Fw: Berkowitz's review of Singer's *Darwinian Left* /I

[Ken Hanly]

I wondered about this review as well. Who is this guy? If he really read much
SInger he would not place so  much weight on the example of the child and the
bugatti. Indeed, Singer accepts that people will argue that the first obligation
of many of us will be to our families but then he points out that many families in
developed countries are ridiculously well off compared to those in absolute
poverty and could supply considerable aid without even harming the welfare of
their families.

    Berkowitz' remarks about Aristotle and Aquinas with respect to ethics is
weird. He claims their ethics primarily involves lists of sexual dos and donts.
This is news to me. Certainly it is not true of Aristotle. His basic concept seems
to be self-realisation or eudaimonia. I can't remember him emphasizing sex at all.
Is there some golden mean: fornication at least once a day and at most three ?

        Peter Kropotkin in Mutual Aid turns Darwinism to leftist purposes. I don't
see why Singer need depend on any genetic research. Kropotkin simply points out
numerous examples from the realm of animals where co-operation seems to have been
an effective survival strategy: ants, bees, wolves, etc. etc. Of course there are
also symbiotic relationships as birds feeding off ticks etc. on animals and on and
on. This review ticked me off so much I didn't even finish it.

   Cheers, Ken Hanly

Scott Martens wrote:


> I have to wonder at some of the things Berkowitz is saying.
>
> I don't see Darwinism as much of a source for ethics, and I'm not very
> interested in Singer, but some things in this review are just dead wrong.
>
> > According to Singer, the longstanding aversion to Darwin on the left
> > derives from the view that evolutionary theory teaches that man is by
> > nature selfish.
>
> Which leftists?  John Maynard Smith was a pretty hard core Marxist.  Stephen J
> Gould is well to the left of centre.  Richard Dawkins is a Labour leftist at
> the very least.  Nearly everyone important in evolutionary theory (that I can
> think of) that has well-known political tendencies is a leftist of some sort.
> True, some of the postmodernists have problems with evolution, but some
> postmodernists have problems with science in general.  I don't see any real
> "aversion to Darwin" on the left.
>
> It's too easy to pick out anti-Darwinist (and anti-scientific) thinking on the
> right.
>
> I find it very ironic that the controversies in evolutionary psychology are
> almost always between deeply leftist scientists, yet the fallout is almost all
> taking place among conservative thinkers.
>
> > But what is most
> > devastating to Singer's thesis that the left should ground itself in the
> > theory of evolution is that the sociobiological interpretation of Darwin
> > favored by Singer subverts the extreme egalitarian aspirations in the
> > defense of which Singer writes.
>
> How so?  I don't see anything in this review that makes that case.  The whole
> point of neodarwinism is that group survival and group well-being matter too.
> That's a pretty socialist idea.  I don't think recognition of the existence of
> human greed, or of unequal skills, is in any way a conservative idea, only
> surrendering to it is.
>
> Scott Martens