ARTICLES

The Universal Animal: Reason as the Active Principle of the Human Nature

Martin Albert Persch
Pages 1–31| Published online: 17 September 2024

Persch, Martin Albert. 2024. “The Universal Animal: Reason as the Active Principle of the Human Nature.” Marxism & Sciences 3(2): 1–31.
https://doi.org/10.56063/MS.2408.03208

ABSTRACT

Since the second half of the 20th century, structuralism has been the dominant theoretical tendency in Amazonian studies. Although since the 1990s, many lead-ing researchers call themselves “post-structuralist,” with Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro at the head of this movement, they retain key pre-suppositions of structuralism. This paper will focus on Descola’s presentation of classificatory and cosmological systems, the so-called ontologies, which constitute the reality inhabited by the different peoples of the world. The paper argues that Descola’s analysis is limited by his disregard of ecological variables and the pro-ductive and reproductive dynamics of the groups that profess these “ontologies.” Descola’s analyses of different cultures are ultimately grounded in a form of in-dividualist psychologism. The present work aims to reconstruct the logic of cul-tural diversity in terms of the concrete interaction of each human collective with the forces of the environment, i.e. what Ilyenkov had called vital activity. The Dialectics of the Ideal and Dialectical Logic, in which he defines the ideal as a specific relationship between a thinking and non-thinking body, will enable us to clarify the concept of “culture,” which has often been treated in anthropology in an abstract and ambiguous way. While Ilyenkov has nothing explicitly to say about the Amazon and the people who inhabit it, it is the claim of this work that the concept of the ideal and that of activity he developed in his works will broaden our anthropological point of view, enabling us to understand Animism and Totemism not as mere ontologies, but rather as vital activities, that is, as a specific interweaving of social dynamics with the ecosystemic forces.

KEYWORDS: Anthropology, Ontology, Amazonia, Vital Activity, The Ideal.

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