ORIGIN AND ALTERATION IN ROUSSEAU’S ANTHROPOLOGICAL THOUGHT

Abstract

Human physical and cultural diversification can be read in Rousseau’s anthropology from the idea of degeneration and the removal of an original nature. Otherwise, it can also be seen, in a positive way, as the affirmation of human variety, regardless of a reference to a original model. Thus, Rousseau’s anthropological thought moves between two distinct and equally valid poles: historical judgment and ethnographic knowledge. If the first one (most common among interpreters) is based on an unique and original model of human being that gradually and historically would degenerate and become corrupted; the latter one multiplies the origins in order to positively affirm the differences, explaining them as such. One constitutes a scale of measurement, another one is an antidote against ethnocentrism. The main objective of this text is to present specially the last pole. In it, physical and cultural diversity affirms itself as such, with no need to award prizes for preserving greater purity to this or that society located at a specific point in time and space. Diversity would no longer indicate corruption, rather the various paths assumed and taken by human groups according to the times and circumstances experienced.