General Information

Author/Creator

Weikart, Richard, 1958-

Language

English.

Published

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Physical Description

xi, 312 p.: ill. ; 22 cm.

Contents/Summary

Summary

From Darwin to Hitler elucidates the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. Weikart demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially the view that human life is sacred. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary "fitness" (especially intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Darwinism played a key role in the rise not only of eugenics, but also euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination. This thinking had its biggest impact on Germany, since Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles, not on nihilism as popularly believed. -- publisher

Subjects

Subject

Eugenics > Germany > History.

Ethics, Evolutionary.

Racism > Germany.

Germany > Race relations.

Bibliographic Information

Responsibility

Richard Weikart.

Library Special Collection

The Roger Griffin ComFas Collection

ISBN

1403965021

Holdings

Item Type	Current Location	Collection	Call Number	Volume Info	Shelving Location	Public Note
Book	OSA Archivum Library	General collection	305.8/00943 WEI		General Stacks	-

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