In Search of the Primitive

In Search of the Primitive
by Stanley Diamond

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Book Summary Information

Author: Stanley Diamond
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1981-01-01
ISBN: 087855582X
Number of pages: 387
Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Book Reviews of In Search of the Primitive

Book Review: Brilliant anthropology and philosophy
Summary: 5 Stars

I love this book, and refer to it constantly, both in my life and in my books. It has the best first sentence of any book I've ever read: "Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home." And the book takes off from there. It is an extraordinary exploration of the indigenous peoples with whom Diamond worked, and explores the differences between, for example, indigenous and civilized moralities. Here is what he wrote about morality in a civilized world: Our moral syntax has no predicate. Hence we speak of doing good, good for its own sake, or evil. We convert each to a pure substantive, beyond experience, abstract. That is what [anthropologist] Paul Radin meant when he observed that the subject (or object) to which love, remorse, sorrow, may be directed is regarded as secondary in our civilization. All have the rank of virtues as such: they are manifestations of Gods if not of Mans way. But among primitives . . . the converse holds. Morality is behavior, values are not detached, not substantives; the good, the true, the beautiful or rather, the ideas of these things, do not exist. Therefore, one does not fall in love, one loves another; and that is an intricately learned experience, as hate, in a certain sense, also is.

The whole book is that good. Fabulous. Fabulous.

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Summary of In Search of the Primitive

Anthropology is a kind of debate between human possi- bilities--a dialectical movement between the anthropologist as a modern man and the primitive peoples he studies. This brilliant, tough-minded book contains chapters ranging from encounters in the field to essays on the nature of law, schizophrenia and civilization, and the evolution of the work of Claude Lvi-Strauss. Diamond views the anthropologist who refuses to become a searching critic of his own civilization as not merely irresponsible, but a tool of Western civilization.

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