In this essay, we examine the grounds, nature and content, status, acquisition and role, and justification of gratitude in Kant's ethical system, making use of student notes from Kant's lectures on ethics. We are especially interested in questions about the significance of gratitude in Kant's ethics. We examine Kant's claim that gratitude is a sacred duty, because it cannot be discharged, and explain how this claim is consistent with his insistence that “ought” implies “can.” We argue that for Kant a (...) proper understanding of self-esteem is importantly related to, if not necessary for, possession of the virtue of gratitude. (shrink)

Abstract:Mentoring is an age-old process that continues to be practiced in most contemporary organizations. Although mentors are often heralded as virtuous agents of essential continuity, mentoring commonly results in serious dysfunctions. Not only do mentors too often exclude people different from themselves, but also the people they mentor are frequently abused in the process. Based on the conception of mentor as a quasi-professional, this paper lays out the ethical responsibilities of both parties in the mentoring process.

Michael Sandel's opposition to the project of human enhancement is based on an argument that centres on the notion of giftedness. Sandel claims that by trying to ?make better people? we fall prey to, and encourage, an attitude of mastery and thus lose, or diminish, our appreciation of the giftedness of life. Sandel's position and the underlying argument have been much criticised. In this paper I will try to make sense of Sandel's reasoning and give an account of giftedness that (...) defends its relevance for the ethical assessment of the human enhancement project. In order to do so, I will also look at virtue-related notions, such as gratitude and humility, and distinguish the gifted from the merely given. The failure to acknowledge this distinction gives rise to one of the most common objections to Sandel's argument. Other objections will be shown to rest on similar misunderstandings. (shrink)

This paper offers a theory of filial piety on which piety is the ethical virtue that responds to the action of person-creating. Piety is the virtue of a creature qua creature. I begin by identifying the action of person-creating as the action of a parent. I then offer some points from the philosophy of action to delineate the action of person-creating. Next, I explain the metaphysical states that this action gives rise to and their value. Parent and child fall in (...) the category of relatives, discussed by Aristotle in his Categories. More specifically, Aristotle says that parent and child are relatives as creator and created. Agreeing with but going beyond Aristotle, I show how parent and child are creator and created as paradigm and image. A pious child is one who images their paradigm well. A child does this by participating in and perfecting the person-creating action of their parent, that is, by being a good person. I argue for the theory’s acceptance on the grounds that it better explains common intuitive judgments about filial piety than do the gratitude theory and the special goods theory (the two most influential and plausible competing theories of filial piety in the philosophical literature). (shrink)

There seem to be many kinds of moral duties. We should keep our promises; we should pay our debts of gratitude; we should compensate those we’ve wronged; we should avoid doing or intending harm; we should help those in need. These constitute, some worry, an unconnected heap of duties: the realm of commonsense morality is a disorganized mess. In this paper, we outline a strategy for unifying commonsense moral duties. We argue that they can be understood in terms of contact (...) with value. You are in contact with a value when you are manifest in it or when it is manifest in you. You have reason to get in contact with the good and avoid contact with evil. And when you’re in contact with a value, the weight of the reasons it grounds are amplified for you. These ideas, we argue, can bring order to the chaos of commonsense morality. (shrink)

According to an influential view about directed expressive duties (e.g., duties to express gratitude to benefactors, remorse to victims, forgiveness to wrongdoers), these duties do not have rights as their correlates, because they are not demandable and enforceable. The chapter argues that this view is mistaken. Like other directed duties, directed expressive duties are demandable and enforceable. While this does not entail that these duties have rights as their correlates, it does create a strong presumption of this being the case. (...) This shifts the burden of proof from those who hold that expressive duties correlate with rights to those who deny it. (shrink)

Resentment is a negative reaction to expressions of bad will. Gratitude is a positive reaction to expressions of good will. To give up resentment, when someone has wronged you, is to forgive them. We might expect an analog for giving up gratitude. The practice features in some ordinary and extraordinary moments in our lives. But it is unnamed and unstudied. I clarify what giving up gratitude is. I identify three types of ordinary and important cases. I then attend to implications; (...) in particular, my account sheds light on restorations of gratitude analogous to un-forgiving. Restoring gratitude may help to repair relationships, and restoring your once-lost gratitude may be morally required in some contexts. More generally, by taking account of gratitude as a dynamic attitude that may be given up and restored as fits the situation and one’s judgment, we may better understand the power and flexibility of gratitude’s everyday function. (shrink)

