Demystifying Rousseau’s “savages”: methodological structure and heuristic function

Abstract

There is a whole tradition of studies that has superimposed a mythical structure on the concepts of the “savage” in the pure state of nature, and of the American peoples who are also called “savages”: the myth of the “good savage”, the golden age, the terrestrial paradise, etc. Despite the efforts made by other authors to dispel this interpretation, it has not been shown that it jeopardises the central thesis of Rousseau’s anthropology: the defence of natural goodness. We are interested here precisely in uncovering these risks, which may be, at least in part, the result of a biased reading of Derrida’s Grammatology.