SOURCE: Combee, Jerry, and Martin Plax. “Rousseau's Noble Savage and European Self-Consciousness.” Modern Age 17 (spring 1973): 173-82.

In the following essay, Combee and Plax examines Rousseau's use of the Noble Savage as a vehicle to criticize European culture.

I

Critical interpretations of Rousseau have commonly characterized him as either a revolutionary or a conservative romantic.¹ The first interpretation, linking him with the French revolution, has generally seen him as a contributor to the development of a revolutionary consciousness and specifically as having been:

looked upon by many French revolutionary leaders and their spiritual descendants as the intellectual defender of the “liberty, equality, and fraternity” which became the slogan of those who overthrew the ancient monarchy …²

The other interpretation of Rousseau as conservative-romantic³ has focused on his critique of the Enlightenment. The Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts has lent itself to this, for there Rousseau attacked the Enlightenment...