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Pedagogy and education
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Gurevich P.S. There are People Who Enjoy Murdering

Abstract: The article is devoted to the problem of human aggression. There are a lot of philosophical and psychological literature sources discussing whether human can be considered to be a murder by nature. As modern researches prove, humans do not have a genetic predisposition to death. The author believes that it is necessary to appeal to social and cultural factors in order to clarify the issue. Initially human believes himself to be a resemblance of animal. This belief is still peculiar for so called 'hunting nations' or nations who follow archaic traditions. Has culture made human to lose these 'animal-like' qualities? Many researchers try to answer this question. The question is whether we can actually assume that each human is a potential murderer or it is true for only some representatives of human society? In his research Gurevich has used neuroscientific, genetic and sociobiologic findings. Special attention is paid to cultural and ethnographic researches. In this article Gurevich gives a theoretical criticism of sociobiological researches that explain human's genetic predisposition to murder. Based on modern genetic researches, the author proves that humans have no genetic predisposition to murder. Many paradoxes of human behavior become obvious if we study sociocultural factors of people's lives. According to the author, the theory 'human murderer' is not only pseudoscientific but also harmful because it leads to such social and political consequences as racism. People are not monkeys, neither they are angels marked with the original sin. According to the author, human aggressive behavior, even violence, demonstrates their need in love.


Keywords:

human nature, aggression, genetic predisposition, sociocultural factors, aggression types, up-bringing, cruelty, empathy, instinct, sociobiology


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This article written in Russian. You can find original text of the article here .
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