During the Enlightenment, the idealization of indigenous peoples were chiefly used as a rhetorical device to criticize aspects of European society.[4] In the realm of aesthetics, however, the eccentric Italian philosopher, historian and jurist Giambattista Vico (1688–1744) was the first to argue that primitive peoples were closer to the sources of poetry and artistic inspiration than "civilized" or modern man. Vico was writing in the context of the celebrated contemporary debate, known as the great Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.