What drives social subjects to act? All literature, all art, all films would not suffice to describe the innumerable motives of our acts. As for the social sciences or philosophy, they need to provide reference points that allow them to understand what are the fundamental springs of the action. Indeed, for a long time it has dominated the idea that the action of men is explained necessarily and exclusively by interest, whether economic, sexual, conservation, power or prestige. On the contrary, the anti-utilitarian theory of action presented by Alain Caillé in this book shows that it is reductionism that ultimately leaves out the essentials of what matters to human beings: they become subjects precisely when they are released of the narrow circle of interests, but without denying them. Because they aspire more to be recognized than to accumulate, men cannot be reduced to the figure of Homo Oeconomicus. And what is valid for individualized social subjects is also valid for societies, quasi structured collective subjects that become visible and thinkable through the joint operation of the political and religious, whose systematic conceptualization is proposed here by the author. Consequently, an anti-utilitarian theory of action must constitute the matrix of all general sociology that seeks to break with the economist approaches, so dominant today, of history and life in society.