Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)—the great evolutionary theologian, paleontologist, and Jesuit priest—continues to be a point of contention for many thinkers concerned with theology, evolution, and their relationship. Certainly I agree with John P. Slattery that we must not allow admiration for figures of the past to cloud our vision regarding their faults (Commonweal, “Teilhard & Eugenics,” March 12, 2019). However, Slattery’s reflections on the controversial Jesuit call for some correction. For example, Slattery’s research indicating that only two sources, one of them unpublished, “mention Teilhard’s connections to eugenics” comes up short. Both Robert Speaight’s The Life of Teilhard de Chardin (1967) and Joseph Grau’s Morality and the Human Future in Teilhard de Chardin (1976), neither of which Slattery mentions in his Commonweal article, consider the issue. The latter source even includes a section titled “The Incorporated Energy of Individual and Social Eugenics,” in which Grau shows some of the difficulty of discerning what Teilhard’s rather speculative and scattered comments concerning eugenics actually come to.
Part of the difficulty is that the word “eugenics,” coined by Francis Galton in 1883, covered quite a lot of ground in the following decades. Today the term conjures associations with forced sterilization, non-consenting experiments on human subjects, and the Nazi final solution; the associations occur with good reason too, for the junk “science” of eugenics was forwarded to justify these actions. At the same time, soon after the term was coined, it circulated among a variety of other meanings, including prenatal care, the monitoring of the environments in which children were raised, and promotion of the general health of the population. According to William Schneider, this was especially true in Teilhard’s native France, where the persistence of the Lamarckian idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics combined with concern about the country’s diminished population to promote healthy living conditions and a tendency to steer clear of inhibiting population growth in any sector of the nation (The Journal of Modern History, June, 1982). Teilhard himself, in a brief passage about eugenics in The Phenomenon of Man (written 1938-1940, though not published until 1955), lists such concerns as “the distribution of the resources of the globe; the control of the trek towards unpopulated areas; the optimum use of the powers set free by mechanization,” and much more. If nothing else, he seems to be thinking of eugenics here in rather expansive terms.
This is not to say that there aren’t some moments in Teilhard that send a chill through me, such as when he writes about the “momentary prominence of certain of [humanity’s] branches over others.” Of course, the idea of momentary prominence works against the notion that some branches of humanity are inherently superior to others. Further, it remains unclear just what he means in this context by “prominence.” It occurs to me that some cultures through history have shown bursts of energy that allow a kind of prominence (which is far from the same as superiority) over others. For example, medieval Muslim cultures were far ahead of other branches of medieval life in the translation of and commentary on the works of Aristotle, whose work would go on to be influential for hundreds of years. Without these Muslim scholars, whose work was valuable in itself, Thomas Aquinas, who had no Greek, would have lacked a major influence on his thought.
Surely the discernment of Teilhard’s attitudes toward eugenics, including how he thought about the meaning of the term, is a worthwhile point of research, though even more urgent is the work of carrying forward his legacy of thinking in terms of the evolving cosmos in which we actually live. In the area of theology, such thinkers as Ilia Delio and John Haught are contributing powerful insights. Although many of us—myself included—accept evolution, we have yet to incorporate it into our feel for the world in which we actually live. Whatever his faults might have been, Teilhard remains a great example of the hard work required in bringing one’s sensibilities up to date.