Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2003 15:52:49 +1000
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: Autonomy and the Gift


Happy New Year to All,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eric wrote,
 >Existence is a free gift. Grace is a free gift. Salvation is a free gift.
 >Once this gift is received, the Christian is obligated to give back in
exchange, >bound to the knowledge that no gift he or she gives can ever
equal in value the >gift received.  Jesus is the ultimate pot-latch deity.
The whole Christian law of >Agape is actually a political economy of
exchange, based upon this very notion >of the gift.  As such, Christianity
is in principle opposed to Capitalism which is >based instead upon a
principle of accumulation.  It is not for nothing that the >early Christians
lived as Communists, sharing all things in common.

the previous day, Turesday,
Eric wrote:

>It is also mystical to the extent that one dies and becomes born again
through >the Event. One is no longer bound to this animal, this body of
death, or what >Paul terms the flesh.  Instead, one becomes, in Badiou's
sense, an Immortal.

>These descriptions may sound somewhat facetious, but I am taking them
>seriously to the extent I choose to interpret Christianity as a religion
that uses >mythological language to describe existential Events.  Perhaps,
something like >religion needs to take place in our shared solitude in order
for each one of us to >become fully human/inhuman.  "Unless you become a
child again (shades of >Lyotard's 'enfans') you shall not enter the Kingdom
of Heaven."

>I would even go farther and maintain that perhaps something like a
postmodern >religious awakening of this kind may be needed in order for the
still-pending >global politics of justice to be realized.  Individuals who
remain tied to >commodities are still in bondage and alienated. Only those
whose happiness >arises from a 'non-present' Event can make the break in the
situation that the >current form of our global politics requires.

Yes, the gifts are mystical, and mystic processes do not require evidence to
be  accepted.  Evidence removes mystery.

Is the gift that obliges the recipient a "true" or "free" gift?  Or is it
only a ploy?

What I find most interesting in this discussion is the emphasis on "Event",
the here-and-now, the act of cognition simultaneous with the emotional
feeling.  In Foucault's language