As far as Nietzsche goes: what he calls good and what I’d call good are mostly opposite, so I stand by my assertion, though I’ll modify it. Nietzsche would’ve loved this book, considered Jack a hero and Ralph a coward, and been pissed off when the British Navy magically appeared at the end. I think he felt much the same about human nature as Hobbes, but in reverse, if that makes sense. So where Hobbes saw ’savage’ man at the mercy of stronger men, and thought that was a bad thing, Nietzsche obviously thought the strong man was right in his subjugation of the weaker. What I was driving at was their shared conception of “the state of nature,” despite their antithetical interpretations of it.

Oh, and it’s good to have you back.

“Golding’s assertion that people are fundamentally bad, no matter what the circumstances - which goes back at least to Rousseau and was presented in its fullness by Nietzsche”

. . . is easily right, but I have to say it defies everything I thought I understood about Rousseau and Nietzsche. I understood Rousseau to think that man was good, that civilization was a disease, and that if we could only drop some boys off on an island they’d find bliss.

As for Nietzsche, the only thing I think he would ever call bad would be someone’s cowardice in not embracing their natural disposition towards freedom and selfishness. Again, I think Nietzsche sees civilization (or at least Christendom) as the thing that’s corrupted man.

I think both Nietzsche and Rousseau are explicit about their idea that things don’t HAVE to be this way, and man isn’t fundamentally bad, no?