Krowy Karola Darwina i „bydło” Wacława Nałkowskiego. O paradoksach etyki ewolucjonistycznej
Charles Darwin’s Cows and Wacław Nałkowski’s “Cattle”. On the Paradoxes of Evolutionary Ethics

Summary/Abstract: The article concentrates on two issues. Firstly, it concerns the problem whether it is justified to connect Charles Darwin’s theory with the complex of theoretical phenomena collectively called “Social Darwinism”, which developed during the second half of nineteenth century. In order to deal with the problem, the article refers to the context of social and biological sciences. It also focuses on discursive similarities and differences between Darwinian evolutionism and other concepts, with which it was usually associated (eugenics, anthropology, Herbert Spencer’s synthetic philosophy). Secondly, the article undertakes the problem of ideological and anti-middle-class texts of Wacław Nałkowski: the author and coauthor of first Polish modernistic manifests. Forajter points to paradoxes of the statements of the author of The Outposts (Forpoczty), who, exorcizing the bases typical of middle-class formation, resorted to arguments and rhetoric characteristic of the Social Darwinists, whom he himself opposed.

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