Locke, Darwin, and the American Science of Modern Virtue

Abstract

American “progress” has typically been reconstructed in terms of the Lockean understanding of who we are. That “progress” is only ambiguously progress. It highlights the truth about our personal freedom, but at the expense of the truth about who we are as free and relational beings. So our Lockeanism receives and deserves Darwinian criticism—criticism from the point of view of the social animals evolutionary theory says we are. This article is a scientific prelude to our openness to a theory that incorporates what’s true about Locke, what’s true about Darwin, and more.