The Historical Philosophy Of Levi-Strauss

Claude Levi-Strauss is one of the most important scholars of contemporary France. For the first time, he introduce a method of philosophy into a concrete discipline:he studies the anthropology with the tool of structuralism. Although he is a anthropologist, his theory will give inspiration to many other disciplines:the sociology, the history, the art and so on. However, very few scholars have noticed his views of historical philosophy though it is necessary. In my master dissertation, I will resume these views and analyze them systematically. It will be separated into three parts.Firstly, I will introduce the anthropology of structuralism of Levi-Strauss briefly. The theory of anthropology of structuralism is the basic of the academic thoughts of Levi-Strauss. Thus, if there is not a introduction of the anthropology of structuralism, there will not be a real understanding of those views of historical philosophy of Levi-Strauss. Secondly, in the principal part of master dissertation, I will introduce those views of historical philosophy of Levi-Strauss meticulously. I separate his historical philosophy into two parts:his speculative philosophy of history and his analytical philosophy of history. The former is his philosophy of history, which includes his thoughts about the progress of history and his points about the civilizations. The later introduces his thoughts on historiography, which involve his points on facts of history, text of history and the classification of the disciplines.In the last part of my theses, I'll discuss the effects of structuralism of Levi-Strauss on the historiography. Contemporary historiography has been affected a lot by structuralism. For example, the theory of Annales School, such as the theory of "longue duree", is largely enlightened by the structuralism.