A New Look At Social Darwinism

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David van Ofwegen UH ID# 1660-2534 09-30-2010
Research studies – Ron Bontekoe PHIL 699
A new look at Social Darwinism
Revised paper
If you are familiar with Social Darwinism, you will probably perceive association with it as
undeserved, insulting or both. Social Darwinism is controversial, but not so due to a lack of
consensus as to whether there is truth in Social Darwinism (in a way that abortion is a
controversial topic in the US) but controversial in the sense that its ideas are considered morally
apprehensible (in a way that throwing babies into a fire is controversial). Although the
definitions used may differ, philosophers, dictionaries and encyclopedias alike do not paint a
rosy picture of Social Darwinism. The divergence in conceptual understanding between
academic sources suggests that Social Darwinism is condemned across the board, yet not well
understood, or at least not well enough to have come up with an agreeable definition in the past
100 or so years. I will look at several examples as a testimony to how the current concept (or
lack thereof) of Social Darwinism is inadequate.
I will start with the world’s current most used (online) encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The
usage of Wikipedia in an academic environment is itself controversial, but note that the goal of
these examples is not to obtain objective information, but to ascertain what is generally
understood as Social Darwinism. Meaning exists as that which people believe something to be,
and the source which most students and other interested individuals address the most, I
believe, is Wikipedia.
Social Darwinism is a pejorative term used for various late nineteenth century ideologies which,
while often contradictory, exploited ideas of survival of the fittest.1
The language used (‘pejorative’, ‘exploited’) does not give Social Darwinism much credit, but
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_darwinism

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the world’s collective editors did notice that the ideologies involved are often contradictory. At
the bottom of the Wikipedia entry, under the header ‘criticism and controversies’, this is expanded
upon in a quote which hits the nail on the head with regards to the aim of this paper.
As Social Darwinism has many definitions, it is hard for some to be either for or against it; some
of the definitions oppose the others. John Halliday & Iain McLean state that2 “Part of the
difficulty in establishing sensible and consistent usage is that commitment to the biology of
natural selection and to 'survival of the fittest' entailed nothing uniform either for sociological
method or for political doctrine. A 'social Darwinist' could just as well be a defender of laissez-
faire as a defender of state socialism, just as much an imperialist as a domestic eugenicist.”3
The following definition, taken from Microsoft’s online encyclopedia Encarta, is brief but clear
in its rejection of Social Darwinism as a viable (social) theory:
A discredited social theory stating that the political and economic advantages in a developed
society are derived from the biological advantages of its collective membership.4
The ambiguity to this definition is whether it intends to say that Social Darwinism considers the
mentioned political and economic advantages to be wholly or partially derived from its
members’ biological advantages. If partially is meant, then it is stating the obvious; a prevalence
of lower intelligence, increased longevity or susceptibility to disease will, like all conditions,
have some economic effects. If wholly in meant, then the definition is incorrect, since none of
the representative Social Darwinists completely reduces society to its biological makeup.
Next is Encyclopedia Britannica:
The theory that persons, groups, and races are subject to the same laws of natural
selection as Charles Darwin had perceived in plants and animals in nature. According to the
theory, which was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the weak were diminished
and their cultures delimited, while the strong grew in power and in cultural influence over the
weak. Social Darwinists held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled
by “survival of the fittest,” a phrase proposed by the British philosopher and scientist Herbert
2
Ibid.
3
Quoted by Wikipedia from The concise Oxford dictionary of politics, Iain Mclean. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996.
4
Microsoft Encarta online encyclopedia, http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861709568/social_Darwinism.html

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Spencer.5
That persons are subject to natural selection is stating an obvious matter-of-fact, alike to saying
that persons are subject to gravity. Natural selection, an environment-driven process that acts
upon variation in the gene pool, takes effect on different levels of organization, including that of
the group (group selection) and the species. As long as we remain DNA-based organisms that
sexually reproduce in an environment, natural selection will occur. The influence of non-
individual selection is open to debate, especially when pitted against stronger forces of
individual selection, but its recognition is not exclusive to a few philosophers in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. See Sober & Wilson’s Unto Others (1999) for a recent look at group selection.
The ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ as used above can directly refer to those with less or more power and
influence, in which case stating that ‘the strong grow in power is a tautology, but undeniably
true.
Ron Bontekoe, who traditionally opens his undergraduate course on Philosophy and
Evolution at the University of Hawai’i with an example on how not to draw the philosophical
implications of the theory of evolution, writes the following about Social Darwinism:
Social Darwinism, the late nineteenth-century moral theory associated in particular with Herbert
Spencer and William Graham Sumner, was predicated on the assumption that natural selection
was inherently a good thing […]. Social Darwinism, one might say, takes what most people would
identify as selfishness and ruthlessness and attempts to recast these as if they were the virtues of
prudence and industriousness. […] If whatever happens is good simply by virtue of its
happening—if whatever works in a given situation is good simply by virtue of its working there—
surely there is no need to approve of it beyond acknowledging that it has happened to work.6
Most criticism and the absence of Social Darwinism as a serious contribution to contemporary
evolutionary philosophy are indebted to this kind of account. It is the account which the so-
called ‘Naturalistic Fallacy’, a much used form of criticism, targets. Much has been said and
written on the naturalistic fallacy, especially in relation to evolutionary ethics, perhaps a little
too much7. The naturalistic fallacy can be summarized as assuming that that which is natural is
5
Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/551058/social-Darwinism/
6
The Nature of Dignity, Ron Bontekoe, (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). Chapter IV.
7
Michael Ruse words it quite nicely when he ridicules its near-magical effectiveness in discussing any form of
e olutio a ethi s i lass: It has ee e ough fo the stude t to u u the agi al ph ase atu alisti

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also good. If Social Darwinism is what Bontekoe suggests it is, then it is justly discredited by the
naturalistic fallacy. I hope to show in the next chapter that Social Darwinists do not commit the
naturalistic fallacy.
Merriam Webster gives a two-fold definition, suggesting a distinction in meaning that will
serve as a useful thread running throughout the paper:
Social Darwinism: an extension of Darwinism to social phenomena; specifically: sociological
theory that sociocultural advance is the product of intergroup conflict and competition and the
socially elite classes (as those possessing wealth and power) possess biological superiority in the
struggle for existence.8
I will argue that the first half of the definition; ‘an extension of Darwinism to social
phenomena’, which I shall refer to as the ‘general’ definition, more closely approaches what
Social Darwinism really is (and nothing more); socially applied Darwinism. The second
definition, among the likes of which I also count Ron Bontekoe’s and the encyclopedic accounts,
will despite a lack of agreement be referred to as ‘specific’ definitions. Merriam Webster’s use of
the word ‘specifically’ is helpful because it marks where these definitions go astray: they define
Social Darwinism as a specific sociological theory, rather than a common method of arriving at
separate prescriptive sociological theories. The specific account fails because it is trying to give a
specific theory that stands for the thoughts expressed by several different philosophers. A
nominalist account –defining Social Darwinism as the thoughts of one thinker- would also be
unsatisfactory, for a) it would be too brief to give an accurate description and b) it would leave
out other Social Darwinists. Instead, the specific definitions try to find a description that applies
to all Social Darwinists, but end up applying to none; precisely because there is no common
theory, only a common method. Not only are the specific theories wrongly attributed to Social
Darwinism, but defining a philosophical discipline in such a way would be like defining
Socialism as the dubious political policies of Hugo Chavez or physics as a set of formulas.
The structure of the paper’s two chapters is as follows: The first chapter will question the
specific definition of Social Darwinism by building the term up anew from its roots; the ideas it
falla , a d the he o she a o e o to the e t uestio , o fide t of ha i g gai ed full a ks o the e a .
-- Micheal Ruse, Evolutionary naturalism: Selected essays, p. 223
8
Merriam Webster online dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/social+darwinism/

