Ernesto De Martino, La fin du monde et l'anthropologie de l'histoire

Abstract

The question of the relationship of Ernesto De Martino with history took, in the discussion of his great posthumous work, The End of the World, contributing to the analysis of cultural apocalypses, a particularly acute character. Indeed, while asserting its commitment to a historical specification of any social fact, in this work he develops an ontology of human posing as invariants the presence in the world, its essential fragility and culture (including religion) as an instrument of periodic and collective replenishment of the being to the world. Historicism or ontology? This article aims to move the debate. It proposes to include the ultimate work of De Martino in a current - which takes place in the midst of the twentieth century - committed to building "structured histories" (Norbert Elias) or anthropologies of history. All different but having the same problematic style, they are, in fact, as many alternatives to the Marxist philosophy of history. © Archives de sciences sociales des religions.