Rousseau’s Twilight: Graeber and Wengrow’s Critique of the Second Discourse

In their monumental reexamination of human history, David Graeber and David Wengrow set their sights on a multitude of targets. But this is to be expected in a counter-narrative of human evolution told over no fewer than 692 pages: from the Ice Age to the present day, they have no time to take prisoners. Interestingly, they are not concerned merely with presenting new (or not so new) evidence that could be used to debunk the “myth of progress.” They also feel that part of their mission is to track this myth all the way back to its origins, i.e., the Enlightenment. In other words, Graeber and Wengrow’s new history is also an attempt at historiography. Such an approach seems perfectly valid. But an eighteenth-century scholar might be surprised to learn that the main figure these authors are blaming for our twisted view of social evolution is none other than Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who is usually considered a dissident from the French Enlightenment and the archenemy of the above-mentioned myth. Their rationale becomes clear to readers as they familiarize themselves with these authors’ main grievances against Rousseau. For the sake of clarity, we will identify three main counts of accusation. First, according to Graeber and Wengrow, Rousseau is responsible for the theory of stadial evolution. Second, he crafted and propagated the figure not so much of the “noble savage” but of the “stupid savage.” Third, Rousseau’s famous critique of inequality is clearly based on an appropriation of the “indigenous critique.” Let us examine these counts one by one.