What Does Gratitude Require?

There's a marked tendency to talk a lot about "gratitude" these days.  In fact, usually springboarding off an oft-quoted passage by Cicero, namely that "gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues, but the parent of them" -- and then never engaging with Cicero's thought again after that -- there's even quite a lot of buzz about gratitude in terms of virtue ethics, or at least what we might call "virtue-lite morality."  There's also a rising and somewhat paradoxical tendency to focus on the positive effects of gratitude on the life, the attitude, even the physical health of the grateful person.

I wonder myself at times whether we really ought to include "gratitude" among the virtues, or whether --  as I've argued elsewhere about forgiveness -- we ought instead better regard it as something connected with and flowing from virtues, but not actually a virtue in its own right.  That's a topic on which I admittedly need to do more thinking.  But, one thing I have been reflecting upon quite a bit lately, is what gratitude ought to look like.  Or, you might say, how far it ought to extend in attitude and action, if it is really to be gratitude.

A Short Review: "What Is Character? Virtue Ethics In Education"

For the last week and a half, I've been participating in a MOOC focused on Character Education and Virtue Ethics -- What Is Character? Virtue Ethics In Education, developed by the University of Birmingham (specifically, by the Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues), and hosted on the FutureLearn Platform.  I'd been looking forward to this relatively short course (only 2 weeks) for some time -- it's enjoyable from time to time to slip back into the role of student rather than professor, and let someone else do the course design and teaching.

I've been idly kicking around the idea of reviewing virtue-, character-, and more general ethics-focused books, courses, and other resources on this blog, and the invitation to reflect upon the course built in near the end of it presented me with an occasion to to precisely that.  So, here it goes.  Overall, I'd award it a solid B- , but that grade is partly due to the fact that it's free of charge.  I'd recommend taking it to most people interested in the subject-matters covered.

A Few Reflections on Gratitude

Another Thanksgiving day has come and gone,bringing in its wake postings and platitudes, and occasionally deeper reflections and expressions of gratitude, the disposition, emotion, or attitude inextricably involved with thanks.  Thankfulness and giving thanks are important, but often overlooked, matters for ethics, a soon-or-later necessary dimension of any sustained, common, well-oriented moral life. Why do we discuss it as infrequently as we do in my field, moral theory?

I suspect for many of the same reasons it's not all that much more often discussed specifically, thematically, whether we look to other academic or professional disciplines,  or turn our gaze upon the broader spheres of ordinary activity -- we've got so much else to focus on, attend to, and talk about together.  Time runs out, seemingly more quickly each passing year -- and so paradoxically, we have to cut out and dedicate a portion of that ever-scarcer resource in order to "make the time" for giving thanks, let alone thinking about, meditating upon, pondering gratitude.  And yet, if we pay attention, it is not too difficult to discover, even stumble across philosopher and theologians who did examine and analyze this distinctively human attitude, affect, and activity.