Il rischio della reciprocità e la frontiera dell'agape

can the category "agape" play an analytical and/or critical role in sociology? the paper argues that the answer is not completely positive as far as the research has arrived until now. The paper argues that agape doesn't identify any specific kind of agency, that could not be understood applying other categories such as gift. Furthermore the paper underlines the risk that considering agape as a sociological category leads toward a social reductionism (every human agency would be considered as socially determined). At the same time the paper tries to articulate a contribution to explore the critical potential of agape in order to better understand a wide area of human behaviour that can not be explained through the traditional theories of action.