A dispute · spans 3 eras
Nature vs. Society
Are humans naturally good and corrupted by society, or naturally brutal and saved by it?
Hobbes: in the state of nature life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" – society is what makes life bearable. Rousseau: humans in nature are decent and free – society is what corrupts them. The dispute organizes modern political philosophy. Locke takes a middle path; Marx says the question itself is malformed because "human nature" is itself historical; Beauvoir applies the same insight to gender. The deepest question is whether any "nature" before history exists to be consulted at all.
// The sides
Society redeems
Left to themselves, human beings would slide into fear and mutual violence, and only shared law and custom make of them creatures able to live together; civilization is a thin crust, laid down over generations and broken through in a day.
Society corrupts
By nature the human being is free and compassionate, and inequality and constraint come only with society, which spoils what was born good by teaching everyone to measure themselves through others' eyes.