The neuropathology of morality: Germany 1930-1960

This article analyzes brain scientists' attempts to trace morality in the brain in Germany from 1930 to 1960. The debate around Karl Kleist's localization of the Gemeinschafts-Ich [community-I] in the 1930s is depicted in order to illustrate the central arguments for and against localizations of morality. The focus of this article is on the period 1936-1960 in which experts put forth specific ideas on morality's cerebral underpinnings that mirror the larger theoretical shift from strict localization doctrine to a more holistic understanding of the brain. As a result of this shift, experts avoided exact localizations of morality. Instead, they posited correlations between brain areas and morality. The analysis illustrates the dependence of neuropathological research on morality on general theories of brain functioning and marks a first contribution to the history of the neuroscience of morality for the time after 1930.