The defection thesis holds that members of marginalized social groups are obligated not to express views important to others in the group that are regarded by the others as substantively wrong. In this essay, I evaluate arguments that seek to vindicate the defection thesis and conclude they all fail. Then, I argue that we have reason to believe sanctioning defectors in certain ways is wrongful and that the expression of their contentious ideas is good for members of marginalized groups. We (...) are left to conclude both that members of marginalized groups have no obligation to suppress certain heterodox views and that it is likely wrong to sanction them for expressing these views even if it were wrong for them to do so. (shrink)

This discussion responds to two recent articles defending a child-centered view of parenting. Anca Gheaus and James Dwyer argue that children should be reared by the best available parent, who, in turn, should make choices based only on children’s welfare. They claim that love and respect require this fiduciary stance. However, love and respect do not justify child-centered norms. If children were competent, they would embrace norms that accommodate parental interests because they benefit from nonfiduciary rules, are grateful to their (...) parents, and reject discrimination produced by child-centered principles. Furthermore, child-centered accounts imply unreasonably broad obligations to children. (shrink)

The paper argues that ‘All varieties of gratitude are only overall fitting when targeted towards agents,’ for instance that any variety of gratitude for the beautiful sunset is only overall fitting if a supernatural agent such as God exists. The first premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ For this premise, intuitive judgments are offered. The second premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is the paradigmatic variety of gratitude.’ For this premise, an aspect of the (...) common consent of philosophers about gratitude is noted and the metaphysical basicness of prepositional gratitude is argued for. This gives the intermediate conclusion that ‘The paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ The fourth premise is that ‘If the paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents, then all varieties of gratitude are overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ To supply the conditional of this premise, the Paradigmatic Fittingness Principle is offered, which states that ‘Paradigmatic emotions set the fittingness conditions for their non-paradigmatic varieties.’ This principle is argued for by noting that it vindicates some popular and plausible intuitive judgements and gives an error theory of why one might think that gratitude could be fittingly targeted towards non-agents, and by suggesting the absence of any other plausible source of fittingness conditions for non-paradigmatic emotions. (shrink)

This paper addresses an alleged paradox regarding gratitude—that a duty of gratitude is odd or puzzling if not paradoxical. The gist of our position is that in prototypical cases, gratitude expression falls under a distinctive deontic category we call morally expected—which has a corresponding contrary deontic category we call morally offensive. These categories, we maintain, need recognition in normative ethics to make proper sense of the moral status of gratitude expression and other morally charged restrictions on action, and likewise to (...) make proper sense of the moral status of failures to abide by such restrictions. We argue for our view largely on phenomenological grounds. (shrink)

This paper discusses under which circumstances grateful responses can become intrinsically bad. It is argued that gratitude should be understood as an appropriate response to value and that it is subject to the so-called recursive account of intrinsic value, according to which appropriate responses to value are intrinsically good, and inappropriate responses to value are intrinsically bad. As a result, gratitude can become intrinsically bad in two cases: i) when gratitude has the wrong object, i.e., is a pro-response to an (...) intrinsically bad act, ii) when the grateful response is grossly disproportionate, i.e., the intensity of the response does not match the goodness of the act that it is a response to. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have written much about gratitude recently. Many of these contributions have endorsed expansionist views of gratitude, counseling agents to feel and express gratitude in many circumstances. I argue that the essential features of the moral norm of gratitude are that a beneficiary acknowledges and appreciates benefits provided by another who is acting from beneficence, and is disposed to provide a comparable benefit to the benefactor if a suitable occasion arises. The best-known philosophical version of expansionist views claims (...) that gratitude is apt even in cases where the “benefactor” not only did not intend to benefit the other, but intended to harm her. In the psychological literature, expansionists typically do distinguish between being grateful to and being grateful that. But they also write as if there is one general character trait of gratefulness. In this paper I argue that the philosophical position considered is mistaken on conceptual and moral grounds, and that the dominant view among psychologists fails to recognize the difference between two different traits of gratitude, one a moral virtue and the other a prudential virtue. (shrink)

Precision medicine relies on data and biospecimens from participants who willingly offer their personal information on the promise that this act will ultimately result in knowledge that will improv...

