Aggression, Conflict, and Peace: Scientific Discourses on "Aggression" in West Germany, 1963 -- ca. 1985

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Kärin Nickelsen
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 505755701

In the 1960/70s, a wide-ranging debate on the origin and avoidability of human aggression developed in West Germany, in the wake of Konrad Lorenz’s book “On Aggression” (1963) (German original: “Das sogenannte Böse”). Lorenz and his students postulated the existence of an aggression drive, in animals as well as in humans, which inevitably seeks satisfaction. The theory stirred considerable attention and criticism in various scientific fields, including the burgeoning psychological research in aggression as well as the fields of peace research and peace education. At the same time, ethology intensified its focus on humans within a newly created sub-field of “human ethology,” which tried to test the validity of Lorenz’s claims in empirical studies. The course and content of this debate in West Germany, which is the focus here, differs markedly from the reception in the USA, which has already received some scholarly attention. The project examines how the authority of interpretation of human aggression was negotiated between various biological and social sciences as well as in the broader public. We investigate the actors’ strategies to situate their research into a wide-ranging discourse on aggression, conflict, and global peace, and we examine processes of consolidating different points of view. By this means, we will contribute to a clearer picture of how the subject of “human aggression” wandered through the (politicised) West German scientific landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, how it was studied and debated, and why it suddenly – and almost completely – disappeared from the scene in the mid-1980s.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants