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, September 26, 2009

Three Cheers for Midwest Straussianism!--Strauss, Science, and the Zuckerts

Although I never met Leo Strauss, I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s where I studied under friends and stude...

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Idea of Species and the False Story about Essentialism

A major objection to my notion of Darwinian natural right is that Aristotelian natural right assumes an essentialist understanding of specie...

Cosmology, Morality, and Divine Law: Remi Brague's Response

Over the past two months, I have written a series of four posts on two of Remi Brague's books-- The Wisdom of the World and The Law of ...

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Remi Brague on Divine Law & Common Morality

In recent months, my posts on the question of cosmic teleology have included comments on Remi Brague--particularly, here , here , and here ....

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

C. S. Lewis and the Medieval Model

C. S. Lewis's The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964) sketches the "Medieval Model...

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Richard Weikart's New Book--HITLER'S ETHIC

What difference would it make for our view of morality if we rejected the Platonic/theistic cosmology of intelligent design in favor of a Da...

Does the Life of the Mind Require a Platonic Cosmology?

Over the past two months, I have written a series of posts on the moral and intellectual implications of Platonic cosmology, its dominance o...

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Three New Books on Darwinism, Philosophy, & Biotechnology

Some of my writing has appeared in three recently published books. Philosophy After Darwin: Classic and Contemporary Readings , edited by Mi...

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Zuckert's Plato: Teleology and Eternity

The Straussian proponents of Platonic political philosophy reject Darwinian natural right for two reasons. First, they think it promotes a...

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Darwinism, Reductionism, and the Socratic Turn

One of the most common criticisms of a Darwinian political science is that it must assume a materialist reductionism that denies the freedom...

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Nietzsche, Darwin, and Christian Morality

It is remarkable that religious believers who fear Darwinian science as a threat to religious morality can quote Friedrich Nietzsche as supp...

Friday, August 14, 2009

How Nietzsche's Pietism Overturned His Darwinism

As Nietzsche fell into madness at the beginning of January in 1889, he wrote and mailed a series of letters. A letter to Peter Gast was only...

Friday, August 07, 2009

Nietzsche and Darwin

For a long time, it has been hard for me to understand Friedrich Nietzsche's relationship to Darwin and Darwinism. On the one hand, Niet...

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