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refers to in the writings of the alleged Social Darwinists. I will, starting from a blank slate,
through a thorough reading of William Graham Sumner and Herbert Spencer, try to most
accurately bring out the differences and similarities between these philosophers and propose
that the ‘general’ definition of Social Darwinism more closely resembles the actual largest
common denominator. The second chapter is a reading of John Dewey that suggests he too
shares this denominator, bringing Social Darwinism back into the realm of respectable
philosophers. I will end with a brief summary of the conclusions reached in this paper.
Chapter I
There aren’t many ‘true’ Social Darwinists in the history of philosophy. In Social Darwinism in
American Thought, Richard Hofstadter is pleased to conclude that Social Darwinism as a
conscious philosophy had all but disappeared after the First World War. The few Social
Darwinists that history provided, most notably Herbert Spencer and William Sumner, must
have held ideas that fall under the header of the term Social Darwinism. For what is a
descriptive term if it does not apply to anything? Much like the retort heard when criticizing
religions such as Islam that advocate violence and intolerance, those that commit crimes in the
name of a religion are often said ‘not to be a true follower’. But then what does a religion consist
of beside in the minds and actions of those who claim to be its followers? How can a religion be
tolerant if its followers are not? In the case of Islam, a discrepancy between the fundamentalism
of group of followers and a more palatable definition of the term ‘Islam’ is acceptable if it can be
shown that others (preferably the vast majority) do hold beliefs that reflect a more moderate
religion. Social Darwinism does not have the luxury of having a billion representatives. Should
it turn out that a theoretical ‘gap’ is found between the term ‘Social Darwinism’ on one side and
the few Social Darwinists on the other, then the term needs to be revised. A term that claims to
refer to certain people and their ideas but has no true referents is both hollow and misleading in
the philosophical debate. For a definition of Social Darwinism to make sense, it should apply to
most, if not all, Social Darwinists. Other ‘isms’ in philosophy, such as rationalism, modernism
or consequentialism are terms that remain useful because apply to one or more philosophers,

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precisely because they are vague, overarching terms that place very few demands on the
specificity of a philosophical theory. Do Social Darwinists, as Bontekoe claims, see natural
selection as inherently a good thing? Does seeing sociocultural advance as the product of group
conflict define the Social Darwinist? It would be acceptable for Social Darwinists to contradict
one another (as per Wikipedia’s definition), but not in the common denominator which defines
them.
Let it be clear that throughout this paper I am not defending Sumner or Spencer’s
assumptions, reasoning or conclusions. It is not necessary to prove that either of them was
correct in order to show that what they were trying to say does not fall under the specific
definitions of Social Darwinism. The main reasons for this are that 1) Sumner and Spencer differ
too much in both their interpretation of Darwinism as well as their conclusions to fall under one
specific header and 2) The best way to understand their writings is as a method of combining
ideas about evolution with independently established ethical goals. As Sober puts it in his work
Evolution and Evidence, evidence (in this case, Sumner and Spencer’s views of evolution) is not
prescriptive by itself. For that you need what Economists call ‘utilities’, the input of values.
Spencer and Sumner arrived at their values independently of their conceptions of the theory of
evolution.
William Sumner
The passage in Sumner’s work that lends itself particularly well for critics to stumble over is the
following, taken from The challenge of facts:
Nature is entirely neutral; she submits to him who most energetically and resolutely assails her.
She grants her rewards to the fittest, therefore, without regard to other considerations of any
kind. If, then, there be liberty, men get from her just in proportion to their works, and their
having and enjoying are just in proportion to their being and doing.9
The key term in the above passage is ‘just’. Sumner’s view appears to coincide with the specific
notion of social Darwinism that centers on the thought that it is just that the fit triumph over the
weak and if they do then it is morally deserved. Either due to his misunderstanding of ‘evolution’
9
William Sumner, the challenge of facts, p. 6.

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or in political support of those that are in power (the industrial robber barons of the 19th
century), Sumner is seen as assuming that natural selection as a positive, righteous force.
Sumner’s use of ‘just’, however, refers to a theory of justice that does not make this assumption.
Sumner is a tragic figure. A quick reading of the opening paragraph of The Challenge of
Facts suffices to debunk the common conviction that Sumner was a Social Darwinist because he
thought the struggle for existence was a good thing. In fact, he claims the exact opposite. He is
convinced that the struggle for existence is a natural law, yet he also admits that the real misery
for mankind is the struggle for existence (“when the conditions of pressure and competition are
renewed, misery and poverty reappear”10). Then, to make things worse, he writes that we
should nevertheless embrace struggle, lest trying (and thus failing) to escape from it will bring
us even more misery. The struggle for existence is a stream in which we shall all be swept away
and it would be prudent to swim with, not against, the current, to avoid more struggle. On
more than one occasion Sumner mentions that we would be best off in situations where we
have to struggle as little as possible11. Limited resources and overpopulation, however, make
such a conceivable situation temporary at best12. When we have the means to do so, we
reproduce until eventually the demand for life’s necessities exceed the supply. We then have to
choose between moving somewhere else (displacing but not banishing the problem), or
advancing in the arts. The arts (technology, science, organization) allow mankind to gain more
resources from the same stretch of land. To advance in the arts, we need capital13: a plot of land
yields more food if tools or fertilizer are used. Sumner describes capital as follows: “Capital is
labor raised to a higher power by being constantly multiplied into itself”14. It is now up to
Sumner to make a case for capitalism as most conducive to the production of generally available
capital. He first announces that it is in fact so.
10
William Sumner, The Challenge of Facts, p. 4.
11
“o as lo g as the populatio is lo i p opo tio to the a ou t of la d, o a gi e stage of the a ts, life is eas
a d the o petitio of a ith a is eak The challenge of facts p. 92.
12
If the stores of nature were unlimited, or if the last unit of the supply she offers could be won as easily as the
fi st, the e ould e o so ial p o le . I id. P. 92.
13
This is not financial, but economic capital: factors of production used to create goods or services that are not
themselves significantly consumed (though they may depreciate) in the production process.
14
Ibid.

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Nature has been more and more subjugated by the human race through the power of capital, and
every human being now living shares the improved status of the race to a degree which neither
he nor anyone else call measure, and for which he pays nothing. Let us understand this point,
because our subject will require future reference to it. It is the most short-sighted ignorance not to
see that, in a civilized community, all the advantage of capital except a small fraction is
gratuitously enjoyed by the community.15
His underlying argument, although unimportant for the task of establishing the nature of his
project, comes down to a deep faith in the workings of supply and demand. Anyone who
manages to produce more capital than is needed for personal use needs to sell them as much as
the next person needs to buy it, because he or she requires money to buy other capital.
Competition between sellers eliminates the prospect of over-charging buyers16. Growth in
capital, according to Sumner, is best served by allowing competition to favor the strong and
industrious, so that we are forced to produce capital that will be enjoyed by the community as a
whole. Capitalism is not introduced because we want to be competitive, for its implicit struggle
too brings about misery, but because the lack of resources that results from curbing competition
brings about an even greater misery. We must, so to speak, beat nature at its own game.
Sumner frequently uses the terms ‘misery’ and ‘happiness’ to justify the moral
soundness of his intentions against the seemingly immoral stance that he takes towards the
weak and the poor. Sumner believes in the greater happiness of a society as the sole criteria by
which to judge a political theory such as socialism or his own. He takes up the challenge put
forward by the social mores of his time. While the socialists, working under the Marxist
assumptions of a world of limitless bounty, saw social economic woes as primarily a problem of
distribution, Sumner thought distribution to be of lesser concern. In order to have a happy,
thriving society, we must make sure that it is capable of making enough resources in the first
place. A happy society is end to Summer’s project; it is because he has this idea if the Good
squarely in mind that he can take measures that, without reflection, seem to promote much
suffering. The ‘Good’ to Sumner is independently established from what is the case.
The sound student of sociology can hold out to mankind, as individuals or as a race, only one
hope of better and happier living (…) The power of the human race to-day over the conditions of
15
Ibid. p. 91.
16
Ibid. p. 92.

