Darwin Kant Darwin and Kant British Physicist Essay

Darwin Kant

Darwin and Kant

British physicist Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species was published in 1859 to widespread and heated discourse. While the text offers a wide range of ideas on the biological advancement of our species as well as the general development of the ecologies of the world, it is almost certainly its exploration of the concept of Natural Selection that would lend the text importance not just scientifically and intellectually but indeed to our sociological advancement as well. This joins Darwin's work into a conversation sparked some 70 years prior by German philosopher Immanuel Kant with the equally controversial Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. The discussion here considers their respective implications to the human condition.

Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection:

Natural Selection presumes that all creatures are biologically driven to evolve toward the means to survive their respective environments.This notion gives over to the idea that every species, man included, must achieve a certain degree of fitness for long-term viability. As the text by Landry (2001) explains, natural selection is a process of "scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life." (Landry, 1)

Competitiveness vs. Antagonism

One of the features of Darwin's work which makes it so ripe for controversy is the manner in which its ideas can be extrapolated to excuse various acts of oppression and abuses of human rights. Much of this is couched in….....