Joseph on Nostr: 9/25 “Friedrich Nietzsche published his Genealogy of Morals in 1887. He was the ...

9/25

“Friedrich Nietzsche published his Genealogy of Morals in 1887. He was the second great sociobiologist, and, unlike Hobbes, he was inspired (or provoked) by Darwinism. As I noted in chapter 7, Nietzsche probably never read Darwin. Nietzsche’s friend Paul Rée, whose ‘tidy’ book, Origin of the Moral Sensations (1877), provoked Nietzsche’s untidy masterpiece. The Social Darwinists were sociobiologists, but certainly not great ones. In fact, their efforts almost did in the memes of their hero, by popularizing second-rate (per)versions of them. The ‘survival of the fittest,’ [Herbert] Spencer proclaimed, is not just Mother Nature’s way, but ought to be our way. According to the Social Darwinists, it is ‘natural’ for the strong to vanquish the weak, and for the rich to exploit the poor. This is simply bad thinking, and Hobbes has already shown us why.”