Larry Arnhart (born January 13, 1949) is a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science at

Northern Illinois University Northern Illinois University (NIU) is a public research university in DeKalb, Illinois, United States. It was founded as "Northern Illinois State Normal School" in 1895 by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld, initially to provide the state with c ...

DeKalb, Illinois DeKalb ( ) is a city in DeKalb County, Illinois, United States. The population was 40,290 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The city is named after decorated Franconian-French war hero Johann de Kalb, who died during the Ameri ...

. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Arnhart has been described as one of the most prominent advocates of contemporary

classical liberalism Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited governmen ...

, along with

Milton Friedman Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and ...

George Stigler George Joseph Stigler (; January 17, 1911 – December 1, 1991) was an American economist. He was the 1982 laureate in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and is considered a key leader of the Chicago school of economics. Early life and e ...

Friedrich Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek (8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992) was an Austrian-born British academic and philosopher. He is known for his contributions to political economy, political philosophy and intellectual history. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobe ...

and

Thomas Sowell Thomas Sowell ( ; born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, economic historian, and social and political commentator. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on T ...

. His areas of teaching and research include the history of political philosophy, biopolitical theory, and American political thought. Arnhart is the author of five books and more than forty peer-reviewed articles.

Background and career

He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

in 1977, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 1974, and a B.A. in Politics from the

University of Dallas The University of Dallas is a Private university, private Catholic church, Catholic university in Irving, Texas, United States. Established in 1956, it is Higher education accreditation in the United States, accredited by the Southern Associat ...

in 1971. In the Department of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, Arnhart teaches in the fields of

political theory Political philosophy studies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of politics. It examines the nature, scope, and legitimacy of political institutions, such as states. This field investigates different forms of government, ranging from d ...

and

biopolitics Biopolitics is a concept popularized by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the mid-20th century. At its core, biopolitics explores how governmental power operates through the management and regulation of a population's bodies and lives. ...

. Arnhart is best known as a scholar in the history of political philosophy and as a proponent of "Darwinian natural right," "Darwinian

conservatism Conservatism is a Philosophy of culture, cultural, Social philosophy, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, Convention (norm), customs, and Value (ethics and social science ...

," and " Aristotelian

liberalism Liberalism is a Political philosophy, political and moral philosophy based on the Individual rights, rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law. ...

." He argues that the tradition of

ethical naturalism Ethical naturalism (also called moral naturalism or naturalistic cognitivistic definism) is the meta-ethical view that holds that moral properties and facts are reducible to natural properties and can be studied through empirical or scientific me ...

from

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas ( ; ; – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest, the foremost Scholasticism, Scholastic thinker, as well as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the W ...

Alasdair MacIntyre Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (12 January 1929 – 21 May 2025) was a Scottish-American philosopher who contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's '' After Virtue'' (1981) is one of ...

can be supported by a

Darwinian ''Darwinism'' is a term used to describe a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others. The theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural sele ...

account of

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

as rooted in human biological nature, which combines liberty and order, freedom and virtue. In defending Darwinian naturalism, Arnhart has debated the proponents of "intelligent design theory" by suggesting that they employ a purely negative rhetoric of criticizing Darwinian evolutionary theory, while offering no positive theory of exactly where, when, and how the " intelligent designer" intervenes in nature to create "

irreducibly complex In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole. Emergence plays a central role ...

" mechanisms. Arnhart has debated the leading advocates of

intelligent design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".#Numbers 2006, Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for it ...

—

Michael Behe Michael Joseph Behe ( ; born January 18, 1952) is an American biochemist and an advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID). Behe serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, an ...

William Dembski William Albert Dembski (born July 18, 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the ...

, John West, Jonathan Wells, and

Richard Weikart Richard Weikart (born July 1958) is a professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, advocate of intelligent design and senior fellow for the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute. In 1997 he joined the edit ...

—all of whom are fellows of the

Discovery Institute The Discovery Institute (DI) is a conservatism in the United States, politically conservative think tank that advocates the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific concept Article available froUniversiteit Gent of intelligent design (ID). It was fou ...

. John West has written a book attacking Arnhart — ''Darwin's Conservatives: A Misguided Quest.'' In defending Darwinian conservatism, Arnhart tries to persuade conservatives that Darwinian science supports the conservative belief that social order arises not from rational planning but from the

spontaneous order Spontaneous order, also named self-organization in the hard sciences, is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos. The term "self-organization" is more often used for physical changes and biological processes, while "spontaneous ...

of instincts and habits. He suggests that Darwinian biology sustains conservative social thought by showing how the human capacity for spontaneous order arises from social instincts and a moral sense shaped by

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the Heredity, heritable traits characteristic of a population over generation ...

in human evolutionary history. He has also developed a Darwinian argument for

. Recently, Arnhart finished writing the fourth edition of his book ''Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Pinker.'' He is working on a new book — ''Darwinian Liberalism: The Evolutionary Science of Political Philosophy.'' This book will apply his Darwinian thinking to the history of political philosophy, while arguing for classical liberalism as supported by evolutionary science.

Works

"Human Nature is Here to Stay", ''The New Atlantis'', Number 2, Summer 2003, pp. 65–78
* ''Aristotle on Political Reasoning: A Commentary on the “Rhetoric”''. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981; paperback edition, 1986). * ''Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls'', first edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987), second edition (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1993), third edition (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2002). Turkish translation: Siyasi Dusunce Tarihi (Ankara: Adres Yayinlari, 2004). * ''Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Pinker'', fourth edition (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2016). * ''Darwinian Natural Right: The Biological Ethics of Human Nature'' (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998). * ''Darwinian Conservatism'' (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2005). * ''Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question'' (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2009).

References

External links

Larry Arnhart blog

YouTube video
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arnhart, Larry American political scientists Northern Illinois University faculty University of Chicago alumni People from DeKalb, Illinois University of Dallas alumni Living people People from Big Spring, Texas 1949 births