As people grow old, many risk becoming chronically lonely which is associated with e.g. depression, dementia, and increased mortality. Whoever else should help to protect them from this risk, various philosophers have argued that any children that they might have will often be among them. Proceeding on this assumption, this article considers what filial duties to protect ageing parents from loneliness consist of, or might consist of. I develop my answer by showing that a view that may be intuitively plausible, (...) namely that they simply require children to visit their ageing parents regularly when they can do so at reasonable cost and call, text, and/or email them from time to time, is defective in three respects. First, it ignores children’s potential responsibilities to encourage and/or facilitate social interaction between their parents and third parties. Second, it ignores their potential responsibilities to help provide their parents with non-human companionship. Third, it elides over their duties to coordinate their efforts to offer loneliness protection with others. What I end up proposing instead, then, is an approach for protecting ageing parents from loneliness that is multi-faceted. (shrink)

While Strawsonians have focused on the way in which our “reactive attitudes”—the emotions through which we hold one another responsible for manifestations of morally significant quality of regard—express moral demands, serious doubt has been cast on the idea that non-blaming reactive attitudes direct moral demands to their targets. Building on Gary Watson’s proposal that the reactive attitudes are ‘forms of moral address’, this paper advances a communicative view of praise according to which the form of moral address distinctive of the (...) praise-manifesting reactive attitudes (approbation, gratitude) is moral invitation. Like moral demand, moral invitation is a species of directive address presupposing its target’s possession of distinctive agential capacities and, when valid, provides its addressee with reason to give the addressor’s directive discursive uptake. While blame’s demands issue imperatival reasons for compliance (e.g. to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize, etc.), praise’s invitations provide discretionary reasons to accept credit in jointly valuing the significance of the act for the praiser. In addition to its phenomenological plausibility and contribution to the already fecund Watsonian-cum-Strawsonian program, the invitational view helps render intelligible the power of our praise practices to facilitate the formation and enrichment of our interpersonal relationships. (shrink)

Associative duties are agent-centered duties to give defeasible moral priority to our special ties. Our strongest associative duties are to close friends and family. According to reductionists, our associative duties are just special duties—i.e., duties arising from what I have done to others, or what others have done to me. These include duties to abide by promises and contracts, compensate our benefactors in ways expressing gratitude, and aid those whom we have made especially vulnerable to our conduct. I argue, though, (...) that reductionism faces a problem: special duties are not strong enough to account for the strength of our associative duties. At the bar of associative duties, we are required to do what no special duty can warrant. I then present an alternative reductionist analysis of associative duties—the ‘Identity-Enactment Account’—which not only accounts for the peculiar strength of our associative duties, but also characterizes them in an intuitively compelling way. On this account, our strongest associative duties are special duties to protect or promote the welfare of the duty’s beneficiary by adopting and enacting a practical identity in which the duty’s beneficiary features prominently. There are persons who can legitimately demand a prominent place in our mental lives, for the protection and intimacy it affords. They can, in effect, legitimately demand to be among our nearest and dearest. The correlative of such a demand is, on our part, an associative duty we have toward them. (shrink)

Most philosophers recognize that sometimes particular individuals have to be grateful to others who have benefited them in a way that provides reasons for treating them in a differential way. In the same way, I argue, there are cases in which society as such benefits from the actions of a person, which gives rise to collective duties of gratitude that must be expressed at the political and socio-economic levels. The political concern about merit should not be merely instrumental, but also (...) moral: a society cannot be just if it disregards its collective duties of gratitude. I criticize Rawls’ famous Natural Lottery Argument showing that it relies on a problematic understanding of the notion of moral responsibility and develop some considerations on the role that gratitude should play when designing both public institutions and policies. (shrink)

