Robert Wright's Evolutionary Psychology Of Sexual Morality

Sexual morality mainly points to the views and attitudes of the male and the female, also the family morality and the generational morality. Sexual morality includes the sexual psychology,sexual actions and the sexual norms. Robert Wright mostly study the sexual psychology; Welsh and Dockens also analyze the sexual affairs, especially the human sexual actions. In Wright's masterpiece The Moral Animal—Why we are the way we are, he calls his theory the evolutionary psychology, that is to say, he applies the theory of evolution to explain the evolution of psychology, which consists of the sexual psychology. The sexual psychology is one part of his sexual psychology, so his evolutionary psychology contains the evolutionary psychology of the sexual morality.The first chapter explores the theoretical background of Wright's evolutionary psychology in order to explain how it is evolved from the social biology, furthermore, pursuits the critical position of his evolutionary psychology in his evolutionary psychology. Essentially his evolutionary psychology belongs to the social biology. As a social biologist, Wright has his own opinions of the social biology. His evolutionary psychology covers every part of the social lives and the sexual morality psychology is the key one.The second chapter explores how Wright analyzes and explains the sexual morality psychology, besides, the connection of the psychology and the sexual norms among our prevailed culture. Firstly we try to definite his sexual morality psychology; secondly study how Wright classifies the sexual morality psychology; thirdly how he describes the different sexual psychology between male and female; lastly how he explains the reasons why there are divergences between them. The theory Wright applies, especially the parental investments theory which is primarily pointed out by Trivers, is not his own originality. Wright applies the theory in the terms of biology, and it's same with his sexual morality psychology. The so-called psychology here is rooted in the theory of natural selection, nevertheless, which is not the typical evolutional theory built up in the basis of modern genetics, especially the gene selection theory the social biologists emphasize, in another word, they treat gene as the basic unit of the natural selection. Finally we explore whether his evolutionary psychology of sexual morality consists of the value appraisal or moral norms.The third chapter looks into the appliance of Wright's evolutionary psychology of sexual morality to Darwin. Wright believes Darwin himself is the best example to explain the theory of sexual morality psychology. He gradually studies the attitudes of Darwin towards marriage, selection of Emma as his wife, the marriage of Darwin and Emma. and the relationship between Darwin and his children, which illustrates the practical feasibility of Wright's theory. The last chapter is to appraise Wright's theory. As a social Darwinist, Wright's theory highly attracts the scholars at home and abroad. As the author of this thesis, I profoundly explore Wright's theory from the point of view of the Marxist theory.