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prosperous and happy living are sufficient to banish poverty and misery if it were not for folly
and vice (…) People suffer so under misery and poverty! Assuming, therefore, that we can solve
all these problems and eradicate all these evils by expending our ingenuity upon them, of course
we cannot hasten too soon to do it.
Any attempt to curtail struggle in society will occur at the expense of the industrious and
benefit the weak (vicious)17, resulting in a worse ratio of capital to land and people, causing
famine, death and misery. Man, unfortunately, is not perfect. Among its member will be the
sick, the lazy, and the deluded (philosophers, statesmen, ecclesiastics). Any struggle will have
winners and losers, so although the general level of wellbeing in a capital-rich industrial society
will be high, a blissful life requires effort and is not guaranteed. Sumner’s lack of compassion
for the miserable is a utilitarian consideration. Either we help the hapless, resulting in less
capital, less resources and eventually greater misery for all, or we let them suffer, increase
capital, resources and happiness and soothe our moral consciousness with the knowledge that
the alternative is worse. In other words, we need to accept that:
1) Suffering is to be avoided as much as possible.18
2) We cannot banish suffering. ‘Poverty and misery will exist in society just so long as vice
exists in human nature’. Hofstadter, not Sumner’s greatest admirer, writes:
Sumner, and no doubt after him all those who at one time or another were impressed by
his views, were much concerned to face up to the hardness of life, to the impossibility of
finding easy solutions for human ills, to the necessity of labor and self-denial and the
inevitability of suffering.19
3) Suffering can be minimized by only having the vicious suffer, i.e. those who contribute
the least capital to society. This he calls justice.
Ron Bontekoe correctly points out two assumptions that come with Sumner’s concept of justice.
One is that the individual receives from nature just (in terms of the ratio) in proportion to the
17
Notice the linking of terms of fit ess eak ess a d o alit i e , e ause weakness ultimately reduces the
greater happiness and is thus morally reprehensible.
18
In a sense, there is a Buddhist streak to Sumner, for he calls on us to accept the fact that life is suffering and any
attempt to deny this fact will only lead to more suffering.
19
Richard Hofstadter, SocialDarwinism in American Thought, p. 11.

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worthwhile effort he puts in. The second is that this proportion is also morally appropriate.
Neither of these, however, assumes that such a proportion is inherently good. To Sumner, a
person’s fate is not just by virtue of ‘what would happen if she were alone with nature’20. Being alone
with nature is not a hypothetical situation. Sumner’s pre-Darwinian belief in the ‘laws’ of
evolution, which he equates with the (19th century) laws of physics, are just as immutable and
inescapable. He does not distinguish between a ‘natural’ environment and that of man in
society. Sumner’s point is exactly that we are always alone with nature. Sumner works on the
Malthusian premise that land and resources are limited. Mankind tends to reproduce beyond its
means and there will be struggle as tension eventually arises between number people and
resources. Malthus however, as Hofstadter points out, was refuted not only by socialists, but by
other critics of Darwinism.
[Henry] George pointed to the coexistence of want with the highest productive powers as
evidence that the Malthusian pressure of population upon subsistence had not begun to
operate.21
Malthus treats mankind as a whole and overlooks the issue of distributing wealth among
individuals, which is more often the cause of poverty and hunger than the total available
amount of resources. Objections to Malthus aside, the Malthusian assumptions in Sumner’s
worldview do not change his project’s intent. Justice is served by having the invalid suffer,
because the invalid does not contribute to the alleviation of the greater suffering. Sumner’s
reasoning is fairly straightforward and unlike Spencer he essentially depends on the same
historical materialist assumptions as the socialists he so despises. Contrary to Spencer, whose
concept of happiness relies on the exercise of biological faculties, Sumner reduces happiness to
material means. A society that can produce the greatest amount of resources relative to its
population will be a happy one. How does a society produce the greatest amount of resources?
It does so through the accumulation of capital. How is the most capital per person created? It is
created in a system of capitalism. Like constructing a dam to harness the energy of a river,
Sumner wishes to use the ‘force’ of natural selection to facilitate the optimal production of
capital, within the boundaries of capitalism (the dam). Capitalism requires the existence of
property laws and the power to enforce them. It just so happens to be, thinks Sumner, that
20
Ron Bontekoe, The Nature of Dignity, p. 182
21
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, p. 111.

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allowing ‘natural selection’ to function, with a few restrictions, best furthers the production of
capital, and thus resources. The hard-working and industrious gain wealth and power by
producing capital that ultimately benefits the society of a whole. Bridling free enterprise or
taking measures to protect the unproductive would result in less total production of capital.
Sumner operates within a utilitarian ethical framework and as such does not recast
moral language. He does not want to have the invalid suffer if it can be avoided. That Sumner
works with certain quasi-scientific assumptions regarding the ‘laws’ of evolution does not place
him in a moral category of his own. Sumner believes that the greater happiness is served by
having modest expectations regarding our ability to change our lot (unlike Spencer). To
Sumner, we would do well to not strive for a perfect society, but instead ‘take our losses’ by
having the ‘weak’ suffer, rather than have everybody suffer, as he believes would result from
socialism (because socialism produces less capital). Justice in the vein of Sumner is a choice for
the lesser of two evils, not a recasting of moral language as Bontekoe suggests. Sumner does not
commit the naturalistic fallacy because he does not derive his moral judgments from the laws of
evolution. To give an analogy: If I use my knowledge of nuclear fission to produce energy that
benefits mankind and morally condemn those that choose to ignore physics (out of religious
motives for example), that does not entail that I think that physics are good; all it means is that
taking nature and the laws of physics into account can serve the greater good. When speed
cameras with absurdly low speed limits are placed in abundance on a non-threatening stretch of
road leading out of Den Haag (or Honolulu), this is done from a sense of justice. Bringing
anguish, anxiety and poverty to people such as me driving to work or school is considered just
in light of causing a lesser evil compared to the resulting increase in road safety. I may not
agree. In fact, I don’t. There is no increase in safety and the frustration caused far outweighs any
benefits other than the police’s ‘real’ motive; money. The point to this second analogy is that
Sumner, whether he is correct or not, keeps his sights set on the greatest possible good, without
getting carried away by lofty ideals or trying to correct ‘wrongs’ without considering their
consequences for life as a whole. While anyone may not agree that the benefits I receive from
nature in proportion to my efforts are just or appropriate, Sumner believes that they are. In fact,
I do not believe that they are, but that is no reason to reject Sumner’s project beforehand or to
treat him differently from any other philosophy that works with faulty assumptions. Aristotle’s
biology was wrong by today’s standards, Kant’s categories do not exist, and unfortunately for

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Descartes, we do not possess pineal glands. Yet, we still study these philosophers because,
while their assumptions might have been wrong, their methods, thought processes or
conclusions may still be of value. Any dispute on Sumner’s working assumptions should be
restricted to the truth of the claims alone, not rejected up front because of a semantic or meta-
ethical dispute.
Sumner, unlike Spencer, does not reason from a biological perspective. The only and
central premise taken from his version of the theory of evolution is a belief in the inevitable
struggle for survival. This quasi-scientific premise, coupled with his ethical values (the desire to
minimizing suffering for all) results in the laissez-faire brand of Social Darwinism that we’ve all
come to ridicule.
Herbert Spencer
Just as Sumner, Spencer separately (but more explicitly) formulates the moral goal of happiness
and the ‘theory of evolution’ as he sees it. On the one end, as independently formulated by the
young Spencer, before he got interested in evolutionary theory, lie happiness and morality.
Happiness precedes the possibility of morals, i.e. the object of morality is happiness as
experienced by beings capable of experiencing happiness and suffering. Ethics and evolution
overlap because Spencer noticed that happiness is the result of using our inherited faculties and
dispositions that are the well adapted to the environment. Caring for our offspring, eating and
defecating were as much a necessity in our evolutionary history as they are pleasant to us now.
Our faculties, which include both physical and mental dispositions, were shaped through
natural selection in a primitive environment; a remainder from times when life was simple and
harsh. Unfortunately, this means that our faculties are not optimally suited to the Christian
values of kindness and compassion, or to life in a large modern society (the ‘social state’). Such
a state of non-adaption where our faculties do not correspond with the needs of the
environment is the sole cause of suffering in the world.

