In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new modes of thought, none more so than what crystallized in the 1980s around an innovative group of French academics. In The Gift Paradigm, Alain Caillé provides the first in-depth, English-language introduction to La Revue du MAUSS - or, "Anti-Utilitarian Movement (...) in the Social Sciences," combining the work of anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and others. Today, the very idea of a "general social science" seems unthinkable, unless you count the pervasive sway of a utilitarian logic in orthodox economics, or the diffuse influence of neoliberalism. Here, Caillé offers a distinctly different reading of economy and society, inspired by Mauss - as vital now as ever. (shrink)

Il est grand temps de faire revivre le projet d ́une théorie sociale générale... et généreuse. En tant que riposte et alternative à la colonisation des sciences sociales par l ́économie néoclassique, nous proposons de reprendre en l'actualisant le projet des grands auteurs classiques, d'Aristote à Marx, de Kant à Habermas, d'Adam Smith à Durkheim et Mauss, de Schumpeter ou Keynes à Polanyi ou Braudel, etc. Contre l ́orthodoxie néoclassique des économistes et la doxa de la neutralité axiologique des sociologues, (...) nous appelons à une nouvelle synthèse de la sociologie classique, de la philosophie morale et politique et des " Studies ". Si les sciences sociales veulent poursuivre leur travail de réflexivité, il est essentiel qu'elles renouent avec la grande tradition et se conçoivent comme la continuation de la philosophie morale et politique par d'autres moyens. Si elles ne réussissent pas à se dégager de l'utilitarisme, elles risquent fort de connaître le même destin que les sociétés et les universités, elles ne seront plus une vocation, mais une profession, et en tant que telles une simple extension du Marché et de l'Etat. (shrink)

Si c'est "malgré tout" qu'il faut défendre la sociologie, c'est malgré ce qu'elle est devenue. Bien loin de ses grandes espérances initiales et des splendeurs que nous ont léguées les Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Mead, Elias, Mauss, etc. Ce que l'on appelle sociologie s'est peu à peu recroquevillé jusqu'à apparaître comme la "science (ou la pseudo science) des restes n, la science de ce dont ne parlent ni les philosophes, ni les économistes, ni les historiens, ni les anthropologues, ni les théoriciens (...) de la littérature, etc. Éclatée en de multiples chapelles théoriques ou idéologiques, privée de colonne vertébrale paradigmatique et institutionnelle, elle ne croit plus pouvoir trouver son unité que dans une référence de plus en plus incantatoire au "terrain" et à l'empirisme, et dans ses querelles infinies sur ce qui fait la bonne méthode ou le bon terrain. La sociologie classique, celle qu'il nous faut faire revivre et actualiser, se présentait tout autrement. Elle revendiquait hautement une approche empirique de la réalité et le souci d'établir des faits, elle aussi, mais elle n'imaginait pas que ce puisse être accompli hors-théorie et sans enjeux normatifs, c'est-à-dire éthiques et politiques... Dit autrement, elle se vivait comme le lieu et le moment généraliste de la science sociale générale. C'est cette sociologie là, autrement dit la science sociale générale, qui nous fait désormais défaut et qu'on appelle ici à renaître de ses cendres. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The anthropologist Marcel Mauss, in his famous exploration of the gift in "primitive" and archaic societies, showed that the essential aspect of the exchange of presents involved the establishment of a social tie that bound the parties together above and beyond any material value of the objects exchanged. He argued that these intangible mutual "debts" constituted the social fabric. Godbout and Caillé show that, contrary to the modern assumption that societies function on the basis of market exchange and the (...) pursuit of self-interest, the gift still constitutes the foundation of our social fabric. The authors describe the gift not as an object but as a social connection, perhaps the most important social connection because it creates a sense of obligation to respond in kind. They examine the gift in a broad range of cases such as blood and organ donation; volunteer work; the bonds between friends, couples, and family; Santa Claus; the interaction between performers and their audience; and the relation of the artist to society. Written in an engaging manner, The World of the Gift will appeal to anyone who is interested in how the world really operates. (shrink)

This article calls for a new theoretical synthesis that overcomes the fragmentation, specialization and professionalization within the social sciences. As an alternative to utilitarianism and the colonization of the social sciences by rational choice models, it proposes a new articulation of social theory, the Studies and moral, social and political philosophy. Based on a positive anthropology that finds its inspiration in Marcel Mauss’s classic essay on the gift, it recommends a return to classical social theory and explores articulations between theories (...) of reciprocity, care and recognition. (shrink)

