A Savage Nature
In Western anthropology, philosophy, and literature, the noble savage is a stock character who is uncorrupted by civilization. As such, the noble savage symbolizes the innate goodness and moral superiority of a primitive people living in harmony with Nature.[2] In the heroic drama of the stageplay The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672), John Dryden represents the noble savage as an archetype of Man-as-Creature-of-Nature.[3]
A Savage Nature
In 18th-century anthropology the term noble savage then denoted nature's gentleman, an ideal man born from the sentimentalism of moral sense theory. In the 19th century, in the essay "The Noble Savage" (1853) Charles Dickens rendered the noble savage into a rhetorical oxymoron by satirizing the British romanticisation of Primitivism in philosophy and in the arts made possible by moral sentimentalism.[6]
As an explorer of lands unknown to European white men, the Frenchman Lescarbot had a positive perception of the native Indian cultures of North America, unlike the English negative cultural preconceptions about the savage who is not English, based upon expansionist conflicts with the Irish pastoralists, the English isolation from Europe, and the English cultural denigration of their Continental neighbours.[9]
In Western literature, the Roman book De origine et situ Germanorum (On the Origin and Situation of the Germans, AD 98), by the historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus, introduced the anthropologic concept of the noble savage to the Western World; later a cultural stereotype who featured in the exotic-place tourism reported in the European travel literature of the 17th and the 18th centuries.[12]
As philosophic reportage, "Of Cannibals" applies cultural relativism to compare the civilized European to the uncivilized noble savage. Montaigne's anthropological report about cannibalism in Brazil indicated that the Tupinambá people were neither a noble nor an exceptionally good folk, yet neither were the Tupinambá culturally or morally inferior to his contemporary, 16th-century European civilization. From the perspective of Classical liberalism of Montaigne's humanist portrayal of the customs of honor of the Tupinambá people indicates Western philosophic recognition that people are people, despite their different customs, traditions, and codes of honor. The academic David El Kenz explicates the Montaigne's background concerning the violence of customary morality:
In the 1st century AD, in the book Germania, Tacitus ascribed to the Germans the cultural superiority of the noble savage way of life, because Rome was too civilized, unlike the savage Germans.[20] The art historian Erwin Panofsky explains that:
On our arrival upon this coast we found there a savage race who ... lived by hunting and by the fruits which the trees spontaneously produced. These people ... were greatly surprised and alarmed by the sight of our ships and arms and retired to the mountains. But since our soldiers were curious to see the country and hunt deer, they were met by some of these savage fugitives.
The leaders of the savages accosted them thus: We abandoned for you, the pleasant sea-coast, so that we have nothing left, but these almost inaccessible mountains: at least, it is just that you leave us in peace and liberty. Go, and never forget that you owe your lives to our feeling of humanity. Never forget that it was from a people whom you call rude and savage that you receive this lesson in gentleness and generosity. ... We abhor that brutality which, under the gaudy names of ambition and glory, ... sheds the blood of men who are all brothers. ... We value health, frugality, liberty, and vigor of body and mind: the love of virtue, the fear of the gods, a natural goodness toward our neighbors, attachment to our friends, fidelity to all the world, moderation in prosperity, fortitude in adversity, courage always bold to speak the truth, and abhorrence of flattery. ...
In the 18th century, British intellectual debate about Primitivism used the Highland Scots as a local, European example of a noble savage people, as often as the American Indians were the example. The English cultural perspective scorned the ostensibly rude manners of the Highlanders, whilst admiring and idealizing the toughness of person and character of the Highland Scots; the writer Tobias Smollett described the Highlanders:
In the Kingdom of France, critics of Crown and Church risked censorship and summary imprisonment without trial, and primitivism was political protest against the repressive imperial règimes of Louis XIV and Louis XV. In his travelogue of North America, the writer Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce de Lahontan, Baron de Lahontan, who had lived with the Huron Indians (Wyandot people), ascribed deist and egalitarian politics to Adari, a Canadian Indian who played the role of noble savage for French explorers:
Interest in the remote peoples of the Earth, in the unfamiliar civilizations of the East, in the untutored races of America and Africa, was vivid in France in the 18th century. Everyone knows how Voltaire and Montesquieu used Hurons or Persians to hold up the [looking] glass to Western manners and morals, as Tacitus used the Germans to criticize the society of Rome. But very few ever look into the seven volumes of the Abbé Raynal's History of the Two Indies, which appeared in 1772. It is however one of the most remarkable books of the century. Its immediate practical importance lay in the array of facts which it furnished to the friends of humanity in the movement against negro slavery. But it was also an effective attack on the Church and the sacerdotal system. ... Raynal brought home to the conscience of Europeans the miseries which had befallen the natives of the New World through the Christian conquerors and their priests. He was not indeed an enthusiastic preacher of Progress. He was unable to decide between the comparative advantages of the savage state of nature and the most highly cultivated society. But he observes that "the human race is what we wish to make it", that the felicity of Man depends entirely on the improvement of legislation, and ... his view is generally optimistic.