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No matter what the special nature of the evil, it is invariably referable to the one generic cause—
want of congruity between the faculties and their spheres of action.22
Luckily, and thanks to Spencer’s steadfast belief in the (erroneous) inheritance of acquired
characteristics (Lamarckism), our faculties can change rapidly over the course of several
generations, by letting people freely struggle and adapt to their new social, civilized
environment. ‘Freedom’ as Spencer uses it refers to the necessity (as well as possibility), to use
one’s faculties in order to survive. A socialist society that provides for its citizens is not free
because no exercise of faculties is required, nor is a society of slaves because they do not have
the opportunity to exercise their faculties. Spencer works an assumption that is true for animals
as well, namely that living beings tend to minimize effort if it is not required, perhaps to save
energy for later consumption. There is an apparent contradiction between Spencer’s definition
of evil as a lack of adaption and the need for adaptation to the social state in order to
‘humanize’ mankind: All adaption has to start from a position of non-adaptation, so in order to
adapt, man must suffer at least briefly. Spencer’s answer to this contradiction is an affirmation
of the teleological nature of his program; we will indeed have to suffer evil until we are at last
perfectly adapted to the social state.
In order to live in such ‘freedom’, people need to actively pursue it. This is the role of
justice, which functions as the innate desire to maintain a state of freedom for all where the best
adapted individuals contribute the most to future generations. Spencer knew well that ‘fitness’
is relative to the environment. In a state that has laws that punishes theft by death, criminals are
less ‘fit’ than law-abiding citizens, while a state of anarchy might make the criminal mind more
‘fit’. Spencer’s envisioned state of freedom would allow the fittest to reproduce and adapt to an
environment that rewards cooperation and moral values. But, an observer may critique,
“doesn’t a ‘free’ society promote the opposite: ruthless selfishness?” Spencer was an optimist in
that he saw an evolutionary trend running from the simple origins of life to civilized man that
leads to an ever increasing heterogeneity; an increasing need for cooperation and division of
labor. In a state of Spenserian freedom, moral values will be rewarded to an increasing degree
as the next generation will grow up in a society that is more heterogeneous than the previous.
This state, as Spencer (like Sumner) understood, is not a Hobbesian state of a war of all against
22
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, Chapter II, paragraph 1.

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all. He was careful not to make the same mistake he attributed to others, and avoided projecting
his version of freedom as the goal rather than the means. Freedom was only needed insofar as it
ultimately promoted the formation of the social state. An evolved society will still have
measures in place to ensure that justice is dealt “Property stolen shall be restored, or an
equivalent for it given” and “any one injured by an assault shall have his surgeon’s bill paid,
compensation for the lost time, and also for the suffering he has borne”23. Spencer saw these
measures as a prerequisite for freedom and a reflection of natural law24. However, this
retribution should after several generations’ worth of adaptation come to exist as an evolved
innate moral imperative. A society of people adapted to the social state will evolve an inherent
sense of justice among its members, who insist on and take pleasure in ensuring freedom for all,
instead of unwillingly being forced to do so by the state.
As the hedonistic paradox implies, the members of Spencer’s social state do not strive
towards happiness themselves. Their moral judgments are formed by justice as its criterion.
Such sense of justice will evolve if man is left in freedom in the social state. Fortunately, a just
life is also (necessarily) a happy life. Firstly because justice promotes freedom, which allows us
to adapt and exercise all of our faculties, causing happiness. Secondly because upholding justice
and abiding by it is a faculty in itself. As a moral faculty, justice is an adaptation to society and
exercising it will eventually become a source of pleasure. Robert J. Richards is correct when he
points out that “It is worth lingering a moment on the role of justice in Spencer’s ethics, since all
major criticisms have ignored it”, but I think he is going a step too far when he equates
happiness with justice “Spencer translated happiness into justice”25. Spencer made it very clear
that that which directly produces happiness is the exercise of one’s faculties. While justice may
be one of those faculties, it is not the only one. Man works, sleeps, eats and reproduces, which
makes him happy.
Spencer believed in the happiness principle, not in the ‘greatest happiness principle’.
This means that his theory aims at creating a society that is generally most conducive to the
happiness of its members, not an individual or global calculation of the greatest happiness.
23
He e t “pe e , P iso -Ethi s in his essays, scientific, political, and speculative, 3:49.
24
Clea l “pe e is t eadi g o thi i e i justif i g pe al la s lai i g that just et i utio efle ts the la of
life . It is dou tful that su h a thi g as et i utio e ists i atu e.
25
Robert J. Richard, Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories and behavior p. 307.

15
Instead of proposing it as the rule of human conduct, if Bentham had simply assumed "greatest
happiness" to be the creative purpose, his position would have been tenable enough.26
The greatest happiness principle, originally formulated27 by Jeremy Bentham in 1789, was later
refined by John Stuart Mill in 1863 as “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness".28 In his first major work,
Social Statics, Spencer’s remarks suggest that he discards the happiness principle, by asking the
reader questions that reflect the main arguments against utilitarianism. He argues that universal
happiness is impossible to attain “as the world yet contains none such, it follows that a specific
idea of "greatest happiness" is for the present unattainable29. In addition, happiness is hard to
define, incalculable and ambiguous (the cause of happiness differs from person to person).
Poetically put (a rare feat for Spencer): “So that in directing us to this "greatest happiness to the
greatest number," as the object towards which we should steer, our pilot "keeps the word of
promise to our ear and breaks it to our hope"30. The multitude of problems facing a happiness-
oriented morality requires a different approach. Not one however, as Mill mistakenly
interpreted in his letters to Spencer, whereby the happiness principle is abandoned altogether.
Incidentally, half a century later Spencer formulated an independent argument for the
happiness principle in the The Data of Ethics:
And yet cross-examination quickly compels everyone to confess the true ultimate end. Just as the
miser, asked to justify himself, is obliged to allege the power of money to purchase desirable
things, as his reason for prizing it; so the moralist who thinks this conduct intrinsically good and
that intrinsically bad, if pushed home, has no choice but to fall back on their pleasure-giving and
pain-giving effects. To prove this it needs but to observe how impossible it would be to think of
them as we do, if their effects were reversed.31
Spencer goes on to argue that the valuation of happiness assumption that underlies all moral
estimates. In other words, he formulates an abbreviated transcendental argument for happiness
26
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics. Chapter III, Paragraph 1.
27
Ethi s at la ge a e defi ed, the a t of di e ti g e 's a tio s to the p odu tio of the g eatest possi le
ua tit of happi ess, o the pa t of those hose i te est is i ie . Je e Be tha , An Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation. XVII.4
28
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, chapter 2.
29
Ibid. introduction §2
30
Ibid. Introduction, §2
31
Herbert Spencer, The Data of Ethics p.12

16
as the ultimate end of morality. We shall see later on that Spencer thinks morality is intuitive.
He concludes his argument with a subtle (or not so subtle, depending on one’s familiarity with
Kant) reference to Kantian transcendental metaphysics:
So that no school can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable state of feeling called by
whatever name—gratification, enjoyment, happiness. Pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some
being or beings, is an inexpugnable element of the conception. It is as much a necessary form of
moral intuition as space is a necessary form of intellectual intuition.32
Ethical use (judgment of conduct) of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ then is only possible under the
presupposition of happiness as good and pain as bad. Introspection will reveal this fact, or
alternatively, another can be asked. One method to become aware of this is by trying to produce
an example of a good act causing pain or a bad act causing happiness. The result will be that
you cannot:
Require him to name any moral-sense judgment by which he knows as right, some kind of act
that will bring a surplus of pain, taking into account the totals in this life and in any assumed
other life, and you find him unable to name one: a fact proving that underneath all these
intuitions respecting the goodness or badness of acts, there lies the fundamental assumption that
acts are good or bad according as their aggregate effects increase men's happiness or increase
their misery.33
Or, alternatively, one could ask why a certain action is good or bad. If the person interviewed
stops midway through the questioning and replies “because x is wrong” (and x is not happiness
or misery) then he must be confusing means for ends:
So the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be
thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be),
but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end.34
The complete title of social statics: or, the conditions essential to human happiness specified, and the
first of them developed suggests, Spencer claims to have specified the conditions to human
happiness. What sets Spencer’s ethics apart from Bentham’s utilitarianism, besides a focus on
32
Ibid. p. 15
33
Ibid. p. 18
34
Ibid. p. 13

17
evolution, is his rejection of happiness as a proximate goal. To circumvent the problems he saw
with utilitarianism, Spencer holds that the greater happiness cannot, need not and should not be
actively calculated and sought after.
Again in a quasi-Kantian fashion, Spencer draws the parallel between the perception of space
“arisen from organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals who
bequeathed to [man] their slowly developed nervous organizations”35 and moral conduct,
which is likewise intuitive and exists independent from experience. We instinctively seek the
greater good. Therefore happiness does not need to be defined or calculated by the moral agent
or philosopher. This is to say our instincts do not compel us to pursue happiness itself, but
rather that which ultimately leads to happiness:
The experiences of utility, organized and consolidated through all past generations of the human
race […] have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition—certain emotions responding to
right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility.36
Henry Sidgwick was predominantly a critic of Spencer. Yet he first formulated a truism that
backed Spencer’s disapproval of a proximate ethics of the greatest happiness, named the
‘hedonistic paradox’37; when one pursues happiness itself, one is miserable; but, when one
pursues some other purpose (e.g. a challenging career, a project important to humanity, a code
of ethics, a religious commitment), one achieves happiness. This was already recognized by
Aristotle and Mill. If the paradox is true, utilitarianism, hedonism or any morality that directly
compels its subjects to strive for happiness is self-defeating. Spencer, however, by emphasizing
subconscious instincts rather than intention, escapes such a fate. A person acting from moral
instincts (faculties) avoids the hedonistic paradox, because he does not pursue happiness, but
achieves happiness by pursuing whatever he is inclined to pursue. Our moral intuition is
derived from consolidation of behavior that produces happiness from previous generations,
rather than based on an immediate estimate of utility.
35
Herbert Spencer, Letter to Mr. Mill.
36
Ibid.
37
…that the principle of Egoistic Hedonism, when applied with a due knowledge of the laws of human nature, is
practically self-limiting; i.e., that a rational method of attaining the end at which it aims requires that we should to
some extent put it out of sight and not directly aim at it He “idg i k, The Methods of Ethics, p.3.

