Traditionalist conservatives and classical liberals need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human nature supports Burkean conservatives and Lockean liberals in their realist view of human imperfectibility, and in their commitment to ordered liberty as rooted in natural desires, cultural traditions, and prudential judgments. Arnhart's email address is larnhart1@niu.edu.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Darwin, Lincoln, and the Lost Cause of the American South
John Barr has written a fascinating essay for the "U.S. Intellectual History Blog." He suggests that proponents of the "Lost Cause" of the Southern Confederacy have loathed both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, because both challenged the "cozy cosmos" of the antebellum South in which the Biblical moral cosmology of a Great Chain of Being supported a hierarchical class society. This fits with much of what I have said about the common themes uniting Darwin and Lincoln.
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