'Romanticism is not the bastard child of the Enlightenment but its mistress'. Discuss with reference to ideas about 'savage' peoples.

In this essay I intend to review some of the key ideas from political and economic philosophy and the general themes that characterised the thinking of the two movements. I hope to trace the course of the perception of the ‘other’ from that of the semi-mythical through to the nascent reject of ethnocentricity. I will be focusing particularly on conceptions of the ‘state of nature’ and the development of the comparative methodology. Finally, I intend to argue that the separation of Enlightenment thought from romantic thought is to some extent a false division in the field of political philosophy.

The British Enlightenment movement, (the 17th & 18th Centuries), was deeply embedded in the political and economic upheavals of the time. The trial and execution of Charles I was an open challenge to the orthodoxy of the divine right of Kings to rule and much of the later political philosophy was to address the form and nature of government. Science and industrialisation were contin...