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Classic Paradox Of Human Nature Essay

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A classic paradox: is Human Nature Originally Good or Bad?

By

Zhi Ye
April 2015
Student ID: 43791255
When it comes to human nature, many Chinese philosophers have different ideas.
On the one hand, some people, represented by Mencius, the “second sage” in China, who inherited and developed Confucius’ thoughts about human nature, believed that human nature is originally good, because human will do many good things without any hesitation and selfishness, and it is only out of instinctive response. (Chan, 1963) Take an example that we discussed on the lecture before, if there is a little baby fell into the river, human who find this emergency will jump into the river to save the baby, and the reason why they do like this is not for any rewards, …show more content…

(Yu 2005) However, there are some differences between human activity and human nature. If people do everything out of instinct, it may make things worse and also cause a disorder. As everyone knows, it is normal that a person is eager to eat when he or she is hungry, and he or she is eager for water under the torture of thirsty and there is no doubt that this is out of instinct indeed and will be accepted we all. Nevertheless, if there is an elder who suffering from hungry and thirsty likewise, the person is supposed to let the elder eat and drink first, based on the principle of politeness and etiquette, but it is totally against human’s instinct. Technically, it is only a virtues that people acquire by learning, not be born with it. Therefore, we can say that a man can acquire knowledge of etiquette and righteous, which are accepted that were produced by sage, through learning and practising. (Chan 1963) And we can conjecture that if human act very much on instinct, maybe the impressive traditional Chinese story, which talks about Kongrong share the pears with his elder brother, would not happen. As a result, the idea of “human nature is originally good” is not a perfect

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