Is Human Nature Evil? DOCX

Title	Is Human Nature Evil?
Author	Christine Lee
Pages	4
File Size	134.7 KB
File Type	DOCX
Total Downloads	269
Total Views	468

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Christine Ka Yan Lee Is Human Nature Evil? Human nature is the essence that constitutes human beings, and this essence is a substance that creates the fundamental identity of what it is like to be human. The fundamental identity, or essence, is the description of physical, psychological or emotional attributes of an existence that are not necessarily dependent upon the observer's judgments and preconceived moral ideas of how certain existence should be in a certain way. However when discussing human nature, good and bad are often the default positions of defining what it is to be human whilst overlooking other neutral, cognitive aspects such as intellectual curiosity that has aided humans in survival and evolution. Therefore, human nature does not need to be corrected to fit the often arbitrary moral frameworks of societies, but rather need to be encouraged to express itself in order to preserve the essence of humanity. Xunzi's ideas about the morality of human nature is clearly pronounced from the beginning of his text "Human Nature is Evil", as he claims that rebelling against one's duty and reducing principle to chaos is evil1 . However, there are two problems with this proposition. Firstly, Xunzi assumes everyone is fundamentally inclined towards chaos and subversion of the status quo, but this assumption disregards the diversity of innate qualities such as personality. Although there are studies that have shown personality is semi-affected by the environment, they also suggest that personality can be partially hardwired by genetics2 , and there are numerous combinations of DNA that can slightly influence one individual to differ from another. Personality assessments such as Myers-Briggs and Enneagram, though they only provide limited scopes of human nature, serve as indicators that not everyone is compelled to be anti-authoritarian or chaotic, and some would even try their hardest to maintain social...