À la recherche de régularités phénoménales ayant valeur de lois pour l’ensemble du genre humain, l’anthropologie accueille avec défiance les rares récits de jeunes ensauvagés vivant à bonne distance de leurs semblables. La représentation de ces prétendus « élèves de la nature » brusque les vérités reçues sur la nature de l’homme, sa supériorité et l’amplitude de ses variations accidentelles. Sous le rapport des capacités affectives et intellectuelles, ils n’incarnent nullement cet éveil de la conscience qu’on prête à l’humanité naissante, démunie mais perfectible. Le rapport spécifique des anthropologues au paradigme de l’ensauvagement témoigne pourtant d’une fascination durable pour leur manière propre d’exister. Leur étude offre donc un test précieux des hypothèses relatives à l’économie de la sensibilité organique, la part de l’instinct dans l’expérience du monde, l’état originel de notre espèce et, en définitive, ce qu’est, ou non, l’homme « selon la nature ». Searching for phenomenal regularities having lawlike value for the whole of mankind, the anthropology sceptically receives the rare accounts of wild men—that is, young people lost in woods and deprived of all contact with their fellow human beings. These so-called “pupils of nature” and their representations shatter received truths about the nature of man, his superiority and the extent of his accidental variations. As regards emotional and intellectual capacities, they do not embody the awakening of consciousness attributed to the nascent, destitute but perfectible humanity. However, the specific relationship of the anthropologists to the paradigm of savagery bears witness to an enduring fascination for their very way of existence. Thus, their study offers a valuable test of the most controversial hypotheses concerning the economy of organic sensibility, the part of instinct in the experience of the world, the original state of our species and, ultimately, what man is, or is not, “according to nature”.
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