Teoria e empiria dell’agape per le scienze sociali: un fondamentale rovesciamento della questione

Continuously present in the overall set of regimes of action and interaction in social reality, the existence - in the incessant transitions between the different regimes - of moments of gratuitousness, "however modest it may be, is anything but negligible" (Boltanski, 2005). What is needed, therefore, is a reversal of the question, so that, instead of the elementary formulations "is gratuitousness possible?" or "why in many ordinary situations do people give more than common logic predicts, expects or hypothesizes?", it may be more intellectually fruitful and certainly more real to formulate: "What is it that makes the ordinary faculties of acting agapically often inhibited and or cancelled?". The moments of gratuitousness, which seem rare, but which do exist and whose effects we experience, possess an enormous power concerning generation and stabilization, from interpersonal relationships to the constitution of society and institutions whose highest expression is gratuitous reciprocity.