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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
RECIPROCITY AS PRIMITIVISM
The earliest references to reciprocity in Western literature are very old, and many arise in the context of war. Xenophon wrote of King Cyrus that he “prayed that he might live long enough to be able to repay with interest both those who had helped him and those who had injured him.” Due in part to such ancient ancestry, several authors suggest that reciprocity as tit-for-tat appeals to our baser, more primitive nature, or at least to what we like to think of in such terms. We typically regard these sentiments as contemporary, but they were already regularly voiced as early as the eighteenth century. “At the beginning of the 19th century,” writes one legal historian, “it was easy to suppose that reprisals were a thing of the past.”
Modern culture is reluctant to acknowledge that reciprocity of this variety has any but the most vestigial influence on us. William Ian Miller thus observes,
We are supposed to believe that when we give a gift we are making no demand for a return, and that when we are victims of hostile actions we have not been obliged to pay back the wrongdoer. We tell ourselves that it would be childish, immoral, unchristian, irrational, barbaric, to do so. Yet despite this official ideology, the norm of reciprocity holds a remarkable grip on our beings. The law may outlaw revenge, but people hunger for movies, books, and tales of vengeful justice clearly invoking sympathy and admiration for the avengers.…If the recipients of our “free” gifts fail to make adequate requital we do not fail to subject them to social sanction.[…]
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