ANT-2215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Primitive Communism, For Marx, Noble Savage
Document Summary
Time period from newton to the french revolution. Intellectual attitudes coalesced to produce key concepts of social science. Taking newton philosophy to the social realm. Deistic meaning god created universe but universe operates on own by mechanical principles. People begin to ask how social world works and it was made by god but how does it work after that. Locke: an essay concerning human understanding, tabula rasa idea from sophists. Culture defined as the accumulated way of living created and acquired by people and transmitted from generation to another other than through genes. Jesuit father joseph lafitau creating inventory of culture traits considerably less ethnocentric. Jean jacques roussea (1712-1778: discourse on the origin and foundation of inequality among men (1751) asks how and why human differences developed over time. He concludes humanity was happier in the past, and that noble savagery was a better period. I can do what i want without working all the time.