Philosophical Concepts: Structuralism

What is structuralism as a philosophical concept? Here is how the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy explains it.

Structuralism is viewed as a broad intellectual movement that originated from linguistics (especially the work of Saussure) and expanded beyond, reaching its height in the 1960s. Lévi-Strauss was the leading structuralist in anthropology.

A crucial idea of structuralism is that meaning arises from mutual relations among various phenomena or units (as opposed to having an inherent meaning of their own), and that these relations form a lawlike abstract structure that underpins superficial variations.

“The common feature of structuralist positions is the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behing local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure. Thus superficially diverse sets of myth, or works of art, or practices of marriage, might be revealed as sharing the same pattern.”

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (pp. 461)

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