The Development of the Idea of Equality of Opportunity in Evolutionary Social Theory in the Late-Nineteenth-Century Britain

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25884051
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: History of thought
• Research Institution: Kushiro Public University of Economics
• Principal Investigator: FUJITA YUH 釧路公立大学, 経済学部, 講師 (90710830)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-08-30 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 思想史 / 西洋史 / ヴィクトリア時代研究 / 進化社会理論 / 社会進化論 / リベラリズム / 社会主義 / 機会の平等

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In the context of British evolutionary social theory in the 1890s, I have analysed how Benjamin Kidd presents the idea of equality of opportunity in his social evolutionism, developed in Social Evolution, and have compared and contrasted this with Alfred Russel Wallace's evolutionary socialism, the core of which is the ideal of equality of opportunity. Their common feature is that they connected the idea of equality of opportunity with the Darwinian mechanism of biological evolution. Also, I have made an inquiry on articles about the social problem published in about the 1890s, and have explored the context of the idea of equality of opportunity developed in evolutionary social theory. These analyses have lead to the hypothesis that evolutionary theory played a key role in the rise of the idea in that period.

Free Research Field

近代イギリス思想史