The ORIGIN OF MAN'S ETHICAL BEHAVIOR (1941) by Ernest Everett Just & Hedwig Schnetzler Just: A Moorland-Spingarn archival transcription created by Theodore Walker Jr. & Lillie R. Jenkins

by Theodore Walker Jr., Lillie R. Jenkins, W. Malcolm Byrnes

“The Origin of Man’s Ethical Behavior” (Unpublished book manuscript, 1941) was co-authored by biologist Ernest Everett Just and research-associate-philosopher-spouse Hedwig A. Schnetzler Just. In the opening chapter, “The Problem Stated,” they reject the idea that moral theory (theory of ethics) should be restricted to religion and philosophy. Just and Just “… we intend to treat ethics as a problem in biology … It is within the field of biology, then, that we locate human ethics, or better to say, man’s ethical behavior” (Just and Just 1941: 2-3 [also 4, 91, 146]). Here, theory of evolution is enriched and advanced by linking (1) primitive cellular origins and subsequent evolution of physical structures and functions to (2) primitive cellular origins and subsequent evolution of spiritual influences and ethical behaviors. The origin and evolution of organic physicality is mutually dependent upon the origin and evolution of ethical spirituality. ----- "... the efficacy of any theory of the cause of organic evolution is measured by the degree to which it is capable of sustaining the superstructure of a theory of the origin and evolution of man's ethical behavior" (Just and Just 1941: 16). ----- Governed by a comprehensive “law of environmental dependence” upon cooperative interactivity with others and with the living environment, and in tandem with the evolution of organic structures and functions, ethical behavior “evolved” from our “very most primitive fore-runner” (Just and Just 1941: 12 [also 17]), from cells to humans. And with appreciation for evolution as a continuing process, and contrary to E. E. Just’s life-long experiences with Anglo-American anti-black racism and his August 1940 internment and September 1940 dramatic escape from Nazi-occupied France, Ernest and Hedwig Just conceived that humanity is “on the threshold” of further evolution in ethical behavior, including relations to "the whole animal world" (Just and Just 1941: 176). Tragically, E. E. Just died (from pancreatic cancer in October 1941) before finding a publisher willing to print a book connecting biology to ethics and environmental dependence. Before Just's death, several publishers had declined to print this book. In additional to Anglo-American scientific resistance to blacks doing science, especially at the level of theory, Just's work (during the 1920s and 1930s) came decades before bioethics and environmental relations were popular concerns. The 1941 manuscript was lost to the public. Fortunately, nearly 77 years later, among the collected papers of Ernest Everett Just at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University, pages and copies of pages from this unpublished manuscript (onion-skin and carbon copies of typed pages, plus typed and handwritten pages; minus annotated bibliography, lab notes, graphics, and final pages of chapter 9) were found, identified, reassembled, and transcribed from ink-on-paper to Word documents created by Theodore Walker Jr. and Lillie R. Jenkins during the spring and summer of 2018. And through 2019-2020, there was further transcribing (plus adding final pages of chapter 9 from deciphering and transcribing previously discovered, by Kenneth R. Manning, handwritten drafts) and co-editing by Walker, Jenkins, and W. Malcolm Byrnes; in consultation with Stuart Newman, Kenneth R. Manning, Charles H. Long, and Moorland-Spingarn curator of manuscripts Joellen ElBashir.

278 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 4, 2020