• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.52
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• pp.1-29
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• 2018

The notion of 'gift' is one of the effective and fruitful codes for understanding Western civilization. In this study, we will shed light on several meanings, especially by comparing among the three French philosophers that expressed interest in this notion: they are Mauss, Derrida and $Ric{\oe}ur$. Called "father of French ethnography", Mauss claims, in his famous article "Essay on the Gift", that the gift is paradoxically a kind of economic exchange dominated by three obligations: to give, receive, and return. But he strives to establish a moral theory based on the obligation to give. Under the influence of Mauss, Derrida deconstructs the theory of Mauss by devoting attention to 'time', one of the determining elements in studies on the gift. Derrida observes that the gift is established just at the extremely short moment of emergence of the act of giving and that this act is transformed into an economic exchange with passing of time. From it, the impossibility of the gift is derived despite its concrete and real emergence and existence. Under the influence of Mauss, $Ric{\oe}ur$, for his part, is interested in the notion of giving as part of the dialectic between 'love' and 'justice'. According to him, whereas justice is dominated by the economy of gift, namely the logic of equivalence, love, by the logic of 'superabundance'. He focuses on establishing 'Supra-ethics' by considering the fact that the gift is at the core of his religious and philosophical vision. Finally, let us point out that in $Ric{\oe}ur$, this notion of gift ('don') is closely linked to forgiveness ('pardon'), that holds in it the secret of understanding regarding the 'fallible' and 'capable' man.