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Old July 26th, 2014 #1
Gerry Fable
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Default Ernst Haeckel's evolutionary Monism and National Socialism



The Scientific Origins of National Socialism

The name Charles Darwin inevitably springs to mind when the name of Adolf Hitler and natural selection is mentioned in the same breath. But academic research suggests that it was German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, and not Darwin's seminal, 'The Origin of Species.', that influenced the ideology of National Socialism.


A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY?

Quote:
“In West Germany a major conference on Haeckel, organized in 1978 by the Association of German Societies for the History of Medicine, gave expression to a widely held opinion in that country, when it set out to run determined interference against the idea that Haeckel, the enlightened, progressive, secular, and above all materialist thinker could be associated with mysticism and the genesis of National Socialism.”

Born in 1834 and educated in Berlin, Ernst Haeckel formed the German Monist League. A pantheistic philosophical society that proposed the unity of all organic and physical nature. 'In monism, the universe is only composed of one substance—matter—and any intelligence or “soul” must be an inherent property of that sole substance.'

Ernst Haeckel's theories on evolutionary biology and monism attracted many leading atheist thinkers of the day, including none other than Lenin himself. Although, it seems Ernst Haeckel wasn't quite the atheist history has painted him out to be.

Quote:
Haeckel is portrayed as a materialist, empiricist, and left-wing progressive. Haeckel was an idealist, mystic, elitist, racist reactionary.

Ernst Haeckel 1834 - 1919

In his major philosophical work, 'Monism as Connecting Religion and Science: The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science' (1892), Ernst Haeckel wrote:

1. “The monistic idea of God, which alone is compatible with our present knowledge of nature, recognises the Divine spirit in all things.

God is everywhere. As Giordano Bruno has it: ‘There is one Spirit in all things, and no body is so small that it does not contain a part of the Divine substance whereby it is animated’.” (Haeckel 1895, 78).

2. “Of the various systems of pantheism which for long have given expression more or less clearly to the monistic conception of God, the most perfect is certainly that of Spinoza.” (Haeckel 1895, 79).

3. “Ever more clearly are we compelled by reflection to recognise that God is not to be placed over against the material world as an external being, but must be placed as a ‘Divine power’ or ‘moving Spirit’ within the cosmos itself.” (Haeckel 1895, 15).

4. “The charge of atheism which still continues to be levelled against our pantheism, and against the monism which lies at its root, no longer finds a response among the really educated classes of the present day.” (Haeckel 1895, 80-81).

5. “I conclude my monistic Confession of Faith with the words: ‘May God, the Spirit of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, be with us’.” (Haeckel 1895, 89).



'Monism as Connecting Religion and Science: The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science' (1892),


The deistic worldview of National Socialism may have been directly influenced by the German Darwinist and pantheist thinker Ernst Haeckel...

Quote:
Today we are in the middle of another revolutionary epoch. Revolutionary scientific understandings of genetics and race have found political expression in the National Socialist worldview. Once again a world of appearances collapsed, which had concealed from our eyes the true nature of humanity and the connections between body, soul, and spirit. The foundation of the Christian worldview is the doctrine of the separation of body and soul; the soul and spirit belong to a world independent of the physical, free of natural laws, and they are even to a certain degree able to free the human body from its natural setting. It is a major shift when racial theory recognizes the unity of body, soul and spirit and sees them as a whole that follows the eternal laws of nature.
Quote:
The human soul does not exist independent of the body, as the Church teaches. Body and soul are an inseparable unity. The living body is the manifestation of the soul.
Der Reichsführer SS/SS-Hauptamt, Rassenpolitik (Berlin, 1943



Quote:
When The Scientific Origins of National Socialism initially appeared, the Times Literary Supplement called it a "very well-argued thesis... that is completely successful... and leaves the reader to extract his own moral lessons." Medical History, in its review of The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, said, "His book is essential for understanding modern Germany. It has a general message derived from the events in Germany, where scientific data were permitted to take on a mystical signficiance... with ghastly consequences." Bruce Chatwin, in the New York Review of Books, called the book "brilliant." Now available in paperback, with a new introduction by the author, this seminal work will be of interest to intellectual historians, as well as those interested in twentieth-century Europe.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Scientific-Origins-National-Socialism/dp/0765805812 http://www.amazon.com/The-Scientific-Origins-National-Socialism/dp/0765805812


Reader's comment

Quote:
Short review -- get this book. It's only 180 pages or so, but it's an excellent reference book on your shelf the next time some numbskull lazily hurls around the "Nazi" label against any political ideology he or she opposes. Very well documented and researched.

