Nature of Human

                                                                                        By 4B Lung Hiu Fung   

Confucianism is one of the most important Chinese philosophical beliefs, and its values still affect us a lot nowadays; for example the ideals of loyalty, filial piety, benevolence and righteousness, but I still disagree with one thing, which concerns the nature of humans.

There are two opposing schools of thought about this: the “good human-nature theory” by Mencius and the “evil human-nature theory” by Xunzi.  However, I disagree with both of them.

Firstly, Mencius believed that humans are born naturally good because when they see a child falling down a well, for example, they want to save it at once - not because they want to seek appreciation from friends and neighbours, nor even improve their own reputation, but because they have an innate tendency towards goodness. Nonetheless, I think the reason for people wanting to save the child is that he is just a stranger. If a person saw someone he regarded as a competitor fall down a well, that person would hesitate to save him, as humans are motivated most by self-interest. Therefore, I think humans only have compassion towards strangers, not their competitors, so they are not really born naturally good.

On the other hand , Xunzi believed that humans are born evil and he thought conflicts would occur if there were no rules to manage society.  However, humans can become good through education, which could be considered hypocritical in a way.  Personally, I agree with the latter view: humans will act unnaturally because of social pressure. For example, the reason that some people obey laws is that they know others will discriminate against them if they break the law. For example, theft: people steal things sneakily because they are aware of the possible penalties, not because they know their behavior is wrong.  However, I don’t think humans are born evil because one of the reasons humans are so different from other animals, is that they can think critically, so they won’t usually hurt someone for no reason as it might have adverse effects on themselves.

To conclude, I think human nature is neither inherently good, nor evil - just selfish.  They value themselves above all else and are likely to harm others who threaten their position.