primitive man

For Radin, primitive man was a man of reason and rationality (see for instance his famous critique of Lucien Levy-Bruhl's Les fonctions mentales dans les societes inferieures).

is defined by the need to nail a cause for every misfortune. The defining feature of modernity, to forbear to ask. Our distinctive achievement in modernity was to invent the idea of natural death and actually believe in it.

he taught that after millennia of uor human past in which dangers were dsaid to be caused by witchcraft and taboo-breaking, our distinctive achievement was to invent the idea of natural death and actually believe in it. . . .for him, the defining feature of primitive man is to try to nail a cause for every misfortune... and the defining feature of modernity, to forbear to ask' (Douglass Risk and CUlture 31).

primitive man, n.All

primitive man