Evolutionary ethics and Haeckelian monism: the case of Heinrich Schmidt's Harmonie (1931).,Theory in Biosciences

当前位置： X-MOL 学术 › Theory Biosci. › 论文详情

Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)

Evolutionary ethics and Haeckelian monism: the case of Heinrich Schmidt's Harmonie (1931).
Theory in Biosciences ( IF 1.3 ) Pub Date : 2019-03-13 , DOI: 10.1007/s12064-019-00288-0
Ian G Stewart _{1,

2} , Uwe Hossfeld ₃ , Georgy S Levit ₄

Affiliation

This paper offers the first ever published discussion of the ethical treatise Harmonie: Versuch einer monistischen Ethik [Harmony: an attempt at a monistic ethics] by Heinrich Schmidt (1874–1935), one of the leading figures in the circle of Ernst Haeckel. Published near the end of Schmidt’s life (1931), it constituted a kind of summation of decades of intense involvement in the “project” of German monism that found its epicentre in Jena, and in Haeckel’s attempts at founding it on Darwinian and Goethian lines. After a brief description of Schmidt’s life and works, we summarize the main lines of Haeckel’s evolutionary thought and their expression in his sparse ethical writings. A detailed description of Harmonie follows, in which we seek to demonstrate Schmidt’s close adherence to Haeckel’s monist foundations, as well as indicate where he expanded his own thinking in directions beyond Haeckel’s. Lastly, we suggest that Harmonie, perhaps contrary to Schmidt’s wishes after 1933, nevertheless offers textual evidence of the deep incompatibility of Schmidt’s understanding of ethics to the sociopolitical ideology of National Socialism. This is consistent with the historical record of how Haeckel’s monism, together with those like Schmidt who worked tirelessly to promote it, was negatively regarded by the NSDAP.

更新日期：2019-03-13

点击分享查看原文

点击收藏

阅读更多本刊最新论文本刊介绍/投稿指南11