The place of grace in anthropology
2011; HAU-N.E.T; Volume: 1; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.14318/hau1.1.017
ISSN2575-1433
Autores Tópico(s)Anthropological Studies and Insights
ResumoPrevious articleNext article FreeThe place of grace in anthropologyJulian PITT-RIVERSJulian PITT-RIVERSFull TextPDFEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMorePrologueIn the introduction to this book we observed that the word "honor" had entered anthropology only in the 1960s and we gave some considerations to account for this, to my mind curious, lacuna. The word "grace" is today in a condition somewhat comparable to "honor" in the 1960s and it is one of the aims of this essay to endow it with the recognition it deserves. I have found only three authors who have called attention to its existence as a general anthropological concept -briefly only1- and none who has undertaken a detailed examination of its logic and potential usage.This, despite the enormous importance of a concept of this order in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the huge theological literature on the subject — (surely the anthropology of religion can no more ignore Western theology than the anthropology of law can ignore Western jurisprudence?) — and the fact that a large number of Christian heresies were provoked by disagreements as to the nature of grace, from the Pelagians onwards. But blindness in this matter can hardly be attributed simply to the parochialism of modem university disciplines or the social scientists' distrust of the expertise of the theologians: no anthropologist has to my knowledge asked himself whether there is anything remotely equivalent to grace among the concepts of Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, or Taoism, though the sinologists have used it freely to translate the extensions of the wordfu (in origin a sacrificial offering, but also, the return of grace, thanks), whether the problem to which the doctrines of grace tender an answer has no echo beyond the religions of the Book, let alone the peoples without writing, or whether grace can be treated as a universal concept or only as an element of Western culture, a question which I asked with regard to "honor" in the introduction to The Fate of Shechem (Pitt-Rivers 1977).Personal destiny, with which grace is very much concerned, looms large in the works of Evans-Pritchard, both on Zande witchcraft and on Nuer religion, [216] yet he who favored employing Catholic theological terms as the nearest equivalents to the concepts of the Azande or the Nuer, seems never to have used the word.2 But these are all petty reasons for astonishment in comparison with the immense importance of the derivatives of grace outside the realms of theology, in the notion of gratuity. (At least gratuity is an abstract, universal, and theoretical concept). Not only is "grace" said before and sometimes after every meal in an Oxford college, I doubt whether any Englishman can get through a single day of his life without saying "thank you" at least a hundred times. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "Thank" is: "1) Thought (M.E.) [It comes from the same Old Teutonic root as "think"]. 2) Goodwill, graciousness, favor. 3) Grateful thought, gratitude. 4) Expression of the grateful acknowledgement of a benefit or favor."Is not "thank you" in the "hundred-times-a-day" sense, simply the recognition and acceptance of a gratuitous gesture? The romance languages connect the notion rather more explicitly with grace: French, merci, Spanish, gracias; Italian, ggrazie, etc. It may be that this notion is not evoked when saying thanks because the Old Teutonic root (thank), used in casual conversation is not recognized as having anything to do with it. The romance root (gratus), which recalls the word "grace," is reserved for more formal occasions when gratitude may really be felt. Yet it remains an enigma that the notion of grace should have escaped the anthropologists for so long. This is only the more remarkable in view of the attention they have given, in recent decades, to the problem of reciprocity. Can one explain systems of reciprocity adequately without considering the possibility of non-reciprocity, i.e. gratuity? Reciprocity is the basis of all sociation, in the form of systems of exchange, of women and of food, of labor and services, of hospitality and of violence. Anthropologists attach importance, rightly, to the detail of personal conduct in their understanding of human relations. And are not thanks the common coinage of encounters between persons? Yet what do they imply? What is their logic? Not even Goffman nor the ethnomethodologists have told us.This oversight might be accounted for simply by a regrettable tendency among those of a functionalist turn to mind to jump to conclusions regarding the significance of human actions on the basis of expressed intentions, without examining their mode of expression; to reduce each institution to "what it amounts