This article is a companion to an article by the same author in issue 33.3 of Criminal Justice Ethics on the question of the standard by which the severity of punishment is determined to be proportional to the seriousness of the crime for which it is inflicted. Its chief argument is that basing the determination on what the offender deserves to suffer is morally problematic because it conflicts with principles of humanity that call for our taking the good of human (...) beings as our end. By contrast, it is also argued, basing the determination on promoting public safety or preserving civil order is not similarly problematic because punishment inflicted to serve either of these ends is compatible with principles of humanity. The article concludes with a comment on how the harsh sentencing laws enacted in the United States in the past 40 years should be seen as a product of the former mode of determining punishment and not the latter. (shrink)

Feelings of gratitude toward the natural environment are problematic because gratitude seems to be an appropriate response to someone’s intentional decision to benefit us, and ecosystems that sustain human life do not choose to do so. In accordance with one defense of the rationality and appropriateness of gratitude toward nature, intentional action can be regarded as not being a necessary condition for feelings of gratitude. Instead, gratitude toward an entity can be considered both rational and appropriate when (1) that entity (...) is the source of a valuable and unearned benefit and (2) the benefit did not result from some accidental and/or regrettable feature of that entity’s character. According to this analysis, we can provide a rational ground for gratitude to particular ecosystems by citing the valuable and unearned benefits that we receive from those systems and by demonstrating that these benefits result from elements within the ecosystems that are neither regrettable nor accidental. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 13, Issue 6, pp 720 - 738 I argue that under the right conditions young dependent children owe their parents gratitude for the care they receive from them and further that parents have an obligation to motivate their children to be grateful in appropriate circumstances. Gratitude is appropriate even though parents have a duty to care for their children but it is only warranted when parents act both benevolently and with respect for their children’s partial autonomy. Moreover, (...) gratitude is uncalled for until children can recognize that they have received a benefit provided benevolently and respectfully. Gratitude is not appropriate if a benefit was provided in a context of abuse or if the beneficiary has reason for moral disapproval of the provision of the benefit. I distinguish gratitude from indebtedness and discuss important benefits associated with gratitude between parents and children for both parties. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain the demands of filial obligations from act and rule consequentialism. More specifically, I defend a rule-consequentialist explanation of filial obligations, and identify a few factors in relation to the determination of filial demands; they include the costs of internalization of filial obligations, and the proportions of the young and the old generations in a population pyramid. I believe that in a society with an aging population, we may accept a strong view of filial obligation. Towards (...) the end of the paper, I explain that rule-consequentialism is compatible with certain special views of filial obligations, such as the gratitude theory and the special goods theory; these theories represent ways in which adult children and their parents may obtain special goods from engaging in the relationship. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The language of virtue is gaining wider appreciation in the philosophical, psychological, and management literatures. Ethicists and social scientists aim to integrate normative and empirical approaches into a new “science of virtue.” But, I submit, they are talking past each other; they hold radically different notions of what a virtue is. In this paper, I shall examine two conflicting conceptions of virtue, what I call the reductive and the non-reductive accounts of virtue. I shall critically study them and argue that (...) the non-reductive view is the best philosophical account of virtue and the only one that can account for the way we talk about virtue in business and in everyday life. We can only understand what it means to act virtuously through the examination of the attitudes, beliefs, desires, and inclinations of the virtuous agent. I shall illustrate the differences between the reductive and non-reductive accounts by considering the virtue of gratitude. (shrink)

