(P/B) THE FALL OF NATURAL MAN

Παρουσίαση

This book gives a new interpretation of the reception of the new world by the old. It is the first in-depth study of the pre-Enlightenment methods by which Europeans attempted to describe and classify the American Indian and his society. Between 1512 and 1724 a simple determinist view of human society was replaced by a more sophisticated relativist approach. Anthony Pagden uses new methods of technical analysis, already developed in philosophy and anthropology, to examine four groups of writers who analysed Indian culture: the sixteenth-century theologian, Francisco de Vitoria, and his followers; the 'champion of the Indians' Bartolome de Las Casas; and the Jesuit historians Jos? de Acosta and Joseph Fran?ois Lafitau. Dr Pagden explains the sources for their theories and how these conditioned their observations. He also examines for the first time the key terms in each writer's vocabulary - words such as 'barbarian' and 'civil' - and the assumptions that lay beneath them. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The problem of recognition
2. The image of the barbarian
3. The theory of natural slavery
4. From nature's slaves to nature's children
5. The rhetorician and the theologians: Juan Gines de Sepulveda and his dialogue, Democrates secundus
6. A programme for comparative ethnology (I)
7. A programme for comparative ethnology (II)
8. Joseph Francois Lafitau: comparative ethnology and the language of symbols
Notes
Bibliography
Index