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Drago Đurić

University of Belgrade

Darwin’s Naturalization of Ethics

Historical Place of the Theory of Evolution

„Man is a part of nature“. This is today almost part of the folk psychology, a usual point of view. As far as the traditions of philosophy and science are concerned, however, Greek atomists were the first to take this stand. But back then, as in European modern times, that view was more of a bare metaphysical claim, a fruit of speculation, without devised argumentation or explanation based on scientific methodology and facts. Many historians of thought, for example, feel obligated to remind us of Spinoza and his thesis that „it is impossible, that man should not be a part of Nature“ (Spinoza 1997, part 4, prop. IV), as well as of his criticism of teleology, especially the way he elaborated it in the Appendix to the first part of his Ethics, where he writes that „there is no need to show to at length, that nature has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments“ (Spinoza 1997, part 1, Appendix). It wasn’t until the naturalists of the 19th century that someone took an effort to systematically support that thesis. One of the major preconditions for that was the sudden development of the natural sciences.

At the turn of the 18th century, great effort was invested into the description and classification of natural phenomena, especially those...