18
When Spencer’s notion of the good and his views on evolution are combined, the
resulting social program is different than that of Sumner’s. Sumner advocates laissez-faire
capitalism in a world of constants where neither the laws of nature and evolution, nor human
nature can change38. The most a society can hope to attain to Sumner is a Daoist embrace of the
forces of evolution, so that we may produce enough resources not to turn into starving
degenerates. Spencer’s ideas on the theory of evolution are more than mere speculation on the
‘laws of nature’. Spencer’s account of evolutionary theory is richer in that it had a strong
Lamarckian component and the endpoint of his ideal, ultra-heterogeneous social state is one
where our faculties have evolved to a point where they are all morally sound and cooperative.
Spencer’s acceptance of laissez-faire capitalism is not only as reluctant as Sumner’s,
(unfortunate means to an end); it is also temporary (unlike Sumner). Eventually there will not
and should not be any competition in the form of laissez-faire capitalism in the social state, for
man shall shed his sinful nature and work out of love for his fellow men.
Chapter II
Richard Hofstadter historically positions American Pragmatism, first represented by William
James and brought to maturity by Dewey, as a critical reaction to Spencer’s Social Darwinism.
He acknowledges that both draw from the same Darwinian source and relates Social
Darwinism and Pragmatism as ‘older’ to ‘newer’ evolutionism, where the newer is an
improvement over the older, crude, racist, imperialist attempt to bring Darwinism to practice.
He writes:
Pragmatism was an application of evolutionary biology to human ideas, in the sense that it
emphasized the study of ideas as instruments of the organism. Working primarily with the basic
Darwinian concepts – organism, environment, adaptation – and speaking the language of
38
In fact, ‘evolution’ hardly fits Sumner’s ideas since there very little biological evolution is discussed
besides an increase in technology and a capitalization of society. Perhaps such an account is, however
unwillingly, more close to the truth than Spencer’s belief in rapid Lamarckian evolution, since genotypic
evolution takes thousands of years to spread in a population.

19
naturalism, the pragmatic tradition had a very different intellectual and practical issue from
Spencerianism.39
As the last sentence above suggests, pragmatism had fundamentally different ideas from Social
Darwinism on how to apply evolutionary biology to human ideas. Pragmatism and Social
Darwinism differ in their immediate target of social change and sit on opposing ends of the
nature/nurture debate. Spencer, as we recall, professed that the environment should only
slightly and incrementally be changed so that our genotype might catch up with it. An
organism whose innate faculties are not adapted to its environment, suffers. To Dewey, too, an
adaptation is a process of suffering, but he takes Spencer’s concept of genetic adaptation and
expands it to include learned behavior. The environment can and should be changed to a large
extent because our behavior depends on it.
The Focus of the logical and historical opposition between pragmatism and Spencerian
evolutionism was in their approach to the relationship between organism and environment.
Spencer had been content to assume the environment as a fixed norm – a suitable enough
position for one who had no basic grievance against the existing order. Pragmatism, entertaining
a more positive view of the activities of the organism, looked upon the environment as something
that could be manipulated.40
Dewey is said to have wanted to do for philosophy what Darwin had done for biology. This
claim can be taken in two ways. The first, commonly agreed upon interpretation is a cultural
application of Darwin’s critique on the immutability of species; Darwin proved the species
concept as liquid, lacking in essence or teleology, just as Dewey contended that truth was not
fixed in the philosophical disciplines of epistemology, science and ethics. Such an explanation is
most clearly supported by the majority of Dewey’s work, most notably the aptly titled The
influence of Darwinism on Philosophy, written in 1909, wherein Dewey professes the change in
thought and consequent transformation of the logic of knowledge that Charles Darwin’s Origin
of Species brings about.
The claim of doing for philosophy what Darwin did for biology can also be taken
literally as directly applying concepts and thinking from evolutionary theory to philosophy.
39
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought pp. 124-125.
40
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, pp. 123-124.

20
This side of Dewey is less well known, especially regarding his aesthetics, although Christopher
Perricone wrote extensively on reading Darwin between every line in Dewey’s estheticism in
his paper The Influence of Darwinism on John Dewey’s Philosophy of Art. On the project of exposing
the Darwinian foundations in Dewey’s thought as a whole Perricone speculates that this path of
inquiry is conspicuously absent, perhaps due to a reluctance to expose the Darwinism that has
often been connected to racism and capitalism (a la William Sumner) as Dewey’s darker side41. I
shall attempt to bring both interpretations together by showing that Dewey’s ‘vocabulary of
familiar terms used in most unfamiliar ways’ does not consist of post-modern neologisms, nor
are the terms he uses unique to pragmatism. Pragmatism is not, as Hilary Putnam puts it, a
philosophical revisionism, although Dewey and those that study him do give the impression that
“the failure of foundationalism makes a difference to how we are allowed to talk in ordinary
life”42
. Rather, a return to a biological vocabulary makes much more sense of many facets of
Dewey’s pragmatism.
Before proceeding to look at the biological character of Dewey’s vocabulary, I would like
to draw attention Darwin’s revision of the species concept. Darwin was not a philosopher like
Dewey or Aristotle was. In ancient Greece, the sciences had not yet emancipated from
philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge was considered a holistic discipline. Philosophy and
science were one, with philosophy at the head as the ‘prima filosofia’, the first and highest form
of knowing. Aristotle was, among other things, interest in biology and integrated his biological
theories with metaphysics, physics, ethics and epistemology. Darwin, although hinting at
possible moral ramifications of his theory in the Descent of Man, did not speculate on a ‘new
logical outlook’. He was a biologist who wrote about empirical evidence that suggested species
can evolve from other species by means of variation and natural selection. Dewey writes in The
Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy that “the Greek formulation of the aim and standard of
knowledge was in the course of time embodied in the word species, and it controlled
philosophy for thousands of years”43. Dewey says a few paragraphs late that Aristotle gave the
name ‘eidos’ ( ἶ ος) to his principle of uniform types of structure and function, which the
scholastics translated as species. This is incorrect. The Greeks, I would say, did not embody the
41
Christopher Perricone. The I flue ce of Darwi is o Joh Dewey’s Philosophy of Art. In Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 1. Pennsylvania State University, 2006. P.23.
42
Hillary Putnam, Realism with a human Face. Harvard university press: Cambridge, 1990. P. 20
43
The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1910. p. 40.

