War - instinct or invention? : overview of concepts relating to the origins of the war

The article aims to present the most famous and influential concepts investigating the etiology of war, elaborated within the field of broadly understood social sciences over the last hundred years. I analyse the history of the dispute between naturalists and cultural determinists as well as researchers who attempted to reconcile two positions. For the first one (represented by Sigmund Freud, Konrad Lorenz, Edward O. Wilson), war has its roots in the biological condition of a human being who inherited the disposition to violence from her animal ancestors. The second one objects to the claim that war is a matter of an instinct encoded in our genes. Proponents of this theory (including Margaret Mead and Ashley Montagu) argue that war “is just an invention”, a behaviour pattern inculcated in individuals by culture, a specific cultural strategy that enables to gain socially desired goals. In the article I address the following problem: why does the “biology - culture” dichotomy influence so strongly our reflections about sources of aggression and wars. Moreover, I give an overview of views of researchers, both naturalists and their adversaries, on the problem of "inevitability" of war and the possibility of its elimination from human life.