Abstract

ALEGRIA VARONA, Ciro. Reciprocity and social criticism: The duty of gratitude in Rousseau and A. Smith. Prax. filos. [online]. 2013, n.37, pp.7-27. ISSN 0120-4688.

Reciprocity reveals herself as a fundamental principle of society once her dual structure appears. On the one hand, the gift diverts the formal value of things towards a claim for recognition and status that creates a social counterworld. On the other hand, such attempts are frequently met with disappointment; they are in sharp contrast with the objective relations, which are criticized against the background of intended reciprocity. In Rousseau's Confessions, the sense of gratitude of the young and marginal characters endows them with moral dignity and entitles them to criticize the social order. Smith traces in his Theory of Moral Sentiments a procedure of moral recontextualizing similar to Rousseau's narrative, but the special meaning that reciprocity gives to objects and subjects of exchange must be discovered in a social background, as a parallel reality

Keywords : Reciprocity; criticism; ethics; recognition; justice.

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