Since the beginning of the 20th century, radical movements have been promoting euthanasia in the West. These movements originated in Anglo-Saxon and German eugenicist and ‘humanist’ circles.

These movements were initially the result of the rise of 18th-century materialism, which denied the sanctity of human life. The life that animates matter and pulls it out of inertia is said to come from matter itself, as does thought.

They were then influenced by Malthusianism, which introduced a quantitative assessment of human lives into political thinking. According to this approach, the progress of society requires that it limit the size of its weakest population. In other words, human life is viewed in material terms and subordinated to the collective interest.

In addition to materialism and Malthusianism, social Darwinism was another driving force behind the change in the concept of euthanasia. Social Darwinism justifies the sacrifice of lives deemed inferior in the name of natural selection and biological progress.

Finally, eugenics has changed the conception of the value of human life by considering it in qualitative terms and justifying human intervention, particularly the elimination of dysgenic lives.

At the end of these four stages, human life becomes a purely material reality subject to economic (Malthusianism) and biological (Darwinism) knowledge, and therefore lends itself to political intervention that implements this knowledge for better management of human life (eugenics).

This study is taken from Grégor Puppinck's book, La conjuration contre la vie (The Conspiracy Against Life), Téqui, Paris, 2026.

 

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