In societies described as “cold” by Claude Lévi-Strauss, the historical dimension is coded into myths, traditions and rituals. Lévi-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 Lévi-Strauss talks about cold societies, which tend to banish history from the consciousness, it doesn’t mean that he is trying to over rule 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”. and Jiří Šubrt.
The study focuses on the subject that Lévi-Strauss never devoted himself to in a systematic way. The essence of his view on the urban space can be found in few pages of his travel book Tristes Tropiques (English version is entitled World on the Wane). In spite of this fact, the study tries to show that the opinions on the urban space delivered in this work are important for us to under stand the basis of his method, as well as to get closer to the places where his thinking opens to the new perspectives of the anthropological studies. When analyzing these opinions, we find that on the one hand they confirm the primary trend of his method, which is the orientation towards unconscious models; on the other hand, however, we see the role of collective conscience in a new light. Similarly, we will have to correct the idea about the relation between structures and their demographic substance. In his work La Pensée sauvage (The Savage Mind) Lévi-Srauss presented this relationship as a conflict of two sides, from which the second one, the demographic substance always ends up pre dominating: it decomposes the structural organizations and leads the community to the historical time. Lévi-Strauss’ reflections about the city indicate that the demographical substance could have a different function in his thinking. Thanks to the concentration of a big amount of people, a city can in its organization of space display the unconscious trends of mind. The last part of the study aims to discover in Lévi-Strauss’ opinions on the South American cities the indication of what could be called the anthropology of present or even future times. and Miroslav Marcelli.
Contrary to what is often thought, the structuralist approach has never been adopted in French sociology very extensively. When speaking about structuralism in this discipline, the work of Pierre Bourdieu is generally referred to. The present paper is intentionally heading in another direction and is questioning Lévi-Straussian traces in Baudrillard’s theory of the consumer society. First, Baudrillard acknowledges being in debt to Lévi-Strauss for his conception of consumption as a language. In this perspective exchanged goods are understood as object-signs. We believe nevertheless that Baudrillard goes even further when he analyzes the phenomenon of absurd violence, bearing in mind - even he does not directly disclose it - Lévi-Strauss’ concept of “free signifier”. All the same we finally conclude that Baudrillard’s use of Lévi-Strauss is rather cursory. Despite this fact it is of interest: Thus we follow Baudrillard’s analysis and consider the problem of social criticism, which is one of the main topics of his writings here discussed. and Jan Maršálek.
Recently there seems to be a growing interest in Aristotelianism among analytic metaphysicians. In this review article I discuss Tuomas Tahko’s collection Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics (Oxford, 2012) that promises to be the first systematic exploration of this interest. I argue that, in spite of the excellent quality of the individual contributions, the book as such does not answer fundamental questions of what Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is and what it should be., Daniel D. Novotný., and Obsahuje poznámky a bibliografii
Kniha Etienna Bimbeneta „L‘animal que je ne suis plus“ je ambiciózním pokusem o vymezení lidství ve vztahu k animalitě, přičemž tento projekt se vepisuje do tradice tzv. fenomenologie života. Autor v mnohém navazuje na filosofii Maurice Merleau-Pontyho, ale zároveň jeho myšlení doplňuje zejména tím, že se konfrontuje s novými poznatky v oblasti psychologie a lingvistiky. Základem jeho výkladu vztahu člověka a zvířete je filosofická interpretace fenoménu tzv. sdílené pozornosti, tj. schopnosti lidského jedince vnímat jinou lidskou bytost jako bytost intencionální, schopnosti, která je podle některých lingvistů nepostradatelnou podmínkou osvojení si řeči. Z tohoto východiska potom Bimbenet interpretuje vztah člověka ke světu, který se podle něho výrazně liší od vztahu, který se světem udržuje zvíře. Předkládaná recenzní studie jednak shrnuje závěry, k nimž Bimbenetova kniha dospívá, a jednak jeho dílo zařazuje do širšího kontextu fenomenologie života a některých lingvistických teorií., The book by Étienne Bimbenet L’animal que je ne suis plus is an ambitious attempt to define humanity in relation to animality, a project that considers itself a part of the tradition of the “phenomenology of life”. The author displays a manifold debt to the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, but at the same time he adds to Merleau-Ponty’s thought, especially by tackling new findings in the area of psychology and linguistics. The basis of this account of the relation between man and animal is a philosophical interpretation of the phenomenon of “shared space”, i.e. the ability of the human individual to perceive another human being as an intentional being—an ability that is, according some linguists, an indispensable condition for the acquisition of language. From this viewpoint Bimbenet then inprets the relation of man to the world which, he argues, is in sharp contrast to the relation which an animal maintains with the world. This review not only summarises the conclusions that Bimbenet’s book comes to, but also puts the work into the broader context of the phenomenology of life, and of certain linguistic theories., and Josef Fulka.