Primitivism, Then and Now
Announcements:
(1) Roger B. Manning readings for next week are listed under three different chapters.
(2) Will finish up with the Hughes book on Monday and if convenient bring the book just in case—we may need to draw attention to specific passages in the book.
I. Introduction: “The Original Nature Man”
Story of Joseph Knowles, taken from Roderick Nash’s Wilderness and the American Mind and elsewhere.
“On the morning of August 10, 1913, the Boston Post headlined its lead story: NAKED HE PLUNGES INTO MAINE WOODS TO LIVE ALONE TWO MONTHS. The following article told how six days previously a husky, part-time illustrator in his mid-forties named Joseph Knowles had disrobed in a cold drizzle at the edge of a lake in northeastern Maine, smoked a final cigarette, shaken hands around a group of sportsmen and reporters, and trudged off into the wilderness. There was even a photograph of an unclothed Knowles, discreetly shielded by underbrush, waving farewell to civilization. He took no equipment of any kind, and promised to remain completely isolated, living off the land ‘as Adam lived’“ (Nash, revised edition, p. 141).
What is the significance of “The Original Nature Man”? Was Knowles just a publicity hound, a con man, a fraud? Is the whole incident just an interesting and mildly amusing footnote in American history?
II. Primitivism, Then and Now
A. Defining what primitivism is:
Primitivism as a reaction against modernization
Leo Marx: “the primitivist viewpoint is the conceptual opposite of progressivism.”
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents: the civilized have always longed to be uncivilized and have attributed great virtues to them
Lovejoy’s and Boas (L&B), Primitivism in Antiquity
chronological primitivism and cultural primitivism
"Primitivism and the Appraisal of Human Nature" (pp. 17-19 L&B), involving the idea of an original state of 'good' human nature
Plato's Republic
Myths of the “Noble Savage” and Greek idealization of the Scythians
[EXCERPT FROM HERCULES ]
C. “Nature as ‘norm’”
Nature as norm:
"The history of primitivism is in great part a phase of a larger historic tendency which is one of the strangest, most potent and most persistent factors in Western thought—the use of the term 'nature' to express the standard of human values, the identification of the good with that which is 'natural' or 'according to nature' " (L&B 12).
Compare to Leo Marx’s article
Different and conflicting senses of the term, “nature”
[SLIDE]
"Little, indeed, in the history of Western ideas about what is good or bad in conduct, in social and political institutions, and in art, is intelligible without a constant realization of the fact that the sacred word 'nature' is probably the most equivocal in the vocabulary of the European peoples; that the range of connotation of the single term covers conceptions not only distinct but often absolutely antithetic to one another in their implications; and that the writers who have used it have usually been little aware of its equivocality and have at all times tended to slip unconsciously from one of its senses to another. A knowledge of the range of its meanings, and of the processes of thought—logical, pseudo-logical, or merely associative—by which one sense of it gives rise to, or easily passes over into, others—is an indispensable prerequisite for any discriminating reading of a large part of classical, medieval and modern literature and philosophy" (L&B 12).
D. Some Meanings of “Nature”
(a) 'by nature'—an account of an intrinsic or objective character. “That person is by nature a happy person.”
(b) nature contrasted with law, custom or convention.
(c) beliefs generally held 'by nature' as opposed to beliefs of different customs or cultures. E.g. perhaps a belief in God qualifies under some explanations.
(d) " 'Nature' as the general cosmic order, optimistically conceived as good, or as divinely ordained . . . ." (L&B 13)
(e) 'natural' equated with 'healthy'
(f) 'natural' state of anything as its original or congenital condition—with man, the 'primeval' condition
(g) 'nature' as opposed to culture or artificial
(h) 'nature' as in humans not owing to conscious thought or choice—i.e. instinct
(i) 'natural' state of human society as the family, or possibly a primitive clan, not government.
Varieties of the “state of nature” (L&B 14-15):
1. temporal (cf. 'b' and 'd' above), for example, before humans arrived.
2. technological (cf. g above), e.g., cave man people or Neolithic technology
3. economic (i.e. without private property)
4. marital
5. dietetic --i.e. vegetarianism
6. juristic--society without government
7. ethical cf. (b) and (h) above; humans as naturally good before civilization corrupted them.
Relation of technological primitivism to anti-intellectualism
Present day examples, e.g., Edward Goldsmith
III. Notes on gladiatorial fights, film on Friday 2/6
See Hughes: “Since the numbers of victims in a Greek or Roman sacrifice was sometimes in the hundreds, the effect of the environment through killing animals, consuming fuel, and releasing smoke into the atmosphere must have been considerable” (p. 53).
See Donald G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome
[BRIEF CLIP FROM GLADIATOR ]