to" or "what it does" in terms of practical results, ignoring its cultural roots, thinking that there is nothing more to be known about the culture of a people than what they themselves consciously recognize. Such accusations cannot be leveled at more than a minority of the profession today. That grace should have been ignored for so long is still puzzling.It is true one does not think of theology every time one says "thank you," or wonder why the word "grace" and its derivatives have such diverse [217] connotations in different settings: why grace is engraved on English coins (Elizabeth II REG. D.G.) as well as said before a meal, why it is used in writing to a duke as well as bestowed on the congregation at the end of Matins, why it is invoked to applaud a dancer as well as to explain the success of a politician, why it names the three pagan goddesses concerned with personal endowment as well as voluntary embellishments added to a musical score, why it is left on the café table for the waitress as well as implored of God in the hope of salvation. One is justified in wondering whether it is still the same word or has become through the wear and tear of time a virtual homonym (Pitt-Rivers 1967). Yet this semantic richness does not mean that there is no association between the different senses.The meanings which a single word has in different contexts, or had in the forgotten past, are guides to the premises which underlie its daily conscious usage, but daily usage is indifferent to contradictions arising between its various senses, and leaves them to be sorted out at the level of action. (This is the case of honor also). Thus it is not necessary to analyze a word in order to know how to use it correctly.Moreover, the implications of the concept differ from place to place; expressions of gratitude are wont to follow different rules of etiquette in different social milieux, as in different cultures, and it is only by reflecting on all potential differences that one comes to understand the concept as a whole, and I maintain that grace is a whole. Thanks can in some situations be interpreted as a reluctance to pay what the recipient expects as his due; in others, on the contrary, to thank is to recognize indebtedness and represents a promise to return the gift or service in the future. (Such cultures might be described as "Maussian," for they have already understood "the necessity to return presents," as Mauss put it in the subtitle of his great essay on the gift). But the etiquette concerning the return of gifts contains more subtleties than Mauss explained.The only general rule that can be cited is that grace is always something extra, over and above "what counts," what is obligatory or predictable; it belongs on the register of the extraordinary (hence its association with the sacred). Nevertheless whenever a favor has been done the return of grace is always expected, whether in the form of a material manifestation (regardless of the material value of that which is returned) or merely in verbal expression.However, there are also conventional formulae for the acknowledgement of thanks which follow the same principle in all European languages. They consist curiously enough in denying that a favor has been done. Hence in Spanish de nada, in Italian de nulla and in French de rien (though this is considered undistinguished; it is more elegant to say c'était un plaisir or je vous en prie as in Italian prego, in German Bitte). In English "Don't mention it," but in American English "It was a pleasure" is the most explicit form. The [218] denial is not in fact the denial of the sentiment which inspired the act of grace but rather that any obligation has been incurred. It is a way of asserting that the grace was real, that the favor was indeed gratuitous. It is a guarantee of the purity of the motives of the gratifier, a way of saying (as we shall see below) you owe nothing for this favor, it is an act of grace. Without wishing to sound cynical, I must nevertheless point out that by, so to speak, stressing the gratuitous nature of the gesture by denying that any obligation has been incurred, it not only maintains the purity of the motives of the gratifier, it maintains his moral supremacy, which is not to be modified simply by verbal thanks but leaves him a creditor, should the occasion ever arise where a more serious return of grace is possible.The modem tendency in England to say "thank you" when no thanks are conceivably due, almost as a pause-word when one does not know how otherwise to bring the conversation to a close, appears to me to impoverish the notion and things have gone so far that it has now become common custom in commercial aeroplanes to use the phrase to terminate an emission over the intercom system, indicating thereby that the unknown, unseen, uninvited speaker has finished what he had it in mind to announce and is switching off. He thinks perhaps that he is giving thanks for the attention that has been paid to his message. But