Darwinian Conservatism by Larry Arnhart

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.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

The Yuck Factor and the Evolution of Moral Disgust

Conservatives often appeal to moral emotions such as disgust and anger as important for moral judgment. One example is conveyed in a phrase ...

Friday, February 20, 2009

Darwinian Natural Right in Primitive Law

My conception of Darwinian natural right includes an account of law. A full account of social order requires a nested hierarchy of three kin...

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Adam Gopnik on Darwin and Lincoln

It is a remarkable coincidence that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day 200 years ago--February 12, 1809. In some p...

Friday, February 06, 2009

Debating Darwin at Forbes.com

The bicentennial of Darwin's birth has brought lots of media attention to the continuing debate over the scientific, moral, political, a...

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Evolutionary Psychology's Slow Acceptance of Darwinian Morality

One sign of the radical character of Charles Darwin's ideas is that even some of his strongest supporters have rejected much of his thin...

Friday, January 23, 2009

Evolution and Thomistic Natural Law: A Reply to Stephen Pope

I have often argued that a Darwinian view of evolved human nature supports traditional natural law reasoning, particularly as developed by T...

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Another Response from John Lemos

John Lemos has sent me the following response to my last blog post on his comments. "When I say that I have no special interest in defi...

Barack Obama Is No Abraham Lincoln

For a couple of months now, we have been told that Barack Obama's First Inaugural Address was going to be comparable to Abraham Lincoln...

Monday, January 19, 2009

Another Reply to Lemos

I have posted John Lemos' response to my earlier comments on his book Commonsense Darwinism . In reading his response, a few thoughts c...

Sunday, January 18, 2009

John Lemos on the Good Human Life

Recently, I wrote a blog post responding to John Lemos' new book Commonsense Darwinism . He has written a reply, and he has given me per...

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Is Human Nature a Superstition? A Response to David Buller

Over the past twenty years, evolutionary psychology has become remarkably influential, particularly among psychologists and anthropologists....

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Darwinian Support for Aristotelian Ethics: A Reply to John Lemos

I have argued that Darwinian evolutionary biology provides an account of human nature and the natural moral sense that supports Aristotelian...

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Darwinian Human Nature in Victorian Novels

Previously, I have written about the possibility of a Darwinian literary theory . Recently, the online journal Evolutionary Psychology has ...

Friday, January 02, 2009

David Hume and the Secular Right

A couple of years ago, Heather MacDonald of The City Journal provoked a controversy among conservatives when she identified herself as a ...

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Levering's "Biblical Natural Law"

I argue that a Darwinian view of human nature supports the natural law reasoning of Thomas Aquinas. I use the term "natural law" t...

Friday, December 19, 2008

The Fascist Corporatism of Bush and Obama

It is a disturbing sign of the times that even though the bailout of the Detroit automakers failed to win congressional approval, President ...

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