Evolution, domination, history Herbert Spencer and the social organism

The lecture analyzes Spencer’s foundation of social science on the biological paradigm as a political project, whose aim is to establish the illegitimacy of both State’s intervention, and collective action. The discussion of his conception of the individual helps highlighting the political character of the general doctrine of evolution in the light of the lot it assigns to those who are excluded from it – the unfit – and those who are condemned not to evolve – workers and women – whose social positions reveal the persistence of domination within voluntary cooperation. Spencer’s evolutionary realism is a strategy of historical exposition aimed both to justify the present of industrial society and to limit the range of future transformations in the name of its past.

Paola Rudan is Associate professor in History of Political Thought at the Department of History, University of Bologna. Her research focuses on the transatlantic dimension of Eighteenth and Nineteenth century political thought, and in particular on the revolutions in North America and France, the South American wars of independence and post-colonial constitutional process. Her research also addresses the history of women’s political thought, feminist and Marxist political theory. She is the author of monographs on Simón Bolívar’s and Jeremy Bentham’s social and political thought, and of a book on the history of the concept of "woman." She recently edited a special issue of the journal "Scienza&Politica. Per una storia delle dottrine" on the politics of algorithm, and a special issue of the journal "Filosofia politica" on the concept of "evolution."