O canibal sob o crivo da razão: tutela ou maioridade-selvagem?

The cannibal under the sieve of reason: tutelage or savage-majority?

Abstract

We will investigate the role which reason plays, as well as its effects,
in the appreciation of the savage other in Montaigne’s Americanist essays. We
will thus enter the recent discussion on the meanings of an imaginary conquest
of the Amerindians by Greco-Roman antiquity (III, 6). This will lead us to a
more comprehensive appreciation of the binome majority-minority, according to
Kant’s terms. Finally, we shall see to what extent the indirect answer given in these
Americanist essays to the La Boétie problem of voluntary servitude may or may not
give another direction to questions surrounding reason, and savage majority.

Keywords: Montaigne, Cannibal, Reason, Majority-Minority