John West's latest book is a tightly written response to scholars and pundits who purport to ground social, economic and political conservatism in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. A review of Darwin's Conservatives: The Misguided Quest.
Darwin's Conservatives: The Misguided Quest
by John G. West
published by Discovery Institute (October 16, 2006)
Ppbk., 160 pgs.
ISBN: 0979014107
Did Darwin make it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled conservative? More likely, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled relativist. So one concludes from Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. The book is a tightly written response to scholars and pundits who purport to ground social, economic and political conservatism in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. Author John West, a political scientist, is steeped in the history of Darwinism’s impact on law, politics and ethics in modern Western Civilization. He convincingly argues that Darwinism more logically supports and is historically tied to the relativistic, anti-traditional, eugenicist, big-government utopianism that conservatives should eschew.
“While nineteenth century giants such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud have been debunked,” writes West, “Darwin retains his prestige among the elites as a secular saint.”
Charles Darwin’s legacy in the social sciences owes primarily to his (other) great work, The Descent of Man. Therein Darwin provides his strictly evolutionary account of human origins, human sociability, and human ethics. Other Darwinists proceeded to popularize such an understanding of mankind. Elites have hardly looked back. Today, Darwin has prominent defenders on the Left — such as bioethicist Peter Singer — as well as the Right.
West takes aim at Darwin’s contemporary conservative crowd, of which political theorist Larry Arnhart is considered the most articulate. For Arnhart, conservatism’s realism and anti-utopianism is best defended through reliance upon a neo-Darwinian explanation of human biology and culture. Darwin is the answer to the left-liberal utopian notion of human perfectibility. But West zeroes in on the undirected and unplanned nature of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory in challenging this Darwinian view of humankind. How can humanity hope to find or defend its purpose, traditions and moral order when humankind is itself the result of an inherently purposeless process?
“Showing a biological basis for certain moral desires could conceivably reinforce traditional morality,” asserts West, “but only if we have reason to assume that those biological desires are somehow normative.” He goes on to observe that many conservatives “fail to appreciate . . . how the Darwinian account of the origins of biological traits fundamentally undercuts their effort to treat our biological desires as normative.” Rather, Darwinism posits that human nature itself is in a never-ending evolutionary process responding to environmental pressures. Moral principles develop simply because they promote survival in a given environment. “But once the conditions for survival change, so too do the dictates of morality.”
Crucial to West’s book is his insistence on clearly defining the terms of the debate — especially slippery words such as “Darwinism” and “evolution.” Most definitions of “evolution,” such as “change over time,” are benign. West takes aim at a particular understanding of “evolution;” namely, the idea that all of life descended from a single common ancestor, and that all such life can be explained as the result of an unplanned and unguided process of natural selection operating upon random genetic mutation (and other random variations). The mechanism of natural selection is the crucial component of this unplanned and unguided process of “evolution” also known today as the theory of neo-Darwinian evolution.
A standout chapter on limited government shows the strong historic ties between ardent proponents of neo-Darwinian theory and eugenics. Many (if not most) of the prominent eugenicists of the 20th Century invoked Darwinian natural selection as the driving force behind their endeavors. Most of the early Social Darwinists hailed from the Left. Moreover, Darwin was heavily influenced by the Malthusian concept of economics as a zero-sum game involving scarce resources. The most prominent of socialists and later American progressives grounded their big-government ideals in extrapolations from Darwin’s theory. True, not all Darwinists are eugenicists or Marxists. But the historical association between Darwinists and those lamentable ideologies and undertakings undermines any confidence in conservatism as the logical entailment of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Carson Holloway’s recent book, The Right Darwin: Evolution, Religion and the Future of Democracy, offers a sharp criticism of Darwinian “conservatism” from a Tocquevillian perspective. But Holloway’s work focused more narrowly upon political theory and The Descent of Man, all but assuming the scientific validity of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. By contrast, West takes a broader look at how leading Darwinist elites through the years have justified their ideologies and policies by extrapolating from the unplanned and purposeless natural order entailed by neo-Darwinian evolution. West’s book also expresses a strong skepticism of the scientific merits of the theory of neo-Darwinian evolution.
A number of scientists have questioned key aspects of neo-Darwinian theory — most importantly, the sufficiency of the mechanism of natural selection (acting upon random mutations) to account for the diversity and intricacy of all biological life. Beyond scientific challenges to neo-Darwinian theory, West defends the theory of intelligent design, the emerging scientific alternative to the majority view. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain aspects of the universe and living things are best explained as the result of an intelligent cause, rather than an undirected cause.
The new Darwinian Right has met its strongest challenge to date, compliments of West. His book also hints at a future work that more expansively explores the impact of Darwinism on a plethora of public policy matters. Let’s hope that it too reaches publication before long. Darwin needs to take his place alongside Marx and Freud.
Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest is available on Amazon.com.
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