Saturday, November 26, 2016

Political Philosophy and Evolutionism

Though some version of Evolutionary Theory is now widely accepted, its implications for Political Philosophy have rarely been considered.  To begin with, if the thesis is that Human History is an episode in Natural History, then any pattern of events in the former must be derived from the principles that govern the latter, e. g. Survival, Adaptation, Variation, Mutation, etc.  Accordingly, the goal of the formation of a Polity must be derived from some such principle.  Furthermore, the fundamental subject of the episode is the Species, so any positing of its individual members as foundations of a Polity, including attributes such as 'freedom', 'right', etc., is, as is, ungrounded.  In other words, Evolutionism invalidates Modern Political Philosophy, as well as its Contemporary successors, to the extent that they accept the undermined premises of their predecessors.

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