
Richard Weikart is Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus. 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, racism, and ultimately Hitler's ideology. It was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2004. For more information on this book, visit darwintohitler.com.
His "From Darwin to Hitler" lecture delivered at the University of California San Diego is available here.
Dr. Weikart has also written Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) which helps explain the mystery of Hitler’s pernicious ideology by demonstrating that Hitler’s immorality flowed from a coherent ethic, inspired by an evolutionary utopian project of biologically improving the human race.
In addition to articles in scholarly journals, he recently published two books: The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life (2016), which contains chapters on materialism, Darwinism, and biological determinism, among other issues. His most recent book, Hitler’s Religion (2016), shows that Hitler was a pantheist who deified nature and based his morality on the laws of nature, especially the Darwinian struggle for existence.
Richard Weikart's Vitae can be accessed here.
Archives


Richard Weikart on How Darwinism Fueled Scientific Racism

“Morality Pills”: Ethicist Calls for Drugs to Solve COVID Non-Compliance

Darwinism, Jews, and White Nationalists
Weikart on Racism, Darwinism and Christianity
Richard Weikart on Michael Ruse’s “Compromise” with Christianity

Richard Weikart on Michael Ruse and the Darwinian Religion

Why Michael Shermer’s “Case for Scientific Humanism” Fails

Darwinian Theory and Evolutionary Psychology — A Troubling Legacy
Evolutionary Psychology Grapples with Racism and Anti-Semitism

Why Social Science Does Not Need Evolutionary Theory

David Barash’s Shocking Suggestion

On the History of Darwinism, Scientific Racism, and Hitler, Is Steven Pinker Objective?

Is Science Objective? Steven Pinker’s Counterattack Against the “War on Science”

Frankenstein 200 Years Later: Have We Heeded the Warning?

How Darwinian Evolution Informed Hitler’s Ethics

Was Hitler a Creationist? Hitler Historian Says No.

Richard Weikart on Hitler’s Religion: Complex and Contradictory

Richard Weikart: The Death of Humanity, pt. 3
