Work, gift, culture and economics: towards a new approach to the economic problem

Abstract

The recent recovery of the notion of gift has highlighted the importance of human life’s cultural dimension, contributing to the configuration of an economical approach based on a more robust and realistic anthropology that revolves around human sociability, sustained in the family, rather than the individual. The transformation of nature that takes place would not be possible without man’s ability to discover the possibilities that are hidden within nature itself, and that man makes clear through the contribution of his work with
which he activates the most valuable elements of his act of being, namely his freedom, his ability to know and love. From an anthropological approach to economics, this work contributes to the reflection on the foundations and meaining of the economic activity.