Crime and Its Causes: Science and Religion

Mankind has always sought to understand (to know) the secrets of the causes of human aggression, violence. For an ordinary person, this problem is, at first glance, simple and clear. However, we do not give ourselves a clear idea of the difficulties we face in explaining the essence and origins of the cause of criminal human behavior. The doctrine of the causes of crime has a rich, informative and versatile history, saturated with various kinds of well-established theories, original views and interesting considerations not so much by criminologists, but to a greater extent by philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, geneticists and even writers. Already in the prehistoric period, this was the subject of attention of the philosophers Solon, Pythagoras, Protagoras, Plato and Aristotle. Some of them considered the causes of criminal behavior as a disease of the human soul, others — as a disease of the state. Philosophers of later times — Hugo Grotius, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Fichte, Gomel, Feuerbach and many others also tried to solve this problem when considering general scientific questions of philosophy. However, philosophizing about the causes of criminal behavior, in addition to a beautiful logical theoretical explanation, did not give practical tangible benefits. Humanity expected from science knowledge about crime and its causes, adapted for practical needs in the fight against crime, which was acquiring an increasingly terrible form and essence. Statisticians, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and then geneticists joined in solving this problem.