16 - How and why? Understanding and explaining reciprocity

Summary

Understanding

The main focus, so far, has been on understanding reciprocity. The term understanding is to be understood here in two senses. The first is the common sense of knowing the whereabouts, the various elements and types, the workings, the influences, and the reasons for actions. For reciprocity and its various types, clear and explicit awareness and knowledge of all these elements, workings and possibilities are by no means a priori obvious. They should be a posteriori, though, once the descriptive analysis is presented, apart from the specific analysis of the effects of strategic interactions (this is the object of chapter 20). The reason is the reliance on understanding in the second sense, which is the technical sense in which this term is used in social science (Max Weber's verstehen). This refers to the fact that we speak of things about humans, and we ourselves belong to this category. To begin with, the crucial items are sentiments, which cannot be given a definition – they can only be specified. When we mention a sentiment, each of us understands what the term means from her own subjective experience. This refers to our feelings, but this information is supported by our experience of life in society, with watching others, hearing from them, interacting meaningfully with them, experiencing some empathy or compassion towards them, understanding their words, situations, and feelings, and being so understood by them. We can use our memory of these facts.