Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; Zusammenfassung: G.; G.: Außen- Innenseite (Band zw. Geber und Empfänger; Gegenwart des Gebers im G.)

Kurzinhalt: In barest outline the simple situation in which a gift is given and received contains three ontological elements, the giver, the gift and the receiver: g sg r... The thing given, then, is not simply a detachable item ... it is he.

Textausschnitt: 57a The foregoing reflection has uncovered the following features of the gift: (1) the gratuity of the gift; (2) the act of endowment by the giver; (3) the original reciprocity: the reception or refusal; (4) the mutual risk to both parties; (5) the additional risk because of the material or symbolic opacity of most gifts; (6) the community built up through the exchange founded upon the original giving and receiving; (7) the non-parity of the parties and the consequent non-reciprocation; (8) the uniqueness and actuality of the relation and the parties; (9) the anonymity of most donors; and (10) the transcendental aspect of the generosity that spreads a sort of diffusive goodness throughout the situation. (Fs) (notabene)
57b In barest outline the simple situation in which a gift is given and received contains three ontological elements, the giver, the gift and the receiver:
g sg r.

57c Something is given (sg) by someone (g) to someone else (r), even while that something (sg) is received by someone (r) from someone else (g). A gift is often thought of merely as something that passes from the ownership of one person into the possession of another. Certainly, we cannot give what is not ours to give. But the pleasure, surprise, and sometimes the solemnity, embarrassment, or uneasiness that attends the reception of a gift points to a deeper flow of energy. We transfer money from one account to another, and furniture from one house to another; but something more moves with a gift. An act of giving initiates a movement that leaves things different than they were. The act is critical in that it divides what has been from what is and will be. It is a crisis (krino, cerno: separate; krisis: decision, issue). It involves giver and receiver in a relationship that has been newly established by the act or in a relationship that has been modified by it. A gift may be more or less meaningful, of course, but its meaning as gift does not derive primarily from its subsistent value, that is, from its independence outside of or apart from the context in which it serves as gift. That is why the widow's mite may be a greater gift than a king's ransom. Inasmuch as it is a gift, it draws the giver as well as the receiver into the relationship. It presents the giver to the receiver. In that presentation the thing acquires an "inside." Now, the "outside" is the independence of the thing given, considered apart from the relationship; and in this exteriority lies it opacity. But the "inside" is the interior bond by which the giver commends himself to the receiver. The lower limit at which something ceases to be a gift is that limit at which all interiority fails, that is, where no giver is present. To an uninvolved spectator a gift might seem to detach itself from one possessor to pass over into the possession of another. But that is to observe only the physics of transference that sometimes accompanies a gift; it is not to grasp the metaphysics of the gift itself. The giver does not hand over something "outside" of himself but under his control; rather, he builds up the thing into a gift by loaning it his own conscious intention as he attends to the receiver. In the act of endowment the giver makes himself present to the receiver; and in this attentive presence he does not only give what is his, he commends himself. In his essay entitled "gifts," Emerson writes:

The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a hankerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift....1
59a In the medieval legend, the juggler brought his performance; and the small child brings her laughter. The thing given, then, is not simply a detachable item, an independent thing in its own right; nor is it to be understood as an external substitute for the giver. It is a token of him, that is, it is not only his: it is he. (Fs)

59b This underscores the risk already mentioned, for if the intended recipient rejects the gift, the giver himself is thereby rejected. The extended hand is a gesture of openness, but it can be brushed aside. In extending a gift, the giver exposes himself, thereby opening up his own being to rejection. If the gift is refused, his openness is betrayed. We have already seen that the recipient is also vulnerable. So, too, our physical posture illustrates this vulnerability and embodies it, for the open arms of a welcoming embrace expose us and stand at the opposite to the closed fist and defensive crouch of someone on his guard. To receive may be to admit more than what is needed and to acquire more than what is possessed. For the receiver the reception is critical because, in receiving the donor himself, he may receive more than he wants. The endowment from which the interiority of the bond issues may be good, ambivalent or worse, so that a gift may be flawed, not only by a refusal or malacceptance on the part of the recipient, but by the intention of the endowment on the part of the donor as well. Once again, it is of such contamination that Peguy speaks when he asks the poor to forgive us the bread we give them. It is not uncommon to feel an obligation attaching to the reception of a gift, and this may be freely taken up in gratitude. Marcel has pointed out that, to the extent to which life is accepted as a gift, it is a call for a pledge of fidelity. The existentialist anti-hero of recent romantic and philosophical literature, on the contrary, protests against the burden of a life which he must bear without having been consulted beforehand. Of course, we often welcome a gift from a tangle of motives, not always without greed, but often with joy at the symbolic presence of the giver who in the gift is brought into a new association with us. Such joy does not, of course, refute the vulnerability or remove the risk; it simply confirms the crisis by its glad surprise. (Fs)