| Summary: | This article contrasts French and English traditions of anthropology in their way of handling the problem of magic, particularly as regards the two problems raised by the phenomenon of magic : what kind of rationality gives magic its efficacy although it makes no predictions ? What made possible the shift from a magical rationality to a scientific and critical rationality ? After a brief survey of the relationships between magic, science and religion as they are conceived by Tylor and Frazer, this article opposes the idea of a plasticity of magical utterances in relation to the pragmatic contexts in which they are inscribed, in the works of Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard, and the idea of a structure of magical thought that would be embodied in the acts of an individual magician, in the works of Mauss and Lévi-Strauss. The conclusion focuses on the way these two traditions have addressed the problem of the logic of practice, and the consequences that such a difference in the position of the problem of magic has for today.
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