The Philosophers' Gift: Reexamining Reciprocity

Awards:   Winner of The French Voices Translation Award 2019
Author:   Marcel Hénaff ,  Jean-Louis Morhange ,  Jane I. Guyer
Publisher:   Fordham University Press
ISBN:  

9780823286478


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   05 November 2019
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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The Philosophers' Gift: Reexamining Reciprocity


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Awards

  • Winner of The French Voices Translation Award 2019

Overview

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, Henaff 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, Henaff 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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Marcel Hénaff ,  Jean-Louis Morhange ,  Jane I. Guyer
Publisher:   Fordham University Press
Imprint:   Fordham University Press
ISBN:  

9780823286478


ISBN 10:   0823286479
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   05 November 2019
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Translator’s Preface | vii Preliminary Directions | 1 1. Derrida: The Gift, the Impossible, and the Exclusion of Reciprocity | 11 2. Propositions I: The Ceremonial Gift—Alliance and Recognition | 30 3. Levinas: Beyond Reciprocity—For-the-Other and the Costly Gift | 52 4. Propositions II: Approaches to Reciprocity | 77 5. Marion: Gift without Exchange—Toward Pure Givenness | 95 6. Ricoeur: Reciprocity and Mutuality—From the Golden Rule to Agape | 124 7. Philosophy and Anthropology: With Lefort and Descombes | 148 8. Propositions III: The Dual Relationship and the Third Party | 169 Postliminary Directions | 199 Acknowledgments | 213 Notes | 215 Bibliography | 245 Index | 253

Reviews

A significant contribution to debates on the gift that have played out within continental philosophy.---Ryan Coyne, University of Chicago Marcel Hénaff asks why the idea of the gift and the demand for generosity has become a topic of such intense interest among philosophers of ethics in recent years. Returning to Marcel Mauss's foundational text, he offers a probing and often critical reading of recent French thinkers, asking: Might the idea of the gift as a figure of absolute generosity be a lament about the absence of just institutions? In the end, Hénaff asks philosophy to relinquish its idealism in favor of what a more empirical anthropology teaches about the functions of giving in creating the social and institutional conditions necessary for being together among strangers. This book is his gift to politics.---Rosalind C. Morris, Columbia University


A significant contribution to debates on the gift that have played out within continental philosophy. -- Ryan Coyne, University of Chicago Marcel Henaff asks why the idea of the gift and the demand for generosity has become a topic of such intense interest among philosophers of ethics in recent years. Returning to Marcel Mauss's foundational text, he offers a probing and often critical reading of recent French thinkers, asking: Might the idea of the gift as a figure of absolute generosity be a lament about the absence of just institutions? In the end, Henaff asks philosophy to relinquish its idealism in favor of what a more empirical anthropology teaches about the functions of giving in creating the social and institutional conditions necessary for being together among strangers. This book is his gift to politics. -- Rosalind C. Morris, Columbia University


Author Information

Marcel Hénaff (Author) Marcel Hénaff (1942–2018) was Distinguished Research Professor of Literature and Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. His books in English include Sade: The Invention of the Libertine Body (Minnesota, 1999), Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Making of Structural Anthropology (Minnesota, 2001), and The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy (Stanford, 2010). Jean-Louis Morhange (Translator) Jean-Louis Morhange is the translator of Pascal Baudry’s French and Americans: The Other Shore (Les Frenchies, Inc., 2005) and of Marcel Hénaff’s The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy (Stanford, 2010).

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