Book Description

The French philosopher and anthropologist examines contemporary philosophical conceptions of gift-giving, commercial exchange, and social cohesion. When it comes to giving, philosophers love to be the most generous. For them, every form of reciprocity is tainted by commercial exchange. Thinkers such 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 the seminal work of Marcel Mauss to reexamine these thinkers through the anthropological tradition. Hénaff shows that reciprocity, rather than disinterestedness, 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. Winner of the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation