Structures, history, and praxis. On Sartre’s argument with Lévi-Strauss from a today’s perspective.

Abstract

The article recalls the historical debate between Sartre and Lévi-Strauss about the meaning of dialectics (or the relationships between dialectical and analytical reason) which concerned also the concepts of history, structure, subjectivity and consciousness, free practice, all in all – the concept of human and the way of understanding anthropology, more “philosophical” or more “scientific”. Instead of simply opposing Sartre’s and Lévi-Strauss’ views the author tries to show quite complex, “dialectical” play between them, although she stresses also their final contrast connected with the inalienable poles of the whole modern philosophy and culture, more specially those of subjectivism and objectivism, and the constant tension between them. Such a tension is reflected not only in different manners of conceiving of man as such (as being mainly a subject and project or, on the contrary, an object and element of a broader universe), but also in the way of understanding the relationship between culture and nature, and, finally, between different cultures.The purpose of the article is not only to reconstruct a historical issue but also to refer the historical debate to contemporary discussions, both theoretical and practical, moral and political, concerning such questions as the status of mind and consciousness, ecology or possible and desirable relations between West and other cultures. In the author’s view in all those quite contemporary debates the tension between rather Sartrian or rather Lévi-Straussian position remain present and vivid.