Thursday, November 27, 2025

Liberalism and the virtue of gratitude

In a new essay at Postliberal Order, I reflect on the virtue of gratitude or thanksgiving and the ways it tends to be eroded in liberal societies.

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9 comments:

  1. MaolsheachlannNovember 27, 2025 at 2:03 PM

    I've noticed that both liberals and conservatives tend to remark that their opponents are better than their philosophies.

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  2. The Great Thurible of DarknessNovember 28, 2025 at 8:00 AM

    I'm not sure how I feel about gratitude being "owed" as a matter of justice, as that seems to imply that one could forcibly compell gratitude if it isn't forthcoming (and it also conjures the mental image of a child being reminded to say "thank you" for every Christmas present they receive.) Not that we shouldn't start young in practicing the virtue of gratitude, but I don't know why anyone would want gratitude that isn't genuinely felt; really, I don't see how a social order based on the assumption that every good must be repaid is that different from a social order in which everything must be paid for, other than that the former assumes an organicism about human relations. I think that, for Christians, we can't understand gratitude without grace: everything is a gift, freely given by God at creation and then again at the cross, and the correct response to a gift given in love is love. I mean, your parents brought you into life out of love for you and for each other, right? Birth is the paradigmatic example of grace in Christian thought. The gift of being and of family, with both taking on a new meaning in the "new birth." It would be strange to thank your parents for giving you life, but it would be natural to love them.

    Again, I don't see anything wrong with being grateful. In fact, I'll even say I'm grateful for Dr. Feser and this blog and all the wonderful books he's written over the years. Maybe someone will give me Immortal Souls for Christmas. I'll be sure to be grateful to them as well.

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    1. TonyNovember 28, 2025 at 11:48 AM

      I'm not sure how I feel about gratitude being "owed" as a matter of justice, as that seems to imply that one could forcibly compell gratitude if it isn't forthcoming

      I suspect, Thurry, you are noticing the oddness of the idea of enforcing gratitude; I think Feser's point (and that of Aquinas and the others) is that gratitude is precisely the kind of justice that cannot be enforced. If you don't return freely given love by love, nobody can reach inside your soul and make you love. But it remains true that if you don't return freely given love by some sort of response of good will, there IS something defective in your soul. That defect just has a name: ingratitude. If it is not just a one-off misfire but a character flaw, it is a vice.

      It is arguable whether it should be cast under "justice" as its genus precisely because it is not the sort of thing susceptible to enforcement. But I suspect that if we changed out the word "owed" when we say "the recipient owes gratitude to his benefactor", and made it rather "ought" as "the recipient ought to be grateful toward his benefactor", it will be less worrisome. Yet perhaps the old, old nexus of meaning between "owed" and "ought" should make us wary of insisting "owed" is wrong and "ought" is right. If "justice" is the genus of the virtues that regulate right relations between persons, then "what they ought to do is the 'just' thing". But if justice is ONE OF the genera of right relations between persons, where "love" is outside of it, then perhaps gratitude is not in justice but in another.

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  3. TonyNovember 28, 2025 at 12:09 PM

    Gratitude involves recognizing the benefit one has received, expressing thanks for it, and repaying it in some way. One form of ingratitude, then, would be not to acknowledge a benefit

    I think this is not sufficiently complete and general: there are times and places where a benefactor doesn't want you to announce the benefit given and your gratitude for it. In such cases, it would be sufficient to have good will toward your benefactor: you might carry through that good will by a positive act that remains interior (e.g. a prayer), but it seems impossible that the virtue literally prescribes that the good will MUST be expressed by a positive act, rather than by, say, willingness to respond with a positive act should a fitting situation occur in the future.

    However, not every good one receives from another requires gratitude. For example, as one manual of moral theology notes, “no thanks are due for what was owed in justice (e.g., wages for work performed), though courtesy demands a pleasant response to every good one receives, even when it is not a favor” (John McHugh and Charles Callan, Moral Theology, Vol. II, p. 429). Similarly, it would be odd to suppose that one owes gratitude (as opposed to mere politeness) to the shopkeeper from whom one buy’s one’s morning coffee or groceries. Market transactions are not governed by the virtue of gratitude, but only by mere civility.

    I think this has an error, in a small way, but a way that feeds into a general and grave mistake about "the market" as a whole.

    In every good, wholesome market transaction where some person A conveys something valuable X to person B, who in turn conveys in return some Y back to A, the value of X to A is less than the value of Y to A, and vice versa the value of X to B is greater than the value of Y to B. The transaction BENEFITS BOTH parties.

    That's Econ 101. Now the moral import: in every such transaction, A and B should hope for, want, desire, expect, and SEEK FOR an event in which the other person benefits. They should anticipate entering into such transactions in part BECAUSE other persons will benefit. If they have true charity for others, true love measured by Christ's commandment "love your neighbor as yourself", they will enter into the transaction hoping to find in it roughly equal benefits to both persons, i.e. where neither one is even close to a position to say "heh, I really got the better of him!" in the sense where A got nearly all of the profit available, and B got only a tiny slice of a better position.

    Every action, including market actions, should be done out of charity. The "common courtesies" that should attend such actions are merely an outward sign of what should be the inward reality of such good will. And, I would say, they are not a different virtue than exchanging such courtesies when there is no transaction involved, the "good day"s exchanged in passing: this courtesy is a virtue, but it is a general one, e.g. affability, that makes society as a whole smooth and wholesome. It isn't a special aspect of transactions.

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  4. AnonymousNovember 28, 2025 at 12:30 PM

    Go to your library and get it on an interlibrary loan.

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  5. AnonymousNovember 28, 2025 at 12:31 PM

    It can also be read free online.

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  6. AnonymousNovember 28, 2025 at 3:13 PM

    The way Feser seems to define “Liberalism” is not what I believe most Americans think of when they say “liberal”. What he calls “Liberalism” most people would call “anarchism”. Most Americans, when they say “Liberalism”, mean “supporting livable wages for all job fields, supporting government run healthcare, and taxing the rich heavily”.

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  7. NormNovember 28, 2025 at 6:38 PM

    Happy Thanksgiving Prof!

    Thank You for all your work. I will always be grateful!

    Wishing you and your family abundant blessings. You are always in my prayers.

    https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1994535027191996802?t=rqfOncy-j1EGHbHorEatyQ&s=19

    Chevrolet released an advertisement emphasising family.

    I agree with all of Prof's criticisms of Trump, at the same time after years of these companies pandering to nonsensical liberal whims, in some respects he has effectuated a "sort of" return to normalcy through his 2024 win however imperfect it might be. And perhaps we can be thankful for that while also hoping that the next 3 years bring back sane policy making

    Cheers to everyone on the blog. Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

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  8. bmillerNovember 28, 2025 at 8:52 PM

    Shaggy,

    It seems you view justice as something negative. It's only giving one what one is due. Why would it be troublesome to give someone what one owes someone?

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