The descent of blushing: On the connection between Darwin's anti-slavery positions and his explanation of the origin of emotional expression

Abstract

Demond and Moore showed how Darwin's antislavery ideals made it possible to explain both the origin and the content of many of Darwin's ideas. In this paper, I will attempt to link Darwinian explanations of the origin of the expressions of emotion to such ideals, trying to show that there are deeper connections than the mere defense of monogenism. For Darwin's explanation of the evolutionary origin of blushing implies that all races and their common ancestry have similar mental capacities. Moreover, accepting Darwinian explanations for the origin of expressions provides a contingent image of evolution that implies the dissolution of the explanatory frameworks to which racist and slavery literature appealed. This literature presupposed absolute standards of perfection and beauty that made it possible to order different races in a chain of being.