Known worldwide with the founder of modern anthropology, the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who's 100th birthday on November 28, is the last giant of French thought.
Philosopher and pioneer of the formation of structuralism that traveled around the world to understand it better and study their myths, Levi-Strauss worked for rehabilitation of primitive thought, sometimes with the look of a moralist.
"His work is inseparable from a reflection on our society and its functioning. It has an environmental focus, advance, the world and individuals," writes his biographer, Denis Bertholet.
Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels on November 28 of 1908, parents of Jewish and French. In his youth, military in SFIO (French Section of the International Workers). In 1931 obtained the title of professor in philosophy.
Appointed professor at the University of São Paulo, in 1935 traveled to Brazil, where he led several missions in ethnological and Mato Grosso in the Amazon. Said that experience in his intellectual autobiography, "Tristes Tropics" (1955), one of the great books of the twentieth century.
Back in Paris on the eve of World War II, was convened in 1939 and then gave low on their Jewish origin. In 1941 took refuge in the United States, taught in New York and met there the linguist Roman Jakobson, who had a great influence on him.
In 1949 assumed the post of vice director of the Museum of Man in Paris.
In 1959, he held the chair in social anthropology of the College of France, where he worked until his retirement in 1982. Doctor honoris causa by several prestigious universities in (Oxford, Yale, Harvard, etc.). Ethnologist was the first elected member of the French Academy in 1973.
Among his major works include "Elementary Structures of Kinship", "Structural Anthropology I and II", which applies to all the facts of human nature a symbolic method, the structuralism, which allows discern ways unchanged in content variables, and "The wild thought. "
This latest work, published in 1962 shows that there is no real difference between the primitive and modern thought. "This is not the thought of the wild, but the wild thought. It is a form that is given to all humanity and that we can find in ourselves but we would, in general, get it in exotic societies," he explained.
It is also the author of "mythology", where the first of his four volumes ( "The raw and the cooked") illustrates the opposition between nature and culture. Levi-Strauss sounded out deep relations between the kitchen and culture.
With its slender silhouette, his gray hair and eyes acute, Claude Lévi-Strauss is intimidating shy, but has an imposing presence and a great ability to listen.
Little concerned with posterity, not written memoirs, but spoke of them with Didier Eribon in a book-review entitled "From near and far."
"Each one of his books is a manual of thought that the intelligence force to open, and a kind of secular gospel that helps to move forward in life," wrote his friend and expert in his work, the philosopher Catherine Clément.
In one of the few entrevitas which has in recent years (in 2005), after mentioning his "debt to Brazil," stated: "are we going to a civilization on a global scale. In what will probably differences, at least we must wait for it (...). We're in a world which no longer belong. What I know, what I loved, had 1.5 billion inhabitants. The world has 6 billion people. It is no longer my world " .
Philosopher and pioneer of the formation of structuralism that traveled around the world to understand it better and study their myths, Levi-Strauss worked for rehabilitation of primitive thought, sometimes with the look of a moralist.
"His work is inseparable from a reflection on our society and its functioning. It has an environmental focus, advance, the world and individuals," writes his biographer, Denis Bertholet.
Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels on November 28 of 1908, parents of Jewish and French. In his youth, military in SFIO (French Section of the International Workers). In 1931 obtained the title of professor in philosophy.
Appointed professor at the University of São Paulo, in 1935 traveled to Brazil, where he led several missions in ethnological and Mato Grosso in the Amazon. Said that experience in his intellectual autobiography, "Tristes Tropics" (1955), one of the great books of the twentieth century.
Back in Paris on the eve of World War II, was convened in 1939 and then gave low on their Jewish origin. In 1941 took refuge in the United States, taught in New York and met there the linguist Roman Jakobson, who had a great influence on him.
In 1949 assumed the post of vice director of the Museum of Man in Paris.
In 1959, he held the chair in social anthropology of the College of France, where he worked until his retirement in 1982. Doctor honoris causa by several prestigious universities in (Oxford, Yale, Harvard, etc.). Ethnologist was the first elected member of the French Academy in 1973.
Among his major works include "Elementary Structures of Kinship", "Structural Anthropology I and II", which applies to all the facts of human nature a symbolic method, the structuralism, which allows discern ways unchanged in content variables, and "The wild thought. "
This latest work, published in 1962 shows that there is no real difference between the primitive and modern thought. "This is not the thought of the wild, but the wild thought. It is a form that is given to all humanity and that we can find in ourselves but we would, in general, get it in exotic societies," he explained.
It is also the author of "mythology", where the first of his four volumes ( "The raw and the cooked") illustrates the opposition between nature and culture. Levi-Strauss sounded out deep relations between the kitchen and culture.
With its slender silhouette, his gray hair and eyes acute, Claude Lévi-Strauss is intimidating shy, but has an imposing presence and a great ability to listen.
Little concerned with posterity, not written memoirs, but spoke of them with Didier Eribon in a book-review entitled "From near and far."
"Each one of his books is a manual of thought that the intelligence force to open, and a kind of secular gospel that helps to move forward in life," wrote his friend and expert in his work, the philosopher Catherine Clément.
In one of the few entrevitas which has in recent years (in 2005), after mentioning his "debt to Brazil," stated: "are we going to a civilization on a global scale. In what will probably differences, at least we must wait for it (...). We're in a world which no longer belong. What I know, what I loved, had 1.5 billion inhabitants. The world has 6 billion people. It is no longer my world " .
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