The Eugenic Philosophy is alive in our Culture

An article by historian Lucetta Scaraffia concerning the translation into Italian  for the first time of the 1920 book by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, titled: Allowing the destruction of life unworthy of life. The article entitled: If Life is 'unworthy of being lived.' that was published in the L'Osservatore Romano offers an historical evaluation of the importance of the book and then it concludes that the basic ideology of the book, that is eugenics or in other words, the elimination of people who are genetically inferior or mentally ill, is alive and well in this culture.

Many people wrongly suggest that this book was a result of the Nazi movement in order to minimize the negative reality of the concepts that are promoted in this book. Binding and Hoche published this book in 1920, before the founding of the Nazi movement. We know that the book sold well and the ideology within this book strongly influenced the Nazi movement towards it destructive ideology, but the book is not a Nazi text but rather a text that influenced Nazi thought. In fact, Alfred Hoche rejected the Nazi party.

The book was based on a concept that it was compassionate to kill people who were "suffering" and in turn it would cleanse society to kill people who are genetically inferior.

I have read the English translation of this book several times. This book is proof that modern day social darwinisn, leads to a belief that some human lives are not equal to other human lives, but that killing these people is necessary for the health and welfare of society but also as a means of compassionately "dealing with" people who "live lives unworthy of life."

Peter Singer

People who question the statement that eugenics is alive in well in our society only need to read the writings of philosopher Peter Singer. For the longest time people have written critical comments about Singer's philosophy without recognizing that his philosophical principles have now become the primary philosophy of our time. People trained in philosophical principles need to attack the very foundation of Singer's philosophy.

If you are not yet aware, Singer defines "personhood" in relation to the ability of a human being to have "self awareness." This philosophical principle leads to the approval of euthanasia for: children born with disabilities (Groningen Protocol), people with cognitive disabilities, people with dementia or Alzheimers disease and others. Singer also promotes in his philosophy a concept that society needs to maximize happiness by ensuring the greatest level of happiness for the greatest number of people. Therefore the elimination of suffering is a paramount focus for society. This can only be ultimately achieved by eliminating the sufferer.

A prime example of Peter Singer's philosophy being presented as mainstream philosophical thought is the Royal Society of Canada report: End of Life Decision Making. It is shocking how the one-sided intentionally chosen authors of this report were allowed to publish a philosophical section that would make Singer, Binding and Hoche proud. They even thanked Peter Singer for helping them edit the report.

Further to that, the recent Quebec government Dying with Dignity report justifies its conclusions with references to the fatally flawed Royal Society of Canada report.

The following is the article written by Lucetta Scaraffia as it appeared in the L'Osservatore Romano:

If life is 'unworthy of being lived'

Lucetta Scaraffia

The book by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, Die Freigabe der Venrichtung lebensunwerten Lebens(allowing the destruction of life unworthy of living) which came out in Germany in 1920 has at last been translated into Italian (in English it is: Permitting the Destruction of Unworthy Life: Its Extent and Form, translated by W.E. Wright, in Issues in Law and Medicine 1992, 8:231-265). 

I say “at last”, because this is a text that marks a watershed. It has inspired many important reflections that are only partially explained in the introduction on 19th-century history – very concentrated at the legal level – by the two editors, Ernesto De Cristofaro and Carlo Saletti. 

It reveals, in fact, that as well as the good fortune enjoyed in Germany in the first half of the 20th century – at the time of the rise of Nazism the definition of euthanasia in the well known Brockhaus Encyclopedia was inspired by their work and quoted them – reflection on eugenics, taken to its extremes, was widespread and was shared even before the Nazis came to power thanks to learned academics which the Nazis were not. Binding, a jurist who died in 1920 and Hoche, a psychiatrist and a pupil of Ernst Haeckel, the scholar who brought Darwinian evolutionism to Germany – even resigned from the university when the Nazis came to power. Therefore, although the Nazis were later to make great use of this book, spreading the basic opinions found in it, it treated ideas that had germinated in a previous culture: eugenic Darwinism, very widespread in Europe in the first half of the 19th century. 

The book may be interpreted in two ways: as an irremediably outmoded text linked to the Nazi ideology, if the accent is put on the theme – developed especially by Binding – of the power of the State over human lives. The idea of the German people, in fact – conceived as an ethnologically homogeneous unit constituted by strong individuals in good health – was raised to a powerful body to which the interest of every individual life must be subordinate. Yet, it is a very topical text; in the essays of the two authors the excessive power of the State over the individual, present without any doubt, constitutes solely one aspect – now obsolete – in the reasoning. In the reasons used to justify – indeed, to express the hope for – the elimination of people seriously ill or affected by psychological ailments we rediscover reasoning and words that are still in use today among the supporters of euthanasia or of the selection of foetuses. 

Binding and Hoche, in fact, maintain that life cannot be considered life in the full sense of those who, because of diseases, are exposed to a painful and hopeless agony, or the life of incurable idiots whose existence drags with no purpose or usefulness, imposing on the community a heavy and pointless burden. With regard to these people, the two scholars invented a new definition which was to enjoy great success even after the defeat of Nazism: “lives unworthy of being lived”. A definition which paved the way to the elimination of the sick and the unfit, permitting these homicides to be justified with a morally appreciable motivation: they in fact spoke of “charitable death” (Gnadentod). These are the same words that recur today recur in the writings of many contemporary bioethicists, and of many politicians who support legislative proposals of a euthanasic type. As the editors write in the introduction, “the notion of life as a good that deserves protection is henceforth cast off from the anchor of any metaphysical postulation, any doctrine of natural law, and is led towards a semantics of concreteness and immanence: life has value as long as it procures pleasure and is free from pain”. We therefore see that this book, precisely because of its grimly up to date characters, must strongly embarrass those who champion euthanasia in the belief that it has nothing to do with Nazism. 

Hoche also proves to be a representative of the scientistic attitude, still alive today, which holds that science is never wrong and is therefore as deserving of faith as a dogma. Indeed,  in proposing the elimination of the mentally ill, he holds that the medical science of the time is perfectly able to establish, without any margin of error, whether or not a psychologically sick person is incurable. 

Contempt for imperfect human life, over estimation of the abilities of science are two attitudes that are still firmly present in our time, to show that eugenics is still alive and has not been wiped out together with  the Nazi past. And this is also because people only partially identified with the latter. As the book of Binding and Hoche proves.
                                                                                             Lucetta Scaraffia