Given Time and the Gift of Life

Given Time and the Gift of Life explores the following nexus in Derrida's thought: the gift, the mother, and life. The first section examines life within the trajectory of the gift, the excess of gift over return in the gift of life, and the rewriting of Aristotelian generation in differantial species-being. The second section shows the quasi-transcendental nature of Derrida's thought. The conclusion sketches some of the political consequences of the gift of life thought as the quasi-transcendental gift of differantial species-being.     

Mishandling the Gift of Life: Noncompliance in Renal Transplant Patients1

Two studies investigating renal transplant patients compliance with their post-transplant medical regimen are presented. Compliance was operationalized as a multidimensional construct incorporating behaviors that represent adherence to the regimen. Study 1 examined the association of noncompliance with clinically significant outcomes and the medical and demographic predictors of noncompliance. Noncompliance was associated with rejection episodes, graft loss, and multiple transplants. The best predictors of noncompliance were medication side effects, age, education, and insurance coverage. Study 2 examined the psychosocial predictors of noncompliance. After age and side-effects complaints, self-efficacy and threat appraisal were the best predictors of compliance. The implications of these results for expectancy-value models of health behaviors (e.g., protection motivation theory; Rogers, 1983) and their ability to predict compliance in patients following long-term regimens are discussed.     

Unpacking the Unethical Gift: Gift Experience and Unethicality Assessment

This research investigates how contextual factors affect unethicality assessment of products. The research is conducted in the context of gifts and compares interpersonal gifts (IGs) and self-gifts (SGs) by examining individuals’ reactions in front of unethical gifts. Five experiments investigate how individuals assess product unethicality differently, depending on the source of the gift, being the Self or a gifter. This research employs attribution theory to explain the differences between IGs and SGs and identify psychological distance as a boundary condition for the effect.     

Finding the Gift in the Horror

Summary

This brief article proposes an analysis of the risks society faces in coping with terrorism, and suggests broad outlines of a plan to increase national resilience through creating a national strategy for enhancing psychosocial security. The analysis is based on survival mode theory, which posits two survival sub-systems in human beings: the threat detection system and the human bonding and attachment system. It proposes to redefine the concept of national security policy to go beyond the traditional military aspects of defense to include establishing psychological countermeasures that define maintaining psychological safety as a key marker of the defense against terrorism.     

The Gift of Memory

Based on a talk given in London at a Pax Christi mdemnce on 3 September 1989 marking the 50th annivematy of the outbreak of World War II.     

Toward a Confucian Ethic of the Gift

In this essay I discuss how the relational ethic characteristic of Classical Confucianism articulates an ethic of gift exchange. I first discuss the tradition that Confucius appropriated and show that the gift was utilized to form, maintain, and symbolize social relationships in Shang, Zhou, and Warring States China. I then go on to discuss the implications of this view by addressing two difficulties of gift exchange that are often discussed in the literature: the use of gifts to indebt or control others and the inability of the gift to fully express one’s sentiments. This essay not only shows that Confucian ethics has much to say on the matter but also demonstrates that ritual action is still relevant in modern contexts.     

Forgiveness,the Gift,and Ecclesiology

Abstract: This article responds to the work of George Lindbeck and John Milbank while putting forth a new position on the theology of gift and forgiveness. Saarinen constructs a rudimentary theological anthropology, focusing on God and human beings as givers. As an example of applying this “giver‐oriented perspective” he outlines a fourfold typology of forgiveness as (1) negative giving, forgetting; (2) negative and positive giving, forgetting; (3) negative giving, forgetting and remembering; (4) negative and positive giving, forgetting and remembering.     

Grace and Reconciliation as Gift

Through examples of grace and gift of reconciliation the meaning of grace is interpreted in relation to social and political transformation. Grace is understood as the unexpected kairotic moment of change, where the future opens up for new possibilities of reconciliation in situations of conflict. It is a moment you cannot plan for, but hope for to happen. Trusting in the possibility of a gracious moment can influence your work in the present. Hoping and waiting for the gracious moment of reconciliation is linked to a praxis of active nonviolence as seen in the work of Martin Luther King, Jr.