The Metamorphosis of the Gift: Offering, Sacrifice, Grace, Money and Gifted Life

Abstract

This paper takes into account the analysis of a specific manifestation of the don, the sacrifice, against the purely taxonomic-classificatory approaches worried classifying different types of sacrifice without setting up previously the concept of sacrifice and against the ethical approaches which reduce the sacrifice to a violent expression of “primitive”, precivilized cruelty. The paper analyzes the non-sacrifitial system of gift Exchange as something proper of the hunter and gatherer groups, meanwhile among the agropastoral groups the combined effect of the rising of the altar as well as the differentiation among the “thiswordly” orientation versus the “otherworldly” orientation will create a clear difference betwen gods and men and a new way of communication among these “worlds” via the sacrifice, as was stated by Henry Hubert and Marcel Mauss at the beginning the XXth Century and Marcel Hénnaf recently. The end of the fascination in ritual practices centered in inmolations will have several relevant outcomes: First, the shift from sacrifice into praying (Guy Stroumsa); second, the rising of two important narratives within Christianity, on the one hand, the ethical interpretation of an antisacrifitial sacralization mouvement centered in the role of the victim, represented by René Girard, and, on the other hand, the mythical-symbolical interpretation which holds “life as a Gift”, represented by Talcott Parsons whose proposal revisit and updates the one from Mauss stated in 1924.; third, secular metamorphosis raised within the economic exchange itself (Niklas Luhmann) and last but not least, fourtly, the persistence of ceremonial exchanges within the life world (Jacques T. Godbout).