Abstract

In this essay the author maintains that exclusively in the range of transcendental appearance the notion of gift is given its truest and fundamental definition, for the act of giving never appears as such. This must be intended as follows: none of us, in phenomenological terms, has the capacity of understanding whether something is really a gift, or whether it is a false gift. Gifts are, in their material nature, the originary position where two different subjectivities reveal their mutual relationship. Through the gift, therefore, a subjectivity donates herself to another. Since the possible relationships between human beings are basically of two types, either of supremacy or of recognition, in the act of giving the related transcendental subjects appear to be either as reciprocally recognised or as in conflict . If the true gift represents the positive aspect of relationship, then the act of giving can not be experienced with a sort of abandon. I abandon myself to the freedom of the other subject, because I can never be absolutely sure that the other party really shares, deep in his heart, the relationship of recognition. The true gift can therefore be conceived, in its essence, as the fundamental basis of all ethical relationships, which clearly are of recognition and not of dominion. These ethical relationships, as stable model for mutual recognition, must not be simply left to the fragility of human freedom. They require a "metaphysical" covering