Levi-Srauss doubts Mauss’ spiritualization of the gift that Mauss draws from the Maori concept of “hau,” the power that is communicated in, with, and under the gift. Rather, hau is “the conscious form whereby men of a given society . . . apprehended an unconscious necessity whose explanation lies elsewhere.” There are, as Paul Ricoeur summarizes, “rules of symbolic thought” underlying and expressed by, but also concealed by, the notion of hau.
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, “The 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.”
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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