Claude Levi-Strauss Quotes on Nature
Claude Levi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and philosopher and the founder of structural anthropology. This page collects quotes attributed to Claude Levi-Strauss on the topic of nature, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Claude Levi-Strauss:
“Myths get thought in man unbeknownst to him.”
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Attributed to Claude Levi-Strauss:
“The world began without man, and it will end without him.”
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Attributed to Claude Levi-Strauss:
“The savage mind totalizes; it thinks the whole through the parts.”
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“Our science arrived at maturity the day that Western man began to see that he would never understand himself as long as there was a single race or people on the surface of the earth that he treated as an object. Only then could anthropology declare itself in its true colours: as an enterprise reviewing and atoning for the Renaissance, in order to spread humanism to all humanity.”
The Scope of Anthropology (1960) -
“We can understand, too, that natural species are chosen not because they are "good to eat" but because they are "good to think." [Les espèces sont choisies non commes bonnes à manger, mais comme bonnes à penser.]”
Totemism (1962), [ Le Totémisme aujourd'hui , as translated by Rodney Needham], p. 89 | Often paraphrased as "Animals are good to think with".