little does he know it when there is an anthropologist in the cabin who responds to this proffered hypocritical gesture of grace by cursing the interruption of his reading or his snooze. (A curse is, of course, an expression of negative grace — like witchcraft as we shall later see — and on that account alone is worthy of attention.)Such excessive use of the catch-phrase of thanks does not always ingratiate the thanker and among the simple folk of southern Europe to thank when no thanks are due was commonly regarded as "uncouth" behavior and raised suspicions as to the speaker's ability to recognize when gratitude was due.3This devaluation of thanks, encountered in British or American airliners is, no doubt, inspired by the feeling that some attempt at sociation is due between the crew and the passengers in their charge, even if one cannot determine what: a wave of the hand or a wink suffice in some contexts to establish it, but the trouble with intercom systems is that you cannot actually see your interlocutor. Reciprocity is the essence of sociation, as has been said, whether in mechanical or organic solidarity, whether in exchanging salutations or in business and whether the return be immediate or protracted; it is, as it were, the cement that holds any society together, for it establishes relations between persons; once you have exchanged something, you are related. The often meaningless salutations on the path have no other function than this (Firth 1973).Exchange is not merely an economic fact making the division of labor possible and enabling peoples of differing ecology and cultural achievement to make their products available to each other and thus extend the potentialities of [219] their lifestyle, it is above all a social fact, for, as a principle, it governs much more than the exchange of "useful goods" and functions: one can exchange pleasures, woes, secrets, women, insults, vengeance, hospitality, conversation, stories or songs, and above all gifts, but the economic justification for exchange is, as often as not, subsidiary or lacking altogether, even in the exchange of goods, as in those Somali marriages, studied by L. M. Lewis (1961: 139), in which camels, paid as bride-price, return as part of the bride's dowry to their original owners. Yet morally they are no longer the same camels. For something of the giver always accompanies the object exchanged, and if in the first place the camels were exchanged for the bride; in the second they testify to the rights of her kinsmen in regard to her children.That the principle of exchange reigns over many more aspects of society than the economic has been recognized ever since Mauss' essay on the gift, and Lévi-Strauss later applied the principle to kinship and marriage, stressing the importance of the groups between whom exchange takes place. This was the point of departure for the structural study of kinship. Yet an aspect that has attracted less attention is that which determines the ways in which, and the extent to which, reciprocity is evaluated and equivalence is established. In the elementary structures of kinship there is no problem: one woman is fair exchange for another. But in other forms of exchange the degree of specificity varies; one man's labor is known in advance not to be as productive as another's, even though this can rarely be admitted openly, yet when it is a matter of exchanging goods their relative values are discussed freely. This is the basis of all bargaining and indeed of commerce itself. But this is not at all: the mythology of our times assumes that agreement as to economic equivalence is the condition of all exchange, and to establish this, some kind of estimation must be made. Yet, in fact, such equivalence is necessary only if the aim is commercial, not if it is moral, for example in the field of religion, as the parable of the widow's mite made quite explicit.There are also reciprocal relations which do not involve a contract of any sort, nor any estimation of value, for they are between participants whose interests are solidary (in the legal sense that all responsibilities are shared and all benefits are held in common). Nothing is specified by way of a return. The nature of the relationship suffices to determine what is due and when. This is what Meyer Fortes called "kinship amity," "where there is no mine nor thine but only ours." The basic distinction between the parties involved, which is essential to the notion of commerce, is missing and in the field of reciprocity we must therefore differentiate between relations of equivalent exchange and relations of amity, between contract and benevolence, between precise commitments, entailing estimations of equivalence, and mutual aid whensoever needed.Yet beyond the realms of kinship amity where all is held in common and [220] without entering the field of exchange as the law defines it ("a mutual grant of equal interests, the one in consideration of the other," Blackstone in O.E.D.), it is possible