Although it has taken us a while to appreciate it, Charles Darwin changed the ground-rules for the philosophical debate. In The Descent of Man (1871/1874), Darwin proposed that moral systems should henceforth be studied as a branch of "natural history" -- that is to say, within an evolutionary framework. Darwin's "take" on morality was that it is indeed a product of the evolutionary process. He believed that the "social instincts", including even our capacity for "sympathy", "kindness" and the desire for social "approbation", are rooted in human nature; in fact, the rudiments of these behaviors can be found in other social species as well.
Peter A. Corning
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