Read more
This classic text in Italian history of political philosophy, translated into English for the first time, investigates the philosophical and ideological conceptions hidden beneath the modern image of the isolated individual. In The Bourgeois and the Savage, Alfonso Maurizio Iacono reveals that this apparently simple and transparent image is imbued with a profound complexity containing human and social relationships, which are intertwined with relationships of power, domination, inequality, colonisation and servitude. As Karl Marx argued, and as was later confirmed by twentieth-century anthropology, the isolated individual does not stand at the beginning of history; he can emerge only where social relationships are already very developed and where society appears as a tool used for private purposes. Considering the writings of Daniel Defoe, the great French Enlightenment philosopher Turgot, and the father of political economy Adam Smith, The Bourgeois and the Savage critically analyses the process which led to the naturalisation of the image of the isolated man and traces its development and transformation into a still dominant paradigm.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Robinson Crusoe's Adventure on the Island: from the Isolated Economy to Political Supremacy.- 3. An attempt to explain the theory of value: Turgot's simplification.- 4. "The rude state of society": and the reason of abundance: Adam Smith's model.- 5. Political Philosophy on "The Gift": Sahlin's Interpretation.
About the author
Alfonso Maurizio Iacono is Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Pisa, Italy. He is the author of numerous books including
Le Fétichisme: Histoire d'un Concept (1992),
Autonomia, Potere, Minorità (2000),
Caminhos de Saida do Estado de Menoridade (2001),
The History and Theory of Fetishism (2016), and
Studi su Karl Marx (2018).