The subject of gratitude has gained traction in recent years in academic and popular circles. However, limited attention has been devoted to understanding what laypeople understand by the concept of gratitude; the meaning of which tends to have been assumed in the literature. Furthermore, while intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of gratitude have been extolled in this growing body of research, there has been little assessment of the value laypeople place on gratitude themselves, or whether and how they think it might (...) be fostered. Since September 2012, our Attitude for Gratitude research project has been engaged in examining precisely how gratitude is conceptualised by the British public, what British people are grateful for, the value they place on gratitude, what kinds of people tend to be grateful, and whether and how they think gratitude might be promoted in British society. The project has incorporated a variety of methods to examine these questions, conceptually and empirically, canvassing the opinions of over 10,000 people in the UK. A key issue for our research has been to represent the views of British people across a range of ages, ethnicities and backgrounds that are representative of Britain today. We are strongly committed to the view that researchers should engage with laypeople to avoid superimposing a meaning and value on gratitude that does not reflect the views of the people the research purports to study. To this end, and to throw light on what British laypeople understand by the concept of gratitude, we carried out a series of empirical studies that complement the definitions of philosophers and psychologists with more everyday definitions of laypeople5. To examine the perceived value of gratitude we surveyed British people directly, making no prior assumptions about where gratitude might be evaluated in relation to other values and virtues. Finally, we sought to elicit suggestions from the British public themselves about how gratitude might be fostered in British society. Much recent research on gratitude has originated in the USA and therefore a further aim of the project was to assess the degree to which the understanding and evaluation of gratitude may differ between the USA and the UK. We sought to target the British public with these questions. (shrink)

Philosophers generally agree that gratitude, the called-for response to benevolence, includes positive feelings. In this paper, I argue against this view. The grateful beneficiary will have certain feelings, but in some contexts, those feelings will be profoundly negative. Philosophers overlook this fact because they tend to consider only cases of gratitude in which the benefactor’s sacrifice is minimal, and in which the benefactor fares well after performing an act of benevolence. When we consider cases in which a benefactor suffers severely, (...) we see the feelings associated with gratitude can be negative, and even quite painful. I conclude with a discussion of the implications negative feelings of gratitude have for the normative question of when gratitude is owed, and for the descriptive claim in positive psychology that gratitude enhances wellbeing. (shrink)

Patricia White (Stud Philos Educ 18:43–52, 1999) argues that the virtue gratitude is essential to a flourishing democracy because it helps foster universal and reciprocal amity between citizens. Citizens who participate in this reciprocal relationship ought to be encouraged to recognize that “much that people do does in fact help to make communal civic life less brutish, pleasanter and more flourishing.” This is the case even when the majority of citizens do not intentionally seek to make civic life better for (...) others. Were citizens to recognize the appropriateness of gratitude in these situations, the bonds of our democratic communities would be strengthened. In this paper, I examine White’s argument more carefully, arguing that it fails to address adequately the difficulties that arise when we attempt to encourage the virtue of gratitude in our students. To address these difficulties, I turn to an unlikely source for democratic inspiration: Friedrich Nietzsche. In spite of his well-known anti-democratic sentiments, Nietzsche offers democratic citizens insights into the social value of gratitude. I argue that Nietzsche’s ideas resolve the educational difficulties in White’s argument and viably establish gratitude as an important democratic virtue that ought to be cultivated. (shrink)

Serial reciprocity exists when people reciprocate for what they have received--for example, from a parent, a friend, a mentor, a stranger, a previous generation --by providing something to a third party, regardless of whether a return is also given to, or makes its way back to, the original giver. To understand serial reciprocity as reciprocity, this article delineates the general features of the serial type of reciprocity and outlines two general situations in which serial reciprocity provides a viable option --the (...) only or the most appropriate option --for reciprocal return. It also argues for a more fundamental rethinking of reciprocity in general. A more cognitive and cultural perspective on reciprocity is proposed that focuses on the meaning of exchanges and treats reciprocity as a socially constructed element of a culturally available repertoire. This can better account for the existing serial type of reciprocity. The article concludes with suggestions for empirical research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper [1] is a defence of a modified version of Jane English's model of filial obligations based on adult children's friendship with their parents. Unlike the more traditional view that filial obligations are a repayment for parental sacrifices, the friendship model puts filial duties in the appealing context of voluntary, loving relationships. Contrary to English's original statement of this view, which is open to the charge of tolerating filial ingratitude, the friendship model can generate obligations to help our (...) parents even if we are no longer friendly with them. Joseph Kupfer has pointed out several ways in which parent‐child relationships differ from peer friendships; but his arguments do not preclude our enjoying a type of friendship with our parents. In response to Christina Hoff Sommers, who objects that feelings of friendship toward our parents are too flimsy a ground for filial duties, the friendship model can provide a plausible, robust account of filial obligations. As for adult children who have never formed friendships with their loving, caring parents, and refuse to give them much‐needed assistance, they can be criticised by moral considerations independent of but compatible with the friendship model. (shrink)

