Lucien Lévy-Bruhl

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Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857—1939) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and ethnographer, whose primary field of study involved primitive mentality.

Bruhl was the first anthropologist to address how people think. In his work How Natives Think (1910), Bruhl speculated on what he believed were the two basic mindsets of mankind: Primitive and Western. The Primitive mind cannot differentiate the supernatural from reality. It uses "mystical participation" to manipulate the world. Bruhl thought the primitive mind didn't address contradictions. On the contrary, the Western mind used speculation and logic. Bruhl believed that eventually the Primitive mind would be replaced by the Western mind.

Evans Pritchard criticized Bruhl. He argued that Primitive man can address contradictions, but just does so differently.

[edit] Works

  • Mental Functions in Primitive Societies (1910)
  • Primitive Mentality (1922)
  • The Soul of the Primitive (1928)
  • The Supernatural and the Nature of the Primitive Mind (1931)
  • Primitive Mythology (1935)
  • The Mystic Experience and Primitive Symbolism (1938)

[edit] External links


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