Beyond Nature and Culture

Philippe Descola

（日本語解説版：一部の欧文文字が文字化けしています）

Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, 2005 (Proceedings of the British Academy 139, pp.137-155, 2006)

4

Finally it took me some more time to understand that my initial mistake stemmed from the fact that I had attempted to derive ontological properties ascribed to beings in the world, and hence the latter’s distribution into categories, from relational processes materialised in institutions, instead of doing the reverse. True, I was in good company: ever since Durkheim, it has been the standard practice of anthropologists to grant an explanatory privilege to social forms. Necessary at the time to carve out for the emerging social sciences a domain of their own, this privilege made it inevitable that religious beliefs, conceptions of the person or cosmologies be ultimately explainable by the social patterns projected onto reality and by the structuring effect of these patterns on the activities thanks to which this reality is objectified and rendered meaningful. By deriving sociological structures from psychological imperatives, L?vi-Strauss was one of the few who tried to escape from this tendency. But the ‘laws of the mind’ he evokes are so vague that this derivation could not but be inductive: except in the analysis of myths, L?vi-Strauss always starts from the study of institutions in order to proceed ‘towards the intellect’, never the reverse. Now a system of relations cannot be understood independently from the elements it connects, provided these elements are taken not as interchangeable individuals or already institutionalised social units, but as entities that are endowed ab initio with specific properties that render them able or not to establish certain links between them. This is why I felt the urge to forsake the long-standing sociocentric prejudice and to surmise that social realities ? i.e. stabilised relational systems ? are analytically subordinated to ontological realities ? i.e. the systems of properties that humans ascribe to beings6. My lecture will be devoted to trying to substantiate this heterodox opinion7.

最終的に、私が最初に犯した過ちは、世界における存在に帰属する存在論的特性、ひいては後者のカテゴ リーへの分配を、その逆ではなく、制度に具体化された関係過程から導き出そうとしたことに起因していると理解するまでに、さらに時間がかかった。デュルケ ム以来、社会形態に説明上の特権を与えることは人類学者の常套手段であった。当時、新興の社会科学に独自の領域を切り開くために必要だったこの特権は、宗 教的信念や人間観、宇宙論が、現実に投影された社会的パターンによって、また、この現実が客観化され意味あるものとされる活動に対するこれらのパターンの 構造化効果によって、最終的に説明可能であることを不可避とした。心理学的要請から社会学的構造を導き出すことで、レヴィ＝ストロースはこの傾向から逃れ ようとした数少ない人物の一人であった。しかし、彼が喚起する「心の法則」はあまりにも漠然としているため、この導出は帰納的なものにならざるをえなかっ た。神話の分析を除いて、L?vi-Straussは常に「知性に向かって」進むために制度の研究から出発しており、決してその逆ではない。しかし、これ らの要素を交換可能な個人やすでに制度化された社会的単位とみなすのではなく、相互の間に特定の結びつきを成立させたり、成立させなかったりするような、 特定の特性をもともと与えられている存在とみなすのであれば、関係のシステムは、それが結びつける要素から独立して理解することはできない。だからこそ私 は、長年にわたる社会中心主義的な偏見を捨て、社会的現実、すなわち安定化された関係システムは、存在論的現実、すなわち人間が存在に帰属させる性質のシ ステムに分析的に従属するものだと推測したい衝動に駆られたのである6。 私の講義は、このヘテロドックスな意見を実証しようとすることに費やされる7。

1 A. Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, CUP, 2000), p.73.

2 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society; essays and addresses (London, Cohen & West, 1952), p. 130.

3 Ph. Descola, ‘Societies of nature and the nature of society’, in A. Kuper (ed.) Conceptualizing Society (London, Routledge, 1992), pp. 107-126, and ‘Constructing natures: Symbolic ecology and social practice’, in Ph. Descola and G. P?lsson (eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 82-102.

4 For instance, T. Ingold, The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London, Routledge, 2000) and E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos e o perspectivismo amer?ndio’, Mana 2 (2) (1996), pp. 115-144.

5 C. L?vi-Strauss, La pens?e sauvage (Paris, Plon, 1962), pp. 154-155, my translation.

6 True, some non-human species also ascribe properties (at least relational and behavioural features) to humans and other non-humans; but before they can be included in a general theory of ontologies, a lot of ground remains to be covered.

7 I am very grateful to Tim Ingold and Peter Marshall for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of the lecture and for their suggestions of stylistic amendments.

8 E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923-1924) II, Theorie der ph?nomenologischen Reduktion (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1959), pp. 61-64.

9 P. Bloom, Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human (New York, Basic Books, 2004).

10 E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos’, p. 117.

11 J. von Uexku?ll, Streifzu?ge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen ? Bedeutungslehre (Hamburg, Rowohlt Verlag, 1956).

12 E. Viveiros de Castro, 'Os pronomes cosmol?gicos', p. 117 (my translation).

13 Ibid., p. 122.

14 W. B. Spencer et F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, Macmillan & Co, 1899), p. 202.

15 C. G. von Brandenstein, Names and Substance of the Australian Subsection System (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 54.

16 C. G. von Brandenstein, ‘Aboriginal Ecological Order in the South-West of Australia - Meanings and Examples’, Oceania XLVII (3) (1977), pp. 170-186.

17 M. Granet, La pens?e chinoise (Paris, Albin Michel, 1968 (1934)), p. 297.

18 A point which Viveiros de Castro was the first to make, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos’, p. 129.

19 B. Latour, Nous n’avons jamais ?t? modernes. Essai d’anthropologie sym?trique (Paris, La D?couverte, 1991).

20 K. Århem, ‘The Cosmic Food Web: human-nature relatedness in the Northwest Amazon’, in Ph. Descola and G. P?lsson (eds.), Nature and Society, pp. 185-204.

21 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ‘On social structure’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 70 (1940), pp. 1-12, republished in Structure and Function, p. 190.

22 M. Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et l’Esprit (Paris, Gallimard, 1964), p. 13.