Der Aggressionstrieb und Das Böse by Winfried Czapiewski-Georg Scherer (review)

186 BOOK REVIEWS that made our past routines appear a barren desert-possibilities that summoned forth a creativity we did not know we had, that infinitely enriched our present by holding up to us a future without bounds-newly quickened our minds and hearts. . . . What being-loved makes being do is precisely be." Synthesis for Johann seems to mean not just a theoretical synthesis of insights from many schools; it seems to mean, above all, a synthesis of philosophy and experience. In giving a concrete manifestation of how he has done this for himself, philosopher Johann has made the project itself both credible and intelligible. Providence College Providence, R. I. PAUL PHILIBERT, O.P. Der Aggressionstrieb und Das Bose. By WINFRIED CzAPlEWSKI-GEoRG ScHERER. Essen: Driewer, 1967. Pp. ~64. These discussions of the relationship between the human aggressive drive and moral evil represent a philosophical examination of the scientific solution of the same problem as offered by Konrad Lorenz in his Das Sogenannte Bose- Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression. (Transl.: On Aggression. Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.) The authors, the former being an instructor, the latter the director of the Catholic Academy, i.e., the Institute of Adult Education, of the diocese of Essen, W. Germany, consider Lorenz's thesis worthy of a serious, critical confrontation. On the one hand, Konrad Lorenz, who is one of the founders of modern ethology, is widely recognized as an outstanding authority on animal, especially instinctual behavior. The high esteem enjoyed by scientists in our modern society as well as the urgency of the problem of human aggression in an age of East-West ideological and political conflict and of atomic weapons armament favor the spread and acceptance of scientific statements on the nature, origin, and control of aggressive urges. In fact, Lorenz's book became a bestseller with twenty editions in less than three years in German-speaking countries. On the other hand, it seems rather questionable to expect final revelations on specifically human attitudes from " a natural history of aggression," i. e., a scientist's conception of the evolutionary development of aggressive behavior patterns in the animal kingdom. Drs. Czapiewski and Scherer are of the opinion and intend to establish that Lorenz's attempt to reduce the evil in man to an aggressive instinct and its manifestation does not even touch the problem of moral evil but truly deals only with a "so-called evil"; consequently, his hope for the evolution of a defense-mechanism against human aggression can BOOK REVIEWS 187 rightly be considered only as an illusion. In the first part of their book entitled Das Bose als Aggression? Dr. Czapiewski presents and evaluates the main ideas of Das Sogenannte Bose; in the second part, Das Nichts und das Bose, Dr. Scherer offers his phenomenological and metaphysical views of the nature and etiology of moral evil. Following Lorenz's explanations, Dr. Czapiewski first determines the nature and meaning of aggression, more exactly, of intra-specific aggression, i.e., of the fight between animals of the same species; for this intraspecific aggression alone is of interest to Lorenz in his attempt to diagnose and to cure aggressive behavior among human individuals and societies. Aggression is found to be an instinct. As such it is " a part of the systemand life-preserving organization of all (living) beings" (13); never is its aim the destruction of a member of the species. It is, then, spontaneous, not merely the result of and the response to an external stimulus. In the absence of a connatural stimulus, aggressive behavior will be automatically elicited and directed toward an Ersatz-object. The danger for the species which, in the case of aggression, is involved in this spontaneity of the instinct is eliminated in the course of evolution inasmuch as the movements of the intra-specific animal fight become " ritualized " and thus mostly harmless or, at least, only gradually dangerous, and inasmuch as damaging attacks are subject to physiological inhibition. This type of ritualization of originally aggressive behavior is most evident in that kind of animal society which, according to Lorenz, is characterized by the most severe intra-specific aggression and, at the same time, by a " personal bond " or...