11 characteristics of STRUCTURALISM in philosophy

In today's lesson we are going to delve into structuralism, a current of thought that was born in France during the S.XX and within the Social Sciences. Having a special incidence in sociology, in anthropology (Cluade Lévi-Strauss), in philosophy (Michel Foucault) and in linguistics (Barthes).

This philosophical current I knowopposed other trends like historicism, humanism, essentialism or existentialism. At the same time, it promulgated that human reality is the result of a whole series of relationships systems or structures and that it is the result of the interaction of said structures and not of the mere chance. If you want to know more about the characteristics of structuralism, keep reading this lesson from a TEACHER.

Structuralism born in France by the hand of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussere(1857-1913) with his work Linguistics course (1916). In which, it establishes that language is a system of signs with meaning and signifier, that it is necessary to find the structure of those signs (that which remains hidden) and that it is necessary to differentiate between language and speech: the first is the form of structuring that does not change and the second the functioning or the form of communication.

However, the best known and most important structuralists developed their theses between the 1950s and 1960s. Moment in which structuralism began to be defined and spread throughout Europe and the United States, becoming in one of the most important currents and methods of research in Social Sciences during the 60s and part of the 70.

In this way, the contributions of J. Lacan (191-1981), L. Althusser (1918-1990), R. Barthes (1915-1980), R. Jakobson (1896-1982), M.Focault (1926-1986) or E.Benveniste (1902-1976). However, the main paradigm and representative of structuralism was the anthropologist Cluade Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), because with him, structuralism jumps into the field of philosophy. Thus, according to Strauss, the structure is the center of everything, the one that shapes our culture and ourselves. A system that structures our relationships and transforms them, present in our unconscious.

In short, the main maxim of structuralism is that human reality is the result of a whole series of systematic relationships or structures and that it is the result of the interaction of said structures and not of chance. Therefore, these structures organize and shape our sociocultural system and, therefore, to know it we must decode these structures.

Image: Slideshare