Introduzione. Su Dio e i suoi uomini e i nostri sacrifici

Anthropology has maybe too often confined itself in an analysis of liturgies and rituals – ideal or actual behaviours which are acknowledged by the social actor as addressed to supernatural beings or agents –, providing extraordinarily precise descriptions but renouncing to comprehend and relate the discourse on Man about himself -and implicitly about God- which is nevertheless traceable in all societies. Anthropology has avoided confrontation with the theologies, although present in all societies and inscribed in cosmogonies, theogonies, anthropogonies, ethnogonies, of which amazingly rich mythologies bear much more than plain traces. Anthropology has done so because it has given way to tekhne which is rampant nowadays. It has surrendered to tekhne because tekhne allows the elision of doubt. And yet, no matter how much one technifies it, anthropology does only exist as complementary to theology and vice versa, at least since the beginning of history. This relation was very clear to scholars such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Maurice Leenhard, Marcel Mauss or Meyer Fortes. After all, has there ever been a liturgy without a theology, a ritual without a cosmology? A sacrifice without a God, no matter how small? Sacrifice is a ritual par excellence.