ABSTRACT
At the most abstract level, Darwin’s gift to philosophy is the gift of genealogy. By showing decisively that the human species is a part of the Tree of Life, Darwin encourages us to study ourselves in the same way we would study any other species. We should see the human capacities which have fascinated philosophers – the capacity to praise, to blame, to be moved, to cooperate, to know, to plan and to act – as the products of historical processes, capacities whose functions have been modified over time, and which still bear the marks of earlier roles. These capacities have shaped our physical, biological and social environments, and they have been shaped by those environments. In these general respects Darwin’s views are close to those of the nineteenth century’s other great genealogist, Friedrich Nietzsche.
