In a Man 's Nature is Evil, men are depicted as evil since birth. Hsün Tzu declares that "Man 's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity" (Tzu 84). He speaks about how men are born with fondness for certain aspects of life such as profit, envy and beauty. Consequently, obtaining these aspects would lead to a life of violence, crime and recklessness. According to Tzu, men are born with a pleasure for profit. However, this need for riches will cause a man to have conflicts and altercations in his life. This is due to the fact that man will have such a great urge to obtain profit in life that he will go to all means necessary, including violence. Man is also born with envy and hate; it is not something he is taught. The internal struggle these two attributes have to offer will once …show more content…
He explains that Mencius is wrong for thinking men are born good. Tzu believes Mencius’ point shows that he does not understand the difference between basic nature and conscious activity. Nature is described as what is given to you by Heaven, and is something you cannot learn. Ritual principles however, are factors you can learn and work on until they are perfected. Those factors you cannot learn are considered nature while those you can learn are conscious activity. An example of this is that men are given the luxury of sight and sound. Clear sight and fine hearing cannot exist without eyes or ears. These are not factors acquired by a man’s studies. This shows that there is a difference between nature and conscious activity. Mencius makes a point that men are good and only become evil when they lose their original nature. Tzu counters this opinion with his own, saying that men move away from simplicity and naïveté the day they are born. This move means that men have lost their original nature. The loss of man’s original nature the day he is born proves that men are naturally
All in all, there will always be people that will judge every move everyone else does in life just like the grandmother did in the story. As a result, people will just have to learn how to deal with it because if others decide to judge them they are probably doing something right. However, if you decide to judge someone else before you do it turn the critical eye on yourself and judge your personal life and ask yourself how is your life doing?
Lerone Bennett Jr.’s What Man Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King Jr. chronicles the great civil rights leader’s life from his birth in Atlanta, Georgia, to his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee. Bennett covers many of the key points of the American civil rights movement as he tells the story of King’s own life. The author does not simply give readers a monotonous series of dates and events, however. Bennett says he took the title What Manner of Man from “a famous Biblical quotation” and that, “It is used here in a symbolic sense as an invocation of a man who moves not natural elements but social forces and millions of human beings” (Intro.). While this is a big part of what Bennett is trying to do in this biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., it is also true that he wants to show readers King on an individual level, as someone who not only faced major social issues, but also everyday life struggles.
It is the contention of this paper that humans are born neutral, and if we are raised to be good, we will mature into good human beings. Once the element of evil is introduced into our minds, through socialization and the media, we then have the potential to do bad things. As a person grows up, they are ideally taught to be good and to do good things, but it is possible that the concept of evil can be presented to us. When this happens, we subconsciously choose whether or not to accept this evil. This is where the theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke become interesting as both men differed in the way they believed human nature to be.
Good and Evil in Human Nature in Lord of the Flies and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The idea of man being an evil being, by nature, is expressed in Machiavelli’s book The Prince. He has written that a Prince should break his promises to his subjects because man is evil and will break their promises to their prince (Prince). I do not agree with this theory because I think that man will make his own decision based on whether or not he is good in character. I believe that a leader should tell the truth and win the support of the public by being known as doing this. Machiavelli seems to have the idea of preparing for the worst and thinking in terms of the worst. This is a preventative measure that will benefit anybody who has evil intentions.
Inwardly examining his own nature, man would prefer to see himself as a virtuously courageous being designed in the image of a divine supernatural force. Not to say that the true nature of man is a complete beast, he does posses, like many other creatures admirable traits. As author Matt Ridley examines the nature of man in his work The Origins of Virtue, both the selfish and altruistic sides of man are explored. Upon making an honest and accurate assessment of his character, it seems evident that man is not such a creature divinely set apart from the trappings of selfishness and immorality. Rather than put man at either extreme it seems more accurate to describe man as a creature whose tendency is to look out for himself first, as a means of survival.
...ut more importantly Mencius' core conception that human nature is also aware of its actions, and considers the well-being of others and that people are morally obligated to do so is also key to attaining our full potential. This conception of human nature and proper order together is what has shaped East Asian political and social thought for centuries. It is credited with creating an East Asia that is economically robust, and socially coherent and once again will be the center of human society in the decades to come. And contrary to popular Western belief, East Asian political thought does appreciate the necessity of the individual in defining society. In fact the only way to attain our human nature is to healthily self-cultivate ourselves morally and materially so we can reach our highest potential and in that way be a valued and contributing member to society.
Hsun Tzu, a follower of Confucius, believed that human nature was to be fundamentally evil. Tzu, in “Encouraging Learning, wrote to Confucians questioning why should they be educated and what human nature really was. Since Confucius never stated his thought on human nature, some people suspect that humans needed to be educated not because they were evil, but because it was moral, and that way they could become into the person Confucius taught them to be. Tzu disagrees with this because of his belief, that humans, in fact, were born with wrong ideals. Tzu considers human nature to take its course on people, and that is why some people are inferior to others. But, with proper training and education, Tzu agrees Confucians can become a better person, and not just that they are becoming into the people that they are meant to be. It could be that Tzu wrote this to straighten out the mystery of what human nature was and how to fix humans evil nature.
Hsün Tzu believed that the human nature of man is evil. At the end of almost every paragraph of Tzu’s essay style writing ends in "It is obvious from this, then, that the nature of man is evil” (Tzu 86). This
Confucius, the founding philosopher of Confucianism, never explicitly details what he believes to be the inherent nature of humans. However, through his teachings and writings, his opinion can be understood to be that humans reach good nature, through self-cultivation and self-improvement. He believes that humans are improvable and teachable, but lack virtue. “Confucius
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur into many shades of grey allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being. Man is not inherently good or evil but they are born innocent without any values or sense of morality until people impart their philosophies of life to them. In the words of John Locke:
“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” (Eleanor Roosevelt). This is just one of the infinite examples of how human nature has been explored by so many different people. Each and every human is born with the capability of making their own choices. The decisions that they will make in the future will determine how evil they are viewed by others. Although one’s nature and nurture do affect their life, it is their own free will that determines whether or not they are evil.
The play, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, shows human nature to be greedy, self-involved and vengeful. Claudius is driven by his greed to commit murder. Polonius is always looking out for himself, currying favor at the expense of anyone in his way. Hamlet thinks only of vengeance from the moment he finds out about Claudius murdering his father. Human nature has been all of these things, but it has also evolved through the ages. We can be base and cruel, but we can also show great compassion and kindness.
Confucius is known for stressing that human nature is intrinsically good. He stresses that human beings are born with the ability for differentiating between wrong and right. A person may not be aware from infancy which acts are tolerable and which acts are not, but all offspring feel shame, and once the children learn which deeds are bad or good, they have a normal tendency to consent of the former and criticize of the latter (Van and Bryan 27).
...ing, it is safe to say that humans are not by nature evil but instead, they are good but easily influenced by the environment and society to act in evil way and do such evil things. You choose the road you want to take; either it’s the bad road or the good road. We are all born to live a life where we will be faced with good and evil things. We were not born to be an evil or bad person, but as you get older you make that choice. What do you want to be remembered as: the good or the bad person? Choose to be good over being bad because the rewards to your family, your friend, and yourself will always outweigh the bad.