Are People Innately Good . . . or Innately Evil? A member of Doctors Without Borders administers polio vaccines to children who are among the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing civil war in South Sudan. Doctors Without Borders is an international group of medical workers that won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in helping the victims of violence and disasters all over the world.
On the one hand, violence motivated by political or ethnic hatred seems to support Freud’s contentions about human nature. On the other hand, the selfless behavior of those who help others, often at a considerable cost to themselves, seems to support Rogers’s view. Which viewpoint do you think more accurately describes the essence of human nature?
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