Jacques Derrida (as quoted in How to Read Derrida pg 77):
Derrida disagrees.
The thing is, as rare as it is for me to disagree with Milton, I think Derrida has a point. Under this calculation, even expecting a "Thank you" changes a gift into a payment, a delivery in exchange for niceties. Derrida pushes it further, arguing that a gift calculated to be a gift could not truly be a gift (because that would mean that the unexpectation of reciprocity would have to be contingent, which it can't be), and therefore can only work on "its conditions of possibility [that] amount to its conditions of impossibility" (ibid. 78).
Taking this further, Derrida claims that forgiveness is impossible unless that forgiveness forgives the unforgivable. I made a milder (or maybe more radical?) claim before, but I didn't realize that I was arguing both in favor and against Derrida: In favor, because, whether or not I recognized it, I was channeling the importance of forgiveness in a deeper way than I normally think of it; against, because I don't make the final leap (that true forgiveness is impossible) and say that God is capable. But it could even be argued, perhaps, that God has to do that impossible thing of forgiving the unforgivable. That is done through the sacrifice, death, and Atonement of Christ, which is both a true gift (given without expectation of reciprocity) and true forgiveness (the unforgivable act--deicide--forgiven by virtue of the gift of Christ).
Or maybe not.
It does make me wonder how many people would expect a theological assertion backed up (kind of) by Jacques Derrida.
For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt. If the other gives me back or owes me or has to give me back what I give him or her, there will not have been a gift, whether this restitution is immediate or whether it is programmed by a complex calculation of a long term deferral or difference [differance]. This is all too obvious if the other, the donee, gives me back immediately the same thing...For there to be a gift, it is necessary that the donee not give back, amortize, reimburse, acquit himself, enter into a contract, and that he never have contracted a debt...The donee owes it to himself even not to give back, he ought not owe and the donor ought not count on restitution. Is it thus necessary, at the limit, that he not recognize the gift as gift? If he recognizes it as gift, if the gift appears to him as such, if the present is present to him as present, this simple recognition suffices to annul the gift. Why? Because it gives back, in the place, let us say of the thing itself, a symbolic equivalent.During a recent book club of discussing Paradise Lost, the idea of what people owe God because of the gift of life He gave them surfaced. Milton, pious Puritan that he was, would absolutely agree that, because of what God gave us, we ought to do something in response.
Derrida disagrees.
The thing is, as rare as it is for me to disagree with Milton, I think Derrida has a point. Under this calculation, even expecting a "Thank you" changes a gift into a payment, a delivery in exchange for niceties. Derrida pushes it further, arguing that a gift calculated to be a gift could not truly be a gift (because that would mean that the unexpectation of reciprocity would have to be contingent, which it can't be), and therefore can only work on "its conditions of possibility [that] amount to its conditions of impossibility" (ibid. 78).
Taking this further, Derrida claims that forgiveness is impossible unless that forgiveness forgives the unforgivable. I made a milder (or maybe more radical?) claim before, but I didn't realize that I was arguing both in favor and against Derrida: In favor, because, whether or not I recognized it, I was channeling the importance of forgiveness in a deeper way than I normally think of it; against, because I don't make the final leap (that true forgiveness is impossible) and say that God is capable. But it could even be argued, perhaps, that God has to do that impossible thing of forgiving the unforgivable. That is done through the sacrifice, death, and Atonement of Christ, which is both a true gift (given without expectation of reciprocity) and true forgiveness (the unforgivable act--deicide--forgiven by virtue of the gift of Christ).
Or maybe not.
It does make me wonder how many people would expect a theological assertion backed up (kind of) by Jacques Derrida.