Two generally recognized moral duties are to reciprocate benefits one has received from others and to compensate harms one has done to others. In this paper I want to show that it is not possible to give an adequate account of either duty – or at least one that corresponds to our actual practices – within a contractualist moral theory of the type developed by T. M. Scanlon (1982, 1998). This fact is interesting in its own right, as contractualism is (...) a leading contemporary contender among deontological moral theories, and the two duties I have mentioned are fairly standard ingredients of such theories. But it also serves to highlight a general problem with contractualism, at least in Scanlon’s version – namely its one-dimensional view of the keystone of any plausible deontological theory: the idea of respect for persons. (shrink)

Forced choices between rescuing imperilled persons are subject to a presumption of equality. Unless we can point to a morally relevant difference between these persons' imperilments, each should get an equal chance of rescue. Sometimes, this presumption is overturned. For example, when one imperilled person has wrongfully caused the forced choice, most think that this person (rather than an innocent person) should bear the harm. The converse scenario, in which a forced choice resulted from the supererogatory action of one of (...) the imperilled people, has received little attention in distributive ethics. I argue that, sometimes, we need not offer equal chances in these cases either. When the supererogatory act places the initially imperilled person under a reciprocal duty to bear risks for the supererogatory agent's sake in the forced choice, we may fulfil this duty for them if they are unable to do it themselves, by favouring the supererogatory agent. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die philosophische und psychologische Literatur zum Begriff der Dankbarkeit bis ins Jahr 2013. Geprüft werden die in beiden Wissenschaften veröffentlichten Arbeiten vor allem hinsichtlich ihrer begrifflichen Grundlagen und der ethischen Bewertung von Dankbarkeit, etwa als Pflicht, Tugend oder Supererogation. Die Analyse zeigt, dass jeweils mit einer Reihe untereinander unvereinbarer Begriffsverständnisse gearbeitet wird, sodass die Debatte von einem komplexen Netzwerk sich überschneidender und überkreuzender Begriffe geprägt ist. Der Beitrag endet mit Vorschlägen für die weitere Forschung. (...) Psychologen wird empfohlen, ihre Konzeptionen von Dankbarkeit präziser zu fassen und zu begründen sowie Bottom-up-Studien zum alltagspraktischen Begriff der Dankbarkeit durchzuführen. Philosophen sollten dagegen der in den Sozialwissenschaften durchgeführten Bottom-up-Arbeit mehr Beachtung schenken. (shrink)

Whether there is a general moral obligation to obey the law, often referred to as ‘political obligation’, is an enduring question in contemporary legal and political philosophy. Theories are continually being formulated, criticized, and reformulated as theorists attempt to settle this issue. However, there yet remains no general consensus as to whether any theory successfully answers this question in either the affirmative or the negative. I propose the legal doctrine of quasi-contract as a candidate for making sense of this persistent (...) issue. While the duty to reciprocate and the principle of reasonable expectations each falls short when independently advanced as a theory of political obligation, quasi-contract, which combines reciprocity, reasonable expectations, and additional moral considerations, is able to establish a satisfactory account of political obligation. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature and argue that this claim is unjustified. I proceed by arguing against the two most plausible lines of reasoning for the claim that we ought to be grateful to nature: 1) that nature is a fitting or appropriate object of our gratitude, and 2) that we ought to be grateful to nature insofar as gratitude to nature enhances, preserves or indicates in us the virtue of (...) gratitude, a character trait we morally ought to have. My arguments against the first line of reasoning show it to be unsound, and my arguments against the second reveal that we actually have reasons to avoid being grateful to nature. If we have reasons to treat nature well, I show, those may be rooted in the appropriateness of attitudes like praise, appreciation or compassion, but not gratitude. I conclude by highlighting several implications my arguments entail about gratitude to entities other than nature and about environmental virtues other than gratitude. (shrink)

