Along with a lot of sharp satire of social snobbery in St Petersburg and the opportunistic greed of some who use egalitarian rhetoric, the book seems to say that not even unselfconscious human goodness is safe (for the "good" person or for those around them) in a world of egotism and delusion.
He proposed that those godly qualities which resemble human qualities are described analogously, with reference to human terms; for example, when God is described as good, it does not mean that God is good in human terms, but that human goodness is used as a reference to describe God's goodness.
If language about God or the divine is totally equivocal, then saying that God is good or claiming to know that God is good bears no relation whatever to standards of human goodness.
You could say -- and I would -- that globalization, driven not by human goodness but by the profit motive, has done far more good for far more people than all the foreign aid and soft loans ever provided by well-intentioned governments and international agencies.
6.2 "Original Sin" glitch fixed; basic human goodness implied.
They will not believe that human goodness is enough to solve this problem.
Essentially, it's a book about public and private morality, about the possibility and definition of human goodness.
Ralph is a "professional Christian", but the novel tests any Christian faith in human goodness well past breaking point.
At all events, the idea of human goodness, as Rousseau developed it, set him apart from both conservatives and radicals.
(He also amusingly confesses that a glance at his previous oeuvre would have made clear the transparent self-delusion of his purported belief in human goodness).
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.
