Abstract
Did Hitler even have an ethic? Since Hitler is the epitome of evil, some will think it absurd even to consider the possibility that morality played a significant role in his worldview. In order to perpetrate such radical evil, many assume, he must have been either an immoral opportunist or else as an amoral nihilist. Gisela Bock, for instance, in her works on eugenics and sterilization properly stresses the Nazi devaluing of human life and rejection of humane ethics.1 However, by accenting only what the Nazis opposed morally, she only gives one side of the story. Did they replace humane ethics with an inhumane ethic, or did they abandon morality altogether?
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Notes
Richard Weikart, “Progress through Racial Extermination: Social Darwinism, Eugenics and Pacifism in Germany, 1860–1918,” German Studies Review 26 (2003): 273–94.
Mario Di Gregorio provides a more nuanced view of Haeckel’s racism in “Reflections of a Nonpolitical Naturalist: Ernst Haeckel, Wilhelm Bleek, Friedrich Müller and the Meaning of Language,” Journal of the History of Biology 35 (2002): 79–109.
J. Lanz von Liebenfels, “Adolf Harpf als Prediger der Rassenweisheit,” Ostara 1 (March 1907): 38–9.
J. Lanz von Liebenfels, Ostara 66 (1913): 1.
Auerbach, Hitler’s politische Lehrjahre, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25 (1977): 8–9.
Hans Günther, “Hass,” Deutschlands Erneureung 5 (1921): 398–400.
Adolf Hitler, “Warum musste ein 8. November kommen?” Deutschlands Erneuerung 8 (April 1924): 199–207
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© 2004 Richard Weikart
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Weikart, R. (2004). Hitler’s Ethic. In: From Darwin to Hitler. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10986-6_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10986-6_12
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