forces beyond the control of the individual. J. G. Hurdel had foreseen this view in his Treatise on Universal History, published between 1784 and 1791 (English translation, 1968).Hudel unified nature and human beings from the perspective of progressive thinking, and he proposed that the temporary chain of existence reveals the special creation plan of God to human beings (Lovejoy, 1959b).In addition, he regards human history as a progressive process, but he believes that each stage of social type has a unique structure, which is more able to provide a good environment for the people.Hegel accepted this view of history as a series of distinct stages and explained it in terms of a new dialectical logic (Jordan, 1967).Forces in nature or society tend to generate their opposites, and by resolving this tension, at a certain point, a whole new world is transformed.Opposite forces are seen as a necessary consequence of the Absolute's struggle to express itself in the world, which cannot be explained reductively or in terms of individual activity. According to Hegel, the ultimate human existence is the state, not the individual.The state expresses the form or spirit of society, and the form or spirit of society is symbolized by some great leaders, who naturally win the loyalty of the people.This is simply the seed of twentieth-century totalitarianism, the idea that the individual should be subordinate to the state, and that the individual can hope to find meaning in his life only by supporting the collective of which he is a part, rather than pursuing his own interests (Popper , 1962).In Hegel's view, this subordination of the individual to the collective is justifiable, because it leads the human being to develop towards the spiritual goal, which is the ultimate end of the absolute. It is possible to apply some aspects of idealist philosophy to biology.For example, Hegel's political theory believes that individuals should obey the state. If this theory is applied to natural history, then it can be considered that individual organisms should obey species.Species are real realities, and in the physical world, species themselves have a deeper meaning than the imperfect manifestations of types in species, so spiritualism is opposed to any form of evolution, because evolution would eliminate fixed distinctions between specific types .Idealists, in turn, accept the idea that all species are interrelated, each being a component or unit in a coherent picture of nature.It is this formal, harmonious picture of the interrelationships of organisms that the work of biological taxonomy seeks to explore.To this end, spiritualists invoke the idea of ​​"archetypes," or basic types, arguing that all members of a particular group exhibit only superficial appearances of archetypes.Goethe discussed archetypal plant types, while Lorenz Okun postulated a vertebrate archetype to represent the fundamental unity of all vertebrate animals.This approach to the interrelationships of organisms is not without some scientific value, since some of them can be interpreted as conforming to the kind of historical connection required by Darwinism.But the formal picture put forward by the idealists of the harmonious interrelationships of the transcendental reality which determine the essence of all natural things is essentially opposed to Darwinism. Perhaps the most important influence of spiritualist philosophy on biology has been the picture it proposes of the world progressing towards a given purpose.Such a picture cannot directly lead to the theory of biological evolution, Hegel, for example, did not believe that the earliest stages in the picture of the development of the universe show a temporal order.Goethe suggested that the course of Earth's history might reveal such an order (Wells, 1967), and this idea became increasingly popular in Germany in the early 19th century.The reason for the popularity of this kind of thinking is the successful use of spiritualism to explore a very professional and very prominent issue in the field of biological development: the growth of embryos.Under the influence of idealism, a generation of German embryologists, from C. F. Wolff to K. E. von Baer, ​​refuted the theory of preformation and laid the foundation of modern embryo science (Adelmann, 1966; Oppenheimer, 1967; Temkin, 1950; Roe, 1981).Schelling and Oken argue that these developments can be recognized through their widespread use as the basis for a general 〖HTH〗natural philosophy〖HTSS〗 (Oken, 1847; Gode von Aesch, 1941; Lenoir, 1978).At this time, individual growth is regarded as a pattern of life evolution in the course of earth history, which is the so-called recurrence theory (Russell, 1916; Meyer, 1935;, 1939; Gould, 1977b).The progressive growth of the human embryo is just a miniature reenactment of the grand progress path of life following the universal plan of creation.Some German naturalists were even prepared to believe that the later, higher stages were actually transformed by the earlier, lower stages.This progressive, directional notion of evolution was not at all compatible with Darwinism, but even until the late nineteenth century it was difficult to get rid of the idea. When we turn to the influence of Karl Marx, we still have to recognize the difference between Darwin's gradual, irregular evolution and progressive, step-by-step evolution toward a predetermined goal.Although Marx got rid of the influence of Hegelian idealism in his mind when he proposed that the real source of historical development is economic force rather than spiritual force, his materialism maintained the dialectical structure in Hegel's thought and therefore still emphasized progress Process discontinuity (Jordan, 1967).Marx welcomed Darwin's theory because it fundamentally destroyed religion, but Marx and his followers could not accept Darwin's mechanism of change based on struggle and individual variation.He was also among the first to recognize that natural selection could be viewed as the exploitation of the world of life by capitalist ethos of individual competition.On the contrary, Marx emphasized that in the struggle for social progress, the individual as a basic unit is subordinate to the class to which he belongs.The ultimate goal of social progress, the communist revolution, is both desirable and predictable.For these reasons, the relationship between Marxism and evolution, especially Darwin's theory of evolution, is questionable because of their respective origins in two opposing branches of nineteenth-century thought.