Through the study of sacrifice, Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss are particularly interested in the sacred and the relationship with the sacred through rites. In a letter to Durkheim, Mauss writes: "Sacrifice exists because there are sacred things, and because it is necessary to act on them and with them." For these authors, the study of the sacred opens a window on the nature of society. Sacred things are social and the authors conceive as sacred everything that, for the group and its members, qualifies society. Although not everyone agrees with Hubert and Mauss's general approach or with their definition of sacrifice, most of the authors who are interested in the subject cannot fail to refer to the Essay on the nature and function of the sacrifice of some form, either critical or to rule it out. From the point of view of anthropology and social sciences, in the case of sacrifice, there...read more
