The Virtue of Gratitude and Its Associated Vices

Gratitude, the proper or fitting response to benevolence, has often been conceptualized as a virtue—a temporally stable disposition to perceive, think, feel, and act in certain characteristic ways in certain situations. Many accounts of gratitude as a virtue, however, have not analyzed this disposition accurately, and as a result, they have not revealed the rich variety of ways in which someone can fail to be a grateful person. In this paper, I articulate an account of the virtue of gratitude, and I use this account to explore various vices that can manifest in its absence

Negative Feelings of Gratitude

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

Does gratitude to R for ϕ-ing imply gratitude that R ϕ-ed?

Many find it plausible that for a given beneficiary, Y, benefactor, R, and action, ϕ, Y’s being grateful to R for ϕ-ing implies Y’s being grateful that R ϕ-ed. According to some philosophers who hold this view, all instances of gratitude to, or “prepositional gratitude,” are also instances of gratitude that, or “propositional gratitude.” These philosophers believe there is a single unified concept of gratitude, a phenomenon that is essentially gratitude that, and whose manifestations sometimes have additional features that make them instances of gratitude to as well. In this article, I show that view to be mistaken. I base my argument on two hypothetical cases, in each of which a beneficiary, Y, is grateful to a benefactor, R, for ϕ-ing, but not grateful that R ϕ-ed. Generalizing from those cases and other cases of gratitude, I argue that prepositional gratitude is the proper response to benevolence-motivated action and propositional gratitude consists in a beneficiary’s judging a state of affairs to be valuable for himself and welcoming that state of affairs. Because not every instance of a benefactor’s acting benevolently toward a beneficiary is something that beneficiary finds valuable for himself and welcomes, it is possible to be grateful to a benefactor for ϕ-ing but not grateful that she ϕ-ed. Prepositional gratitude and propositional gratitude can each occur without the other and are thus two distinct phenomena. I conclude by explaining the importance of accurately understanding the relationship between prepositional gratitude and propositional gratitude

Can You Be Grateful to a Benefactor Whose Existence You Doubt?

Among philosophers who study gratitude, there is much disagreement about what gratitude is and when it is called for. One thesis no one has questioned, however, is the thesis that in order to be grateful to a benefactor, a beneficiary must believe that that benefactor exists. In this essay, I lay out novel reasons to doubt this thesis, and I explore a striking implication of rejecting it: the implication that doubters of various kinds—not just religious people in periods of doubt, but also lifelong agnostics, and even some atheists—might be capable of gratitude to God. I begin by developing a hypothetical case that demonstrates people can be grateful to human benefactors whose existence they doubt. My case shows that gratitude to a doubted benefactor is consistent with hoping that benefactor turns out not to exist. I then show how my case implies that theists in periods of doubt, agnostics, and a particular kind of atheist could be grateful to God, despite a lack of belief in his existence, and despite a lack of faith in God