File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9801, message 33


Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 19:10:22 +0100
From: Massimiliano Marinelli <m.marinelli-AT-fastnet.it>
Subject: Re: Nietzsche on Mill and Darwin


Steven E. Callihan wrote:
>Nietzsche takes pains to disassociate his thinking, the will to power
>specifically, from any kind of teleology of strength, from the notion of
>evolution as progress, from Spencerism, as you pointed out, I believe, but
>also from Darwin's own perhaps unfortunate attempts to defend and explain
>his own theory (the phrase "survival of the fittest" was his, after all). 

I agree with Steven, but ... only two remarks:
1) there is a great difference between Spencer theory and evolution theory.
The first is "optimistic", the latter is nihilistic
Darwin, as philosopher, can be a phlegmatic, (J.T. Duryea)  but, as a
scientist, he was nihilistic.
So in BGE 253 N. names Darwin as  a mediocre englishman, but in BGE 9 the
picture of nature is darwinist.

2) On the survival of the fittest,  I remember that we know the fittest
only  "a posteriori".
There are a casual mutation and a natural selection: that is all.


Ciao, Max
Massimiliano Marinelli .
Bioethics Department, Urbino Italy




	--- from list nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005