Lévi-Strauss liberated rational thinking

The famous French ethnologist and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss died in Paris on Friday. The daily The Independent reviews his intellectual legacy: "Lévi-Strauss was the quintessential man of his own culture and the global age. He was at once steeped in the ultra-rational intellectual tradition of France, while drawing universal rules from his myriad observations and experiences around the world. Born in Belgium, persecuted in Vichy France and given refuge in the US until the war's end, he won fame, and then reverance, as the father of structural anthropology. Structuralism has its critics; it may in time seem less revolutionary, and revelatory, than once it did. But as a great international man of letters, Lévi-Strauss bequeathes a legacy that transcends the narrow academic labels of his time."

» full article (external link, English)
More from the press review on the subject » Public Culture, » Science / Research, » France, » Global

» To the complete press review of Wednesday, November 4, 2009