noble savage

noun

1. (in romanticism) an idealized view of primitive man

noble savage

1. Someone who belongs to an “uncivilized” group or tribe and is considered to be, consequently, more worthy than people who live within civilization. Many writers and thinkers through the centuries of Western civilization have believed in the noble savage. The expression is particularly associated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau .

Example Sentences

His character avoids conventions of the so-called noble savage; Eli’s internal conflict pits his loyalty to his heritage against his history in the U.S.

From New York Times

"The Honorable Indian" or "Noble Savage" is the figure whose integrity and honor stems from their resolve and pride in commitment to their original way of life despite its newfound obsolescence.

From Salon

He drew notice as the killer Hanzee Dent in “Fargo” and the robot warrior Akecheta in “Westworld,” taking what were to some extent stereotypes of the implacable or noble savage and investing them with real emotion.

From New York Times

To romanticize the lost past is to risk another form of exoticization, casting Indigenous peoples as beatifically wise ancients — the archetype of the noble savage — and thus depriving them of dimension and a stake in modernity.

From New York Times

“Contra leftist anthropologists who celebrate the noble savage,” psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in 2007, “quantitative body counts—such as the proportion of prehistoric skeletons with ax marks and embedded arrowheads or the proportion of men in a contemporary foraging tribe who die at the hands of other men—suggest that pre-state societies were far more violent than our own.”

From Scientific American