The Gift and the Common Good

What do we live for? What do we work for? What keeps us together? In the Western tradition, the answer to these questions has always been the concept of the common good. But is it also suitable for the globalised world of tomorrow? An interculturally competent social philosophy needs new philosophical impulses. The concept of the gift as the uncatchable principle of meaning of all social exchange is discussed in this volume by thinkers from China, America and Europe with regard to its suitability for this purpose. Two perspectives emerge, not primarily along the boundaries between the different cultural contexts, but also across them: gift as an achievement, even dedication of the individual for the whole, and gift as the starting point of individual meaning owed to the whole. And there is already an institutionalised economy of the gift today, which can be a guiding principle for worldwide interaction from the perspective of economic philosophy. This, too, is being philosophically considered here.