A longitudinal study of 308 white-collar U.S. employees revealed that feelings of hope and gratitude increase concern for corporate social responsibility (CSR). In particular, employees with stronger hope and gratitude were found to have a greater sense of responsibility toward employee and societal issues; interestingly, employee hope and gratitude did not affect sense of responsibility toward economic and safety/quality issues. These findings offer an extension of research by Giacalone, Paul, and Jurkiewicz (2005, Journal of Business Ethics, 58, 295-305).

After having been invited to the United States by some disciples from Hong Kong, the Master established a Buddhist Lecture Hall in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1962. In 1963, because some of the disciples there were not respectful of the Dharma, he left Chinatown and moved the Buddhist Lecture Hall to a first-floor flat in a run-down Victorian building on the edge of San Francisco's Fillmore District and Japantown. The other floors of the building contained individual rooms for rent with (...) communal kitchens. Those rooms were occupied by poor, elderly black people and a bunch of young Americans who were, in various ways, eagerly searching for meaning in their lives. (shrink)

I attempt to show that it is notphilosophically incompetent to ground politicalobligation in feelings of gratitude. But theargument needs to be stated carefully.Gratitude must be distinguished fromreciprocity. It applies only to good governmentwhich provides benefits to citizens for whichthey ought to feel grateful. It applies only tocitizens who accept that their feelings ofgratitude are properly demonstrated by anacceptance on their part of the duties ofcitizenship. It does not apply to citizenswhose benefits are purchased at the expense ofthe unjust treatment of (...) fellow citizens. (shrink)

“Moorean Dogmatist” responses to external world skepticism endorse courses of reasoning that many people find objectionable. This paper seeks to locate this dissatisfaction in considerations about epistemic responsibility. I sketch a theory of immediate warrant and show how it can be combined with plausible “inferential internalist” demands arising from considerations of epistemic responsibility. The resulting view endorses immediate perceptual warrant but forbids the sort of reasoning that “Moorean Dogmatism” would allow. A surprising result is that Dogmatism’s commitment to immediate epistemic (...) warrant isn’t enough to avoid certain standard arguments for skepticism about the external world. (shrink)

This article makes use of the thinking of both Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand in attempting properly to understand the nature of humility. The article examines how gratitude and truthfulness are both present, in an essentially integrated fashion, when a person exists in a humble state. Also addressed is the converse proposition, namely, that gratitude and truthfulness are absent in theperson who exists in a proud state and are replaced in that person by their respective opposites, ingratitude and mendacity. (...) The article begins with a discussion of Scheler’s view of humility as gratitude, then investigates von Hildebrand’s notion that humility is truth. In presenting their ideas, the article identifies three distinct ways in which von Hildebrand’s analysis of humility in terms of truthfulnesscomplements and expands upon Scheler’s analysis of humility in terms of gratitude. These three distinct yet complementary ways are, respectively, ontological, psychological, and ethical in nature. (shrink)

Citizenship education is a complex matter, and not least the place of civic virtues in it. This is illustrated by a consideration of the civic virtue of gratitude. Two conceptions of gratitude are explored. Gratitude seen as a debt is examined and Kant’s exposition of it, including his objections to a person’s getting himself into the position where he has to show gratitude as a beneficiary, is explored. An alternative conception of gratitude as recognition is developed. This, it is claimed, (...) has more relevance to the kind of gratitude it would be appropriate for citizens of a democratic state to feel. The educational implications of these views are indicated. (shrink)