Primitivism

The doctrine that supposedly primitive peoples, because they had remained closer to nature and had been less subject to the influences of society, were nobler than civilized peoples.

The idea flourished in the 18th century (1700’s) and was an important element in the Romantic movement.

History: the rational philosopher, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (fl. c. 1710), in his effort to show that God had revealed himself completely in nature -- and that nature was therefore perfect -- reasoned that primitive peoples were closer to God and therefore essentially moral.  Human beings are by nature prone to do good: their evil comes from self-imposed limitations of their freedom.

The movement was advanced by the writings of Rousseau, particularly his belief that human beings were potentially perfect and that their faults were due to the vicious effect of conventional society.

The idea of the “Nobel Savage” produced the idealized American Indian, as in Cooper’s novels, and American life was exploited because it was primitive, as in Crevecoeur’s Letters.

Elements of primitivism, related to the idea of natural goodness, appear throughout American writing in the 19th century (1800’s).

A common and useful distinction is made between Cultural Primitivism and Chronological Primitivism:

Cultural being used for the primitivism that prefers the natural to the artificial, the uninhibited to the controlled, the simple and primitive to that on which people have worked, nature to art.

Chronological being used for the primitivism that looks backward to a “Golden Age” and sees our present sad state as the product of what culture and society have done to them.

If this distinction is made -- and the terms are not mutually exclusive -- it becomes apparent that many of the political doctrines of the American founding fathers were influenced by Chronological primitivism, whereas Cultural primitivism has been a powerful, although silent, force in American realism.

Nobel Savage:

The idea that primitive human beings are naturally good and that whatever evil they develop is the product of the corrupting action of civilization and society.

A doctrine of a natural nobility.

Source: Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature