Biopolitics: Charles Darwin, Moral Philosophy, and the Growth of a Governmental Social Science

FAIN: FA-54286-08

Stephen G. Engelmann
Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Chicago, IL 60612-4305)

Scholars in a range of disciplines are searching for a biological basis for human cooperation. Biopolitics critically studies the history of this endeavor, which has its roots in British moral philosophy. My subject is the moral science of Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man, its precursors and successors; I demonstrate the surprising extent to which biology, as we know it, is a social and ultimately governmental science.