Structural Philosophy

Paper Summary:

This paper attempts to explain the structuralists' themes which dominated the philosophical thinking in the Twentieth Century and influenced many postmodernists and post-structuralists. As examples, the writer makes reference to the works of Ferdinand Saussaaure, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuz. Post-Structuralism and Postmodernists basically argue that "truth" is relative, it says that language is rooted in culture and its practice, thus it always favors that particular culture. Meaning, on the other hand, is not objective but depends on the experience of the individual.

From the Paper:

"In the late 1960s the structuralist's movement, which was based in France, attempted to synthesize the ideas of Saussaaure, Freud and Marx. Thinkers like Claude Levi-Strauss and Lacan developed structuralism, which was against the existentialist doctrine, which claimed that man is what he makes himself. For these structuralists the individual is shaped by sociological, psychological and linguistic structures over which he /she has no control, but which could be understood and uncovered by using structuralists methods."

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