Modernity has tended to deny the existence of any transcendent dimension to society. However, as Durkheim noted, we are not the authors of the social world in which we live. It is in this perspective that the author critically discusses the transcendental character of the objectifications underlying social and political life. Throughout history the modalities of these objectifications have varied according to societal type. In other words, each society has represented itself in this transcendence in different socio-historical forms. The author puts forward a typology of these forms, extending from primitive societies to postmodern societies, and notes the dissolution of ontological references in the latter. He then examines the effects of this dissolution on subjective and collective experience.