Philosophy Quotes

"The individual is not the measure of all things; society is the true measure of human existence."

"Western thought has made the grave error of universalizing its particular values."

"Dualism—the separation of subject and object—is the root of Western philosophy's blind spots."

"Holism, not atomism, is the key to understanding human societies."

"Culture is not decoration upon a universal human nature; it is constitutive of that nature."

"Homo hierarchicus and homo aequalis are two fundamental human possibilities."

"Every society must answer the question: what is a human being for?"

"The concept of the individual as autonomous and self-determining is not universal."

"The sacred and the secular are not two separate realms but intertwined modes of meaning-making."

"Human beings are not ends in themselves but nodes in vast networks of being."

"To be human is to be caught between the claims of self and the claims of the whole."

"The West has universalized its own pathologies and called it enlightenment."

"Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun."

"Thick description is the hallmark of genuine anthropological understanding."

"The concept of culture is essentially a semiotic one—we are meaning-making creatures."

"The analysis of culture begins with the recognition that human beings are intrinsically interpretive animals."

"Rationality is not something that exists independent of cultural context."

"Coherence and consensus are products of interpretation, not preconditions for it."

"The self is not a thing but a process of continuous cultural negotiation."

"What appears natural or inevitable is often the product of culturally specific interpretive work."

"The shaman speaks to the invisible world so the visible world may remain unchanged."

"The primitive does not ask why, but how to live together."

"The primitive mind is not less developed, but differently organized."

"A society without hierarchy is not a society without difference."

"The primitive does not question order; he maintains it."

"Society is held together by the fiction of legitimacy."

"The primitive's philosophy is lived, not theorized."

"The function of ritual is not to compel the gods, but to organize our social relationships."

"The boundary between the sacred and profane is drawn by society, not by nature."

"The difference between primitive and modern is merely a difference in the complexity of our illusions."