Claude Lévi-Strauss, An Introduction

Frédéric Keck

The work of Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) is one of the biggest intellectual references of the 20th century. Made accessible thanks to a number of literary, aesthetical, political and moral examples, it is at the root of many surprising and intellectually pleasing discoveries and wonders. His work is a significant mark in the development of scientific thought of the 20th century. As a witness of this century, of its history, its violence as well as its hopes and scientific achievements, the author of Tristes Tropiques gave its status to a discipline which was a synthesis for all social sciences: anthropology. A scientific study of people accomplished by people, anthropology carries the hope of a science arguing that every human phenomenon, in all their diversity, can be brought down to a few understandable principles. Lévi-Strauss calls those principles “structures”.
This introduction to Lévi-Strauss's thought aims to point out his work does not belong to the past but is still relevant today. It introduces Lévi-Strauss's thought by searching for a common point above every object he encountered and studied and above the philosophical and scientific controversies it created.

Frédéric Keck teaches philosophy at the University of Lille III and at the Centre international d'étude de la philosophie française contemporaine of the École normale supérieure. He is the author of Lévi-Strauss et la pensée sauvage, PUF, Paris, 2004, and of a work on Lévy-Bruhl in the collection «Pratiques théoriques» of the PUF.