to speak of the exchange of favors. Both favors and contracts involve reciprocity, but contractual reciprocity, the basis of trade, is not the same thing as the reciprocity of the heart. The latter escapes the attention of economists (and fiscal authorities, though they have introduced "gift tax" in the attempt to frustrate the evasion of other more onerous taxes). The ties of kinship or of friendship, the hidden incentive, the act of forbearance, the incalculable benefits of favorable decisions, the aim to please, evade the notice of both, for they cannot be evaluated, yet at the micro-level that concerns the anthropologist they are primordial, the very tissue of social relations, and in the end they bear fruit at the macro-level of society and distort the calculations of those who suppose they can be ignored.Hence, for example, the problem of "corruption" in Latin America has received much comment, especially from foreign analysts who have tended to deplore it as a vice in the administration, if not in "the Latin-American character." The mordida, literally "the bite" (and the word is used in syndical affairs in the United States in quite the same sense) is sometimes blamed for the various ills of the Mexican economy; it is indeed quite current that those empowered by the State to give their assent to the operations which are subject to legislative control expect to be thanked for giving it, for personal relations remain personal in Mexico regardless of the legal function of the participants. This "customary expectation of the return of favors" may be reprehensible from the viewpoint of modem Anglo-Saxon values, yet what could be more natural than the principle from which the mordida springs: that a favor requires to be returned, and all the more imperatively when the possibility is open that it may be withdrawn if reciprocity is not forthcoming. in Mexico, as in most of the non-European world, the values of the heart are rated higher than those of the law, and the confrontation between the two leads sometimes to anomalies, as in the case of that Governor of the State of Chiapas who ruined his political career by refusing to accept mordidas. Apart from the moral pretensions of his stance which were resented by those he governed, it was felt that such a man could not be trusted in personal relations. Moreover, is it not also frequently the case in Europe that the values of the heart take precedence over legal and economic considerations? The example of neighborly cooperation between small peasant farmers will be examined below. indeed, wherever the idea of gratuity appears, contracts, calculation, and legal obligations step into the back seat and the counter-principle of grace takes over. Yet the back seat is never empty and from the moment that grace reigns over the order of the day, the clever ones start calculating the odds and exploiting the situation to their advantage. Hence it comes as no surprise to learn that there are plenty of people in Mexico who strongly resent having to give a mordida to an official [221] who is already paid to do his job, yet if they are not quixotic they give it all the same. But since the servants of the state are poorly paid in Mexico it is difficult to see what advantage anyone would have in entering its service if he could not look forward to making something on the side. Thus, as things stand at present, those who require the State's services are those who pay for them. What could appear more equitable? However, applied at a higher level, of government, rather than of petty local administration, these principles produce a rather different result: the concentration of power in the hands of a political class whose existence is not recognized by the ideology of the State. Thus, behind the facade of administrative law the personal policies of the administrators reign and the values of the heart are exploited by their calculations of how to increase their fortune or their power.There are, then, two parallel modes of conduct, ideally, even if they are not always easily distinguished, which correspond to the old opposition between the heart and the head: that which is felt and that which is known, the subjective and the objective vision of the world, the mysterious and the rational, the sacred and the profane. They are governed, respectively, by the principle of grace and by the principle of law, that is to say, predictable regularity, as well as justice and the law which impose order in human affairs — from which pardon (grace) authorizes a departure. Under the heading of "grace" it is possible to group all the phenomena that evade the conscious reasoned control of conduct.Etymology: theological origins and extensionsLet us look then first of all at the notion of grace in general before dealing with its different aspects. From the Greek root Xàpiç (Charis), we get charity, charisma, eucharist and so forth; from the Latin, derived from it, gracious, gratitude, congratulations, etc. The origin of the word is