„Prijatelj našega naroda”: Prikazbe Drugoga u djelu Viaggio in Dalmazia Alberta Fortisa
„A friend of our people “: Images of the Other in Alberto Fortis’ Viaggio in Dalmazia

Summary/Abstract: In this essay I analyze ideas about other social groups and their cultures expressed by the Italian naturalist and travel writer Alberto Fortis in his book Viaggio in Dalmazia, 1774. As Fortis’ construction of the idea of the Other relies on a framework built by other Enlightenment thinkers, I take into account a wider Enlightenment philosophical context. The influence of several different doctrines that view one’s own social group as superior to other groups is evident in Fortis’ work. When discussing Morlacs, Fortis, for the most part, relies on the doctrine termed by Tzvetan Todorov ‘egsotism’, which constructs the ideal by criticizing one’s own society and culture. In Viaggio in Dalmazia, the most common way of relating towards the Other is ethnocentrism, or the belief that one’s social group possesses an inherently superior, universal character and that other social groups should be evaluated in relation to it. But in addition to ethnocentrism, Fortis uses elements that have a much stronger and naturally determined discriminatory function. These elements include, in the first place, the notion of ‘nature’ (l’indole) when used to describe an entire social group, and the implicit scale of ‘rationality’. Fortis’ thoughts about the history and the origins of his and other social groups make an important part of the constructions of inferiority. Finally, I contrast Fortis’ ideas about the human diversity with the thoughts of Ivan Lovrić, the first and the most ardent critic of Fortis’ work. According to Fortis, Lovrić was a member of an inferior social group. Lovrić responded to Fortis’ comprehensive ethnocentrism with a relativistic viewpoint. Yet, following the philosophies of Rousseau and Montesquieu, Lovrić did not attempt to apply relativism to everything. For him some values were universal; and his viewpoint is the most evident in the field of morality. In contrast to Fortis, Lovrić argued that morals were universal to all people and did not depend on the local traditions.

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