Between Theory of the Sensible and Aesthetic Logos: Lévi-Strauss and Merleau-Ponty
Scarso, Davide
Between Theory of the Sensible and Aesthetic Logos: Lévi-Strauss and Merleau-Ponty - 2009.
83
In this article we want to show that one can find some tangible resonances and singular exchanges between the positions of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Without going so far as to annul the basic differences, these exchanges and resonances perhaps make it possible to understand to what extent the common reference to a “savage mind” (esprit sauvage) could mean, according to Lévi-Strauss’s phrase: at the same time the same and a wholly other thing. We take into consideration more particularly Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on animality and on the concept of species in the course notes on Nature, and Lévi-Strauss’s pages devoted to the same themes in Totemism today and The Savage Mind. For both of them, the animal species plays a central role in the analysis of the relationship between humans and the natural world, a role that numerous mythical traditions forcefully illustrate. Although they had solutions and aspirations that oppose each other in numerous respects, Merleau-Ponty and Lévi-Strauss appear, in any event, committed to probing in-depth a common territory: that of the relation between sensible experience and thought, between nature and culture, and between humanity and animality.
Between Theory of the Sensible and Aesthetic Logos: Lévi-Strauss and Merleau-Ponty - 2009.
83
In this article we want to show that one can find some tangible resonances and singular exchanges between the positions of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Without going so far as to annul the basic differences, these exchanges and resonances perhaps make it possible to understand to what extent the common reference to a “savage mind” (esprit sauvage) could mean, according to Lévi-Strauss’s phrase: at the same time the same and a wholly other thing. We take into consideration more particularly Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on animality and on the concept of species in the course notes on Nature, and Lévi-Strauss’s pages devoted to the same themes in Totemism today and The Savage Mind. For both of them, the animal species plays a central role in the analysis of the relationship between humans and the natural world, a role that numerous mythical traditions forcefully illustrate. Although they had solutions and aspirations that oppose each other in numerous respects, Merleau-Ponty and Lévi-Strauss appear, in any event, committed to probing in-depth a common territory: that of the relation between sensible experience and thought, between nature and culture, and between humanity and animality.
Réseaux sociaux