Claude Lévi-Strauss a problém tzv. synchronického času

• Authors: Subrt Jiri

Title variants

EN

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS AND THE PROBLEM OF 'SYNCHRONIC TIME'

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

In societies described as 'cold' by Claude Levi-Strauss, the historical dimension is coded into myths, traditions and rituals. Levi-Strauss says that ritual is an 'instrument for the destruction of time'. The key to the author's idea of the opposition of synchronicity and diachronicity is found in his work 'The Savage Mind', in which he talks about a never-ending struggle between these two which initiates totemic thinking. In current sociology, Levi-Strauss' concept of reversible time is utilised by Anthony Giddens, who adapts it in his structuration theory. However the concept of synchronous (structuralist) reversible time is simultaneously the subject of a critique from the perspectives of cultural anthropology (Alfred Gell) and sociology (Barbara Adam). At the article's conclusion, the argument is made that when Levi-Strauss talks about cold societies, which tend to banish history from the consciousness, it doesn't mean that he is trying to overrule the laws of logic or physics (as he is accused by Gell) but at tempting to see the world through the eyes of a specific type of society and to understand time from the perspective of a 'native'.

Keywords

EN

COLD/HOT SOCIETIES; REVERSIBLE/IRREVERSIBLE; RITUAL; STRUCTURALISM; SYNCHRONICITY/DIACHRONICITY; TIME

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Teorie vědy (Theory of Science)
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 31
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 49-63
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Subrt Jiri

• Jiri Subrt, Katedra sociologie Filozoficke fakulty UK, Celetna 20, 116 42 Praha 1, Czech Republic; http://dlib.lib.cas.cz/4846/

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10CZAAAA08332