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Into this vacuum of thought, structuralism has reared its guidon all over the Gallic intellectual landscape. A new school of fiction has risen with the declared intent of consulting man's subconscious intellectual infrastructure rather than the visible rules of literary composition. The function of writing itself—rather than message, story or character—becomes the novelist's purpose. The formlessness of structural fiction stems from a reliance on the creative inspiration of the unconscious—the hidden intellectual code. At an even more arcane level, literary critics are using structuralism to redefine—and enhance—the critical role. In its name they have demanded equal billing with the works they judge. "It is inconceivable," says Roland Barthes, one of the movement's chief spokesmen, "that the creative laws governing the writer should not also be valid for the critic. All criticism is criticism both of the work under consideration and of the critic."
Lévi-Strauss stands aloof from such cultist and far fetched applications of structural thought. Yet in their way they are testimonials to the pull he exerts on the imagination. His approach to man has added something to the human equation that is hard to dismiss or forget. Ironically, time may show that this agnostic's principal gift to human understanding is a spiritual one. "I don't believe in God," he says, "but I don't believe in man either. Humanism has failed. It didn't prevent the monstrous acts of our generation. It has lent itself to excusing and justifying all kinds of horrors. It has misunderstood man. It has tried to cut him off from all other manifestations of nature."
Down the centuries, an extravagant portion of human energy has supported the position that, because of their differences, men are not equal. There is no room for this in Lévi-Strauss's view of humanity. "Respect for others," he writes, "springs spontaneously and naturally in man, long before reasoning and its sophistries come into play." Elsewhere, he maintains that "insofar as man is worthy of respect, it is not just civilized man of today or the future, it is the whole of mankind.
"Identification with all forms of life, beginning with the most humble—this principle, in a world where overcrowding makes mutual respect more difficult and that much more necessary, is the only one which can permit men to live together. In a cultivated society there can be no excuse for the only real inexpiable crime of man, that of considering himself abidingly or momentarily superior; be it for reasons of race, culture, conquest, service or merely expediency."