The author sets out here to reveal the 'hermeneutic power'? of the event and to highlight the way in which this power acts in the organization of behaviours, whether individual or collective. He starts with the idea that such power can be considered as both an end and a beginning; as a fact which can be explained and interpreted and as a source of understanding of the context or an illumination of the situation. This duality impacts on the way in which the event is the object of an experience, and on the configuration of the past and the future which it allows. Thus, for instance, a determined past is relative to both an event and that which conditioned it. Taken in context, the event is of a critical nature, in the literal sense: it serves to draw distinctions, to establish oppositions and contrasts, to generate alternatives and to choose appropriate responses.