Within moral and political philosophy and the social sciences, recent conceptual developments in the concept of recognition cannot be dissociated from an opposition to those theories inspired by what is commonly called rational action theory or the economic model of action. The paradigm of recognition represents the heart of those theories that are both alternative and complementary to the theory of individual action. Nonetheless, this conceptual development calls out for an alliance between political philosophy and the social sciences. We argue (...) that the paradigm of recognition can only be developed to its full potential if it is interpreted in the wake of what Marcel Mauss and the Revue du MAUSS, has called the paradigm of the gift. The gift only takes on its full sense when understood as a means, performer, and symbol of public and/or private recognition. (shrink)

In this essay, Alain Caillé reconstructs the “singular history of the MAUSS (Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences)” from when in early 1980 a group of friends from different disciplines (sociologists, economists, philosophers, etc.) decided to found the “Bulletin du MAUSS” to counter the growing hegemony of utilitarianism and economism in the human sciences and in the philosophical disciplines themselves. The Bulletin would initially become the “Revue du MAUSS trimestrielle” from 1988 to 1992 and from 1993 to 2022 the (...) “Revue du MAUSS semestrielle” until its current anglophone extension “MAUSS International”. The author takes Marcel Mauss’ definition of the gift as a “total social fact” and explains that the gift paradigm is a “translation operator” in the sense that it is continuously enriched in interaction with existing discourses. The theoretical operation that Caillé proposes is to explicate Mauss’s discovery by moving from a simple gift paradigm, based on the perspective of simple reciprocity between giver and recipient, to an expanded gift paradigm. In this way, it can dialogue with other paradigms and other currents of thought (theory of recognition, theory of care, theory of human development, etc.). And from here to a conception of the gift as “adonnement”, i.e. the commitment of human subjects to bring something new and unprecedented into the world. (shrink)

What steps are needed to make life better and more convivial? The Second Convivialist Manifesto has presented a short diagnosis of the current crises and sketches of a possible and desirable future. It has been a necessary work of theoretical synthesis, but preserving a viable world also requires passion. It is thus urgent to show what people would gain from a shift to a post-neoliberal and post-growth convivialist future. This volume includes a theoretical debate on convivialism which reflects dystopias and (...) shows the multiple and major obstacles that convivialism will have to face. Mainly, however, the contributors to this volume create sketches of a convivial future and collect accounts of another future world which is attractive for as many as possible. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Malgré l’intérêt de Leibniz pour la physique de Huygens, leur correspondance entre 1692 et 1695 renferme plusieurs divergences révélatrices de deux ontologies différentes des corps. Selon Leibniz, les lois de Kepler peuvent être expliquées par une circulation harmonique, alors que Huygens substitue à celle-ci une pesanteur intrinsèque des corps. De plus, pour Huygens, il y a une extension dépourvue de tout corps et pourtant matérielle, ce qui n’est pas compatible avec la métaphysique de Leibniz. Enfin, Huygens explique la cohésion des (...) corps par des atomes extrêmement durs ; Leibniz rejette de telles entités, mais complète les lois du mouvement relatif par un niveau substantiel au-delà de l’étendue. (shrink)

Que reste-t-il aujourd’hui de vivant et d’universalisable de ce qui a fait la Gauche – signifiant privilégié de tous les espoirs politiques des deux siècles écoulés – et de l’idéal socialiste qui en était le cœur ? Comment reformuler celui-ci de manière plausible en ces temps de globalisation qui voient l’Europe, berceau de la Gauche et du socialisme, plonger dans l’impuissance..

Dans Les Tragiques (1616, « Les feux »), Agrippa d’Aubigné raconte que, alors que dans sa prison le célèbre martyr du Bourg était prêt de flancher : Ce cœur tremblant revint à la voix d’une Caille :Pauvre femme, mais riche, et si riche que lorsUn plus riche trouva l’aumône en ses trésors.O combien d’efficace est la voix qui console,Quand le conseiller joint l’exemple à sa parole,Comme fit celle-là qui, pour ainsi prêcher,Fit en ces mêmes jours sa chaire d’un bûcher. Cette (...) Caille célébrée par... (shrink)

