QuestionsAre humans good by nature?Education can do everything: one is born neither fool nor genius, neither good nor bad
Are humans good by nature?Neither good nor bad

Education can do everything: one is born neither fool nor genius, neither good nor bad

"Education can do everything"; "education makes us what we are"; the Savoyard

Claude-Adrien Helvétius 1715 · 1771People are not born fools or geniuses, good or bad: education, broadly understood, makes the person.
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What it claims

Education can do everything, or nearly everything: one is born neither fool nor genius, neither good nor bad, and what we are is the effect of education in the broad sense (instruction, needs, position, laws, example).

Why

The same people change in character with their instruction, government and position: education makes the person.

The same idea through history
Confucius500 BCConfucius already said that people are close by nature and that practice sets them apart. Helvétius goes further: all or nearly all comes from what one has learned and the position in which one lives.
John Locke1693Locke, whom Helvétius claims as his master, writes in his Thoughts on Education that, of all the men we meet, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.
Claude-Adrien Helvétius1758Helvétius (1715-1771) puts the thesis forward in De l'esprit (1758), a book condemned by the Parlement of Paris and burned. He takes it up and develops it in De l'homme, published after his death, in 1773.
John Dewey1922Dewey cites Helvétius as the type of those who make human nature an empty and passive material, and judges this position excessive. For him conduct arises from the interaction between nature and environment.
In short

"Education can do everything: one is born neither fool nor genius, neither good nor bad" is an argument by Claude-Adrien Helvétius (De l'homme, 1773 (introduction; sections I and X); De l'esprit, 1758, 1758) on the question "Are humans good by nature?" (answer: neither good nor bad). Its claim: Education can do everything, or nearly everything: one is born neither fool nor genius, neither good nor bad, and what we are is the effect of education in the broad sense (instruction, needs, position, laws, example). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

De l'homme, 1773 (introduction; sections I and X); De l'esprit, 1758
Valid with an implicit premise

Is a child born with a character, a talent, a goodness or a wickedness already inscribed? Helvétius says no. For him well-built people all have roughly the same starting aptitude. What makes them so different is their instruction, their needs, their desires, their position, their government and the example before their eyes, what he calls education in the broad sense. The Savoyard is thrifty, active and faithful because he is poor and hungry; the monk is wicked because of his education. Helvétius sees good news in this: if man is the product of his education, nations hold in their hands the instrument of their greatness. He does not say that everyone can become a genius: he specifies that education can make everyone a person of wit and sense. The P1 to P5 form is our reconstruction; the translations are ours.

P1The strongest proof of the power of education is the relation constantly observed between the diversity of instructions and the diversity of their results: the savage runs better than the civilised man because he is more practised, the civilised man has more ideas because he receives more sensations.
P2The same men are frank, loyal, industrious and humane under a free government, and base, lying, vile, without genius or courage under a despotic one. This difference of character comes from the different education received in each.
P3Mind and talents are never in men but the product of their desires and their particular position. The science of education perhaps comes down to placing men in a position that forces them to acquire the talents and virtues desired in them.
P4Man is born ignorant, but he is not born a fool; foolishness is acquired through instruction that piles error upon error. The monk's wickedness is also explained by his education.
P5 · implicit premiseCommonly well-organised people all have the same natural aptitude; if their results differ according to education and not according to organisation, then one is born neither fool nor genius, neither good nor bad, and it is education, in the broad sense, that makes the person.
Therefore education can do everything, or nearly everything: one is born neither fool nor genius, neither good nor bad, and what we are is the effect of education in the broad sense (instruction, needs, position, laws, example).

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where results differ greatly according to education, but where starting aptitudes also differ and weigh as much: education no longer does everything, and one can no longer say that one is born neither fool nor genius.
With its five premises, the conclusion follows. The most fragile point is P5: the premise that Helvétius develops in section II of De l'homme (not in our extracts) according to which all commonly well-organised people have an equal aptitude. The examples of P1 to P4 (the savage, the Savoyard, the governments) show that education weighs heavily. They do not show that it alone plays a part: the same gaps could be found if nature played a part too. Helvétius himself specifies that education does not make geniuses of everyone, which qualifies "can do everything".
Analogy. A sculptor receives two identical blocks of marble and makes of one an admirable statue and of the other a heap of stones. Helvétius says: such are people, nearly equal blocks, and everything depends on the sculptor. Diderot answers that the blocks are not equal, and that the sculptor works with veins.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Denis Diderot 1774 · attacks premise 5

Diderot writes, in his notes on the book, that he knows no system more consoling for parents and more encouraging for teachers, but none more desolating for children who are thought equally fit for everything. One does not give a greyhound the nose of a pointer, nor the speed of a greyhound to a pointer. He challenges Helvétius: if five hundred newborn children are handed over to him, how many men of genius will he return? Why not five hundred? All answers will come down to the difference of organisation, primary source of laziness, levity, stubbornness and other vices or passions.

