Biografía de Lucien Lévy-Bruhl

¿Quién fue Lucien Lévy-Bruhl?

Lucien Lévy-Bruhl nació en París en la familia de un administrador del sul de Francia. Lévy-Bruhl estudió informática en el Instituto Técnico Superior del Sul de Francia, donde se graduó en 1895. Entró a la Sorbona en 1899 en filosofía, y posteriormente se graduó con honors en 1901. En 1897 conoció a la filósofa suiza Édouard Claparède, quien le influiría a mediados de los años 1920. En París se convirtió en fans de Henri Bergson, quien tuvo una gran influencia intelectual en él.

While at the Sorbonne, where he earned a Ph.D. at the end of 1901, Lévy-Bruhl first became acquainted with the works of the sociologist Émile Durkheim. A friendship with Durkheim’s former secretary Marcel Mauss led him to undertook research in Morocco, which Mauss described in his «Essai sur l’origine des tabous alimentaires» (1919-20; «Essay on the Origins of Food Taboos,» 1929). Lévy-Bruhl moved to a professorship at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (later the Collège de France) in 1907, remaining there until his retirement in 1944.

In 1918 he published his influential book, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (Mental Functions in primitive societies), a detailed anthropological study. During the 1920s, Lévy-Bruhl took notes on religious practices in Chinese markets and described the sympathetic magic in Australian tribesman. In 1928, following many years of contact with Henri Bergson, Lévy-Bruhl joined the Coenobium, a society dedicated to the study of Bergson’s philosophy. Lévy-Bruhl prolifically published on philosophy, including works on Bergson and other surrealist philosophers.

It was his successors in the field of anthropology who would later question Lévy-Bruhl’s belief that the mental functions of primitive peoples differed from modern man. He encouraged the study of myth and ritual and argued that primitive mentality cannot be studied from rational criteria.

Lucien Lévy-Bruhl falleció el 1 de mayo de 1939 en Menton, Francia..