One matter upon which the already voluminous philosophical and psychological literature on the topic seems to be agreed is that gratitude is a psychologically and socially beneficial human quality of some moral significance. Further to this, gratitude seems to be widely regarded by positive psychologists and virtue ethicists as a moral virtue. This paper, however, sets out to show that such claims and assumptions about the moral character of gratitude are questionable and that its status as a moral virtue is (...) by no means straightforward. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a reconstruction of gratitude as an Aristotelian virtue. The account I propose is meant to be essentially Aristotelian although it is clearly not Aristotle’s own account. I start in section “Current Discourses on Gratitude” with an overview of recent discourses on gratitude in philosophy and psychology. I then proceed, in section “Putting the Aristotelian Pieces Together”, to spell out a formal characterisation of gratitude as an Aristotelian emotional virtue. Section “Reappraising Aristotle on (...) megalopsychia and Gratitude” pauses to explore how such a characterisation can be squared with Aristotle’s apparently unambiguous remarks about gratitude as a non-component of the virtuous makeup of the megalopsychoi. Finally, I conclude in section “Gratitude and Poetic Justice” by demonstrating the virtuosity of gratitude—what makes it intrinsically valuable as part of eudaimonia—by elucidating its association with the overarching emotional virtue of nemesis. (shrink)

Much of the debate concerning political obligation deals with the question of which, if any, moral principles could make obedience to the directives of the government a matter of obligation. What makes political obligation political has not received attention in the literature on the topic. In this article I argue that the lack of systematic reflection on what makes political obligation political is responsible for the failure of a number of influential theories of political obligation. I demonstrate this failure using (...) the consent theory of political obligation as my major example. I conclude my analysis by formulating some positive conditions that a successful principle of political obligation should satisfy. (shrink)

Appreciation and gratitude get good press: They are central virtues in many religious and secular ethical frameworks, core in positive psychology research, and they come highly recommended by the self‐improvement set. Generally, appreciation and gratitude feature as good things, in popular consciousness. Of course, on an Aristotelian model, the belief that these are virtues implies they are something people can get right or wrong. This paper examines bad appreciation and bad gratitude, characterizing forms of appreciation and gratitude at the center (...) of some major social norms and practices, and demonstrating that they mask familiar oppressive expectations and power relations. (shrink)

Most philosophers recognize that sometimes particular individuals have to be grateful to others who have benefited them in a way that provides reasons for treating them in a differential way. In the same way, I argue, there are cases in which society as such benefits from the actions of a person, which gives rise to collective duties of gratitude that must be expressed at the political and socio-economical levels. The political concern about merit should not merely instrumental, but also moral: (...) a society cannot be just if it disregards its collective duties of gratitude. I criticize Rawls’ famous Natural Lottery argument showing that it relies on a problematic understanding of the notion of moral responsibility and develop some consideration on the role that gratitude should play when designing both public institutions and policies. (shrink)

Gratitude is the proper or called-for response in a beneficiary to benefits or beneficence from a benefactor. It is a topic of interest in normative ethics, moral psychology, and political philosophy, and may have implications for metaethics as well. Despite its commonness in everyday life, there is substantive disagreement among philosophers over the nature of gratitude and its connection to other philosophical concepts. The sections of this article address five areas of debate about what gratitude is, when it is called (...) for, and what implications it has for other debates in moral philosophy and philosophy generally. (shrink)

This essay argues that gratitude for one's own life is an intelligible attitude to have. It does so by arguing that reducing pro-attitudes in response to unintentional benefits to “appreciation” is too broad. Instead, such “appreciation” can be understood as gratitude if such benefits satisfy a number of conditions that track or are analogous to why we care about interpersonally bestowed benefits. One's own life satisfies those four conditions, which can make gratitude for it intelligible—when it is perceived as a (...) benefit. (shrink)

