Claude Lévi-Strauss
Archetype: Fatalist of Community
1908 to 2009 · Paris, France, and São Paulo, Brazil
“The world began without man and will end without him.”
Do you think like Claude Lévi-Strauss? Answer 44 to 132 statements and find out who, among 130 thinkers, has the way of thinking closest to yours.
Who was Claude Lévi-Strauss
A French anthropologist and philosopher who taught at the newly founded University of São Paulo in the 1930s and studied Indigenous peoples of Brazil. He founded structural anthropology, searching for the hidden rules behind myths, kinship, and customs. His book Tristes Tropiques blends travel narrative with reflection on the place of human beings in the world.
Core ideas
- Different cultures follow deep, shared mental structures
- Myths and kinship rules work as systems, much like a language
- The thought of so-called primitive peoples is as logical as scientific thought
The tradition: Structuralist
Structuralism looks for invisible structures, such as rules and oppositions, that organize language, culture, and society. Lévi-Strauss took this method from linguistics into anthropology and made it famous.
Learn more: Wikipedia
Books by Claude Lévi-Strauss
Three ways in. Start with the first.
Where Claude Lévi-Strauss stands on the 11 axes
Each axis runs from the first pole (−1) to the second (+1). These are the positions the test compares with your answers.