Like the Earl of Shaftesbury in the Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit (1699), Jean-Jacques Rousseau likewise believed that Man is innately good, and that urban civilization, characterized by jealousy, envy, and self-consciousness, has made men bad in character. In Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men (1754), Rousseau said that in the primordial state of nature, man was a solitary creature who was not méchant (bad), but was possessed of an "innate repugnance to see others of his kind suffer."[28]
In War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (1996), the archaeologist Lawrence H. Keeley said that the "widespread myth" that "civilized humans have fallen from grace from a simple, primeval happiness, a peaceful golden age" is contradicted and refuted by archeologic evidence that indicates that violence was common practice in early human societies. That the noble savage paradigm has warped anthropological literature to political ends.[45] Moreover, the anthropologist Roger Sandall likewise accused anthropologists of exalting the noble savage above civilized man,[46] by way of designer tribalism, a form of romanticised primitivism that dehumanises Indigenous peoples into the cultural stereotype of the indigène peoples who live a primitive way of life demarcated and limited by tradition, which discouraged Indigenous peoples from cultural assimilation into the dominant Western culture.[47][48][49]
Anarcho-primitivists, such as the philosopher John Zerzan, rely upon a strong ethical dualism between Anarcho-primitivism and civilization; hence, "life before domestication [and] agriculture was, in fact, largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health."[53] Zerzan's claims about the moral superiority of primitive societies are based on a certain reading of the works of anthropologists, such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard Borshay Lee, wherein the anthropologic category of primitive society is restricted to hunter-gatherer societies who have no domesticated animals or agriculture, e.g. the stable social hierarchy of the American Indians of the north-west North America, who live from fishing and foraging, is attributed to having domesticated dogs and the cultivation of tobacco, that animal husbandry and agriculture equal civilization.[53][54]
Carpenter Nature Center July 14 Explore the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway at Carpenter Nature Center in Hastings, MN. We will take a hike to the shore of the St. Croix, look for signs of the critters who live there, and meet some of CNC live Animal Ambassadors. We will enjoy lunch and explore what the nature center has to offer.
With that simple question began the building of a dream. Mike and Jan acquired the land in 1990, and homesteaded on the property (in what is now the ski cabin!) for 8 years, formulating their vision. Granted, it was not always a perfect process, but here you are, relaxing, dining, and enjoying yourself in the dream of two love struck people who share a love for nature.
Mere failure to introduce any evidence on the assailant's past, however, is not necessarily fatal to plaintiff's case. Unseaworthiness is a species of strict liability. If a seaman is injured by a winch which becomes faulty, he need not show that on a number of other occasions the same winch nearly injured other members of the crew. The defective nature of gear is often demonstrated only by the circumstances surrounding the injury itself; the same may be said of the assault cases.
Defendant is correct in pointing out that, in some circumstances, even a deadly assault does not establish unseaworthiness. For example, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has held that a seaman who stabbed his captain did not render the vessel unseaworthy.[8] The evidence supported a finding that the attack was provoked by a cruel and abusive officer who carried a gun, cursed the crew, made false accusations, withheld pay wrongfully, stranded several members of the crew in foreign ports, and had some seamen arrested in port without cause. Immediately after the assault in question, the captain pulled his gun and fired several times at the assailant, who survived only by jumping overboard and swimming ashore. And in Connolly v. Farrell Lines, Inc.,[9] plaintiff was hit over the head with a large "board" by a man who had earlier threatened to kill him. The assailant, who had never before been involved in a fight, struck plaintiff who was armed and advancing on him. Not all violent assaults, therefore, are committed by persons with a vicious nature. 041b061a72