Helvétius replies
Helvétius What Helvétius already specifies in the introduction to De l'homme (note 3)
Summary: Helvétius notes that, whatever degree of perfection education is brought to, it would not make geniuses of all the men able to receive it. It can excite emulation, accustom people to attention, open hearts to humanity and minds to truth, and make of all citizens, if not men of genius, at least men of wit and sense. A nation made of such men would, he says, be the first in the universe.
The debate goes on (our summary) The two answer each other without meeting. Helvétius anticipated that one does not make a genius of everyone, but he maintains that all well-built people can reach "wit and sense". Diderot asks whether vices and passions come from organisation, and Helvétius answers with examples (the monk, the Savoyard) that Diderot finds insufficient.
Where the debate stands (our summary)A basic disagreement, not settled: the share of differences at birth in characters and talents. Helvétius holds it very small and Diderot decisive. Both admit that education matters a great deal.
T
Thomas Bouchard and colleagues 1990 · attacks premise 5

Summary: the Minnesota study of twins reared apart compared identical twins who had grown up in different families. They resemble each other on many personality and intelligence traits, almost as much as twins reared together. The authors conclude that an important share of psychological differences between individuals is linked to genetic differences.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1990, after the author's death (1771).
E
Eric Turkheimer and colleagues defender of the argument · 2003
Summary: in a study of seven-year-old twins, Turkheimer and colleagues find that the share of IQ differences linked to genes depends on the social environment. In very poor families, the shared environment explains the largest part of the gaps and the effect of genes is small. In affluent families, it is the reverse. They conclude that heritability is not a fixed property of a trait.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Both results are debated in detail. Critics have questioned how the Minnesota twins were found and their contacts before the study; the effect described by Turkheimer is found in the United States, but not in Western Europe or Australia (Tucker-Drob and Bates, 2016). One question remains open: how far can education change what genes favour?
John Dewey 1922 · attacks premise 5

Summary: Dewey writes that authors like Helvétius made the complete malleability of a human nature originally empty and passive the basis of the omnipotence of education and of the infinite perfectibility of mankind. For him original nature supplies the raw materials, and custom the machinery and the designs: nature is not empty.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1922, after the author's death (1771).
The debate goes on (our summary) Helvétius does not say that nature is empty: he says that physical sensibility is the source of all our actions, and that well-organised people have an equal aptitude. Dewey above all reproaches him for believing that original nature counts for nothing, which Helvétius does not claim in the passages we have. The disagreement is about how to read the "everything" in "education can do everything".
Where the debate stands (our summary)The two positions have much in common: an original nature that is neither good nor bad and an education, in the broad sense, that gives it shape. Dewey insists on interaction, Helvétius on the power of education.
Kant 1793 · attacks the conclusion

Summary: Kant writes that man carries within him, by nature, an original disposition to good (personality, or respect for the moral law) that nothing destroys, and also a universal propensity to evil that he has given himself.

no reply
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1793, after the author's death (1771).
The debate goes on (our summary) Kant writes twenty years after De l'homme and does not cite Helvétius in this passage. In a note in the same book, he refuses to admit a neutral moral state that education would fill, and holds that the moral law is present in us as an incentive. A partisan of Helvétius would answer that "respect for the law" is itself the effect of an education that Kant does not see. A Kantian would answer that without a prior disposition, no education could give rise to obligation. Neither has a proof the other accepts.
Where the debate stands (our summary)An open disagreement, at the heart of the question: is the sense of duty innate or constructed? Moral psychology today treats the question without settling it.
What today's voices say
Criticize it
Jordan PetersonHe denies that culture alone can fix human problems: you can pile all the culture you want on a person and it will not solve their problem.