Darwinian Evolution of ethics - Essay Example

Of these, ethics is the most vulnerable to change as it merges with beliefs, morals, science, religion, and character of each individual. As a result, the evolution of ethics has a direct relationship to what Charles Darwin believes is the human species’ inherent desire to survive in a culture that alters regularly. This ultimately demonstrates that the underlying principle of the evolution of ethical systems remains upon the survival of the human species. Darwin’s stance on morality suggested morality as the evolutionary process’s product.

Darwin was of the view that such social instincts as the tendency of humans to display kindness, sympathy, and have an urge for social approbation originate in the human nature. In reality, other social species also constitute the rudiments of such behaviors. Even though, Darwin thought that these instincts tend to contradict the natural selection’s imperatives e.g. the rise of selfless behavior from the selfish genes’ machinations. Among a vast majority of the Darwinian theorists, Darwin was the first to deal with this conundrum.

“Darwin proposed to account for our sociality with a combination of selection for individual reciprocity (reciprocal altruism), "family" selection (a.k.a. kin selection) and "group selection" -- that is, the positive selection of traits which provide an advantage for groups that are in competition with other groups” (Corning). In addition to that, nothing but the human beings possess the true morality because of their ability to superimpose the reasoned constraints of culture upon their motives.

Darwinian theses that have implications for moral philosophy include: humans being the natural selection’s product, humans being forged to serve as social organisms by that process, and the presence of an innate moral sense among the mechanisms governing human sociality (Joyce 1). Although the first two theses are not questioned seriously, yet the thesis of moral nativism sparks doubt. However, Darwin has personally approved of all three theses in The Descent of Man. The evolutionary account of moral sense provided by Darwin emphasizes upon the importance of moral emotions, thus overlooking the morality’s essence as pure rationality (Arnhart).

Interest in Darwinism’s moral implications rose after the Origin’s publication as the truth of Darwinism was suspected to undermine the traditional ethics. Darwinism’s biological thesis attracted some resistance from its incompatibility with the traditional morality that led to the perception of rejection of Darwinism. The founder of the Social Darwinism ethical system is Herbert Spencer, who argued that the fittest in a proper society are the ones who are successful while the unfit are placed at the bottom.

These ideas are challenged today, especially the argument that helping the needy leads to unfavorable consequences since it helps the ones who are demonstrated to be unfit survive (“Evolution and Ethics”). There was an obvious oversimplification of the adaptation of Spencer to Darwinism to the social situations. Such virulent anti-Darwinian perspective is inspired by social Darwinism and its logical following from the evolutionary theory. However, the ideas of Spencer do not necessarily follow from Darwinism logically.

Humans adapt to survive and they do so by creating standards and rules of