Iconic French intellectual and anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss has died in Paris at age 100 years.
“Part philosopher, part sociologist and entirely humanist, he studied tribes in Brazil and North America, concluding that virtually all societies shared powerful commonalities of behavior and thought, often expressing them in myths,” explained Thomas H. Maugh II for the LA Times.
“A powerful thinker, Mr. Lévi-Strauss was an avatar of ’structuralism,’ a school of thought in which universal “structures” were believed to underlie all human activity, giving shape to seemingly disparate cultures and creations,” Edward Rothstein wrote for the New York Times. “His work was a profound influence even on his critics, of whom there were many. There has been no comparable successor to him in France. And his writing — a mixture of the pedantic and the poetic, full of daring juxtapositions, intricate argument and elaborate metaphors — resembles little that had come before in anthropology.”
In a review of Levi-Strauss’ books, Larry Rohter wrote, “To the layman, much of the debate between structuralists and existentialists, which raged from the 1950s into the 1980s, now seems incomprehensible, if not sterile and outdated. But no matter what one thinks of Mr. Lévi-Strauss and his theories, it is hard today to undertake the serious study of anthropology, ethnology, sociology, philosophy or linguistics without at least acknowledging him or trying to debunk him.”
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