Concept
Struggle for existence
Overview
concept
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Struggle for existence is discussed.
Against this theory of Darwin Herr Duehring urges that the origin of the idea of the struggle for existence is, as Darwin himself confessed, based on the views of the political economist and theorist, Malthus, on the population question, and he covers it with all the abuse appropriate to the clerical Malthusian views on keeping down the population. Now it happens that Darwin never said that the cause of the struggle…
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. Two canine animals in a time of dearth, may be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live.
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
_Geometrical Ratio of Increase._ A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. Every being, which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of…
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
a chapter is titled for it; names the idea; opens on it
But as an investigator of nature, a person ought to emerge from his paltry human nook: and in nature the state of distress does not _prevail_, but superfluity, even prodigality to the extent of folly. The struggle for existence is only an _exception_, a temporary restriction of the will to live; the struggle, be it great or small, turns everywhere on predominance, on increase and expansion, on power, in conformity…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom
states what it is; names the idea
It thus operated most unfortunately upon the social conscience of mankind. For it directed almost exclusive attention to the aspect of struggle for existence in a fixed environment. To a large extent the environment is fixed, and to this extent there is a struggle for existence. It is folly to look at the universe through rose-tinted spectacles. We must admit the struggle. The question is, who is to be eliminated.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
names the idea
Related ideas
- Heraclitus
- Homeostasis
- Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
- Immanuel Kant
- History of Animals
- Leviathan (Hobbes book)
- Exponential growth
- Mutation
- Natural selection
- Harriet Martineau
- Natural theology
- Ontogeny
- Russia
- Richard Dawkins
- University of Cambridge
- State of nature
- Johann Gottfried Herder
- Thomas Hobbes
- On the Origin of Species
- Teleological argument
- Aristotle
- Thomas Robert Malthus
- William Paley
- An Essay on the Principle of Population
Place in the tradition
Part of Lebensphilosophie.