Nuovi doveri, e più alti. Una rilettura del Mondo magico di De Martino.

In «Il mondo magico» (1948) – one of his earliest and fundamental texts – Ernesto De Martino argues that what is called "magic" is not the superstitious relic of primitive civilisations, nor some “supernatural” phenomenon that can eventually be apprehended by means of scientific instruments. Magic civilisation is in fact the moment where, with a titanic struggle, human beings strengthen their “presence in the world” against mortal dangers such as the confusion between the self and the world; the rupture of natural cycles; the irruption of disorder. Only after such a struggle, and with a strong enough presence, could those things that we take as granted (such as the objectivity of the world, the sense of being a person, the scientific apprehension of the world etc.) be established. In his appraisal of non-Western civilisation, De Martino could still assume that Western civilisation was, indeed, the one that had built the best stronghold against those dangers that magic civilisations still had to face. Critiques from Croce, Eliade and Paci, and his following encounter with Marxist tradition, made De Martino rethink the separation between magic and scientific civilisation, but it is only in his last, unfinished work, «La fine del mondo», that he came to analyse contemporary forms of "presence’s crisis". More than half a century after «Il mondo magico», our collective perception of Western civilisation is no longer so self-assured. Just like De Martino began to do in his last theoretic effort, we have to rethink the possibility that, regardless of its technological strength and its fire power, the Western presence in the world faces as many dangers as every other cultural form of presence, and can therefore crumble. This awareness imposes upon us new obligations in our relationship with other cultures and other forms-of-life.