The natural man
it possible that the ‘natural man’ of Jean Jacques Rousseau actually exists? This proposal is very old and tells us that man gradually loses his wild, impulsive natural state, that civilization puts in its place restraints and controls that have the effect of perverting our true, wild natures. Some of the most disreputable initiatives of the 20th century take the above form – the ‘Manifest Destiny’ of the era of Theodore Roosevelt, the ‘White Man’s burden’ once so useful in legitimising colonialism, and the Germanic notion
