rousseau s noble savages gibbon s barbarians and darwin s lowest savage

Write no more than three, double-spaced pages for your answer.

The questions are intentionally complicated for the space provided, so craft your responses aiming for an at once succinct and intricate manner. We are looking for precision, detail and complexity of argument.

Three further recommendations. First, you should cite often, using endnotes that can include quotations from the text and proper references; but because you only have little space and what matters here is showing your ability to interpret a text (we don’t want you simply to relay what the text says), try to avoid quoting in the text itself except where absolutely necessary. Certainly avoid using block quotes in the text, and instead paraphrase/interpret/cite the passages. [NB: to use endnotes, look through the ‘footnote’ function in your word processor.]

Second, when you are setting up your paper, think about what it means to be carrying out an interpretation of the text: at least in the formatting, organization, and phrasing, the interpretation is yours; but this differs greatly from simply stating your opinions or convictions: this means that reading passages attentively, and making careful comparisons, is perhaps the essential component to setting up a forceful interpretation.

Question: Compare and contrast Rousseau’s “noble savages,” Gibbon’s “barbarians,” and Darwin’s “lowest savage.” What are the three authors’ explicit or implicit distinctions between such “others” and “us”—and how do they explain the difference, inequality, or similarity between “them” and “us”? What characteristics of human beings are particularly human—i.e. constitutive of the essence of humanity?

I attached the article for Gibbon and also notes that are related to the 3 authors. You might have to look for notes online.