Ideas of Claude Lévi-Strauss, by Theme

[Belgian, b.1908, Born in Brussels. At the Collège de France in Paris.]

green numbers give full details    |    back to list of philosophers    |     unexpand these ideas    |    
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 4. Linguistic Structuralism
Basic to human culture are binary oppositions, such as eating raw or cooked
     Full Idea: Lévi-Strauss made canonic to French structuralism the idea that human culture could be understood through a series of binary oppositionsn - the difference between what could be eaten raw and what cooked being one of the most fundamental.
     From: report of Claude Lévi-Strauss (works [1950]) by T.H. Green - Prolegomena to Ethics 1
     A reaction: My guess is that such oppositions can often be illuminating, but will always be eventually judged as too simplistic.