religious; it is a theological idea which has found various spheres of extension outside the realm of theology. Benveniste (1969: 199) traces it to an Indo-Iranian root: the Sanskrit gir, a song or hymn of praise or of grace, or to give thanks. He notes also that, like all other economic notions, its economic sense derives from the totality of human relations or relations with gods rather than the contrary. Gratuity is the core of the notion, that which is undertaken not in order to obtain a return but to give pleasure.We must certainly start with the theological concept of grace, for it appears that the structure of the religious notion is able to account for the elaboration of the popular senses, though whether popular theology is derived from the reasoning of the learned or whether the latter have based their doctrines on the popular premises which they absorbed in infancy — an argument that has raged for a century with regard to other aspects of culture — is an issue that we need not raise now, but it is worth observing that, unlike honor, grace seems never [222] to have quite forgotten its etymological roots. Without entering into the subtleties of the numerous varieties of grace and the excessively optimistic or pessimistic doctrines which have been condemned as heresy from time to time, we can give, as its starting point, the pure gratuitous gift of God.Louis Ott (1955) defines it as "a free gift of God unmerited by men" ("un don gratuit de la part de Dieu et immérité de la part de l'homme"). According to St. Thomas Aquinas it is especially the gift of the Holy Spirit, but it is also, in the pauline view, associated particularly with christ whose death redeemed us from original sin. As pardon obtained through Him, it is the key to salvation.It develops within us as a habitus,4 an acquired disposition to cooperate with the will of God, and this involves human will also, upon which the will of God operates, in St. Augustine's opinion. It is a supernatural accident created in our nature in such a manner as to adapt it to divine life, in the Thomist doctrine. Ott, again, says (1955: 314): "The unfathomable mystery of the doctrine of grace is to be found in the intimate collaboration and reciprocal intervention of divine power and human freedom. All the controversies and heresies regarding grace have their point of departure in this." ("Dans la collaboration intime et l'intervention réciproque de la puissance divine et de la liberté humaine se trouve le mystère insondable de la doctrine de la Grâce. Toutes les controverses et hérésies relatives à la grâce ont là leur point de départ.") And (pp. 348ff.) he discusses the relations between grace and freedom.It is clear that the discussions center upon the role of human will which is insufficient by itself to attain salvation, but which cannot be dispensed with without falling into determinism. If individual will is the essence of honor, the essence of grace is the will of God, which necessarily restricts the individual's will in some degree, but the attainment of grace can only be achieved with the cooperation of human will since God requires his benificence to be returned; the rites of the Catholic Church require the appropriate intentions on the part of the beneficiary in order to be valid. The Catholic solution to the paradox of theodicy resides in this mysterious conjunction of the will of God and the will of man.Grace is connected with the will in another way also, for it is associated with purity. To be "in a state of grace" is to be sinless, to be redeemed, through confession, from the state of sin into which our all too human will has led us. To be in a condition to receive grace one must be cleansed of sinfulness, not only of original sin, of which one was discharged by the grace of the Holy Spirit at baptism, but of the sins which result from a will inadequately accorded to the will of God. Yet such provisions are necessarily insufficient to assure the attainment of grace, since the will of God on which this depends is by definition arbitrary. On account of this unpredictability, grace comes in popular usage to mean good fortune, that which cannot be foreseen. [223]Benveniste (1969), etymologist rather than theologian, discusses grace in less mystical terms, easier to grasp for one who is not versed in theology: "The Latin words show that, in origin, the procedure consists in giving service for nothing, without reimbursement; this literally gracious or gratuitous service provokes in return the manifestation that is called 'acknowledgment'." ("Les mots latins montrent que le procès, à l'origine, consiste à rendre un service pour rien, sans contre-partie;" ce service littéralement 'gracieux' provoque en retour la manifestation que nous appelons 'reconnaissance'.) And later:Everything that refers to economic notions is tied to much vaster representations which bring into play the totality of human relations' with divinities.Over and above the normal circuit of exchanges, that which one gives in order to obtain a counterpart, there is a second circuit, that of bounty and acknowledgment which is given without any consideration of a return of that which is offered, as an act of thanks.