The article presents an overview of the intellectual trajectory of Alain Caillé, the founder and animator of the anti-utilitarian movement in the social sciences (MAUSS) in France. Going back to early influences of Claude Lefort, Karl Polanyi and Pierre Clastres, it shows the centrality of the symbolic constitution of the economy in the development of an intellectual front against rational choice. It also considers how Marcel Mauss’s famous Essay on the Gift has been developed into a ‘gift paradigm’ that (...) aims to unify the various social sciences into a comprehensive alternative to the interest paradigm. (shrink)

Is it only yesterday's humanism, whether religious or secular in origin, that is dying - and is it really dying? - or is it more profoundly the very paradigm of humanity? At least it is worth asking the question. Do we not hear on every side today that everything is ‘constructed’ and ‘formated’? No inherited moral standard now seems acceptable, nor any reference to any sort of human nature or naturality. The only idea that henceforth finds acceptance is that of (...) the infinite plasticity of the human, leaving individuals free to shape themselves as they wish beyond any commonly received standard, since only defiance of the norm seems to be the source and proof of freedom. (shrink)

Is it only yesterday's humanism, whether religious or secular in origin, that is dying - and is it really dying? - or is it more profoundly the very paradigm of humanity? At least it is worth asking the question. Do we not hear on every side today that everything is ‘constructed’ and ‘formated’? No inherited moral standard now seems acceptable, nor any reference to any sort of human nature or naturality. The only idea that henceforth finds acceptance is that of (...) the infinite plasticity of the human, leaving individuals free to shape themselves as they wish beyond any commonly received standard, since only defiance of the norm seems to be the source and proof of freedom. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Marcel Mauss’s “Essay on the Gift” (1925) is not only intended to inaugurate a new paradigm on the terrain of ethnology and anthropology, but at the same time to make the gift a kind of novum organum of the social sciences and of moral and political philosophy itself. In the first part, I reconstructed the critique that M. Merleau-Ponty and C. Lefort have made to Lévi-Strauss’s “structuralist” reading of Mauss, and, in a second part, (...) I emphasised the importance that M. Hénaff assigned to the ceremonial gift of traditional societies as an intentional procedure of public mutual recognition between groups. But, using some of A. Caillé’s indications, I explain that this device of mutual recognition and alliance, characteristic of the gift cycle (giving/receiving/ reciprocating) also applies in modern societies whenever legal-political institutions become sclerotized and lose their legitimacy in the face of new actors in political action (newcomers or new arrivals, to use the Arendtian category of natality in a broad sense). (shrink)

Is it only yesterday's humanism, whether religious or secular in origin, that is dying - and is it really dying? - or is it more profoundly the very paradigm of humanity? At least it is worth asking the question. Do we not hear on every side today that everything is ‘constructed’ and ‘formated’? No inherited moral standard now seems acceptable, nor any reference to any sort of human nature or naturality. The only idea that henceforth finds acceptance is that of (...) the infinite plasticity of the human, leaving individuals free to shape themselves as they wish beyond any commonly received standard, since only defiance of the norm seems to be the source and proof of freedom. (shrink)

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

A. H. Louie's More Than Life Itself is an exploratory journey in relational biology, a study of life in terms of the organization of entailment relations in living systems. This book represents a synergy of the mathematical theories of categories, lattices, and modelling, and the result is a synthetic biology that provides a characterization of life. Biology extends physics. Life is not a specialization of mechanism, but an expansive generalization of it. Organisms and machines share some common features, but organisms (...) are not machines. Life is defined by a relational closure that places it beyond the reach of physicochemical and mechanistic dogma, outside the reductionistic universe, and into the realm of impredicativity. Function dictates structure. Complexity brings forth living beings. (shrink)

This book argues for the use of nonideal theory in social ontology. The central claim is that a paradigm shift is underway in contemporary social ontology, from ideal to nonideal, and that this shift should be fully followed through. To develop and defend this central claim, the first step is to show that the key questions and central dividing lines within contemporary social ontology can be fruitfully reconstructed as a clash between two worlds, referred to as ideal and nonideal social (...) ontology. Ideal social ontology is characterized by consensus and cooperation, while nonideal social ontology is characterized by conflict and contestation. The second step is to show that, when taken together, objections to the standard model of ideal social ontology (the dominant version of ideal social ontology) imply that this model needs to be given up in favor of nonideal social ontology. In other words, we should look to nonideal rather than ideal social ontology for core concepts. The third step is to offer a positive account, called the power view, of nonideal social ontology. This account places the concept of social power at the core of a general theory of the social world and replaces the flat and narrow conception of power in ideal social ontology with a richer and more extensive conception. In addition, it rectifies a shortcoming in nonideal social ontology by attending to class, which has been notably and oddly overlooked in the literature. (shrink)

