The overall aim of this article is to redress some of the deeply rooted and widely held prejudices against Charles Darwin's ethics and social theory. The topic is in particular Darwin's consideration of ethics as laid out most prominently in his book on the descent of man. By allowing Darwin to `speak for himself', I hope to deprive simplified biologistic interpretations of their basis. Moreover, my aim is to present some other, surprising results. In contrast to widely held expectations connected with Darwin, I want to show first of all, that his ethics is not primarily a biological ethics, that it, secondly, does not constitute an evolutionary ethics, and that thirdly, it does not constitute what is called `Social Darwinism'. The title of my article intends to emphasize how important Darwin thought it was for us to cultivate a moral sense and to refrain from violence in order to develop and preserve this moral sense. Although for explaining the possibility of natural selection among organisms Darwin drew on the population principle put forth by the British national economist Thomas Robert Malthus and adopted the idea of a struggle for life as the motor of natural selection, Darwin did not adopt the economist's theologico-metaphysical premises. For Malthus nature and its laws -- in this case the population principle -- are invested with a normative status whose recognition and description are at the same time the formulation of a norm prescribed by God. Darwin divorces Malthus' principle from its theologian and normative framework. This law serves him exclusively as a means for explaining the descent of species, not as a moral or ethical rule. This fact is significant for an adequate assessment of Darwin's ethics.
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