By Mary Midgley
Popular thinker Mary Midgley explores the character of our ethical structure to problem the view that reduces human motivation to self-interest. Midgley argues cogently and convincingly that straightforward, one-sided bills of human causes, comparable to the 'selfish gene' tendency in contemporary neo-Darwinian proposal, will be illuminating yet are regularly unrealistic. Such neatness, she exhibits, can't be imposed on human psychology. She returns to Darwin's unique writings to teach how the reductive individualism that's now awarded as Darwinism doesn't derive from Darwin yet from a much broader, Hobbesian culture in Enlightenment considering. She finds the egocentric gene speculation as a cultural accretion that's simply no longer noticeable in nature. Heroic independence isn't really a practical objective for Homo sapiens. we're, as Darwin observed, earthly organisms, framed to engage always with each other and with the advanced ecosystems of which we're a tiny half. For us, bonds aren't simply restraints but in addition lifelines.
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Additional info for The Solitary Self: Darwin and the Selfish Gene
Example text
This has allowed members of the scientifically minded public at last to accept as fact something that has certainly been a central element in their experience throughout their lives. They can now admit that we actually do perceive the anger, scorn, affection or suffering of the solitary self those around us quite as directly as we see lights or hear noises, a feat that, however surprising, is an essential part of our equipment as social animals. Is it not interesting that the twentieth century could not admit this well-known fact until it was revealed through a machine?
These are obvious examples of the way in which humans are naturally linked to those around them by feelings of fellowship, just as other social creatures are. No monstrous metaphysical change is needed to explain the presence of spontaneous generosity. Altruism, the direct wish to help others, is not a wild fantasy, not something that needs a conspiracy theory to account for it, but an everyday aspect of human motives. As Hume pointed out, a sympathetic involvement in what goes on around us is not optional; it is a basic part of our nature.
Theorists, however, have been so strongly attracted by the pugnacious interpretation that they have treated it as a central part of Darwinism. As Kropotkin noted: It happened with Darwin’s theory as it always happens with theories having any bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it according to his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more …. They came to conceive the animal world as a world of perpetual struggle among half-starved individuals thirsting for each other’s blood.