Man is born pure and through society he becomes corrupt.
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after 13 votes the winner is...
Puck
| Started: | 11/24/2009 | Category: | Arts |
| Updated: | 3 years ago | Status: | Post Voting Period |
| Viewed: | 8,994 times | Debate No: | 10234 |
Debate Rounds (2)
Comments (33)
Votes (13)
 Pro In the words of Rosseau, "Man is by nature good. Men are depraved and perverted by society." When out into perspective we realize that what could a newborn child have done wrong? Compared to the wretched sins a mere five year old has committed. Now if Society was not evil would the following list of atrocities occur almost on a regular basis: Terrorism Child Pornography Murder Holocaust Genocide Abuse  Con Man, at birth is neither good nor bad. To be good as is requires an intrinsic notion of the term. That it is good because it is, it exists as good because it's existence is good. A thing, action is not good, or bad in and of itself. It is good, or bad in context, in relation to, in evaluation of. To be good it must of good to someone. An intrinsic notion of good, divorces the good from the beneficiary, there is no good for, simply it is good, a child has no evaluative capacity, it simply is. The next detail asserts some relativistic corruption. There is no valid 'society' here that can corrupt. Individual ideology either stands or falls on its own. I do not murder, so how am I corrupted by some vague collective? |
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Pro The individual edeologies that compose a certain society is what makes it corrupt, ie drug dealers, murders, pedophiles, rapists, child abusers. Murder is not the only form of curruption, lieing, cheating, sinning, which we are all guilty of consitute corruption. And we learn these things from fellow men, extend the phrase society corrupts. A child has an evaluative capacity, because we can compare it the expetaions that are expected of it. still because also good and bad must occur to an other person, there is no effect to who being good or ba Con A synonym of pure is good. http://thesaurus.reference.com... "Man is by nature good. Men are depraved and perverted by society." The two are related concepts, your argument makes that clear. Such profound sophistry should be noted my fellows - no definitions were provided, it rests then on what the arguments lead as to the meanings of the terms. "The individual edeologies that compose a certain society is what makes it corrupt, ie drug dealers, murders, pedophiles, rapists, child abusers." My opponent performs the fallacy of the ambiguous collective, stating since individuals can X society must X. Ignoring that an individual =/= collective. |
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13 votes have been placed for this debate. Showing 1 through 10 records.
Vote Placed by brittwaller 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by LuisMiguelLuna 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by Cherymenthol 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by alto2osu 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by Koopin 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by daniel_t 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by Korashk 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by Kleptin 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by Alex 3 years ago
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Vote Placed by ac1125 3 years ago
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Man is just a douche.
My point is that, like other stereotypes, asserting that all children are naturally "pure" or "good" is inappropriate. Children exhibit the entire range of attitudes from very altruistic to very selfish, and everything in between.
IMHO, whatever attitude the child is born with, can (and should) be normalized to some extent but can't be radically altered.
Further unless the children are sociopathic and can't feel empathy at all your point that there's a spectrum of feeling doesn't suggest that there are no such tendancies.
Small children also don't speak, but I wouldn't say that language acquisition isn't tied up in their biology. They simply hav'nt developed their natural capability for speach.
Conduct: CON. This was blatantly a semantics argument, that Con planned out through, as Con said, trickery. The resolution uses the word "pure", but throughout all R1, Pro kept using the word "good". Then, in R2, he decides to call foul on Con? I don't think so.
Spelling and Grammar: Tie.
Arguments: CON. Con aptly pointed out the flaw in Pro's argument. Character limits less than 3000 tend to yield disappointing debates, few points of substance were made here, especially since Pro decided to argue two resolutions in a two round debate.
Sources: CON. Only two sources were given, a quote and a dictionary definition. Con's definition was key in showing the flaw of Pro's argument. Pro's quote spoke of "Good" and not "Pure", acting as further evidence against his "Pure vs Good" case.
This Mencius apparently didn't work with small children on a regular basis. My wife worked for 23 years taking care of infants and small children, they are by no means, *all* good. Unless Mencius is claiming that the "good tendencies" are so fragile that a child can be stripped of them before he/she can talk, he is wrong.
There are all kinds of children being born, some highly social and empathetic (good) and some strongly asocial and unsympathetic[1], but most are somewhere inbetween.
Here is a good talk on the subject: "Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's minds"
http://www.ted.com... Note especially her comments on child development.
[1] Oddly, I couldn't find an antonym for "empathetic" in the dictionary...