philosophy
religion
Is Human Nature Inherently Good or Bad?
Philosophy, UMass Amherst
Ethics and Public Theology
0
0
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
May 12th, 2020
I thank Professor Antony for this exchange.
My objection to her argument is that Professor Antony relies, seemingly exclusively, on biological/materialist and cognitive assumptions about human nature and morality. I did not see any real substantive definition about human nature offered by Professor Antony: empathy and fairness are part of human nature, but she offers no explanation for why selfishness and partiality are not constitutive as well.
In her view, human nature is one of bedrock potentiality only (except for “very probably” empathy and fairness), conditioned by external circumstances. But this raises a question: If moral conditioning is merely environmental, why does human civilization—with all of our technological progress—still have to contend with human evil? And that raises an antecedent question essential to this debate—what is goodness and evil? How are those objectively understood, and working backwards, how are good and evil understood to be properties that can be understood by human nature on this biological accounting of human nature? In my view, Professor Antony has offered no explanation of morality that does not ultimately collapse down to a biological and cognitive explanation that reduces all evil to emotive displeasure. In my view, it’s hard for her to say whether humanity is good or evil without establishing a standard to determine those properties. In her paradigm, one wonders whether goodness and evil are concrete realities or really just illusory apparitions triggered by a reflexive emotivism.
This gets to another oversight lacking in her initial explanation: Professor Antony does not adequately assess the question of motive: People can do good things for bad reasons. To this, Professor Antony can only reply that what matters is the result, not the motive. But my argument, that humans are inherently bad, understands that motive speaks more about an inherent nature than mere consequence alone.
She says it is “nonsense” to “attribute an individual’s character or behavior entirely to either her ‘nature’ or her ‘nurture’” but then insists that factors like economic security and universal healthcare “encourage those tendencies” of kindness and justice. Professor Antony is making contradictory statements.
I see no evidence from real life that environmental factors such as economic security do anything to mitigate the evil that resides in each one of us. It might be able to better train one’s impulses, but it cannot extinguish the propensity for greed, theft, and hate.
According to Christian anthropology, humanity is evil. But being “evil” is not inherent to what it means to be human. Rather, because of sin, all humanity is evil. In my view, no amount of external conditioning can totally eradicate humanity’s propensity to do evil to one another.
While we have the capability for virtue, we have the disposition to vice. A child might possess empathy and fairness, but a child also does not have to be taught selfishness. I’m unsure of Professor Antony’s religious commitments, but religious or not, the unfolding of human history would lead someone to overwhelmingly conclude that humanity is evil by sheer evidence alone.
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