This companion is a cutting-edge primer to critical forms of the posthumanities and the feminist posthumanities, aimed at students and researchers who want to catch up with the recent theoretical developments in various fields in the humanities, such as new media studies, gender studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, human animal studies, postcolonial critique, philosophy and environmental humanities. It contains a collection of nineteen new and original short chapters introducing influential concepts, ideas and approaches that have shaped and developed (...) new materialism, inhuman theory, critical posthumanism, feminist materialism, and posthuman philosophy. A resource for students and teachers, this comprehensive volume brings together established international scholars and emerging theorists, for timely and astute definitions of a moving target – posthuman humanities and feminist posthumanities. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Grace A. de Laguna’s theory of universals in its historical context and in relation to contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. I explain the central features of her theory, arguing that her theory should be classified as a form of immanent realism and as a powers ontology. I then show in what ways her theory affords a theory of modality in terms of potentialities and discuss some of its consequences along the way.

I. Ókor -- II. A középkor és a reneszánsz -- III. Az újkor.

On fundamentals of Vedanta and science; a study.

Desde la aparición, en 1927, de su obra central Ser y tiempo, Martin Heidegger ha sido y sigue siendo considerado por amplios sectores de opinión como el filósofo más importante del siglo XX. Frente a esta sobrevaloración del filósofo de los Bosques Negros, Heleno Saña procede, en su documentadísimo libro, a una crítica de la filosofía heideggeriana, intentando demostrar que está basada en una tergiversación e instrumentalización sistemáticas de la terminología y los conceptos esenciales de la filosofía clásica. El resultado (...) final de sus ejercicios hermenéuticos y sus continuos malabarismos lingüísticos, es un irracionalismo de índole claramente nihilista, por su culto implícito y explícito a la muerte. En este sentido es altamente significativo que a la biografía y a la filosofía heideggerianas pertenezcan su adhesión al nacionalsocialismo y la glorificación de Alemania como la “raza de los señores” por excelencia, tema al que Heleno Saña dedica la debida atención. Uno de los signos distintivos de este ensayo es el de la claridad con que expone sus tesis, de manera que el libro no está pensado solo para eruditos, sino para todas las personas interesadas en ampliar sus conocimientos culturales y filosóficos. (shrink)

La admirable riqueza cultural y artística del Renacimiento esconde una desoladora miseria y aquella "edad de la abundancia" contrasta con una inmensa pobreza. Lejos de ser una broma o una pesadilla, la celebrada Utopía de Tomás Moro fue antes que nada un desafío insoslayable, pues proponía que ninguna sociedad merece tal nombre si tolera la miseria de un solo pobre. Rico y pobre explora la cuestión en ese libro de 1516 y en otros del escritor londinense para concluir con un (...) esbozo de su vida a la luz de la pobreza como virtud indispensable y libertadora. He aquí un hombre afortunado que no fue indiferente ante el infortunio de tantos y que vio en la humanitas la virtud por excelencia que lleva a una constante atención y cuidado del prójimo. Inspirado por un cambio de actitud en su época, así como por su fe cristiana y la mejor tradición estoica, mostró una robusta preocupación sobre el tema subrayando el valor social que debe tener toda riqueza, tanto a nivel estatal como individual, destacando la grave obligación cívica de los ricos y la necesidad que tienen todos, ricos y pobres, de empeñarse en la práctica de cierto desprendimiento y generosidad si no quieren mermar su propia humanidad y fallecer en su avaricia. La percepción de la miseria había cambiado de tal manera que su remedio ya no podía estar en una u otra limosna en plazas e iglesias, sino en la acción bien pensada y perentoria de todo gobierno que se tenga por justo. Sir Tomás Moro, privilegiado desde la cuna y seguro en su trabajo profesional, vio la pobreza de tantos como un desastre social, pero uno que, al mismo tiempo, debería llevar a todo ser humano a ver en el desprendimiento y generosidad una excelencia o virtud que alumbra la "otra" libertad, y tan íntima y valiosa que en su caso brilló aun en la prisión y ante el horror de una muerte injusta y atroz." -- Page 4 of cover. (shrink)