21
standard of knowledge in the word species, but in ἶ ος. Given the context of Ancient Greece
and the status of philosophy and science, it is unwarranted to equate ‘species’ with ‘eidos’, such
as when Dewey proceeds to write “The conception of eidos, species, a fixed form and final
cause, was the central principle of knowledge as well as of nature”44. Darwin’s use of the word
‘species’ resembles its meaning in contemporary English more than the Greek ‘eidos’. A species
is first and foremost a biological species. Yet Dewey (and others) profess that Darwin redefined
ἶ ος. He did not. He redefined ‘species’. When Dewey writes that Darwin questions the classic
philosophy of nature and knowledge, he does something alike to translating 道 as ‘road’ and
proceeding to conclude that deep cosmological issues (and Lao-tzu himself) should be seen in a
different light now that roads are no longer made of dirt, but tarmac.
Besides doing what many philosophers tend to do; confirm the value of their own
discipline, livelihood and intellectual self-worth by reading more into texts than there actually
is, I can guess at Dewey’s reasons for projecting his thought onto Darwin. Dewey had already
had his sights set on the ‘transformation of the logic of knowledge’ when Darwin came along
and made him pull the trigger. Perhaps Dewey was in the formative stage of his philosophical
development when he was captivated by Darwin. Before that, he had been a Hegelian. Darwin’s
influence profoundly changed Dewey’s pragmatism (and its vocabulary), but it also built upon
convictions of metaphysical continuity and change that were already present. In Meaning and
Action: A critical history of pragmatism, H.S. Thayer writes:
Dewey’s Hegelianism went through a conversion under Darwinian evolution… The idealism,
with its categories of the organic whole, and development viewed as a passage from
‘contradictions’ to ‘syntheses’, gave way to the evolutionary and biologically conceived notions of
growth as a process of ‘conflicts’ and ‘resolutions’.45
Dewey describes his pragmatist terminology (‘growth’, ‘habit’, ‘progress’, ‘ideal’, ‘impulse’) in
evolutionary terms in one of his earlier works, a paper written in 1898 titled Evolution and Ethics.
In this paper, Dewey lays out the foundation (choice of wording is intentional) of his
pragmatism as an interpretation of Darwinism distinct from Thomas Huxley and Herbert
44
John Dewey. "Evolution and Ethics" Pages 34-54 in The Early Works of John Dewey 1882 - 1898, Vol. 5 (1895-
1898) edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press (1972). Originally
published in The Monist VIII, (1898): 321-341. p. 40.
45
Thayer, H.S. Meaning and Action: A Critical History of Pragmatism. New York: Bobbs Merill, 1968.

22
Spencer. Spencer spoke of growth and progress in the same way as Dewey did, albeit in more
naturalistic terms.
Dewey distilled an optimistic view of human nature from his interpretation of
Darwinism. His break with Spencer, Sumner and Social Darwinism is not radical, but more of a
shift in emphasis from genetic change, or the lack thereof, to cultural change. On the one hand,
Dewey saw that genetic forces did not operate in isolation from custom, nor were they rigid
enough to prevent humanity from ‘creating’ its own destiny through forming of habit. On the
other hand, he kept a very limited form of biological influence, and contended that human
beings were inherently social and possessed a ‘human nature’; characteristics that could (and
should) allow man as a social organism to flourish.
But man as man still has the dumb pluck of the animal. He has endurance, hope, curiosity,
eagerness, love of action. These traits belong to him by structure, not by taking thought.46
Growth according to Dewey happens when one achieves reproductive success by adapting
creatively to changing conditions, brings his or her habits into contact with aims and ideals and
overcomes the tension between them. The passage below could just as well be lifted from Social
Statics, as it is virtually identical to Spencer’s Lamarckist program of adaptation, although
growth to Dewey is not necessarily genetic in nature.
The very highest habits and ideals which are organizing today with reference to existing
conditions will be just as much, and just as little, an obstacle to the moral conduct of man millions
of years from now, as those of the ape and the tiger are to us. So far as they represent the survival
of outworn conditions, they will demand re-constitution and re-adaptation, and that modification
will be accompanied by pain. Growth always costs something. It costs the making over of the old
in order to meet the demands of the new.47
But what makes survival or reproductive success so desirable? If growth is mere survival,
Dewey escapes falling prey to the teleology that he rejected, but walks right into the clutches of
‘anything goes’ survivalism that is so often brought in against Spencer. Darwin himself was
46
John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct. New York: Henry Holt, 1922. P. 200.
47
Evolution and Ethics. P.47.

23
careful not to see progress in evolution, but Dewey does, which raises questions. What is the
normative component of growth and why is it a positive, rather than a neutral term? Why are
some interactions conductive to growth, but not others? As I hope more readers of Dewey have
felt there is a nagging tension in Dewey’s work when he vehemently argues against
metaphysical, scientific, epistemological and moral foundationalism while continuing to use
normative terms. Is the mass-murderer who thrives on the pain of others by inventing new and
creative ways of suppressing them displaying growth? I believe it is because Dewey commits
the naturalistic fallacy. Elion Schwartz suggests but does not explicitly mention the naturalistic
fallacy when he writes (on Dewey) that “As a naturalist philosopher, the good was not
something to be found outside of experience. We value sociability because sociability, with its
attendant characteristics of sympathy and concern for others, is central to what a human life is,
and therefore should be”48. In other words, Dewey did have a flexible yet defined concept of
human nature which was intrinsic, and therefore good. Growth, as the basis of the normative
component of his philosophy, fosters and nurtures the self as a social being.
The kind of self which is formed through action which is faithful to relations with others will be a
fuller and broader self than one which is cultivated in isolation from or in opposition to the
purposes and needs of others. In contrast, the kind of self which results from generous breadth of
interest may be said alone to constitute a development and fulfillment of self, while the other way
of life stunts and starves selfhood by cutting it off from the connections necessary to its growth.49
Dewey is ahead of his time when he spots the tautological nature of the ‘Survival of the fittest’,
a term which Spencer coined with intentions of separating those worthy and unworthy of
survival. To Dewey (and contemporary evolutionary ethicists) the ‘fit’ are those who survive; be
that the weak, the strong, the moral or the immoral. When Huxley opposes the good and the fit,
morals and nature, he fails to recognize that man is a social animal and that changing human
morality is part of our evolutionary history. Morals are not opposed to nature and the
environment; they are one with it, having been selection for in the past.
48
Ellion Schwartz, At Home in the World. Human Nature, Ecological thought and Education after Darwin. State
University of New York press: Albany, 2009. Pp. 70-71.
49
James H. Tufts and John Dewey. Ethics. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1909, 350.

24
“The environment is now distinctly a social one, and the content of the term "fit" has to be made
with reference to social adaptation. The conditions with respect to which the term "fit"
must now be used include the existing social structure with all the habits, demands, and ideals
which are found in it. If so, we have reason to conclude that the "fittest with respect to the whole
of the conditions" is the best; that, indeed, the only standard we have of the best is the discovery
of that which maintains these conditions in their integrity50”
Richard Dawkins writes of memes (non-genetic replicators) in the extended phenotype51, and
draws our attention to the beaver’s dam or the anthill as gene expressions. The old model of an
organism adapting to a static environment is too simple; it is shaping the environment to which
it is exposed. If Mohammed cannot come to the mountain, then the mountain will have to come
to Mohammed. The organism and its environment become one, or, viewed from another
perspective, the traditional environment is expanded to include everything including the
organism itself. Environment and organism interact in a constant feedback loop, reflected in the
pragmatist concept of relational interdependence.
Evolution is a continued development of new conditions which are better suited to the needs of
organisms than the old. The unwritten chapter in natural selection is that of the evolution of
environments.52
Dewey takes his notion of progress and growth from this realization, which I believe is correct,
when he states that “the selection which marks progress is that of a variation which creates a
new food supply or amplifies an old one”53. Readers of Dawkins’s other work, The Selfish Gene,
however, may notice a conflation of desires when Dewey speaks of ‘the needs of organisms’.
The needs of an organism (let alone organisms) do not correspond to the evolutionary needs of
the genes of which the organism is a phenotypic expression. For example, a male black widow
spider does not want to be bitten to death painfully by its (much larger) partner during
copulation, but he still jumps to his doom. We all want to be happy, yet happiness bores us.
Women do not want to go through menstruation or painful childbirth, but they do. Individual
50
.Evolution and Ethics. p. 39.
51
Richard Dawkins. The Extended Phenotype. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
52
Evolution and Ethics. p. 52
53
Ibid. p. 51

