primitivism

primitivism, an outlook on human affairs that sees history as a decline from an erstwhile condition of excellence (chronological primitivism) or holds that salvation lies in a return to the simple life (cultural primitivism). Linked with this is the notion that what is natural should be a standard of human values. Nature may mean what is intrinsic, objective, normal, healthy, or universally valid. Various senses of primitivism depend on whether the natural is set over against historical development; against artifact and contrivance; against law, custom, and convention; or against rational mental activity.

Among historical expressions of primitivism are the Cynics’ spurning of luxury, property, and social amenities; Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi’s “free and easy wandering” in the spontaneity of the Dao; the Greeks’ pristine Golden Age; the biblical Garden of Eden; medieval monasticism; the Anabaptists’ aloofness from bourgeois civilization; the Romantics’ idealization of the “savage”; and modern nostalgia for the “golden” years of childhood and yearning for the “simplicity” of the past.