The bourgeois and the savage : a Marxian critique of the image of the isolated individual in Defoe, Turgot and Smith / Alfonso Maurizio Iacono ; translated by Leigh-Anne Wendy Mazzoncini.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Iacono, Alfonso M., 1949- author.

Contributor:

Mazzoncini, Leigh-Anne Wendy, translator.

Series:

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms

Standardized Title:

Borghese e il selvaggio English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Economics--History--18th century.

Economics.

History.

Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731. Robinson Crusoe.

Defoe, Daniel.

Smith, Adam, 1723-1790.

Smith, Adam.

Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, baron de l'Aulne, 1727-1781.

Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques.

Political science.

Political science--Philosophy.

Political sociology.

Europe--History--18th century.

Europe.

Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, Daniel).

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 147 pages ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2020]

Summary:

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. Alfonso Maurizio Iacono is Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Pisa, Italy.

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Originally published in Italian, 1982.

ISBN:

9783030395070

3030395073

OCLC:

1159001147