CIE200DD, Spring 2010 (Rein)

Third paper assignment -- either Darwin or Nietzsche-Ngugi

For this paper, you can choose from one of the following two options:

Option 1: Darwin
Imagine that you are writing in the 1860s in response to the controversy caused by
Darwin's recent publications. Your job is to show, via a solid, persuasive argument, that
it would be a disaster for civilized values, morality, and/or religion if Darwin's way of
thinking about nature were to be widely accepted. It may be helpful in addressing this
question to review the critiques of Darwin that appear on p. 105 of your CIE 200 reader
(two of them are copied below as excerpts 2 and 3). You can choose your approach --
you can focus on the religious implications of Darwin's theories, or on what you think
their psychological consequences might be, or on whatever you think will allow you to
make the strongest, most compelling argument. Feel free to draw on any of the CIE texts
from the reader, even if we didn't go over them in class.

Option 2: Nietzsche meets Ngugi

Based on your understanding of the Genealogy of Morals (the Preface and First Essay),
explain what you think Nietzsche's opinion would be of Waiyaki's story as portrayed in
The River Between. Would he think Waiyaki was doing something noble or great? Or
would he think it was pathetic and weak? Why? Assume, for the sake of the paper, that
your Nietzsche has read The River Between and thinks of it basically as a true story, and
that he thinks Waiyaki is a real person, but don't assume that he knows any more about
the story than is revealed in the novel. If you are feeling really daring, write it in the first
person (in other words, write your paper in the voice of Nietzsche himself).

Length: 1500 words. Include a word count.

Due: 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, April 6, 2010, via email to me.

As with the first two papers, give your paper a filename like the following (call it
"Darwin paper" if you're choosing the first option, "Ngugi paper" if you're choosing the
second):
[your last name] - CIE200DD - [Darwin or Ngugi] paper, draft 1 - [date
of email as MM-DD-YYYY].doc
So, for example, mine would look like this:
Rein - CIE200DD - Ngugi paper, draft 1 - 4-6-2010.doc
Excerpt 1, from Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), chapter III (CIE 200 reader, p. 89).

[U]nless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, the whole economy of nature,

with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be
dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with
gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see or we forget, that
the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are
thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their
eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always
bear in mind, that, though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all
seasons of each recurring year.

Excerpt 2, from a review of Darwin's Origin written by the scientist Adam Sedgwick and
published in the English magazine, Spectator, in 1860 (CIE 200 reader, p. 105).

The pretended physical philosophy of modern days strips Man of all his moral
attributes, or holds them of no account in the estimate of his origin and place in
the created world. A cold atheistical materialism is the tendency of the so-called
material philosophy of the present day. Not that I believe that Darwin is an atheist;
though I can not but regard his materialism as atheistical; because it ignores all
rational conception of a final cause. I think it untrue, because opposed to the
obvious course of Nature, and the very opposite of inductive truth. I therefore
think it intensely mischievous.

Excerpt 3, from a speech given by English politician Benjamin Disraeli in 1864 (CIE 200
reader, p. 105, corrected).

The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the
angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence the contrary view, which is, I
believe, foreign to the conscience of humanity.