Two intuitions are important to commonsense morality: the claim that all persons have equal moral worth and the claim that persons have associative duties. These intuitions seem to contradict each other, and there has been extensive discussion concerning their reconciliation. The most widely held view claims that associative duties arise because relationships generate moral reasons to benefit our loved ones. However, such a view cannot account for the phenomenon that some acts are supererogatory when performed on behalf of a stranger (...) but obligatory when performed on behalf of a loved one. This paper offers a novel view of associative duties, according to which such duties arise because relationships serve as indirect intensifiers of moral reasons: they decrease the cost to the agent that certain acts imply, and this increases the relative weight of the reasons that speak in favour of the act in an all-things-considered judgement. This reconciles moral egalitarianism and associative duties in a promising way: the moral worth of a person always generates the same moral reasons, but due to differences in the cost to the agent, these reasons sometimes amount to obligations and sometimes do not. (shrink)

Research on differences in personal control among Blacks and Whites is conflicted. The purpose of this study is to see if differences in feelings of control between Blacks and Whites can be attributed to race differences in the use of religious resources. Developing a close relationship with God serves as the focal measure of religious involvement. The data come from a nationwide survey of middle-aged and older Blacks and Whites in the United States. A second-order factor model is embedded in (...) a larger latent variable model that assesses the relationships among race, a close relationship with God, and feelings of personal control. The findings suggest that Blacks have a stronger sense of control than Whites. Moreover, a significant portion of these race differences can be attributed to the fact that Blacks are more likely than Whites to report they have a close relationship with God. (shrink)

Gratitude to others is typically understood as a response to good things people give to us or do for us. Occasionally, though, we thank people for things other than gifts or actions. We sometimes thank people for being there for us, for instance, or for loving us, or for being good parents or teachers, or for believing in us. In this article, I develop a set of considerations to help determine whether gratitude to others for being, loving, or believing can (...) be fitting in any of these cases. I begin by arguing that when it is appropriate for a beneficiary thank a benefactor for ϕ-ing, the beneficiary’s gratitude to the benefactor for ϕ-ing is fitting only insofar as the benefactor ϕ-ed out of benevolence, care or concern for the beneficiary. I then show that thanking can express attitudes other than gratitude, thereby highlighting the thanks-gratitude fallacy: the mistake of inferring the fittingness of one person’s gratitude to another from the fact that it would be reasonable for the former to thank the latter. These considerations imply that gratitude for being there for us, gratitude for believing in us, and gratitude for being a good professional can sometimes be fitting, while gratitude for loving us and gratitude for being a good intimate generally are not. (shrink)

Gratitude is usually conceived as a uniquely appropriate response to goodwill. A grateful person is bound to reward an act of goodwill in some appropriately proportionate way. I argue that goodwill, when interpreted as love, should require no reward. Consequently, the idea of gratitude as a proportionate response to love is not intelligible. However, goodwill can also be understood merely as a disinterested concern. Such forms of goodwill are involved in reciprocal relationships. But gratitude has no place in these relationships (...) either. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDankbarkeit erfreut sich uneingeschränkter Hochschätzung. Es soll hier zur Probe dem Gedanken nachgegangen werden, Dankbarkeit sei allenfalls eingeschränkt als gut zu beurteilen. Die positive Bewertung der Dankbarkeit steht, so die Vermutung, unter der sozialontologischen Voraussetzung einer fortgeschrittenen Vereinzelung der Menschen.

This article casts light on the moral implications of the possibility of human extinction, with a specific focus on extinction caused by an interruption in human reproduction. In the first two paragraphs, I show that moral philosophy has not yet given promising explanations for the wrongness of this kind of extinction. Specifically, the second paragraph contains a detailed rejection of John Leslie’s main claims on the morality of extinction. In the third paragraph, I offer a demonstration of the fact that (...) a moral view which stresses the permissibility of some types of human extinction can be effectively constructed, while in the following paragraph I propose a prima facie defense of a new approach to the topic which is likely to provide us with reasons in favor of the wrongness of a premature departure of humankind. (shrink)

Decades of public investment in molecular technologies and data integration techniques have fueled promises of precision medicine (PM) as a novel, targeted, and data-driven approach that takes into...