The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology

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' Bartolom� 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.

• Author
• Anthony Pagden

• Format
• paperback

• Pages
• 284

• Publisher
• Cambridge University Press

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 9780521337045

• Genres
• history, anthropology

• Release date
• 1987