Recounting

I like this characterization of the work of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Straus.

There is an Hassidic parable which tells us that God created man so that man might tell stories. This telling of stories is, according to Lévi-Strauss, the very condition of our being. The alternative would be total inertia or the eclipse of reason.

This is from the Massey Lectures delivered by George Steiner under the title Nostalgia for the Absolute. I like it all the more because Steiner situates Marx, Freud and Lévi-Strauss in a narrative of his own.

And so for day 611
15.08.2008