Richard Weikart
Dr. Weikart is Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus, and Fellow at the Center for Science and Culture of Discovery Institute, Seattle.
He completed his Ph.D. in modern European history at the University of Iowa in 1994, receiving the biennial prize of the Forum for History of Human Sciences for the best dissertation in that field. His revised dissertation, Socialist Darwinism: Evolution in German Socialist Thought from Marx to Bernstein, was published in 1999.
His book, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, documents the influence of naturalistic evolution on ethical thought, euthanasia, militarism, and racism—and ultimately Hitler's ideology.
With an extensive background in modern German and modern European intellectual history, he has published articles in journals such as Isis, Journal of the History of Ideas, German Studies Review, History of European Ideas, European Legacy, and Fides et Historia. One such article received the Selma V. Forkosch Prize for the best article in 1993 in the Journal of the History of Ideas.
Articles by Richard Weikart
“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism... neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the worlds greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.”