Imágenes religiosas 1. Imagen de Dios

Philosophers and social theorists have long concerned themselves with the complex relationship between human nature and the body politic. Renais- sance writer Niccolò Machiavelli created a early form of political realism in his treatise The Prince (c. 1516), advancing a frighteningly pragmatic approach to leadership, “[ I ]t is better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”17

As a result, his work is often simplistically interpreted as an amoral justifica- tion of tyranny; the name Machiavelli and the term “Machiavellian” are now synonymous with unscrupulous, cunning behavior and expedient dishonesty. Shortly afterwards, British philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s pessimistic view of human nature led him to argue that a strong political state ( headed by a king) was necessary to protect society from descending into a so-called state of nature, where a “war of all men against all men” would occur.18 _Hobbes

was convinced that human societies had developed as they are because having strong guidelines to interactions between individuals was for the benefit of all. Machiavelli and Hobbes became touchstones for countless later theorists with pessimistic views of human nature and society.

In his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) English demographer Thomas Malthus announced that drastic measures were needed to curb popu- lation growth. Malthus claimed that, because population grows geometrically while food supply increases arithmetically, the great masses of humanity would suffer from limited supplies of food by the middle of the following century. To combat the looming specter of widespread famine, Malthus advocated limitations on reproduction—although only for the poor. That his analysis of human suffering focused exclusively on population and food supply did

little to dampen enthusiasm for his ideas; neither did his failure to anticipate the growth of increasingly sophisticated and productive farming techniques. Yet, though repeatedly and comprehensively debunked,19 _{the grim Malthu-}

sian vision still exerts its influence today. Historically, however, Malthus’s Essay and its focus on the evolution of population had another unforeseen conse- quence: it made a young English naturalist think not just in terms of competi- tion between different species, but competition between members of a single species.

Of all the scientific discoveries that have challenged religion’s primacy, none has been as devastating as Darwin’s theory of descent with modifi- cation. Charles Darwin (1809–1882), a naturalist and biologist, presented the fruits of his life’s research in The Origin of Species (1859), later apply- ing his findings directly to humanity in The Descent of Man (1871). Darwin showed that species evolve over huge periods of time, periods of time far longer than the biblical account of world history allowed for. Similar theo- ries had been advanced previously, but Darwin, indebted in part to Malthus’ underscoring of intraspecies competition in the “struggle for existence,”20

provided the first account of the mechanism by which species evolved: nat- ural selection. In any reproductive population, Darwin showed, favorable traits would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones would tend to be destroyed. Over time, the population would evolve. It was a simple idea, but uniquely powerful.

The Darwinian revolution was too important to be limited to the natural sciences; it was also a philosophical revolution. It removed humanity from the center of creation, denied that nature was benevolent or designed, directly repudiated the Genesis creation story, and undermined (for many, eliminated) the role for a creator. The long-term implications for religious belief in par- ticular were profound. Key processes in the natural world could be explained without reference to divine or biblical authority, and the anthropocentric as- sumptions of theism were shattered. By revealing the natural mechanisms that drive organic change, Darwin contributed enormously to the demysti- fication of nature and is subsequently one of the most influential men in his- tory, his name virtually synonymous with the vivid description of “nature red in tooth and claw,” and the terms “evolution by natural selection” and “sur- vival of the fittest.” The philosophical implications of his work are still being debated today.

The phrase “survival of the fittest” was, however, not the formulation of Darwin but of his contemporary, the philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820– 1903). Spencer was devoted to the general notion of evolution— particularly the earlier theory of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck—and social progress well be- fore the publication of Origin of Species. For example, in his 1857 article

“Progress: Its Law and Causes,” he argued that “[the] law of organic progress is the law of all progress,” and applied its principles well beyond merely the biological realm:

Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through a process of continuous differentiation, holds throughout.21

With his belief in the parallel nature of biological and social develop- ment, Spencer is often regarded as the chief architect of social Darwinism, an early, misguided attempt at sociobiology. Though the theory was born in some of the Spencer’s extensive writings—it was not a major theme of his—it was promoted most eagerly by late nineteenth-century capitalists and figures such as the American sociologist William Graham Sumner.22 _Social

Darwinism is rooted in the nineteenth-century social engineering tradition of Malthus and others, although its advocates eagerly applied the enormous descriptive power of Darwinian terminology to social thought.

Social Darwinism claims that the fittest members of human society will naturally dominate, and that the weaker, less able to compete members will naturally be dominated. It further asserts that this stratification of society into those strong, worthy, and successful over those weak, unworthy, and unpro- ductive is morally right, because it represents the natural development of soci- ety along evolutionary principles: not only will the strong dominate the weak, but the strong should dominate the weak. It is therefore morally wrong to as- sist someone weaker than oneself, for such assistance is unnatural and would be assisting the survival and possible reproduction of less desirable, parasitic elements of society. Sumner, echoing Spencer’s fixation on progress, stated the central thesis bluntly:

Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, in- equality, survival of the fittest; not liberty, inequality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.23

The ethical implications of this theorizing became its most notorious leg- acy, especially when combined with another influential contemporary theory. Francis Galton, a geneticist and Darwin’s half-cousin, coined the term eu-

genics in 1883 to describe the process of planned hereditary improvement of

the human race by controlled selective breeding. Galton encouraged the use of eugenics to assist the so-called more suitable races or strains of blood in

overcoming the less suitable; in practice, this entailed encouraging the breed- ing of those with supposedly noble qualities and the forced sterilization of the weak, disabled, or poor. Social Darwinism and eugenics were logical bed- fellows and became popular with Western intellectuals. Winston Churchill, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Alexander Graham Bell, and numer- ous American industrialists openly endorsed and applied the concepts well into the twentieth century. Their popularity led to enormously unjust eu- genics programs in a number of countries, including America, and played a central role in Nazi racial policy. The use of social Darwinist and eugenic thought to justify mass exterminations during World War II showed all too clearly the moral failings of the theories, and both fields were almost entirely abandoned.