Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien

LÉVY-BRUHL, LUCIEN. - Philosopher and sociologist,
b. in Paris on 10 April 1857, d. there on 13 March 1939.
Professor at the Sorbonne, where he succeeded E. Boutroux,
member of the Institute, a scholar of sociology according to
the system of A. Comte, he later drew close to that of the
sociological school founded by E. Durkheim, whose vast ethnological documentation
he appreciated, but
he rejected the rigorous schematism that sacrificed
the individual element exclusively for the benefit of the
social one.

Of his philosophical works the most notable is: La morale et la science des moeurs
(Paris 1903). All the other volumes, six
in number, are directed at investigating
the mentality of primitive peoples in their way
(which he, with a term later repudiated by
himself, calls "prelogical" insofar as it is
independent of our logical schemas) of intuition of reality, a way that he says is characterized by a particular "participation"
that the primitive feels between himself and the world
that surrounds him and that determines his
thought and his action. To this idea of participation (though later excluding that it has the value of a law) he remained
always faithful. Other works: Les fonctions men-tales dans les sociétés inférieures (Paris 1910,
2nd ed., 1923) in which he analyzes that mentality
and illustrates the concept of "participation";
La mentalité primitive (ibid. 1924) dedicated
in particular to the concept of causality among
primitive peoples; L'âme primitive (ibid. 1927), which the
primitive would conceive as a "mystical" force present in all beings; Le sur-naturel et la nature dans la mentalité primitive (ibid. 1931) on the manner in which the primitive
represents to himself the supernatural world; La mythologie primitive (ibid. 1935) on the particular truth proper to myth
and on its consequent capacity to bring reality back to life
if evoked or thought over again; L'expérience mystique et les
symboles chez les primitifs (ibid. 1938), which is the crowning
of all of L.-B.'s activity in this field, with particular regard to the function of the symbol. M. Leenhardt
published posthumously the Carnets de L. L.-B. (Paris 1949),
where this upright scholar came to rethink and
jot down, with an intellectual fervor always vigilant, the
material of his work.

The work of L. L.-B. is notable for the abundance of the material used, which, within the schema of the six volumes
cited, examines all aspects of the life and thought
of primitive peoples. It represents a mitigation of the exclusivism of the sociological school of Durkheim, to which
the mental activity of the individual remains extraneous. Nevertheless
the idea of mystical-magical participation, on the basis of which
he reconstructs the mentality of the primitive, ends up
reducing to nothing the concept of normal causality. Therefore
objections have been raised against him not only by philosophers, but
also by the ethnologists of the historico-cultural school, the latter
of whom have also reproached him for using without
discrimination facts relating to ethnic
groups distant and different
from one another, against one
of the fundamental canons of that
school.

Nicola Turchi

LĚWĪ BEN
GĚRŠŌN: v. GER-
HIS WORKS.

(by courtesy of Fr. Michele Lacke S.J.)
LEVOČA - Madonna (15th cent.) venerated
in the sanctuary of the Marian Mountain.