Is A Good Human?

A famous philosopher Socrates once said, 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' With that idea, the question 'Are Human Beings Intrinsically Evil?' has been asked by philosophers for many years. It is known as one of the unanswerable questions. Determinists have come to the conclusion that we are governed by the laws of science, that there is nothing we can do about ourselves being evil because we naturally are. Evil is simply the act of causing pain. In this essay I will argue that human beings are born with a natural reaction to 'fear and chaos' to be instinctively evil.

At some point in time we have all wondered what it means to human, and what we are supposed to do with our lives. Throughout the centuries, there have been gradual changes in what it means to be human. Through Pico della Mirandola we will how man became the measure and took the place of God, through Charles Darwin we will see how nature and science began to take the place of man, and through the art of Friedrich we can visually see all of these changes.

In Chinese culture, human nature has discussed for few thousand years by Confucians, for instance, Mengzi, Xunzi, Gaozi. Chinese Confucians Xunzi thought is human nature is bad unless humans give efforts and force themselves regarding to standard defined by sage referring to week 2 lecture notes. Comparing Xunzi and Mengzi thought, Mengzi states differently that human nature is good because of four sprouts and it could be bad because the influence of environment. According to Cambridge dictionary, the definition of human nature means the natural ways of behaving most people share without cultural influence. This essay will discuss whether human nature is good or bad and give reasons to agree or disagree to Xunzi statement. In fact, Xunzi statement

A straightforward question. Are humans naturally good or evil? A simple question that has many of different answers and a question that may require deep thinking. For me, both sides I was drawn to. My household is christian, so I thought of the religious answer, but I also thought that people are born good and their environment and decisions can cause them to be evil. This is what I came up with.

Thanks Alicia, I appreciate your thoughtful and informative response to my post. I'm sorry if you found the term “mid level provider” offensive. I honestly, hadn't viewed the term as derogatory until you shed light on the origin and true meaning. I also, believe most people are inherently good, however as you stated there are those few that discredit this notion. Yes, I have dealt with situations in my nursing career that made me question another individual’s integrity. I have no issue confronting another provider or peer if I discovered unsafe or unethical practices within the

How does one define what is good? Is it the beauty around us, actions that one performs, or living a life without troubles? If you stopped random people on the street and asked them, “what is good?” you would probably get many different answers. Merriam-Webster gives a simple definition of good as ‘high quality’. The KJV dictionary gives the definition of good as ‘complete or sufficiently perfect in its kind’. Here we have two definitions of good, one from a worldly source and the other from a biblical source. How can we use these definitions to evaluate what good is and to prove good exists in the world today? In the Bible, Matthew 12:35 states, “A good man out of the treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things” (King James Version). Does this mean that good can only come from a person who has a characteristically good

My biggest issue with the soundness of Plato’s final argument however falls between premises six through eight:

What is thought of as immoral to one person can be seen as ethical to another, and vice versa. This is due to the difference in the way humans perceive things, which is part of the intricacy of mankind. "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man." (Hobbes) Hobbes states that Humans are naturally evil and need a powerful government to control them. Is it true? Rousseau thinks otherwise. "In reasoning on the principles he (Thomas Hobbes) lays down, he ought to have said that the state of nature, being that in which the care for our own preservation is the least prejudicial to that of others, was consequently the best

Plato may have developed his theory around the importance of goodness because he believed that there is a universal ‘goodness’ that everyone, including himself, should strive to reach. This relates to Plato’s elitist views that only philosophers can truly understand what is good and just as they are the only people who are not blinded by physical senses and the authorities’ opinions. Additionally, goodness is something that everyone attempts to achieve and so shows a strong moral foundation that would be readily accepted to aim for in our society. This can be represented by the Particulars in

This is a form of showing attempt to be desired or approved of. This is why humans are good. Human beings are inherently good, and this is shown by history and literature. To begin, humans are inherently good and this is illustrated by Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist who made a large contribution to the civil rights movement (“Martin Luther King Jr.” 1).

For my To Be human assignment the central theme of my drawing is “what does it mean to be human.” I chose to do a comic/drawing that visually/creatively represents four distinct things that I believe sets us humans apart from other animals. These are four different aspects of the human condition that people, as well as myself personally, see as the things that make us human.

In the book The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov a robot shows the readers what is important about being human. Andrew the robot shows us that one of the things that separates humans from machines and makes humans special is that human lives don’t last forever. What makes our life valuable is that humans have a limited time on this earth, which is why living and dying is better than living forever.

However, most of these paradoxes are due to the evolution of Plato’s ideas. Plato’s earlier dialogues seem to place too much value on the pure rationality of man, while later dialogues show an acknowledgment of man’s basal needs influencing his morality (455). By focusing on Plato’s later works regarding ethics it becomes far more possible to find interpretations that have academic consensus. In Plato’s Republic, a collection of works exploring the nature of virtue, one sees a teleological axiom: “The good is that which all soul pursues and for the sake of which it does everything” (Parry, 241). It is important to note that Plato has a specific idea in mind when he writes of the good. For Plato the good is the inherent trait that makes all good things good (243). With these two premises Parry is able to conclude: “That which all soul pursues and for the sake of which it does everything is the good itself, the reality of goodness, and not any visible good” (244). According to Plato, when the soul does everything for the sake of the good the soul is acting virtuously, as the good is all that is good, including all of virtue (249). Furthermore, since the good is a teleological state, the admiration of the good is what humans should strive for. And only by recognizing the good can humans admire it (250). Therefore, when humans obtain the knowledge to recognize the good and admire it for itself can humans do everything for the sake of the good, thereby

I would now like to share my opinion and perspective on how I perceive the theories of Plato and Aristotle. In my view, the better solution to the problem of the ‘good life’ is Aristotle’s belief rather than Plato’s belief of the good life. Firstly, Plato’s

All humans look and act the same until they are put in an endangered situation which brings out their evil instincts so they can survive. Over the years philosophers have argued about human nature, from our reading of Thomas Hobbes Vs John Locke we can see the two opposite extreme perspective on how to maintain order in society. While Hobbes believed that people are born wicked and only care for their personal interest therefore they need absolute monarch to govern them “Every man for every man” (Hobbes). On the other hand Locke believed that people are born good and can learn from their own mistakes and this is why they can govern themselves. In his book “Lord of the Flies” William Golding shows when a group of children are left in deserted island because of a war going on back home in England and how they return back to their savagery instincts when law and order are hard to maintain on the island. From what humanity has been facing and all the revolutions and wars we