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- Title
Darwin's Bulldog and Huxley's Ape.
- Authors
Johnson, Keith Leslie
- Abstract
This essay determines the literal genealogy with a conceptual genealogy in Aldous Huxley's 1948 novel "Ape and Essence" in relation to Darwinism. The main observations in the literary piece are the absence of a robust ethical distinction between humans and animals in the Darwinian model, the evolutionary narrative of ethics that is deemed dissatisfactory, the lack of a strong ethical narrative, and the notion of humankind in a state of creaturely abjection without the possibility of righteousness. Also analyzed are the element of gradualism and the notion of justice which overtook sympathy as the central term in Huxley's ethics.
- Subjects
APE &; Essence (Book); HUXLEY, Aldous, 1894-1963; DARWIN, Charles, 1809-1882; BIOLOGICAL evolution; ETHICS in literature; ETHICS; NARRATIVES; HUMAN beings in literature; JUSTICE in literature; SYMPATHY in literature; RIGHTEOUSNESS in literature
- Publication
Twentieth Century Literature (Twentieth Century Literature), 2009, Vol 55, Issue 4, p572
- ISSN
0041-462X
- Publication type
Essay
- DOI
10.1215/0041462X-2009-1006