The Gift as Sufficient Source of Normativity

Extract

Daniele Hervieu-Léger and Marcel Gauchet explain that today the hold that the religious dimension has always exerted over human societies is, of very recent date but definitely, slackening; that it is becoming ‘hollow’ and ceases to inspire collective action, leaving henceforth wide open the question of knowing in which name we should attempt to take our destiny in our hands and base the norms of collective being. This question at once summons up another, implicitly contained in the latter: is every ethical norm (or moral norm, for we are not making a distinction between the two concepts here) ultimately religious in origin, as is most often supposed, or can one in fact conceive of sketching the outlines of a moral code that is immanent within the social relationship, a moral code that is sufficiently coherent and self-consistent to do without, at least in theory, a religious-type transcendence? Here, I should like to make a case for the second response by emphasizing that religion - whatever meaning one bestows on this notion, still undefined today - does not constitute the primary, irreducible social and historical fact that is most often supposed, but that it should itself be interpreted as the formulation of a more original and more universal formulation: the threefold obligation of giving, receiving, and repaying distinguished by Marcel Mauss in his famous Essay on the Gift. Of course, I shall not claim here to do more than sketch a few possible lines of argument. But even before formulating them, I must call to mind two prejudicial objections that my argument has encountered.