Philosophies Of Gratitude

"Philosophies of Gratitude is a study of gratitude as a philosophical concept. It explores what past philosophers from Aristotle to Kant have said about gratitude, and examines what role the idea of gratitude has played in their philosophies. It also looks at the three primary ways we think about gratitude - as an emotion we feel in response to a gift or benefit, as an act we perform to express our thankfulness, and as a virtuous disposition in which we are and feel ready to be grateful to the world we inhabit. Like love and trust, gratitude is a way we react to other people in our lives, sometimes for who they are (lovable or trustworthy) and sometimes for what they do (act benevolently towards us). It is a way we feel and act towards others. It is, in other words, a primary way we situate ourselves in relationships. Philosophies of Gratitude examines the key historical moments when gratitude was an important philosophical concept - in classical antiquity, in the early modern era, and in the Enlightenment - in order to discover what gratitude meant for those who produced our fundamental Western notions of ethics. It then examines the forms gratitude assumes - as a feeling, an act, a disposition - in order to discern what role our emotions play in our ethical responses to the world. Finally, it examines what we can say about ingratitude as a response that usually strikes us as base, in other words, as a moment when a human being fails to act morally, but also as a response that sometimes indicates a deeper kind of ethical stand against injustice"--

Existential gratitude-gratitude for one's very existence or life as a whole-is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time. A team of leading scholars introduce existential gratitude as a perennially and characteristically human phenomenon, central to the distinctive life of our species. Attention is given to the conditions under which existence itself might be construed as having a gift-like or otherwise gratitude-inducing character. Drawing on a diversity of perspectives, chapters mark out new territory in philosophical inquiry, addressing whether and in what sense we ought to be grateful for our very existence. By analysing gratitude, this collection makes a novel contribution to the discourse on moral emotions, phenomenology, anti-natalism and theology.

Expressions of gratitude abound. Hardly a book is published that does not include in its preface or acknowledgments some variation on, "I am grateful to...for..." Indeed, most achievements come to be only through the help of others. We value the benevolence of others, and when we--or our loved ones--are the recipients of benevolence, our emotional response is often one of gratitude. But, are we bound to the requirement of 'repaying' our benefactors in some way? If we are, and there are--as ordinary language suggests--debts of gratitude, what kind of debts are these? Does the appropriateness of my gratitude require that my benefactor in fact intended to benefit me (in just the way she did)? Is there a difference between feeling grateful and being grateful? Is a precondition of my being grateful to another that I respect her? Do we owe a special sort of gratitude to those who have shaped us into the persons we are? What are the psychological and normative relations between gratitude the emotion, and gratitude the virtue? These are among the questions carefully addressed in The Moral Psychology of Gratitude. This volume provides readers with the state-of-the-art in research on gratitude. It does so in the form of sixteen never-before published articles on the emotion by leading voices in philosophy and the sciences of the mind.

Explores how the emotional experience of gratitude has been enlisted in neoliberal governance through the language of debt. In The Art of Gratitude, Jeremy David Engels sketches a genealogy of gratitude from the ancient Greeks to the contemporary self-help movement. One of the most striking things about gratitude, Engels finds, is how consistently it is described using the language of indebtedness. A chief purpose of this, he contends, is to make us more comfortable living lives in debt, with the nefarious effect of pacifying the citizenry so we are less likely to speak out about social and economic injustice. To counteract this, he proposes an alternative art of gratitude-as-thanksgiving that is inspired by Indian philosophy, particularly the yoga philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutras. He argues that this art of gratitude can challenge neoliberalism by reorienting our politics away from resentment, anger, and guilt and toward a democratic ethic of thanksgiving and the common good. Jeremy David Engels is the Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Associate Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University. He is the author of The Politics of Resentment: A Genealogy and Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the Early Republic.

Psychologists, philosophers, theologians and educationalists have all lately explored various conceptual, moral, psychological and pedagogical dimensions of gratitude in a rapidly expanding academic and popular literature. However, while the distinguished contributors to this work hail from these distinct disciplines, they have been brought together in this volume precisely in recognition of the need for a more interdisciplinary perspective on the topic. While further developing such more familiar debates in the field as whether it is appropriate to feel grateful in circumstances in which there is no obvious benefactor, whether it is proper to feel grateful to those who have benefited one only from a sense of duty and whether it makes sense to be grateful if so doing colludes with injustice, the essays in this collection explore a wide variety of fresh conceptual, psychological and moral issues. For example, in addition to identifying some new moral paradoxes about gratitude and seeking a generally more morally discriminating approach to gratitude education, relations are explored between gratitude and humility, forgiveness and appreciation and the religious and spiritual dimensions of the concept are also given much overdue attention. By drawing together serious academic engagement with the study of gratitude and a serious attempt to undertake this within an interdisciplinary perspective, Perspectives on Gratitude will be of value to academics and graduate students in the fields of philosophy, psychology and theology, as well as other research-based disciplines.

This book asserts that gratitude for God's gift of creation grounds the insight of positive psychology that grateful persons act pro-socially. Kenneth Wilson posits that a sense of gratitude encourages sacrificial service and reveals all behavior to have at heart an essential moral quality.

Teachers at all levels of education will find this book practical and inspiring as they read how other educators have engaged with challenges that reveal different dimensions of gratitude, and how some have discovered its relevance in gaining greater resilience, improved relationships and increased student engagement. In the first comprehensive text ever written that is solely dedicated to the specific relevance of gratitude to the teaching and learning process, Dr Howells pioneers an approach that accounts for both dilemmas and possibilities of gratitude in the midst of teachers’ busy and stressful lives. She takes a contemporary and philosophical view of the notion of gratitude and goes beyond its conceptualisation simply from a religious or positive psychology framework. Exploring real situations with teachers, school leaders, students, parents, academics and pre-service teachers - Gratitude In Education: A Radical View examines many of the complexities encountered when gratitude is applied in a variety of secular educational environments.