Le choix de Ponce Pilate, entre le sacré et le profane

At the beginning of The Man and the Sacred (1939) Roger Caillois affirmed that “every religious conception of the universe implies that there is a distinction between the sacred and the profane”. Caillois discussed the theme of the sacred throughout his life, in several essays, articles and lectures. In 1961, Caillois wrote Pontius Pilate, a brief novel in which he explored the dilemma of the governor of Judea. For the first time, Caillois changed genre. The author escaped the theme of the sacred by way of the novel. The purpose of this paper is to show how the theme of the sacred leads to a comparison between the thought of Caillois, the theories of the College of Sociology, and the theme of The Scapegoat by René Girard.