Our moral makes us have a balance for everything. Today our actions hardly go unnoticed, they are always weighed in that scale that tells us if something is good or bad. We think it’s as simple as seeing where it leans to understand our level of goodness or badness, however, it seems more complicated than that.
For centuries philosophers have sought an answer to what we are and among the questions arises whether we are good or bad by nature. It is there when the man examines himself seeing his role as an individual, as part of a family, a clan and a society.
The answer is much more complicated than it seems, because even though the extremes seem to be completely opposite, our ethics are not always between black and white.
man is bad by nature
Thomas Hobbes lived in the 17th century under a monarchical society. In that context he wrote the following: Homo homini lupus, which translates as “man is the wolf of man” and could easily be accepted by anyone. As if it were about putting ourselves in front of a mirror and seeing the worst qualities of ourselves, Hobbes emphasizes that the greatest enemy of humanity is humanity and that in any situation we are more likely to seek our benefit than to help others.
Hobbes said that man is evil by nature, which is why he needs society in order to be functional and leave his wild side behind. This sounds pretty good, considering everything we as humanity have done. Wars, climate change, famine, the destruction of entire ecosystems and more are no one else’s fault but ours. Even Kant said that practical reason compels man to renounce the state of war and seek peace and prosperity; but it seems that while one war is over, the reason is what dictates the next one.
man is good by nature
Years after Hobbes said that man is bad and that he needs the State or the crown to be good and happy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau said the opposite. He argued that man is naturally good, but it is society that corrupts him.
While the former sought to demonstrate that the State was the benefactor of our happiness, the latter argued that this deficient and problematic society is the one that brings out the worst in us.
However, there is something that can be drawn from the contradiction of the two thoughts and that is that while one says that society is what makes you good and the other says that it corrupts you, we must think about what society they are thinking of. Rousseau argued that these are societies in which they are taught to get as much as they can, but are not given a purpose for those riches. The freedom to have is what transforms your life and certainly your spirit.
Karl Marx said that man’s way of thinking was determined by external factors, those of society that determine people’s consciousness: “the human essence is, in its reality, the set of social relations.”
It is not about our birth, about our ability to integrate into society or to reject it as everything we always fight against, but about the type of society in which we live. A capitalist world cannot disguise itself as kind no matter how much it wants to, because it perpetuates the difference between people and consolidates the idea that poor people are needed so that rich people can exist and vice versa.
Humanity will never be able to reach that state of goodness if it does not care about its equals at all times.