Are Human Beings Inherently Good or Evil?

Chapter 9.5: The Range of Human Morality

Why this book | Title Page | Table of Contents
Preface | Introduction
PART 1
Chapter 1 (1.1) (1.2) | Chapter 2 (2.1) (2.2) (2.3) | Chapter 3 (3.1) (3.2) (3.3) (3.4) (3.5) (3.6)
PART 2
Chapter 4 (4.1) (4.2) (4.3) (4.4) (4.5) | Chapter 5 (5.1) (5.2) (5.3) (5.4) (5.5) (5.6) (5.7) (5.8) (5.9)
Chapter 6 (6.1) (6.2) (6.3) (6.4) (6.5)
PART 3
Chapter 7 (7.1) (7.2) (7.3) (7.4) (7.5) (7.6) | Chapter 8 (8.1) (8.2) (8.3) (8.4) (8.5) | Chapter 9 (9.1) (9.2) (9.3) (9.4) (9.5)
Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14
PART 4
Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 |
PART 5
Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Conclusion
Appendix | Works Cited

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Note: This is an installment of The Freedom Scale: An Accurate Measure of Left and Right. See here for installments of The Distributed Nation: A Plan for Human Independence.

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Chapter 9.5

• The Range of Human Morality

• Reasons for Evil

  • Personal gain & the seven deadly sins

  • Ideology and “the end justifies the means”

Are we good?

❝May freedom be seen not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity…to do what is right.

—Rev. Peter Marshall

Are human beings inherently good, albeit capable of being led astray? Are we imperfect creatures capable of good or evil? Are we inherently wicked, prevented from acting on our wickedness only by assiduous moral or religious instruction…or by the firm hand of an all-powerful sovereign?

Three important Enlightenment-era philosophers held very different views:

Rousseau…

Man is his natural state is good (in a simple, primitive sort of way), and is ruined by the rise of property, economic specialization, and the institutions of society.

Locke…

Most people, while somewhat partisan to their own family and friends, can get along with each other well enough if they are guided by reason and follow natural law. It’s a few rotten apples—and the acts of force they perpetrate on others—that spoil the barrel.

Hobbes…

In the absence of restraint, people will produce a world of fear and plunder that ends up as a “war of all against all.”

Depending on the circumstances, culture, and historical moment, it seems that man is capable of any one of these, and more. (See also chapter 17.)

The range of human morality

❝Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts…

—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Think about all the people you know.

Most likely, there are people you like and don’t like. There are people you don’t know all that well, but who seem pretty decent. There are also some people who haven’t really given you cause for alarm, but…something about them makes you think that if push came to shove, they might “just as soon step on your face as look at you.”¹ If you’re lucky, you may know a few people whom you would call truly wonderful; if unlucky, you’ve known some people who seemed downright evil.