ENGB35H3 Lecture Notes - Innocent Victims, John Locke
Document Summary
Humans and civilization manage nature and keep it under control. This is shown in crusoe because he does not sit and admire the natural beauty of the island, but he begins to work it and bring it under control. At the end of the 18th century, the idea changes to that nature is lovely and all humans do is destroy it. There is a hysterical response to the cannibals: monsters, hellish, degenerations of humanity, inhuman etc. etc. Crusoe begins to have ideas of he should massacre all of the cannibals. Violence is transposed from violence to crusoe s righteous violence. The difference between the controlled european and the evil natives has begun to collapse. Eventually, he begins to question his own motives. Cannibals don t know anything beyond their existence: back to the lockean idea of education. No one is innately evil, they are products of their society.
