What inquiry can do is make evasion harder.

It can force the abstract claim back into contact with a particular choice. It can ask whether the standard I apply to an opponent survives contact with an ally. It can make me distinguish the good an institution protects from the harm it excuses. It can reveal that two things I wanted to separate have been living in the same room all along.

That is the inquiry I am inviting the reader to join.

Not whether human beings are naturally good or naturally corrupt. We are capable of love, cruelty, sacrifice, appetite, loyalty, fear, courage, self-command, and self-deception. The more useful question is what our families, institutions, moral systems, and choices teach those capacities to become, and what happens when one of them is denied, exploited, indulged, or treated as the whole person.