This week’s lecture was on Social Darwinism. Social evolution was a concept that was considered by Nietzsche after Darwinisn invaded politics in the 1880s. In simple terms, Social Darwinism means that individuals, groups and people are subjected to the same laws of natural selection as plants and animals. It considers the survival of the fittest in society.
Greece: Plato’s idea of people was very simple. He thought of people as metals – philosophers were gold, soldiers were silver and the common people were bronze. These ideas were teleological because they were meant to represent the real form of human. It was similar to Nietzsche’s idea of a superhuman/ubermensch as it was all about saving the ‘gold’.
Artistotle was a great biologist as he categorised species. There was no concept of speciation but traits could be genetically inherited. He believed traits could be inherited via essence and passed down through the generations. This is hereditary evolution.
The Enlightenment: This period saw the development of sciene and animal breeding. Selective breeding, phrenology and racial categorisation occurred.
The Bible: It was written that all species were created in one single act. This shocked civilisation and ultimately led to Protestantism by Martin Luther.
USA: The USA was the first single state to be made up entirely of people with a non-ethic background due to the cruel extermination of the Native Americans. This created a state of neo-classicism. By 1900, USA was seen as the new Rome as they were starting to control parts of the Caribbean through militarism. The USA functions as a state of war to bring people together (this is still going on now all around the world i.e. the Middle East and Lybia).
Germany: They have a very romantic view on ethnicity. The ‘Heimat’ is essentially you are what you eat. They are very dominant and proud of it’s ‘pure’ ethnic background. They disagreed with the Enlightenment and they only mix well with people of their ‘own kind’.
France: They were very similar to Germany in that they wanted to make the world French. They wanted to compete with other nations by endorsing their own civilisation (e.g. the Algerian war).
Britian: Britiain’s language was formed by the Anglo Saxons who were, at the end of the day, German. Essentially to be British you had to be German. Britiain tried to establish themselves with the flag, the royal family and writers. Hellensim was used for imperialism. Public schools educated their students, trying to build up a bureaucratic elite (which was a success, for example, Eton and Harrow are seen to be a cut above the rest in terms of class). This was a new breed of elite as they learnt Ancient Greek and Latin. Britain tried to sort out other countries’ problems as they believed to be better than them because they were educated and ultimately trying to ‘save humanity’.
-KG
KavitaGajjar 