25
needs, unfortunately, do not correspond to either the needs of the species as a whole, nor to that
or not our genes. Eons of evolution only gave us the blessing of happiness insofar as it
motivates as we find it so desperately lacking and not a morsel more. A legacy from Hegel,
Dewey’s anthropology is so holistic that it cannot or would not accommodate for modern
Darwinism’s post-Mendelian, less consolatory approach to being and happiness. Dewey states
his position clearly when he has to break a bleak message to the sheep who is (understandably)
disappointed with the wolf’s desire to keep eating him.
The fact is the wolf asserted himself as a wolf. It was not mere life he wished, but the life of the
wolf. No agent can draw this distinction between desire for mere life and desire for happy life for
himself; and no more can the spectator intelligently draw it for another.54
This interpretation of Darwinism forms the basis of Dewey’s desire-based ethics.
In valuing the (unknown, context-dependent) evolutionary needs of an organism at any
given time and identifying it with the esthetic, the teleology that Dewey rejects in The Influence
of Darwinism on Philosophy is reintroduced. Dewey does not go far enough in rejecting
Darwinian teleology. He sides with Spencer in believing that evolution moves forward,
allowing for an increasingly fuller, richer, more meaningful life as unpredictable emergent
qualities appear through struggle. The intelligent man aligns himself and his surroundings with
the richest possible experience.
“But I question whether the spiritual life does not get its surest and most ample guarantees when
it is learned that the laws and conditions of righteousness are implicated in the working processes
of the universe; when it is found that man in his conscious struggles, in his doubts, temptations,
and defeats, in his aspirations and successes, is moved on and buoyed up by the forces which
have developed nature; and that in this moral struggle he acts not as a mere individual but as an
organ in maintaining and carrying forward the universal process.”55
In the light of pragmatism’s ‘weak’ relativism where the good is not a matter of ‘anything goes’,
but specific to the ever changing context (also called ‘pluralism’, as opposed to ‘strong’
54
Evolution and Ethics. p. 45.
55
Ibid. p. 53

26
relativism), the use of value-laden terms such as growth and progress is surprising. It is less
surprising when considering Dewey’s positive projects; his estheticism, celebration of
democracy and education reform rest on the appreciation of growth as survival by creatively
overcoming obstacles.
A salient feature of Dewey’s interpretation of Darwinism is his focus on cultural
selection. The concept of habit is introduced by Dewey to avoid taking a firm stance in (or
attempting to dissolve) the nature/nurture debate. Dewey, like Nietzsche, acknowledges that
‘hardened’ social customs and instinctual drives are two sides of the same coin. A habit is
acquired behavior (‘nurture’ --if you will) solidified.
Habits as organized activities are secondary and acquired, not native and original. They are
outgrowths of unlearned activities which are part of man’s endowment at birth56
Dewey says that we cannot practically distinguish instinct (‘impulse’) from habit. If I like to
shake hands with people and smile when I first met them, who can tell whether this behavior is
genetic or acquired, and what is really the difference? It feels natural do to so. Does that mean it
is instinctual? No. Do I have an innate disposition to display acts of kindness or am I immoral
by nature and did my community condition me to act against it? Dewey would say neither.
Habit is a term that crosses the boundary between instinct and learned behavior, because such a
line is impossible to draw. Our behavior is always interplay between our social environment
and our instinctive tendencies, to the point where habits feel and operate just like instincts,
keeping in mind that ‘bare’ impulses need a context to take shape. Without it they are chaotic,
tumultuous and confused. We –are- our habits, just as much as we are our impulses. After this
realization fitness can no longer be defined in genetic terms, separate from the social forces that
shape our habits. Dewey draws the conclusion: ‘The unfit is practically the anti-social”57
I will not look in-depth the connection between Darwinism and Dewey’s art as
experience, for Perricone does a thorough job already, but rather question the general role of
evolution in pragmatism as estheticism instead.
56
John Dewey, Democracy and Education. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916. P. 66.
57
Evolution and Ethics p.39.

27
Even if my argument for the foundational role of growth as creatively adapting to the
changing environment of which he is part by harnessing our innate social nature seems
convincing, it remains to be seen if pragmatism as estheticism likewise relies on the biological
concept of growth. By estheticism I mean the appreciation of some form of experience, which
Dewey calls ‘an experience’ as possessing value (or more value than others).I believe that the
process moving towards having an experience is very much Darwinian. I also find the
distinction between estheticism and ethics interesting, yet confusing, for both are value-laden
terms that can furnish a normative program. Is Dewey’s estheticism eudaemonist and if not
then what is so desirable about the esthetic experience? I contend that to Dewey the distinction,
like so many before it, between estheticism and ethics ultimately collapses as human conduct
and behavior should be both geared towards bringing about a richer, more meaningful aesthetic
experience as well as allow moral growth to be an esthetic experience itself58. This moral growth
as esthetic experience is not fixed, because as habits and environments change, new ideals form
through conflict of old habits, desires and current demands. These new ideals are the concepts
of the good. Dewey’s ethics have been labeled as a form of informed desire theory. I believe this
is correct.
If I think of “Good”, I am approaching conduct from the standpoint of value. I am thinking of
what is desirable. This too is a standard, but it is a standard regarded as an end to be sought
rather than a law. I am to “choose” it and identify myself with it rather than to control myself by
it. It is an “Ideal”.59
If Dewey values satisfaction of desire, this brings us back to the unanswered question about
growth, namely what the good is of surviving by conforming to our social nature and having an
experience. Dewey accomplishes this by equating survival with happiness; he indeed has a
notion of the Good.
[…] Mr. Huxley himself is practically unable to limit the meaning of the phrase "struggle for
existence" to this narrow import. He has himself to widen it so as to include not only the struggle
58
John Dewey and James H. Tufts. Ethics. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1909. P. 10.
59
Ibid. p. 7.

28
for mere continuance of physical existence, but also whatever makes that life what it is. The
distinction between the struggle for existence and the struggle for happiness breaks down.60
Dewey uses the same method as Sumner and Spencer when he takes his notion of the good
(happiness as an esthetic experience) and, given a certain conception of evolution, produces a
normative program. Herbert Spencer advocated his form of Social Darwinism because he
believed that man’s happiness relied on the use of his faculties; faculties that had evolved in
struggle and were subsequently neglected in the modern environment because they were no
longer required when selection was weak61. Dewey criticized Spencer for his belief in an
ultimate end to evolution62, but the notion of progress remained alive in his thought. Dewey’s
esthetic experience of mutual adaptation by doing and undergoing is rooted in the struggle for
existence. Like Spencer, Dewey foresaw the struggle for mankind to be social rather than
physical in character, but the struggle is appreciated nonetheless, although adaptation, growth
and the esthetic experience require a period of conflict and pain that arises when existing habits
are pushed to their usefulness. Unlike Spencer he did not appreciate adaption in light of a
teleology, but because every new adaptation brings about new experiences. Imagination is
called upon to create a new variation; a new emergent quality that will allow for persistence in
accordance with man’s social being.
If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not
enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling
out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the
conditions under which it lives (…) These biological commonplaces are something more than
that; they reach to the roots of the esthetic experience.63
Dewey is not content with merely subsisting, because merely subsisting is not subsisting at all.
To clarify the apparent tautology here, remember that Dewey believed in human nature as
possessing certain fixed (positive) qualities, such as imagination, creativity, idealism (including
60
Evolution and Ethics, p. 44.
61
Herbert Spencer. Social Statics: Or, the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of them
Developed. London: Chapman, 1851. CHAPTER IV, paragraph 2
62
Evolution and Ethics. p. 47.
63
John Dewey, Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn Books, 1958. P. 13.

29
religiousness) and strive for improvement and social harmony. These traits are like a shark in
that they need to keep moving to survive. We need and should keep adapting and growing, not
because the environment demands it, but because we do. It is who we are man an organism that
is one with the environment. We do not adapt because the environment forces us to, but
because we are what Tejere Victorinio calls ‘adaptive man’.
Under the influence of Darwin, adaptive man is now seen by Dewey as the problem solving
animal. Active experience (doing) is seen as a seeking of means to survival. Dewey calls
experience associated with the attainment of ends “consummatory experience.” Where there is a
balance between doing and undergoing, according to Dewey, we may be said to have had an
integral experience as when we go through an aesthetic experience.64
To conclude the chapter on Dewey, some form of structuring of Dewey’s interpretation of
Darwinism will be useful in showing that he was Social Darwinist that worked with a different,
and just as incorrect by today’s standards as Spencer’s, account of Darwinism. I will do this
according to a favorite Hegelian activity of Dewey; reaching a synthesis by collapsing
dichotomies. He disposed of several theses and antitheses in evolutionary theory. These are:
1) Organism and environment. Dewey foresaw the extended phenotype and
recognized that adaptation is not a one-way street between actor and
environment. The organism always has the horizon of variation and change
stretching out before it and will be rewarded by actively changing the
environment it lives in, by being and becoming (part of) the environment.
2) Natural selection and social selection. Huxley contrasted man’s grooming of the
garden of life with that of nature’s way. Dewey saw that it made no difference in
terms of effects. In fact, our ability to ‘select’ is the source of freedom and
opportunity; growth is possible thanks to our ability to form and revise habits
through social interaction.
3) Genetic variation and phenotypic variation. In the wake of the collapse of the
previous distinction lies that of genetic and phenotypic variation. Whether John
walks from A to B because his physical attributes or because he has learned to do
64
Tejera, Victorino. 1996. American Modern: The Path Not Taken. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. P. 119.

