On Aggression

On Aggression (, "So-called Evil: on the natural history of aggression") is a 1963 book by the ethologist Konrad Lorenz; it was translated into English in 1966. As he writes in the prologue, "the subject of this book is aggression, that is to say the fighting instinct in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species." (Page 3)

The book was reviewed many times, both positively and negatively, by biologists, anthropologists, psychoanalysts and others. Much criticism was directed at Lorenz's extension of his findings on non-human animals to humans.

Publication

On Aggression was first published in German in 1963, and in English in 1966. It has been reprinted many times and translated into at least 12 languages.

Content

Programming

According to Lorenz, animals, particularly males, are biologically programmed to fight over resources, the primary purpose of which is to distance specimens of a species sufficiently far from each other to make the drain on local resources sustainable. This behavior must be considered part of natural selection, as aggression leading to death or serious injury may eventually lead to extinction unless it has such a role.

However, Lorenz does not state that aggressive behaviors are in any way more powerful, prevalent, or intense than more peaceful behaviors such as mating rituals. Rather, he negates the categorization of aggression as "contrary" to "positive" instincts like love, depicting it as a founding basis of other instincts and its role in animal communication.

Hydraulic model

thumb|The psycho-hydraulic model of Lorenz

Additionally, Lorenz addresses behavior in humans, including discussion of a "hydraulic" model of emotional or instinctive pressures and their release, shared by Freud's psychoanalytic theory, and the abnormality of intraspecies violence and killing. Lorenz claimed that "present-day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive" and suggested that low levels of aggressive behaviour prevented higher level responses resulting from "damming" them. His 'hydraulic' model, of aggression as a force that builds relentlessly without cause unless released, remains less popular than a model in which aggression is a response to frustrated desires and aims.

Ritualization

In the book, Lorenz describes the development of rituals among aggressive behaviors as beginning with a totally utilitarian action, but then evolving to more and more stylized actions, until finally, the action performed may be entirely symbolic and non-utilitarian, now fulfilling a function of communication. In Lorenz's words:

Reception

Favourable

J. L. Fischer, reviewing On Aggression in American Anthropologist in 1968, called it a "fascinating book by a distinguished animal ethologist" that would "annoy most social and cultural anthropologists" but nonetheless stated "an important thesis", namely that intraspecific aggression was "instinctive in man, as it can be shown to be in a number of other species." Fischer found Lorenz's account of nonhuman animals at the start of the book, written from Lorenz's own experience, "the most convincing and enlightening". Leach writes that where Ardrey focuses on territoriality, Lorenz aims to demonstrate that "animal aggression is only a 'so-called evil' and that its adaptive consequences are advantageous or at least neutral."

Critical

The zoologists Richard D. Alexander and Donald W. Tinkle, comparing On Aggression with Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative in BioScience in 1968, noted that few books had been reviewed so often "or with as much vehemence in both defense and derogation" as these two. In their view, this was because both men had tried to write about a sensitive and important question, human nature and to what extent it is determined by evolution. They call On Aggression a personal commentary from a professional zoologist where Ardrey's book is a well-documented book by a non-biologist. Both, in their view, tend "to rekindle old, pointless arguments of the instinct vs. learning variety" Fromm considered that in one way Lorenz had succeeded where Sigmund Freud had failed, Lorenz's hydraulic theory of aggression, innately programmed, being in Fromm's view a better explanation than Freud's opposed passions, the supposed drives for life (eros) and death or destruction (thanatos).

The anthropologist Donald Symons, in The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1979), accused Lorenz of inadequately documenting his major thesis.

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins described Lorenz in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a "'good of the species' man". He criticises On Aggression for its "gem of a circular argument" that aggressive behaviour has a "species preserving" function, namely to ensure "that only the fittest individuals are allowed to breed". In Dawkins's view, the idea of group selection was "so deeply ingrained" in Lorenz's thinking that he "evidently did not realize that his statements contravened orthodox Darwinian theory."