1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910793888803321

Autore

Hénaff Marcel

Titolo

The Philosophers' Gift : Reexamining Reciprocity / / Marcel Hénaff

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, NY : , : Fordham University Press, , [2019]

©2019

ISBN

0-8232-8649-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (193 pages)

Altri autori (Persone)

MorhangeJean-Louis

Disciplina

177/.7

Soggetti

Generosity

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Translator’s Preface -- Preliminary Directions -- Chapter 1. Derrida: The Gift, the Impossible, and the Exclusion of Reciprocity -- Chapter 2. Propositions I: The Ceremonial Gift— Alliance and Recognition -- Chapter 3. Levinas: Beyond Reciprocity— For-the-Other and the Costly Gift -- Chapter 4. Propositions II: Approaches to Reciprocity -- Chapter 5. Marion: Gift without Exchange— Toward Pure Givenness -- Chapter 6. Ricoeur: Reciprocity and Mutuality— From the Golden Rule to Agape -- Chapter 7. Philosophy and Anthropology: With Lefort and Descombes -- Chapter 8. Propositions III: The Dual Relationship and the Third Party -- Postliminary Directions -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Winner, French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation. When it comes to giving, philosophers love to be the most generous. For them, every form of reciprocity is tainted by commercial exchange. In recent decades, such thinkers as Derrida, Levinas, Henry, Marion, Ricoeur, Lefort, and Descombes, have made the gift central to their work, haunted by the requirement of disinterestedness. As an anthropologist as well as a philosopher, Hénaff worries that philosophy has failed to distinguish among various types of giving. The Philosophers’ Gift returns to Mauss to reexamine these thinkers through the anthropological tradition. Reciprocity, rather than disinterestedness, he shows, is central to ceremonial giving and



alliance, whereby the social bond specific to humans is proclaimed as a political bond. From the social fact of gift practices, Hénaff develops an original and profound theory of symbolism, the social, and the relationship between self and other, whether that other is an individual human being, the collective other of community and institution, or the impersonal other of the world.