If someone is inherently evil, then they cannot be good; if someone is inherently good, then they can do no evil; and if someone is inherently neither good nor bad, then they cannot be either. So, do human beings have a nature that can be characterized as either good or bad, and is deviation from one’s nature possible? If yes, then why? What is it to be good, and are human beings capable of being good?
I will briefly defend a Platonic answer — within the state of nature, human beings are estranged from their true nature, which means that in the natural realm, so to speak, human beings are self-seeking and strive to dominate others. The goodness of human beings is present to them as an endowment and an ideal which has to be converted into an achievement. The process of negation of disidentifying with the false sense of self has a positive result, leading to the recovery of our true selves. The process of recovering one’s true self is the cultivation of virtue. The process of becoming is such that one does not become other than oneself in cultivating virtue, and has one’s own self as the result of the process.
Could men be inherently good? This would not explain how deviation from one’s own nature is possible because men do act viciously. Human beings are not indivisible selves, and some negation is part of finitude. In the state of nature, we are divided selves, and the unification of oneself is constitutive of virtue. We find the problem with this option in Rousseau’s conception of the general will, which he did not analyze into sum total of individual wills. Rather, the general will is what the legislator has to get right, and morality lies in reconciling one’s particular will with the general will. The general will is regarded as infallibly good, and it is possible, on the one hand, that the sovereign assembly of the members of the state end up promoting the private interests of a certain section of the people, in which case the decision of the assembly does not reflect the general will. But on the other hand, in practice, the majority vote is also regarded as a reflection of the general will and the individuals who voted otherwise have a duty to reconcile their particular will with the general will. The general will is the true will of the people, whether or not they understand that. The general will becomes a tautology; by definition, it is good. If we ensure there has been no foul play, then what the majority of the members decide must be the general will. On the one hand, there is no intrinsic connection between the majority and the general will and on the other hand, there is. If the outcome is bad, then we have to assume something went wrong, and we failed to legislate in accordance with the general will. So the concept of the general will ceases to have any explanatory value. Again, on the one hand, Rousseau regards human beings as good within the state of nature and free and yet by the time he is writing his ‘On Social Contract’, he also wants to show that within public life and society, there is greater liberty than there was within the state of nature.
Are human beings inherently evil? Hobbes took this option and then asserted that the counter-balance to this tendency, which is reason, is also present to us through nature. It is because of this faculty that we can curb our liberty to protect ourselves and form a community and government. Within the state of nature, there is neither good nor evil because morality is conformance to law, and without the power of the sovereign to back it up, there is no law. The problem here is in showing why the concentration of particular wills to one sovereign will is good and constitutes the duty of every individual citizen.
The problem with all these theories is that they aim to arrive at the conception of the common good, yet the collection of individual wills is in no way constitutive of this conception. The common good must be the true will of every individual, in the sense that it has normative force and binds them to act in a certain way, and, on the other hand, it cannot be identified with individual will, whether singly or collectively. Contrary to Rousseau and Hobbes, it must have normative force so that deviation from the norm allows us to hold an individual morally accountable for his actions, and it must also have explanatory value, which is to say it must explain why an action should be regarded as good or bad, and man must have the aptitude to conform his will to the common good. But since this common good is neither the negation of individual will nor the sum total of individual wills, human beings cannot reach it through either absolute self-denial and asceticism nor through affirmation of self-love. It is only by knowing and willing what is good that human beings can become good. This foray into political philosophy was meant to clarify the nature of good.
The very idea that virtue is a mask depends on human beings having a fixed nature within the ‘state of nature’, and the process of becoming virtuous is becoming something other than oneself or posing to be other than what one is, while ‘what one is’ is something unchangeable and specified in naturalistic terms. But if freedom is to be oneself or to be self-determining, then within nature human beings are not free, for their actions are dependent on the stimulus they receive from outside themselves. So, the cultivation of virtue is the cultivation of freedom, where freedom is a return to one’s own self. Since God’s nature is simple, there is no possibility of deviation for God, but human beings are not indivisible selves and complex entities, so deviation from one’s own nature is possible for them, but the path of return is also open. Even with different starting points, both Rousseau and Hobbes cannot show how we can become good.
Against the psychological view that believes that the underlying substrate of human actions is a self-loving self-seeking animal, I would say the proof of human nature does not lie in what is inside the skull but in the deeds of the person. A human being is what he does. A good friend is someone who actually helps their friend in need, not a friend with only good intentions that never translates into action. A human being can cheat with a few actions but not his entire life, what he does throughout his lifetime is who he is. So the view that man is morally innocent but becomes corrupted through civilization or that he is morally corrupt and hides it through civilization are both with serious shortcomings, as we saw, without a common good or a law over and above particular wills, there is no morality and without the ability to conform one’s will to this common good no freedom is possible which implies that within the state of nature there is no morality and no liberty.
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