This book describes the origins of National Socialist thought (the "Volk" movement), and its connections to Darwinism, evolution, and nature worship. The author does an excellent job at the connecting of dots between Ernst Haeckel's evolutionary Monism and Hitler's philosophy. This should be read by all, because the evil ideology of National Socialism is irresponsibly misrepresented in pop culture as a capitalistic, Christian enterprise, when nothing could be further from the truth. An excellent companion to "Nazi Economics" by Barkai, another good myth-buster.

It's kind of scary how little people know about the intellectual origins of Nazism, how it's glossed over by professors and "intellectuals" who find that the skeletal backbone of National Socialism hits a little too close to home.
The Scientific Origins of National Socialism free preview link.
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Old July 27th, 2014 #2
Gerry Fable
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Historical Essay
Ernst Haeckel’s Alleged Anti-Semitism and
Contributions to Nazi Biology

Robert J. Richards


Quote:
Yet the efforts to recruit the author of Die Weltrathsel to the Nazi cause foundered almost immediately because of a quasi-official monitum issued by Gunther Hecht, who represented the National Socialist Party’s Department of Race Politics (Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP). Hecht, also a member of the Zoological Institute in Berlin, explicitly rejected the suggestion that Haeckel’s materialistic conceptions should be regarded as having contributed to the doctrines of the Party:

The common position of materialistic monism is philosophically rejected completely by the volkisch-biological view of National Socialism. Any further or continuing scientific-philosophic disputes concerning this belong exclusively to the area of scientific research. The party and its representatives must not only reject a part of the Haeckelian conception—other parts of it have occasionally been advanced—but, more generally, every internal party dispute that involves the particulars of research and the teachings of Haeckel must cease. (Hecht 1937–1938: 285)17
According to this article the National Socialists rejected Haecke's monism on grounds that it was materialistic. Which is correct if the definition of monism, the philosophy that attracted atheist thinkers such as Lenin, is: 'In monism, the universe is only composed of one substance—matter—and any intelligence or “soul” must be an inherent property of that sole substance.'

However, Haeckel suggested that matter and spirit is infused when he penned, “Ever more clearly are we compelled by reflection to recognise that God is not to be placed over against the material world as an external being, but must be placed as a ‘Divine power’ or ‘moving Spirit’ within the cosmos itself.” (Haeckel 1895, 15).

Quote:
Haeckel rejected the dualism which believes that matter and spirit are two separate substances, and developed his own world view called Monism. This was materialist in the philosophical sense, though Haeckel sometimes denied this, since he believed that matter as widely infused with "psychic" sensitivity. He was also a determinist, and did not believe in free will.

Haeckel expounded what he called the "Law of Substance" - "the eternal persistence of matter and energy, their unvarying constancy throughout the entire universe." He regarded matter and energy as "two inseparable attributes of the one underlying substance" which he identified with God.

Haeckel's pantheism was essentially rational and aesthetic. His God was identical with the material universe, and the main ways of relating to it were through science (discovering its true nature) and through art (appreciating its beauty).
http://www.pantheism.net/paul/history/haeckel.htm

The above quote from a pantheist site suggests that Haeckel's monism was indeed materialistic. So this would clearly explain why the NSDAP rejected Haeckel's monism on grounds that it conflicted presumably with the NS worldview of the unity of 'body, soul, spirit'.

I'm having trouble fathoming Haeckel's monism and what he exactly meant by 'God'. I must assume then, as a 'rational' scientist, he wanted to prove that 'God' is matter, and matter is 'God'. That spirit doesn't exist. So it would appear that any influence Haeckel had on the NSDAP, it was from his research as a biologist, and not evolutionary monism.

The deistic worldview that is National Socialism, and the pantheism of Haeckel's monism, are very similar, and appear almost identical at first glance. So I can understand why it caused disruption in the party. It had me confused for sure, and Daniel Gasman's (Jewish?!) thesis in 'The Scientific Origins of National Socialism' is plain wrong. Perhaps Gasman got confused due to a lack of information that is available for historians to study about this subject?

