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The title of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it alludes to the reading that Mauss did for his essay The Gift, notably of Bronislaw Malinowski and Franz Boas. On the other, it refers to key readings of Mauss’s essay by others. The two aspects are connected, and they help clarify one another. More specifically, this paper argues that Mauss’s reflection on the bond implied in the obligation to reciprocate gift-giving (an issue that is at the very heart of The Gift) is the outcome of his highly original reading of some passages in Rousseau’s Émile. The paper traces the legacy – both direct and indirect – of this Rousseauian core of Mauss’s essay, from Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel, to the divergent readings of Mauss provided by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Claude Lefort, respectively based on a non-conflictual and a conflictual image of society.