Abstract

From a teleological concept of a species you can derive normative orientation, more precisely the aim of the good realisation of the immanent telos. But can you draw any ethical consequences from Darwin's scientific evolutionary theory? To answer this question, some preliminary clarification is necessary concerning both sides, Darwinism as well as ethical theory. Who is the bearer of evolution and how far do the claims of evolutionary theory reach? Nowadays, one would say that it is neither the species nor the group which carries the process of evolution, but the gene. In what follows I use this revised model. What is the role of evolution once we look at man? Does man disrupt evolutionary descriptions as soon as he has developed language and culture, or does it make sense to talk of cultural evolution, and what does the term mean in this context? The debate on the possibility and scope of evolutionary ethics (socio-biology) often suffers from a lack of differentiation in the underlying concepts. I suggest that we distinguish three (interdependent) aspects: form, content and motivation. Having sketched the background assumptions of my paper, in the main part I'll try to find out what ethicists can learn from evolutionism and what are the limits of socio-biology. Finally, I'll explicate the consequences of Darwinism regarding the scope of morality: animals being our ancestors or relatives, endowed with similar capacities, they cannot be disregarded as objects of our moral obligations