The Eternal Return to the Issue of “Primitive Thought”: L. Vygotsky and N. Marr looking at L. Lévy-Bruhl

Abstract

In this article, L. Vygotsky’s and N. Marr’s ideas on thinking and language are analyzed in the light of their reflections about L. Lévy-Bruhl’s theories of “primitive thought”. Not only were Lévy-Bruhl’s ideas and facts related in his books used by both Vygotsky and Marr to constitute theoretical grounds and important conclusions of their theories, but the French anthropologist often served as an author of common interest between Vygotsky and Marr. This tendency was particularly evident in their reflections on a “crisis” in psychology and linguistics in the first third of the 20^th century, on a “diffuse” nature of primitive thought and language and on verbal and gesture languages.