Throughout his career, Konrad Lorenz, co-founder of ethology, extrapolated from animal behaviour to humans – especially concerning degeneration as a result of domestication – and then prescribed for the allegedly resulting ills of society. The descriptions were constant. Lorenz had observed that wild animals subjected to and bred in captivity often underwent various abnormal physical and behavioural changes, such as changes in stature and coloration, and also in instinctive behaviour patterns – mating, eating, raising young, and so on. He went on to posit that the same sorts of ‘degeneration’ of human individuals were due to overcrowding, race mixing, poor nutrition, overbreeding, etc. – any kind of human society being equated with captivity – and claimed that faults in human society arose from these sorts of individual degeneration effects. Then, of course, as a physician, he prescribed for how society might be cured. Since he came to scientific prominence during the Nazi era, there have been constant criticisms and accusations that Lorenz must have been a Nazi and that Nazi ideology underlay many of his ideas about humanity and ethology. The thesis of this paper is that Lorenz had accepted the truth of human degeneration and social decline before the rise of Nazism. While he adopted Nazi-type terminology, prescriptions and arguments during the early stages of his career (which coincided with the rise and fall of the Third Reich), he dropped them as soon as the end of World War II rendered them unacceptable. Thereafter Lorenz retained the belief in human degeneration and social decline, but chose other arguments and prescriptions based in part on popular theories of the day, e.g. capitalism, and later ecology.

中文翻译：

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康拉德·洛伦兹 (Konrad Lorenz) 关于人类退化和社会衰退：一个长期关注的问题

在他的整个职业生涯中，动物行为学的联合创始人康拉德·洛伦兹 (Konrad Lorenz) 从动物行为推断到人类——尤其是关于驯化导致的退化——然后为所谓的社会弊病开出处方。描述是不变的。洛伦兹观察到，被圈养和饲养的野生动物经常会发生各种异常的身体和行为变化，例如身材和颜色的变化，以及本能的行为模式——交配、进食、抚养幼崽等。他继续假设人类个体的同类“退化”是由于过度拥挤、种族混合、营养不良、过度繁殖等——任何类型的人类社会都等同于囚禁——并声称人类社会出现了缺陷来自这些个体退化效应。然后，当然，作为一名医生，他为如何治愈社会开出了处方。自从他在纳粹时代成为科学界的杰出人物以来，一直有批评和指责洛伦兹一定是纳粹分子，而且纳粹意识形态是他关于人性和行为学的许多想法的基础。本文的论点是洛伦兹在纳粹主义兴起之前就已经接受了人类堕落和社会衰落的真相。虽然他在职业生涯的早期阶段（与第三帝国的兴衰相吻合）采用了纳粹式的术语、处方和论点，但一旦第二次世界大战结束使它们变得不可接受，他就放弃了它们。此后洛伦兹保留了人类退化和社会衰退的信念，但选择了部分基于当时流行理论的其他论点和处方，例如