Rousseau i nowożytne spotkanie z Innym

Abstrakt

The paper situates the thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau in the context of the 17th and 18th century social and political debate on the possibility of creating a better society, which intensified with the crisis of feudal system and early modern discovery of the Other. The paper also discusses consequences of this debate for shaping anthropology as a field of knowledge and understanding culture of the time. The idea of a “noble savage” according to which non-Europeans, i.e., the “primitive” people living in the state of nature as free and equal, without concerns and inconveniences of civilization, is contrasted with an opposite project of a “degenerate savage” of Thomas Hobbes, who used it as a justification for absolute monarchy in European countries and of European societies over non-Western ones.