Talk:Noble savage

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Souldn't Savage Noble(from Beast Machines) be at least mentioned here, as his name is likely a reference to the 'noble savage', and he has the right character traits, at least to an extent.Seven-point-Mystic 12:57, 24 September 2006 (UTC)


The content of these two paragraphs appears to be well off the topic of the "noble savage" and more appropriate to a general discussion of critiques of western imperialism. If anyone has an idea where these paragraphs might fit better, please move them. Rossami 18:56, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

There are no more "neolithic" people on this planet; the word "primitive" does not refer to people living in a former stage in cultural evolution, it refers to people who are at the periphery of the world capitalist economy who have been, are, or are about to be victims of Western colonial or imperialist expansion, ethnocide, and genocide.
There have been some -- many, but not all, anthropologists, and many non-anthropologists -- who developed a critique of European ethnocentrism, and sought to develop more objective understandings of non-Western peoples. They continue to challenge the presumption of European (or Western) superiority, and to challenge specific claims made by Westerners concerning human nature and the world in which humans live and act. Those who are committed to the superiority of the West and Western ideas, colonialism, ethnocide and genocide, are profoundly threatened by such attempts.
The modern use of such terms as "neolithic" may be as doomed by time and study as suich terms as "primitive". Cultures around the world did not simultaneously abandon tool use.----Kortoso 20:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it is ridiculous to classify Robert E. Howard's Conan as a a 'noble savage.' Conan is a Barbarian and a plunderer; a criminal who holds to few scruples. He is admired for his strength and brutality alone, and adheres to next to zero of those attributes listed. (Chalk one up for physical health and sexual inhibition, which includes the attempted rape written in Howard's The Frost Giant's Daughter.) To consider Conan the Barbarian as morally superior to civilized man is inane. Conan's ignoble desires are primarily lust, wealth, and battle.

To me, Tarzan and Conan are both portrayed as being superior because they are from outside civilization, and often they triumph by mere virtue of that "noble" birth. Isn't that the essence of the noble savage myth? Montaigne was one of those who influenced Rousseau, and in particular his essay "On Cannibals".
Whether that means that they behave in a way that we expect them to, when confronted with civilization, may be a matter of our own expectations. I am inspired to write an essay citing the Cimmerian's "rough code" of honor using specific examples.--Kortoso 20:51, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Original sin

I think it needs to be mentionned somehow that the idea of the noble savage had tremendous repercussion on Western Philosophy. In Christian doctrine, humans are born with the orignal sin and religion is what guides them to know what is right and what is wrong. But there we are one day, Europe is colonizing America, a continent that could not have known the Christian religion. On this new continent, Europeans find human beings living there and they have their own morality and they don't live in perpetual sin. Something is not right. Aren't they supposed to be killing, raping and eating each other all the time? There goes Rousseau one day writing that the human being is born good and that civilization is what makes him vicious. -- Mathieugp 19:49, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, all Christian apologetics is rooted on the belief that there exists in all cultures an independent moral code, for which is borrowed the term "Tao." (Lewis, Mere Christianity). The statement that the "Noble Savage" theory disproves the doctrine of original sin is naive, backwords, and appalling.

[edit] History of American Indians

Isn't one of the primary uses of this term that referring to American Indians as worthy of friendship and of conversion to christianity? --Schwael 15:48, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

No, quite the contrary in fact. Christianity and railroads and silk top hats and duchesses and popes are all signs of decadence from the original fine simplicity of the instinctively noble savage. That's the germ of the idea: and it is only a dream-idea, not a fact of ethnology. --Wetman 22:24, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Modern denial

A good citation would probably be The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, which offers an excellent review of the history of this idea. --User:ianrickard 05:44, 19 December 2005

Could you edit into the article the mainstream flow of the idea of the noble savage as Pinker lays it out? This article needs some structure and reports from some professional assessments. --Wetman 17:23, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Is it the history of the idea we want here? I'm personally more interested in orientating the article more around the evidence that supports and refutes this concept. I think the literary examples are important because they show how pervasive the idea has been, but they seem to be making up the bulk of article at the moment. --User:ianrickard 22:20, 20 December 2005
Of course it's the history of the idea. There's no fact to report about "noble savages"! It's an idea whose time has come ...and gone! Quotes show how the idea has been received and expressed: Wikipedia readers are less interested in what nosotros think of "noble savage". Inspect the subtext and contemporary context of a series of quotes, and bingo! you've got the article right there. --Wetman 22:20, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
I think many of the examples in there are rather uninteresting and there's much more to be said about how the idea has become embedded in manyh people's notions of how humans behaved ancestrally, how it ties in with socialism, anthropologists allegedly manipulating data or misinterpeting observations from various cultures in order to match their allegiance or otherwise to this idea, etc. There's a load of stuff connected with Margaret Mead and Napoleon Chagnon that's still controversial. User:ianrickard 23:02, 20 December 2005


Teal'c would probably count as a "noble savage," although he is a little too sophisticated in my mind to fit such a stereotype. Worf? NO WAY!

Let's go through the list of characteristics from the article:

Living in harmony with Nature - FALSE. Worf is a starfleet officer, a highly technological character.

Generosity, fidelity and selflessness - FALSE. Worf is honourable, but he is quite capable of demonstrating selfishness and other negative traits; see, for example, the episode in which he withholds life-saving and harmless donations from a patient just because that patient is a Romulan.

Innocence - FALSE. Worf, again, is honourable, but many of the plots deal with the issues of guilt he faces as a result of his divided background.

Inability to lie - FALSE. Worf chooses not to mostly, but he has himself said that he admires guile, which may sometimes include lying for a certain reason.

Physical health, disdain of luxury - TRUE, but this is due to his background as a Klingon.

Moral courage - TRUE.

"Natural" intelligence or innate, untutored wisdom - NONSENSE! Worf's wisdom is from normal education, albeit of a different form to ours today.

I am not going to remove this reference from the page as I am no anthropologist. AS a layman, however, it seems to me that Worf does NOT fit the stereotype.Johno 13:47, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


I absolutely agree with this assessment of Worf. I also removed the reference to Conan as a Caucasian-- his race is totally irrelevant. Make a big deal out of Tarzan's race if you want; that is worth noting because historically Caucasian civilizations were not in jungles. Implying that Conan's race is somehow improper in his setting is inappropriate.

[edit] RfC

I have started an RfC on the usage of the term "barbarian" at wikipedia. Please leave your opinion on this matter HERE<< link. - WeniWidiWiki 19:48, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

...oh. and if we forbid "savage" too, will we have to delete this page? Are many other terms likely to be forbidden? How about Fool? That's certainly "pejorative." --Wetman 23:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Caliban

Hi -- I'm intrigued by the notion that it's "anachronistic" to cast Caliban as a noble savage, since Shakespeare draws so heavily on Montaigne's essay "Of the Cannibals," which (to me at least) sounds very much like a precursor of the noble savage idea as discussed in this article... I didn't want to edit anything b/c I thought others might know more about the subject than I, but I do think it's worth further consideration. What say others? Gotterfunken 18:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Frankenstein's monster, mentioned in the same breath, is also confusing. In the intro, he "embodies the ideal" of the noble savage, but later on, it's an anachronism to recast him as one.