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There is obviously still enough ego in America to claim that C. Rogers was the first to argue that men are fundamentally good. Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau formulated that already in the 18th century in his "Second Discours" - Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality)

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Rousseau was not French but Swiss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau

Right, my bad. I got taken away by his name, location of death and which country he influenced the most.

this is a deeply ironic comment, seeing as how mencius instilled that idea into confucianism back in the 3rd century bc. (rousseau might have introduced the idea to western philosophical thought; i don't know very much about him.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius

Thanks for the addition, I have not heard about Mencius before but will certainly check him out. Surely the idea of goodness is older than Rouseau, yet his work is probably the beginning of a new stream in western philosophy.

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