• Administration
  • Spanish Classes
  • Society.
  • Culture.
  • English
    • Arabic
    • Bulgarian
    • Croatian
    • Czech
    • Danish
    • Dutch
    • English
    • Estonian
    • Finnish
    • French
    • Georgian
    • German
    • Greek
    • Hebrew
    • Hindi
    • Hungarian
    • Indonesian
    • Italian
    • Japanese
    • Korean
    • Latvian
    • Lithuanian
    • Norwegian
    • Persian
    • Polish
    • Portuguese
    • Romanian
    • Russian
    • Serbian
    • Slovak
    • Slovenian
    • Swedish
    • Thai
    • Turkish
    • Ukrainian
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Definition of Social Darwinism
    • Science.
    • Get To Know Us
    • Psychology. Top Definitions
    • History. Top Definitions

    Definition of Social Darwinism

    Miscellanea   /   by admin   /   May 18, 2022

    concept definition

    The concept of social Darwinism comes from an extrapolation of the theory of evolution, understood in terms of a survival of the fittest, to the explanation of the social order. In this framework, it proposes a foundation of the social struggle on the ideas of biological evolutionism, developed mainly by biologists Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829).

    lilen gomez | May. 2022
    Professor in Philosophy

    Broadly speaking, social Darwinism holds that human societies historically progress according to natural laws, namely, law of natural selection, through the survival of the fittest individuals. Thus, there would be a biological determinism of human groups, which would necessarily justify the existence of relations of oppression between classes and the inequality Between the men. That is why, well into the 20th century, this notion will be widely questioned, not only from theoretical currents inscribed in the sciences social sciences and the humanities, but also within the realm of the biological sciences, for example, from the point of view of genetics modern.

    instagram story viewer

    The main referent of the idea of ​​social Darwinism has been Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), according to whom human society it behaved like a living organism, in such a way that it had to respond to the same laws as any other organism. In this way, he found a natural causation of society, which was expressed in a identity Come in evolution social and progress.

    The origin of the concept

    Although Darwin's main work, The origin of species (1859) was not the first to suggest the idea of ​​evolution and the mechanisms of natural selection in the field of biology, it had a great pregnance that can be explained by the context of its publication. England was, towards the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, in full colonial expansion and at the height of the Industrial Revolution, whose counterpart had been the deepening of the inequality between the bourgeoisie and the class worker. At this juncture, theories were developed such as that of the economist Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who established the hypothesis that population growth, faced with the availability of food resources under favorable production conditions, is always resolved through a struggle for survival.

    The Malthusian theory concluded that, by virtue of the natural dynamics of populations, it was useless allocate social policies to combat economic inequality, since this was the necessary result of laws natural. Thus, it was a justification ideological of the politics liberal laissez faire, according to which the state should not intervene in the free game of the market, self-regulated by an "invisible hand", in the terms of Adam Smith (1723-1790). In this way, a scientific-conceptual framework was formed that served as support for the interests of the ruling classes.

    Around 1851, Herbert Spencer recovers, in his work Social Statics, such a conceptual framework, under the figure of the survival of the fittest as the engine of social relations, always traversed by competition to survive. According to Spencer, science confirmed that the most biologically effective individuals are those who prevail in said competition. under this climate period, the economic and social doctrines of Malthus and Spencer were associated, among the English bourgeoisie, to the Darwinian explanation of the evolution of populations, from a perspective that was convenient to his social position.

    Social Darwinism and the naturalistic fallacy

    Notwithstanding what has been said, there are many criticisms of the interpretation that the Darwinian theory of evolution can be explained as a succession of competition processes with a naturally beneficial purpose and, therefore, acceptable in moral terms within societies human. In this line, it has been called naturalistic fallacy to the idea that transpolating a natural order to the explanation of social processes of the human being would be ethically acceptable. This fallacy is based on three premises: first, that natural processes occur according to ends; second, that such ends are naturally perfect; and, thirdly, as a consequence, that all the previous stages are progressively perfected until reaching such an end.

    Since the Darwinian theory of evolution does not hold, in any case, that evolutionary processes tend towards a previously determined end, on the one hand, it could not be interpreted under the scheme of the fallacy naturalist; On the other hand, the name of social "Darwinism" that this trend has received is erroneous, since it lacks support in the developments of Darwin himself.

    Bibliographic references

    Perez, J. L. m. (2010). The ideology of "social Darwinism": the social policy of Herbert Spencer (II). Labor Documentation, (90), 11-57.

    Sandin, M. (2000). On a redundancy: social Darwinism. Asclepius, 52(2), 27-50.

    Topics in Social Darwinism
    Tags cloud
    • Miscellanea
    Rating
    0
    Views
    0
    Comments
    Recommend to friends
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    SUBSCRIBE
    Subscribe to comments
    YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
    • Importance of Professional Ethics
      Miscellanea
      08/08/2023
      Importance of Professional Ethics
    • Concept in Definition ABC
      Miscellanea
      04/07/2021
      Concept in Definition ABC
    • Concept in Definition ABC
      Miscellanea
      04/07/2021
      Concept in Definition ABC
    Social
    7555 Fans
    Like
    8392 Followers
    Follow
    2926 Subscribers
    Subscribers
    Categories
    Administration
    Spanish Classes
    Society.
    Culture.
    Science.
    Get To Know Us
    Psychology. Top Definitions
    History. Top Definitions
    Examples
    Kitchen
    Basic Knowledge
    Accounting
    Contracts
    Css
    Culture And Society
    Curriculum Vitae
    Right
    Design
    Art
    Job
    Polls
    Essays
    Writings
    Philosophy
    Finance
    Physics
    Geography
    Story
    Mexico History
    Asp
    Popular posts
    Importance of Professional Ethics
    Importance of Professional Ethics
    Miscellanea
    08/08/2023
    Concept in Definition ABC
    Concept in Definition ABC
    Miscellanea
    04/07/2021
    Concept in Definition ABC
    Concept in Definition ABC
    Miscellanea
    04/07/2021

    Tags

    • Basic Knowledge
    • Accounting
    • Contracts
    • Css
    • Culture And Society
    • Curriculum Vitae
    • Right
    • Design
    • Art
    • Job
    • Polls
    • Essays
    • Writings
    • Philosophy
    • Finance
    • Physics
    • Geography
    • Story
    • Mexico History
    • Asp
    • Administration
    • Spanish Classes
    • Society.
    • Culture.
    • Science.
    • Get To Know Us
    • Psychology. Top Definitions
    • History. Top Definitions
    • Examples
    • Kitchen
    Privacy

    © Copyright 2025 by Educational resource. All Rights Reserved.