The document discusses debates around whether human nature is inherently good or evil. It provides perspectives from philosophers like Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Gandhi and Xunzi on both sides of the debate. Experimental research is cited finding babies as young as 6 months can distinguish and favor good vs bad behaviors, suggesting an innate sense of morality. Personal experiences are shared that can be interpreted as demonstrating both good and bad in human nature. The debates on human nature being good vs evil date back to philosophers like Rousseau vs Hobbes and continue today without clear resolution.

3. Quotes for Good side
“We’re having a meeting.
Come and join in.” (pg.16)
This quote demonstrates that
when boys include others, it grows
deeper friendship/relationship.
http://learnchinese.mychineselearning.com/Meeting_
Demo.html

4. Quotes for Evil side
“Kill the pig. Cut
her throat. Spill her
blood. (pg.69)”
Based on this quote, this tells
that boys are getting more
savage and becoming more
violence.
http://lordoftheflies.org/img/tlc.htm

5. Great Thinkers
GOOD SIDE:
-GANDHI
-MENCIUS
Evil Side:
-Xunzi
-Lincoln

6. MENCIUS
-Human nature’s being good is like water’s
tending downward. There is no water that
does not tend downward.
-There is no human who does not tend
toward goodness.
-The humans can be caused to not be good
is due to their natures also being like this.”
www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPaper/HumanNature060522.htm
www.history-of-china.com/spring-and-autumn-period/meng-zi.htm

7. GANDHI
“Human nature is regarded as fundamentally
virtuous. All individuals are believed to be
capable of high moral development, and of
reform”
http://www.gandhiserve.org/information/brief_philosophy/brief_philo
sophy.html
“Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute
nature has been known to yield to the
influence of love. You must never despair of
human nature.”
http://www.sfheart.com/Gandhi.html
http://www.sfheart.com/Gandhi.html

8. XUNZI
-People’s nature is bad. Their goodness is matter of
deliberate effort.
-Now people’s nature is such that they are born with a
fondness of profit.
-They are born with feelings of hate and dislike.
-They are born with desires of the eyes and ears, fondness
for beautiful sights and sounds.
www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPaper/HumanNature060522.htm
2.bp.blogspot.com/_P8wZ_9wdkGk/SyPBu4phLLI/AAAAAAAAIN4/d4-xyz4u6D0/s320/1064.jpg

9. LINCOLN
“If you look for the bad in
people expecting to find
it, you surely will.”
http://www.mydearvalentine.com/quotes/love/human-
nature-quotes.html
http://www.all-famous-quotes.com/Abraham_Lincoln_quotes.html

10. Media
IS HUMAN
NATURE
GOOD OR EVIL?
① Some people believe that human beings are born good, while others believe in the doctrine
of original sin. Which ethical doctrine do you believe in? Do you think we have innate
goodness or human nature is evil? Recently, U.S. researchers conducted a very interesting
study and found the answer for the age-long question!
② Until now, many psychologists believed that babies are born “amoral animals” and they
acquire a sense of right and wrong through education as they grow up. However, a team of
psychologists from the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University found through a serious of
experiments that man is born good and even tiny babies can tell right from wrong!

11. IS HUMAN NATURE GOOD OR
EVIL?
③ In their study, the researchers asked babies of various ages to choose between characters which
they had seen behaving well or badly. Most of the babies overwhelmingly favored the good
characters. In an experiment where one-year-old babies were shown a puppet show, some babies
even smacked a mean puppet on the head!
④ In another experiment, babies aged between six months and a year old watched an animated film
in which a red ball tries to climb a hill while a yellow square tries to help push it up from behind and a
green triangle tries to force it back down. At the end of the film, the researchers tested which shape
the babies favored. More than 80 percent of them chose the helpful yellow square over the unhelpful
green triangle.
⑤ “We found through well-designed experiments that babies are able to tell right from wrong from
the age of six months,” said Paul Bloom who led the study. “Our study showed that babies have
moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in their first year of life. A growing body of
evidence suggests that humans do have a fundamental moral sense from the very start of life.”
⑥ So, what do you think? Do you agree with the new findings or do you still believe that human
nature is evil? Personally, I„m relieved to learn that human nature is good!
http://nuri.hani.co.kr/hanisite/dev/board/listbody.html?h_gcode=board&h_code=48&po_no=1252
6

12. Rousseau vs. Hobbes
(GOOD VS. EVIL)
The English philosopher Tomas Hobbes argued that humans are bad, and that therefore
assertion of authority is necessary in order to prevent civil chaos. John Locke agreed
with Hobbes that people are often selfish, but also believed that human nature is
characterized by reason and tolerance; the combination of these ideas is sometimes
called enlightened self-interest. Locke's ideas figured significantly in the
Enlightenment, strongly influenced the founding fathers of the United States of
America, and also figured prominently in the thinking of later philosophers including
Rousseau.
Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that that humans are good by
nature but are corrupted by society. Rousseau also argued that the state of nature
eventually degenerates into a brutish condition without law or morality, at which point the
human race must adopt institutions of law or perish – seemingly agreeing with Hobbes on
the necessity for imposition of authority – but also believed that sovereignty should be in
the hands of the people, while Hobbes apparently felt that the nature of the relationship
should be rather looser, with the sovereign having only a "moral obligation" to make good
decisions.
The opposing viewpoints of Hobbes and Rousseau often arise in discussions of political
http://issuepedia.org/Hobbes_vs._Rousseau
philosophy and are typically referred to as Hobbes vs. Rousseau.

13. Personal Experience
Good
Even though I was doing something my own, I helped friends when
they needed my help. From this situation, I think this can show the
good nature of man
Bad
I think the nature of man is evil because in some cases, when there
are some bad or difficult situation, people try to do evil things to get
out of that situation

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