<\/p>
Levi-Srauss doubts Mauss\u2019 spiritualization of the gift that Mauss draws from the Maori concept of \u201chau,\u201d the power that is communicated in, with, and under the gift. Rather, hau is \u201cthe conscious form whereby men of a given society . . . apprehended an unconscious necessity whose explanation lies elsewhere.\u201d There are, as Paul Ricoeur summarizes, \u201crules of symbolic thought\u201d underlying and expressed by, but also concealed by, the notion of hau. <\/p>\n
But Levi-Strauss misses a key point by reducing the gift to impersonal universal rules. In fact, he misses the gift and the giver. As Claude Lefort argues, \u201cThe idea that the gift must be returned presupposes that the other person is another self who must act as I do; and this return gesture has to confirm for me the truth of my own gesture, that is, my subjectivity . . . . Human beings [thereby] confirm to one another that they are not things.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Levi-Srauss doubts Mauss\u2019 spiritualization of the gift that Mauss draws from the Maori concept of \u201chau,\u201d the power that is communicated in, with, and under the gift. Rather, hau is \u201cthe conscious form whereby men of a given society . . . apprehended an unconscious necessity whose explanation lies elsewhere.\u201d There are, as Paul Ricoeur […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n