Are We Fundamentally Good?

On Rousseau, Luther, and Skepticism

Luther claims we are fundamentally sinful, distorted.

Rousseau assumes we are fundamentally good. It’s society that messed us up.

Skeptics, Buddhists, and Rabbinic sages largely argue that we are neutral—good and bad are judgments or stories that we make up, but that don’t inhere in our basic existence (which is beyond good and evil, to borrow Nietzsche’s phrase).

So which is it? And how might we know?

Large questions and yet ones on which we stake so much.

If we are fundamentally evil, then we either have to work really hard to overcome it, or we have to be “justified through faith,” as Luther thought (since works are basically pointless).

If we are fundamentally good, then we just have to return to our primitive state before society messed up. Maybe we should just meditate or go walk in the woods and get away from the Corrupt City.

If we are fundamentally neutral—which might be another way of saying that good and bad are relative and/or constructed—then we should simply construct our lives in such a way that we can say of them, “this is good.” Block and mute all the “haters.”

This is a fundamental question. It seems to be a question not just about epistemology— “How can we know our nature?”—but also metaphysics.

Many of us may have strong views on human nature, but have less well thought out views on the metaphysics or theology of why our nature is what it is.

Should it trouble us that our views on human nature are largely a matter of conjecture or temperament, given that they affect everything from our attitude to self-improvement to criminal justice? Or do you think there’s a master-discipline or method that might finally and definitively tell us the truth about who we are and why we are the way we are?

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