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In the form of a short essay, this paper questions the conditions for describing the human individual as an entity with its own contour. The author criticises the classical expressions of social anthropology, whose observations and descriptions tend to dilute the human being. The author turns to Parmenides, Aristotle, and the mathematician René Thom to find grounds for describing the human being as a singular entity. On the other hand, in the notion of a volume of being, he finds a decisive lever allowing him to synthesise his theoretical proposal.

La réflexion de cet article part du contexte intellectuel des dernières années privilégiant nettement une pensée relationniste et propose de distinguer la science sociale de la science humaine et, plus spécifiquement, la sociologie (y compris les anthropologies sociales et culturelles) de l'anthropologie au sens strict du terme, comme science des hommes. L'article, d'une part, propose une critique de différentes lectures relationnistes (Goffman, Lévi-Strauss, Bourdieu, Latour) ainsi que de l'ethnographie comme relationnisme méthodologique et, d'autre part, à l'aide des notions de volume d'être et d'exo-actions, il veut valoriser l'idée de séparation et de singularité des individus ainsi que la méthode phénoménographique pour apprendre à regarder et analyser des êtres séparément.

The article aims to be theoretical, and to consider the impact of the word "ontology" in anthropology. I will start from an observation of religious worship, in which at least humans, various objects and a divinity are present, as well as actions, movements, statements, perceptions and various thoughts. I shall then try to use the word "ontology" on at least two different levels: on the one hand, to describe entities, the presence of which must be assumed if the situation is to remain consistent, and on the other hand, to focus on what really exists, beyond what people do and say. Finally, I will explore the advantage of this "realist" point of view.