(Tout ce qui se rapporte à des notions économiques est lié à des représentations beaucoup plus vastes qui mettent enjeu l'ensemble des relations humaines ou des relations avec des divinités. Au-dessus du circuit normal des échanges, de ce qu'on donne pour obtenir — il y a un deuxième circuit, celui du bienfait et de la reconnaissance, ce qui est donné sans esprit de retour, de ce qui est offert pour "remercier.")Thus he distinguishes clearly between the two "circuits" of reciprocity, that which is properly called "exchange," an interchange of interests, and that which is inspired by a generous impulse, good will, gratuity, which demands only a reciprocity of sentiment. The former, subject to contract, can be simultaneous or protracted over a specified time. The latter, an exchange of grace, is simultaneous only in the handshake or the act of embracing, and normally requires an initiatory gesture, followed by a response, as in hospitality, or the return of favors. On account of its gratuitous nature there is no need, as in contractual exchange, to determine in advance what the value of the return shall be, nor when it shall be made, since none is envisaged, even though it may be hopefully expected. Whether any is to come depends not upon mutual agreement but upon the wishes of the recipient. The word "boon" expresses the notion of gratuity better than any other in English, for it is both a prayer, a request for a favor and the favor granted, a blessing and an unpaid service, such as ploughing or shearing, for a neighbor.Though grace is a free gift of God, unpredictable, arbitrary and mysterious, there are nonetheless means of obtaining it: first of all through the sacraments. This is the main function of the rites of the Church, indeed of any church. Sacrifice is always a tentative to embark upon an exchange of grace with the Deity. The offering invites a return-gift of grace, the friendship of God, as it has been called. The Eucharist, the commensality of the mass, confession, prayer, and penance, the usage of "gratiferous" substances: incense, corn, wine, oil, and salt and water too, are all employed in the enterprise of obtaining grace, [224] whether for the salvation of the souls of the faithful or their material prosperity. But the passage of grace is never guaranteed, even by the state of grace, the purity of intentions or the correct administration of the rite, because grace is a mystery which remains in the free gift of God.If God is the source of grace, this does not mean that humans cannot generate it, and dispense it to others. The dictionaries' lists of meanings provide an abundance of examples, which we can leave the reader to examine at his leisure. The central core remains always the notion of gratuity, on the social as on the theological plane, and the essential opposition is to that which is rational, predictable, calculated, legally or even morally obligatory, contractually binding, creating a right to reciprocity. Grace is a "free" gift, a favor, an expression of esteem, of the desire to please, a product of the arbitrary will, human or divine, an unaccountable love. Hence it is gratuitous in yet another sense: that of being not answerable to coherent reasoning, un justifiable, as when an insult is said to be gratuitous, or when a payment is made, over and above that which is due.Thus it ranges from the tip left on the table for the waitress to the "golden handshake" of the company director who has lost his company a fortune through his bad judgment and swollen head, obstinacy or plain idleness, but who cannot be permitted to depart unrewarded for his "long and loyal service," lest he do the company yet more damage by revealing its secrets. The tip displays the principles involved; it is called "a small gratuity" in self-consciously pompous language and this corresponds to our definition, for it is a sum paid over and above what is owed, whose amount is 'left to the appreciation of the client' as it used to be put on French restaurant menus, until, in blatant contempt of the very principle of grace, it became a compulsory charge of ten, and later fifteen percent. But the principle of grace is not so easily dismissed; the attempt to rationalize the system of payment and do away with the gratuity was unsuccessful, for no sooner had the clients become used to being charged more, than the custom crept in to leave a small tip extra in order to maintain their status relationship with those who served them.George M. Foster's essay, "The analysis of envy" (1972) attributes the tip to the need to assuage the envy which a server might be supposed to feel towards those whom he serves, rather as the envy of witches is sometimes bought off by a gesture of gratuity, and there is certainly some substance to this explanati
Referência(s)