Where does evil in humans come from?
On the axis: Vision of humanity · the source of our bad acts
If humans do evil, is that bent in them from the start, a drive or a fallen nature, or does it arise from without, from social comparison and inequality? Depending on the answer, wickedness is our depth or our product.
Justification
« Man is naturally good »: his vices lie not in his nature but in the history that has drawn him from it. In the state of nature, self-love and reign, not wickedness; it is property, comparison and that breed inequality and domination. Rousseau thus overturns the dogma of original sin and shifts the fault from nature to society: it is not men who must first be corrected, but institutions.
Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.Emile, book I
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality · Rousseau, Emile, book I
Anchors: Rousseau · Augustine · Freud · Hobbes