Darwin, Marx and Freud: Their Influence on Moral Theory

250 Pages·1984·4.06 MB·English

by  Antony G. N. Flew (auth.)

DARWIN, MARX)
AND FREUD
Their Influence on Moral Theory
THE HASTINGS CENTER SERIES IN ETHICS
ETHICS TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
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MENTAL RETARDATION AND STERILIZATION
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THE ROOTS OF ETHICS: Science, Religion, and Values
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ETHICS IN HARD TIMES
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DARWIN, MARX, AND FREUD: Their Influence on
Moral Theory
Edited by Arthur L. Caplan and Bruce Je1lnings
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DARWIN, MARX,
AND FREUD
Their Influence on Moral Theory
Edited by
ARTHUR L. CAPLAN
and
BR UCE JENNINGS
The Hastings Center
Institute oj Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
Plenum Press • New York and London
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Darwin, Marx, and Freud.
(The Hastings Center series in ethics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Ethics, Modern - 20th century - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Darwin,
Charles, 1809-1882 - Ethics - Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Marx, Karl,
1818-1883-Ethics-Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Freud, Sigmund,
1856-1939 - Influence - Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Caplan, Arthur L. II.
Jennings, Bruce, 1949- III. Series.
BJ319.D37 1984 170/92'2 84-1909
ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-7852-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-7850-1
001: 10.1007/978-1-4684-7850-1
© 1984 The Hastings Center
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1s t edition 1984
Institute of Society, Ethics, and the Life Sciences
360 Broadway
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706
Plenum Press is a division of
Plenum Publishing Corporation
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All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Contributors
EUGENE B. BRODY is Professor of Psychiatry and Human
Behavior at the University of Maryland Medical School. He is
Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neroous and Mental Disease
and President (1981-83) of the World Federation for Mental
Health. His most recent book is Sex, Contraception and
Motherhood in Jamaica.
ARTHUR L. CAPLAN is Associate for the Humanities at The
Hastings Center. He is the editor of The Sociobiology Debate
and Concepts of Health and Disease and the author of nu
merous articles in the philosophy of science and bioethics.
ANTONY G. N. FLEW is Professor of Philosophy at York
University, Toronto, Canada and Emeritus Professor at the
University of Reading, Reading, England. He is the author of
Evolutionary Ethics, A Rational Animal, and several other
books.
MICHAEL HARRINGTON is Professor of Political Science on
the faculty of Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center and
is the National Chair of Democratic Socialists of America. He
is author of several books, including The Other America, So
cialism, Fragments of the Century, and Decade of Decision.
ROBERT R. HOLT is Professor of Psychology at New York
University and is the founder and former director of the NYU
Research Center for Mental Health. He is the author of Meth
ods in Clinical Psychology (2 vols.).
v
vi CONTRIBUTORS
GERALD N. IZENBERG is Associate Professor of History at
Washington University. He is the author of The Crisis of Au
tonomy: The Existentialist Critique of Freud.
BRUCE JENNINGS is Associate for Policy Studies at The
Hastings Center. His publications include several articles on
the history of political theory, and he is co-editor of Ethics, the
Social Sciences, and Policy Analysis.
LEON R. KASS is Henry R. Luce Professor of the Liberal Arts
of Human Biology at the University of Chicago. His articles
have appeared in several journals, including SCience, The Pub
lic Interest, The Journal of the American Medical Association,
and Commentary.
ERNST MAYR is Alexander Agassiz Professor, Emeritus, at
Harvard University. He is author of Animal Species and Evo
lution, Evolution and the Diversity of Life, and The Growth
of Biological Thought.
ELIZABETH RAPAPORT is Associate Professor of Philosophy
at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. Her publi
cations include several articles on ethics, politics, and feminist
theory.
ALLEN W. WOOD is Professor of Philosophy at Cornell Uni
versity. He is author of Kant's Moral Religion, Kant's Rational
Theology, and Karl Marx.
Acknowledgments
The papers in this volume are based upon a series of presen
tations at The Hastings Center which were underwritten by
a generous grant from the Humanities Division of the Rock
efeller Foundation. Mary Gualandi and Eva Mannheimer de
serve special praise for their willingness to type numerous
revisions of the papers included here. Also, the editors would
like to thank Daniel Callahan and Willard Gaylin, respectively
Director and President of The Hastings Center, for their en
couragement and support of this project. Finally, we would
like to thank the contributors to the volume for their patience
in attending to the various editorial suggestions and requests
that were made of them.
vii
Contents
Introduction Ethical Theory and Social Science: The
Legacy of Darwin, Marx, and Freud xi
Arthur L. Caplan and
Bruce Jennings
PART ONE DARWIN
Chapter One The Philosophical Implications of
Darwinism ............................. 3
Antony G. N. Flew
Chapter Two Evolution and Ethics .................. 35
Ernst Mayr
Chapter Three Darwinism and Ethics: A Response
to Antony Flew ........................ 47
Leon R. Kass
PART TWO MARX
Chapter Four Preliminary Thoughts for a
Prolegomena to a Future Analysis of
Marxism and Ethics .................. 73
Michael Harrington
Chapter Five Marxism and Ethics Today ........... 113
Elizabeth Rapaport
Chapter Six Marx and Morality ..................... 131
Allen W. Wood
ix
x CONTENTS
PART THREE FREUD
Chapter Seven Freud's Impact on Modern Morality
and Our World View ................ 147
Robert R. Holt
Chapter Eight Ethics and Excuses: The Ethical
Implications of Psychoanalysis 201
Gerald N. Izenberg
Chapter Nine Freud's Influence on the Moral
Aspects of the Physician-Patient
Relationship .......................... 209
Eugene B. Brody
Index 221
Ethical Theory and Social
Science
The Legacy of Darwin, Marx, and Freud
ARTHUR L. CAPLAN AND BRUCE JENNINGS
Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud incontestably
belong to that very small group of nineteenth- and early-twen
tieth-century thinkers whose work has left an indelible mark
on our own thought. With an intellectual boldness and creative
insight rarely matched in Western intellectual history, these
men and the theoretical movements they inspired have fun
damentally reoriented our modern understanding of biological
nature, society, and the human mind. In so doing, they effec
tively rewrote the agenda of subsequent philosophy and hu
man science.
The influence of Darwin on Marx and of both on Freud
has long been a subject of considerable interest to intellectual
historians, just as the effort to formulate a theoretical synthesis
that would somehow fuse their respective theories into some
unified or at least hyphenated whole has long provided a major
growth industry for social philosophers and critical theorists.
The results of these inquiries-particularly the latter-have
been inconclusive at best, but the motivating impulse behind
them is easy to see. If, in an age of increasingly specialized
knowledge and fragmented perspectives, there is to be any
xi