Post #31 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

In the story of Counterfeit Money the friend is judged by the narrator, but both are indicted by the appearance and look of the beggar to acquit themselves by sacrificing, i.e. to make a destructive gift to appease the gods, the poor. They both must give, but one gives more than the other and in this giving what they give must show itself. This is not for the poor man or for the law but for the other, the partner, the friend. This is because as friends they are not only indebted with regard to the poor man but also to each other. (145)

The comparison of their offerings is central to the story, the other elements, the poor man, the law seem as part of the conditions needed for their exchange to take place, which is constituted as a bidding war, a potlatch. What is given in this potlatch is one friend’s advantage over the other due to the surprising generosity of the donation. The narrator at first takes pleasure in his friend’s generosity, he treats himself to pleasure.

The narrator equates pleasure with surprise, the sudden coming of the new, which cannot be anticipated or repeated, it is an event. Pleasure is being surprised and more intensely causing a surprise in the other. The cause of pleasure in the other is surprise, the passion of wonder – the origin of philosophy. But the greatest pleasure is to be the cause of the cause of the surprise, by giving what gives me pleasure to the other – for example tobacco.

Derek Hampson