Darwin and Nietzsche on Genealogy

Taking a genealogical approach to an idea -- what is its lineage, family tree, or antecedent chain of births? -- is not new.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau had arguably taken a similar approach to moral degradation and inauthentic living in his "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality" (1754).  (See, e.g., two prior notes on this, here and here.)  It does seem, however, that genealogy more explicitly comes into its own as a method of inquiry in the nineteenth century.  Sigmund Freud himself later will follow much the same path in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930).  When one reads Freud's exploring the genealogical history of human unhappiness with civilization, which he explains by tracing the evolution of guilt in the development of the super-ego, one detects not only the influence of Rousseau's incipient genealogical explorations, but also the more mature and distinct projects of nineteenth-century luminaries Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Darwin (1809-1882) and Nietzsche (1844-1900) both emphasize genealogy in their respective scientific and philosophical investigations. They believe that the present is a byproduct of the historical development of the past; however, Nietzsche, unlike Darwin, did not view the preservation of all traits through evolutionary development as favorable to the human species, especially in the case of morality.

Charles Darwin, 1854

Darwin scrutinizes animal details in nature. He theorizes that progressive development of physical traits in a species offers the best explanation for how the species came to be the way it is now: “This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.” Because “natural selection can act only through and for the good of each being,” he assumes further that minor propensities are positive and utilitarian. There is also a social community benefit in natural selection: “In social animals it will adapt the structure of each individual for the benefit of the community; if each in consequence profits by the selected change” (On the Origin of Species [1859], ch. 4; my emphasis). Here are two important concepts: (1) evolutionary development over time that is (2) positive.

A third implication is that for Darwin there is no ideal human essence:  “...species...are merely artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect; but we shall at least be freed from the vain search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species” (OS, ch. 14; my emphasis). The truth of humans’ present state is a result, not a predetermined goal, of its struggle for existence. Adaptive changes survive; those that foster weakness become extinct. When Darwin writes at the end of The Descent of Man (1871) that “[m]an still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin,” he asserts that humans’ current existence reflects the accumulated history of generational change. Humans with their “lowly origin” are the products of an evolutionary process common to all creatures and are not intrinsically superior because of special creation by God.

Nietzsche employs a similar genealogical method to trace the evolution of humans in their social relations, particularly their moral feelings. He agrees with Darwin that there is no ideal essence of things. Nietzsche’s concern in the "Second Essay" of On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) is the genealogy, or social evolution, of the human feeling of guilt (“bad conscience”) in humans. Our moral concepts are protean; they are not fixed. They are social conventions. They adapt to the will of communities. Moral instincts are not ideal essences independent of their social use.

For Darwin, moral instincts derive from social instincts: “These instincts are highly complex ... the more important elements are love, and the distinct emotion of sympathy” (DM, conclusion). These moral instincts work to preserve the species. Darwin concludes that morality is an adaptive construct, "highly beneficial to the species" and "in all probability ... acquired through natural selection," not something ideal or perfect.

Friedrich Nietzsche, c. 1875

Nietzsche agrees that morality, or conscience, is a social construct. The imposition of law in culture created meanings for what is “just” and “unjust”: "To talk of just and unjust in themselves has no sense whatsoever; it’s obvious that in themselves harming, oppressing, exploiting, destroying cannot be ‘unjust,’ inasmuch as life essentially works that way, that is, in its basic functions it harms, oppresses, exploits, and destroys...” (512).  For Nietzsche, as Michael Roth explains, “in order to understand values, you have to understand its historical development.” This is the genealogical method.  However, Nietzsche is more disapproving of the result than Darwin.  Nietzsche emphasizes not that the evolution of morality has preserved the life of species, but that morality is a result of a contest between the weak and the strong.  He explores how the bad conscience governed by morality works to control us.

This adaptive trait is not freeing for humans but confining, not natural but artificial, not healthy but an illness.  “I regard the bad conscience,” he explains, “as the serious illness that man was bound to contract" when he became civilized in society (520).  Bad conscience, Nietzsche continues, is “the result of a forcible sundering from his animal past, as it were a leap and plunge into new surroundings and conditions of existence, a declaration of war against the old instincts upon which his strength, joy, and terribleness had rested hitherto” (521).  This process of subduing is “the essence of life”:  “in all events a will to power is operating” (515, 514).

For Darwin, natural selection in physical and social life only yields positive results, namely, the preservation of strong and desirable traits. Nietzsche concurs with Darwin about the lack of a foundation for the meanings that we assign to the dignity of human life.  But for Nietzsche the construction of social norms of “love” and “empathy” merely induced a mechanism for remembering transgression, and the evolution of morality is a sign of historical decline to establish more systems of control.  Darwin interprets natural selection via the struggle for existence neutrally or positively:   it just is the way of the world, and it perpetuates life. Nietzsche employs a similar genealogical method in moral philosophy but interprets the surviving adaptations as hindering the natural expression of human life independent of artificial ethical constructs. For Nietzsche, unlike for Darwin, historical accretion of these moral traits is an imposition of control and the denial of instinct and intensity.

At the outset, I noted that Freud would later apply a genealogical method of inquiry to psychoanalysis, that is, to explore mental and emotional, conscious and subconscious, components and faculties.  It may be worth sketching only briefly a few points of contact between him, specifically his concept of the super-ego, and key predecessors.

• For Freud, the super-ego, the seat of guilt and remorse, is Rousseauean in that its development in connection with the evolution -- really, with the advent -- of civilization helps to explain humanity's present misery within it:  namely, because the super-ego redirects humanity's primal traits of self-preservation and empathy.
• For Freud, the super-ego is Darwinian in that it reflects its genetic past history in its present function:  namely, the exercise of an adaptive ability that enables humans to live in community by restraining the warring destructive and erotic impulses.
• For Freud, the super-ego is Nietzschean in that it works to control the intense libidinal instincts of humans, especially the natural impulse to aggressiveness. 

What comes to the fore through our own genealogical observations of these modernist figures, perhaps, is the path toward the preoccupation with the individual.  Rousseau, Darwin, and Nietzsche all discuss humanity or civilization as a whole.  They explore their respective topics by asking questions about individuals collectively in community.  With Nietzsche, however, one detects a leaning toward the individual's exercise of the will to power against the constraints imposed by society's use of the same will to power.  This type of rebelling will lead to more authentic existence, the sort that Rousseau champions.  Then with Freud the emphasis on the individual comes into its own.  And the contemporary effects on western social morals and institutions of Freud's paternity are all too evident.  That, however, is a subject for another time.