Western anthropology, as a project of comparative knowledge of the human experience, is rooted in a willingness to embrace difference and holism as focus and method of dispute, as opposed to the values that guide Enlightenment science, which reduces the complexity and power of human phenomena. In assuming this, however, while exploring the borders of otherness, anthropology ends up fulfilling the west's internal "romantic" mandate. In the present article, we analyze the characteristics of this paradox, particularly with regards to "postmodern" knowledge in the broad sense.
Enlightenment; Romanticism; Empiricism; Post-Modernism; Holism