Larry Arnhart is taking a tour of the Galapagos Islands in Darwin’s footsteps. Some pictures and maps included:
From part 1:
‘The primary reason why some religious believers object to Darwin’s theory is not, I think, the worry about whether it is scientifically true, but the worry about its moral and political implications. If human beings are to be explained as purely products of a natural evolutionary process, what does that mean for human morality? Can our human moral sense be explained empirically as rooted in our evolved human nature? Or does that moral sense point to some transcendent or cosmic standard of right and wrong?’
Do we make the moral laws, or do the moral laws make us?
And from part 5:
‘Those with Platonic longings for a moral cosmology conclude from this that Darwinism is nihilism, because they cannot accept the moral anthropology of Darwinian science–that human morality arises from evolved human nature without any cosmic normativity to support it. Here is where Darwinian science continues the tradition of Lucretian liberalism as revived by David Hume and Adam Smith, which forces us to consider the possibility that Friedrich Nietzsche was right in claiming that we could properly “describe the entire phenomenon of morality as animal.”
This is also unfortunately the trip on which Kenneth Minogue passed away:
‘Although Ken was not persuaded by my argument, it is significant that classical liberals like Ken and others at the MPS/Galapagos conference were willing to devote an entire week in the Galapagos pondering the possible implications of evolutionary science for the moral and political thought of liberalism’
Ken Minogue and William F. Buckley discuss ideology, and which institutions and ideas can protect individuals from idealism:
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On this site, see: Roger Kimball At Arma Virumque: ‘Kenneth Minogue 1930-2013′…William F. Buckley And Kenneth Minogue Discuss Ideology
From Darwinian Conservatism: ‘Nietzsche–Aristocratic Radical or Aristocratic Liberal?’…Here’s Nietzsche scholar J.P. Stern on Nietzsche’s anti-Christian, anti-secular morality (Kant, utilitarians), anti-democratic, and anti-Greek (except the “heroic” Greek) biases……
Leon Wieseltier At The New Republic: ‘A Darwinist Mob Goes After a Serious Philosopher’
Franz De Waal At The NY Times 10/17/10: ‘Morals Without God?’…
The neo-classicism of Leo Strauss and the reason/revelation distinction: Repost: From the Cambridge Companion To Plato-T.H. Irwin’s “Plato: The intellectual Background’…
Update And Repost- From YouTube: Leo Strauss On The Meno-More On The Fact/Value Distinction?’…Harvey Mansfield At Defining Ideas: ‘Democracy Without Politics?’
Can Kant do all that heavy lifting…what are some of the dangers with what’s become of Kantian reason?: From Bryan Magee’s Talking Philosophy On Youtube: Geoffrey Warnock On Kant…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty” …