“THE SAVAGE MAN”
Etching
Published in London
August 1766
This work refers to two of Rousseau’s most famous works, Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality, published in 1754, and The Social Contract, published in 1762. In the
Discourse, Rousseau argues that man in a state of nature, however savage and brutal, had
not yet learned how to socialize nor how to take possessions of property. Man in a
civilized state – that is, in modern society – needs laws to insure that he remains civil
because society has created far more artificial persons than were known when all were
equal in a state of nature. In The Social Contract, Rousseau argues that for society to
function each person must submit his individual will to the general will, which acts in the
best interests of society as a whole. Even the sovereign of the state is subject to this
general will. Inevitably, the political actors who spoke for revolutionary France believed
that they could interpret and enact the general will. In The Catalogue of Prints and
Drawings in the British Museum, Frederick Stevens suggests that “The Savage Man” is
an allusion to a quarrel between Rousseau and British philosopher David Hume, an
acquaintance whom Rousseau believed had been plotting against him. Hume published a
pamphlet entitled, “A concise and genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume
and Mr. Rousseau” in the same months that notices for this print first appeared in The
Public Advertiser. Thus, the print uses ideas from Rousseau’s texts, namely Discourse on
the Origin of Inequality and The Social Contract, to comment on Rousseau’s personal
dispute with a British contemporary.
Frederick Stevens, The Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum Volume IV.