ABSTRACT
That remarkable act beautifully illustrates our usual concept of the gift. The gift is contrasted with what we are obliged to provide. Think of the statement “I will give you my basketball tickets.” That means I choose to give them; I did not “have to” or owe them to you, and I am not selling them to you. On these terms, what we might call the pure gift is spontaneous, uncoerced, and for those reasons often received with surprise. The essence of the gift is its voluntariness, the freedom with which it is offered. The gift is unexpected by the recipient, completely voluntary and unnecessary by the giver. It is a Romantic notion of gift, nurtured in an individualist society.
