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Introduction
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Introduction “Has anyone promised us anything? Why then are we still waiting ?”1 These disturbing questions that Cesare Pavese’s skepticism was unable to hush set us in front of a dilemma. If we respond negatively to the first question, then we find ourselves unable to explain why it is that the resilient longing suggested by the second question is so unwilling to fade away. On the other hand, if we reply positively to the first question, then human existence finds itself thrust into an open-ended, dramatic dialogue with the giver of that assurance, that is, someone who is adamantly opposed to closing off any questions. Reality’s resistance to being brought down by the evil that swamps human life, and by the nihilism this evil begets, discreetly suggests that positivity might not be, after all, a chimera that naively resists coming to terms with its own dreadful fate. Strangely enough, positivity resists being received without being welcomed—this is why it always manages to elude facile acceptance and to rouse up disengaged spirits. It is, however, fairly common to set positivity on the shelf along with other disregardable matters, or to pack it away as one among many other insights which, however alluring, do not come to grips with the real questions. Nevertheless, if one heeds positivity’s persistence, then, perhaps, one might be able to perceive that it has something fundamental to say about the nature of being itself. Any approach to the issue of being’s positivity—an endeavor that is normally undertaken through the study of different categories such as gift, fullness, gratuity, and donation—cannot neglect the existence of evil. Nev- 1. Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere. Diario (1935–1950) (Turin: Einaudi, 1997), 276. ertheless, evil should not be seen as a dialectic partner to being’s positivity, for this would threaten to counterbalance gift by claiming an equiprimordial status for evil with regard to givenness. Feebleness presupposes gift. In fact, at its heart, evil is always a rejection of love.2 Admittedly, to approach positivity from the category of gift could very easily lead to circumscribing donation to the bestowal of goods or ills, that is, to an exchange in which what is not given or what one expects in return matters more than the gift itself.3 In this interpretation, the reflection on gift would have to examine whether, bearing in mind the presence of evil, gratuitous giving is at all possible and whether gift’s demand of an inextricable “for its own sake” is indeed able to undo any utilitarian reduction. The coexistence of gift’s demand for no return and the everyday, selfseeking search for reciprocity in the exchange of gifts may require understanding gift and the dynamics of giving and receiving in an altogether new fashion. Jacques Derrida, for instance, contends that gift should be thought of without any reference to a giver, a gift, or a receiver. It is only then, he says, that one is able to see that gift is an inevitable pathway to thinking the unthinkable and that in considering gift, one must acknowledge that gift is both possible and impossible because there is no decidable origin or destination of the gift. Gift, then, reveals something fundamental that pertains to the whole, if there is any: otherness is in such relation to Introduction 2. In this sense, as the work of Paul Ricoeur cogently shows, the presence of real evil leaves the door open to that of real gift. See Paul Ricoeur, Temps et récit, 3 vols. (Paris: Nabert, 1983); id., Le mal. Un défi à la philosophie et à la théologie (Paris: Labor et fides, 1996); id., Philosophie de la volonté, vol. 1: Le volontaire et l’involontaire; vol. 2: Finitude et culpabilit é: I) L’homme faillible. II) La symbolique du mal. (Paris: Aubier, 1949–60); id., Conflict des interprétations; essais d’herméneutique (Paris: Seuil, 1969). 3. In fact, several sociological or economical approaches to the category of gift have shown that this logic of exchange tends to transform the axiom do ut des (I give so that you can give further) into the claim to receive (I give so that you can give back to me) which thus prompts the search for wealth for its own sake. See Alain Mattheeuws, Les “dons” du mariage : Recherche de théologie morale et sacramentelle (Brussels: Culture et vérité, 1996), 99. See, among others: Marcel Mauss, “Essai sur le don.” This article...