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Like many interested in the gift, I have to confess to having always experienced a certain attraction for methodological individualism. Through its way of approaching social actors, methodological individualism introduces the actor's concern: what are the sound principles which account for the behaviour of the actors that are observed? This is the question which individualism compels us constantly to ask. Admittedly, its response is almost always the same: self-interest. As R.H. Frank wrote:
Most [economists'] texts mention at the outset that our rational choice model takes peoples' tastes as given. They may be altruists, sadists, masochists; or they may be concerned solely with advancing their own material interests. But having said that, most texts then proceed to ignore all motives other than material self-interest.
(Frank, 1994, p. xxiii)
But at the outset, and in theory, other responses are possible. And, when we ask what are the sound reasons for giving, we assert that the interest response, while important, is not enough and we are led to seek other valid reasons. This search has led me to postulate a homo donator, who is the opposite of homo oeconomicus, not in the sense of claiming to replace him but in the sense of a supplement to account for what is in circulation among the members of a society (Godbout, 2000). This postulate seems to me to be similar to Arnsperger's (2000) proposition setting the concept of methodological altruism in opposition to that of methodological individualism.
The question posed by the present paper is the following: is homo donator a homo moralis? This theme of the relations between gift and morality or normativity can be tackled briefly by asking three questions:
Starting from the moral considerations of Marcel Mauss's Essay on the Gift, one asks whether the gift is necessary for morality.
Does this gift morality encompass the entire moral code; is it the sole foundation of the moral code?
Is the gift necessarily moral? Is every gift moral?
Moral considerations. There is a homo donator in concluding his essay on the gift, Mauss was led to formulate 'moral conclusions'. This passage on moral considerations has been considered unjustified and unjustifiable by many commentators. And not without reason. For how, after stating at the start of a...