30
so is irrelevant (and indistinguishable) as long as he gets there. We do not need
to change the structure of the eye to look in a different direction65. An astute
observer also will notice that mind/body dualism is also no longer tenable in this
light, since both are practically (i.e. with regard to effects) the same.
4) The struggle for existence and the struggle for happiness. Dewey’s concept of
interdependence, of existence in relations also extended to his interpretation of
the struggle for existence. An organism is constituted relationally both in its
lifetime and historically. Or put negatively in evolutionary terms; it is not
something separate from the process which formed it. When Dewey speaks of a
wolf desiring to be a wolf he affirms that happiness is contextual, that you cannot
know what it is to be wolf without having experienced being one. At the same
time, the struggle for existence is given value because to exist as oneself --a
struggling intellectual animal with the capacity for experience and growth means
to be happy. I believe this is the Darwinian core of Dewey’s pragmatism as an
estheticism.
Dewey was the first (great) Darwinian Philosopher (as opposed to a philosophical Darwinist)
and was way ahead of his time in his interpretation of Darwinism. Most of his understanding
65
If the reader will excuse me for quoting an unusually large piece of text, the following excerpt is relevant in its
entirety, for in it Dewey mentions a part of Darwinism that may lead to the outdated evolutionary theory of
Lamarckism; a matter of which he could not have been certain about at the time. Even Darwin himself did not
know how i he ita e o ked, si e Me del s la s had ot ee edis o e ed u til the ea l 20th
century –
several years after Dewey wrote his Evolution and Ethics. Despite being a visionary in many areas when it comes to
evolutionary theory, Dewey was a product of his time (which he would certainly agree with) and certain kinks had
not been worked out of the Darwinian Synthesis. One of these is the inheritance of acquired characteristics,
perhaps leaving Dewey with an account of selection that overestimates the potency of behavioral change.
We do not need to go here into the vexed question of the inheritance of acquired characters. We know that
through what we call public opinion and education certain forms of action are constantly stimulated and
encouraged, while other types are as constantly objected to, repressed, and punished. What difference in principle
exists between this mediation of the acts of the individual by society and what is ordinarily called natural selection,
I am unable to see. In each case there is the reaction of the conditions of life back into the agents in such a way as
to modify the function of living. That in one case this modification takes place through changes in the structure of
the organ, say the eye, requiring many generations to become active; while in the other case it operates within the
life of one and the same individual, and affects the uses to which the eye is put rather than (so far as we can tell)
the structure of the eye itself, is not a reason for re-fusing to use the term "natural selection." Or if we have limited
that term to a narrower technical meaning, it is certainly no reason for refusing to say that the same kind of forces
are at work bringing about the same sort of results. (John Dewey, Evolution and Ethics, p. 50.)

31
will stand the test of time admirably, as is indicated in Perricone’s characterization of Richard
Dawkins (arguably the world’s foremost contemporary Evolutionary Theorist) as ‘Deweyan’. It
is mainly in points ‘2’ and ‘4’ that I think Dewey slightly missed the mark although even if he
did his pragmatism does not lose much punch besides being a little overoptimistic. The
immediate and ultimate desire of man, survival (or happiness) is not the immediate or ultimate
end of nature’s varying pulls of selection. Neither the group, nor the gene, nor the organism
itself has the same interests as the recipient of experience, man.
None of the three discussed philosophers (Sumner, Spencer and Dewey) worked with an
account of evolution that is correct by today’s standards, although Sumner’s is so minimal that
it is hard to deny. All three worked within a consequentialist framework and a notion of the
good (without necessarily making claims about quantification). I purposely did not include the
nature/nurture distinction among the dichotomies above, for, while not a hundred percent,
Dewey largely sides with nurture in the debate. Taking the nurture side is essentially what
separates him from Spencer (Sumner spoke more of ‘nature’ than of ‘human nature’) who
heavily relied the influence of inheritance. To Dewey, man is not a completely empty slate, but
he is not far off. Modern genetics and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology suggest
that Dewey, in wishing to distance himself from the ‘old’ Social Darwinism, may have
underestimated the genetic component of mental as well as physical character. We are to a large
degree a slave of our passions, which are sometimes more specific than Dewey’s social and
creative ‘tendencies’ and chaotic, unrefined dispositions or potentialities. Indeterminism and
optimism notwithstanding, evolution works too slow to bring about much structural change or
growth in man in the sense Dewey would like to see it, while social selection may not be
powerful enough to do so. Then again, Dewey wouldn’t be America’s #1 philosopher if he
didn’t believe that we could change the world anyway.
Conclusion
Richard Hofstadter wrote that “Readers who turned to serious books between 1871 and 1900
found much provocative discussion of the meaning of Darwinism for ethics, politics, and social
affairs”66. Such an intellectual climate would be welcome today and incomplete without Social
66
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston, MA: Beacon Press books, 1992. P. 90.

32
Darwinism. Much is written by contemporary academia about the theory of evolution and its
relation to psychology and epistemology. The unfortunate demise of the term ‘sociobiology’
shows that any serious attempt to look at the implications of evolutionary theory (even without
a without a normative socio-political program) is associated with the wrongful definition of
Social Darwinism and subsequently shot down. I hope to have shown the following in order to
contribute to the rehabilitation and reintroduction of Social Darwinism into the exciting field of
modern evolutionary philosophy:
1) Specific accounts of Social Darwinism do not apply to its main advocates, William Sumner and
Herbert Spencer. The normative political project that is the product of their respective
understanding of the theory of evolution and a pre-established notion of the good differs
between them and is not accurately represented by what is understood as ‘Social Darwinism’,
either in encyclopedic sources or by philosophers.
2) For Social Darwinism to be a useful term in philosophical discourse, it must be given a new
meaning that is unique enough to warrant the term and general enough to apply to actual
thoughts; the thinkers of which should at least include the philosophers that are traditionally
associated with it. This meaning is the maximum which William Sumner and Herbert Spencer
are found to have in common; a method of coming up with a prescriptive socio-ethical program
based on the full implications of an understanding of the theory of evolution together with an
independently formulated concept of the good.
3) The new meaning of Social Darwinism will bring other philosophers that were not considered
Social Darwinists before, under its scope. One of these is John Dewey, who follows the Social
Darwinist method by basing a normative social program in the form of educative reforms and a
call to democracy on his understanding of evolution and an esthetics of experience caused by
adaptation.
Richard Hofstadter ends Social Darwinism in American Thought with a scathing polemic against
Social Darwinism of the kind that sides with ‘nature’; an emphasis on the effects of biological
evolution on society. He pleads for Pragmatism and against Sumner and Spencer.

33
Whatever the course of social philosophy in the future, however, a few conclusions are now
accepted by most humanists: that such biological ideas as the “survival of the fittest”, whatever
their doubtful value in natural science, are utterly useless in attempting to understand society;
that the life of man in society, while it is incidentally a biological fact, has characteristics that are
not reducible to biology and must be explained in the distinctive terms of a cultural analysis; that
the physical well-being of men is a result of their social organization and not vice versa; that
social improvement is a product of advances in technology and social organization, not of
breeding or selective elimination; that judgments as to the value of competition between men or
enterprises or nations must be based upon social and not allegedly biological consequences; and,
finally, that there is nothing in nature or a naturalistic philosophy of life to make impossible the
acceptance of moral sanctions that can be employed for the common good.67
Hofstadter’s conclusion is a good indication of what academic discussion under the header of
Social Darwinism can be concerned with. In has been the aim of this paper to give an accurate
account of Social Darwinist thought and I have not argued for or against a position. I can
however safely say that I believe that Sumner and Spencer were wrong in their conception of
Darwinism as well as in its application. Nevertheless, if any of the points Hofstadter mentions
are not obviously true (and I do not think they are) then future Social Darwinists have their
work cut out for them. As has been the case with Dewey, social life need not be completely
reduced to biological facts or ideas for a normative program that follows from an inquiry into
their effects to be worthwhile. More so it would be unwise to ignore the role of Darwinism in
prescriptive ethics because of an underserved, negative association with an inadequate
definition of Social Darwinism.
67
Social Darwinism in American Thought, p. 204.

34
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