Myth 19
That Darwin and Haeckel were Complicit in Nazi Biology
Robert J. Richards


Quote:
In 1971, Daniel Gasman saw published his Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League, the dissertation he had produced at the University of Chicago two years before. That book argued that Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), the great champion of Darwinism in Germany, had special responsibility for contributing to Nazi extermination biology. Gasman stacked up the evidence: that Haeckel’s Darwinian monism (which held that no metaphysical distinction separated man from animals) was racist; that he was a virulent anti-Semite; and that leading Nazis had adopted his monistic conceptions and racial views. Quite uncritically, scores of historians have accepted Gasman’s claim, the most prominent of whom, at least among historians of biology, has been Stephen Jay Gould.
Quote:
2. The number of historians that have unquestioningly adopted Gasman’s
thesis is quite large. Here are just a few authors who recently have: J. W.
Burrow (2000: 256 and 258); Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (2004: 13); Scott
Gordon (1991: 528); Joseph L. Graves (2001: 130–131); Robert Jay Lifton
(2000: 125 and 441); Richard M. Lerner (1992: 33); Daniel Pick (1989: 28);
Pat Shipman (1994: 134–135; Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari (1998:
136). Gasman’s thesis, however, has indeed been critically scrutinized and
disputed by a few—too few—historians: Robert Bannister (1979: 133) and
Richard J. Evans (1997: 64). Paul Weindling (1989) offers the most balanced
assessment of Haeckel and other German biologist in the context of the Nazi
movement
From Haeckel to Hitler:
The Anatomy of a Controversy
by Daniel Gasman


Gasman's rebuttal of Robert J. Richards

Quote:
Darwin did not proselytize on behalf of an evolutionary religion that would replace Christianity, nor did Darwin believe in the existence of a world soul, or in pan-psychism,
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Last edited by Gerry Fable; July 29th, 2014 at 04:27 AM.
 
Old July 27th, 2014 #3
Vance Stubbs
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Obviously monism wasn't off the table for Hitler, since Schopenhauer believed the world was essentially comprised of Will.

I don't know where the idea that monism believes everything to be "essentially matter" comes from. Every monist I've ever heard of believed that everything was essentially God/Logos/The Absolute and that matter was one aspect of it, like Jesus as an aspect of God or Vishnu as an aspect of Brahma.

Likewise I don't know what "matter is the only substance" is supposed to mean. Matter is substance is matter, what's material is substantial, if "spirit" is also a substance what's the difference between spirit and matter? Spirit can't be perceived by humans? Spirit comes from God and is magical? What's the significance of spirit-as-a-substance?

Dunno where Hecht was coming from. Maybe he was confused, or thought Haeckel was confusing, and didn't feel like dealing with it.

Haeckel seems quite Nazist, though anyone reading Schopenhauer and Darwin could easily come to the same conclusions.
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Old July 28th, 2014 #4
Gerry Fable
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Quote:
Spirit comes from God and is magical? What's the significance of spirit-as-a-substance?
I believe that matter and spirit co-exist in a symbiotic relationship. I also believe that spirit is the opposite of matter and is divine. However, I don't believe spirit has any magical properties, other than the fact it is responsible for our unique individuality. Which is quite magical I suppose, but not in a 'supernatural' way.

I believe that individual consciousness is somewhere else outside of the brain beyond causal space and time. Carl Gustav Jung termed this the 'acausal' . It's all very esoteric and mind blowing stuff but David Myatt has penned some articles on the 'science' of the acausal.

According to String Theory there is at least nine dimensions to our physical reality. What we see, feel and imagine with our senses is only a fraction of reality.
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Last edited by Gerry Fable; July 28th, 2014 at 08:35 PM.
 
Old July 28th, 2014 #5
Vance Stubbs
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Hmm, I'm more inclined to see something's "spirit" as a pattern-in-itself, its formula or blueprint, which is part of a universal order more generally. A person, a song, a number, or a genotype could be said to be comprised entirely of spirit. The evolution of Chaos to Cosmos is the march of the spirit through matter. But I only vaguely understand what I mean by that.
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Old August 22nd, 2014 #6
Gerry Fable
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NAZI GERMANY AND THE ENVIRONMENT: POLICIES AND VIEWS

More conjecture about Ernst Haeckel's pioneering research and his influence on the ideology of National Socialism.
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Old October 20th, 2014 #7
Gerry Fable
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From Haeckel to Hitler:
The Anatomy of a Controversy


by Daniel Gasman
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