Abstract
Gratitude to others is typically understood as a response to good things people give to us or do for us. Occasionally, though, we thank people for things other than gifts or actions. We sometimes thank people for being there for us, for instance, or for loving us, or for being good parents or teachers, or for believing in us. In this article, I develop a set of considerations to help determine whether gratitude to others for being, loving, or believing can be fitting in any of these cases. I begin by arguing that when it is appropriate for a beneficiary thank a benefactor for ϕ-ing, the beneficiary’s gratitude to the benefactor for ϕ-ing is fitting only insofar as the benefactor ϕ-ed out of benevolence, care or concern for the beneficiary. I then show that thanking can express attitudes other than gratitude, thereby highlighting the thanks-gratitude fallacy: the mistake of inferring the fittingness of one person’s gratitude to another from the fact that it would be reasonable for the former to thank the latter. These considerations imply that gratitude for being there for us, gratitude for believing in us, and gratitude for being a good professional can sometimes be fitting, while gratitude for loving us and gratitude for being a good intimate (e.g., a good parent or spouse) generally are not.
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Notes
See, for instance, Manela (2016: 282–283). I have also argued for the converse of that claim. For the purposes of this article, it is only the fact that gratitude that doesn’t imply gratitude to that I need to establish.
These include, for instance, Gulliford et al. (2013: 299), Roberts and Telech (2019: 1). Appreciation is grammatically well suited to describe gratitude that and gratitude for (but not to). Like both these uses of gratitude terms, “appreciation” is never to anyone, and “appreciation” can be used in both a propositional and an objectual sense.
One recent philosopher who seems to rely on this inference is Sungwoo Um (2020: 222). In the first paragraph of his article, “Gratitude for Being,” Um writes, “We sometimes seem to express gratitude to our intimates for being who they are to us. On Mother’s Day, for example, it is not uncommon to give a card saying, ‘Thank you for being such a good mother to me!’” For the rest of his article, Um takes for granted that we are expressing gratitude to our mothers when we use such utterances. I will address Um’s argument in more detail in Sect. 7.
These conditions may not all be necessary for one person’s thanking another, but I take it they are sufficient. And while these conditions may not be sufficient to guarantee that an instance of thanking is perfectly felicitous or perfectly ideal, I take it they are sufficient to say that thanking has occurred. If you loved someone, and he earnestly said, “I thank you for loving me,” the most reasonable response a skeptic in your position could give would be something like, “You shouldn’t thank me for that,” or “Don’t thank me for that,” or “There’s no need to thank me for that,” but not, “You seem to be trying to thank me for this, but you’re unable to do so.” This suggests that thanking is still occurring in such circumstances, even if it is not perfectly felicitous in the case of thanks for being, loving, or believing.
To say this, of course, doesn’t mean that all such instances are morally required. Nor does it mean that all such instances are actually are fully or perfectly felicitous. It could turn out that, despite what most people think, we never should thank people for loving us, for believing in us, for being there for us, or for being good relations to us, because it might turn out that it is never fully felicitous to thank people for these things. But what I have said here is enough to establish the claim that we do sometimes thank people for being, loving, and believing.
I argue for this in Manela (2018: 632–634; 641).
That is, she was doing it for the sake of the ecosystem itself or for the non-human organisms or species that lived there, and not at all for the sake of human beings.
Philosophers who see gratitude as a typical response to benevolence or goodwill include Strawson (1962), Berger (1975), Roberts (2004: 62), McConnell (2019) and Manela (2016, 2020). Arguments that benefactor benevolence is necessary for gratitude to be fitting can be found in Manela (2016: 283–285).
For the sake of clarity, I will use names beginning with the letter “Y” to refer to beneficiaries and names beginning with the letter “R” to refer to benefactors in the hypothetical cases throughout this paper.
Gratitude for refrainings has been written about by, inter alia, Saul Smilansky (1997).
Some might believe that whether this is true depends on whether refraining from turning Yura in is morally acceptable or morally objectionable. Robert Roberts (2013: 124) and Terrance McConnell (2019: 49–51; 2021: 92), for instance, seem skeptical that gratitude can be owed for benevolently motivated acts or refrainings that were morally reprehensible. I suspect they would agree, however, that Yura would owe Roderick gratitude if Roderick refrained from turning in Yura out of benevolent motives and refraining from turning Yura in to the authorities was morally acceptable (as it would be if this scenario played out in an unjust society ruled by a tyrant, for instance). Even if gratitude is not owed in response to all instances of benevolence, this case thus is still consistent with the claim that gratitude is owed only in response to benevolence.
In that sense, Bush’s thanking Gore was different from Bush’s thanking Bill Clinton, his predecessor, for “his [Clinton’s] service to our nation” during his presidency.
Some philosophers might be inclined to doubt this claim. Such philosophers might start with the presumption that thanking is by definition an expression of directed gratitude. On this view, which I will call the narrow view of thanking, no utterance beginning with “Thank you for…,” no matter how earnest, would count as genuine thanking—let alone reasonable thanking—unless it expressed or was meant to express directed gratitude. This view has a number of implausible implications. It implies, for instance, that when I earnestly write to a journal editor, “Thank you for the chance to revise and resubmit this article,” intending to convey my gladness and appreciation, I have not thanked her. It implies that when a manager tries to express gladness and appreciation by earnestly saying to you, “Thank you for bringing this problem to my attention,” he has not thanked you.
Nevertheless, some philosophers might hold to this narrow view of thanking, and these philosophers might fear that the remainder of my article holds no interest for them. My plan is to consider cases of thanking and inquire into whether such cases can ever express directed gratitude. According to those who hold the narrow view, this will be pointless, since each case I consider will fall into one of only two categories: (1) cases where genuine thanking is occurring and ipso facto directed gratitude is being expressed, or (2) cases where attitudes other than gratitude are being expressed, but, despite appearances, genuine thanking is not occurring. There would be no chance of discovering a case of genuine thanking that doesn’t express gratitude. Even if this is true, though, subscribers to the narrow view should still be interested to know which of “Thanks for being there for me,” “Thanks for being a good intimate,” “Thanks for being a good professional,” “Thanks for believing in me” and “Thanks for loving me” can be instances of genuine thanking that express directed gratitude, and which are not genuine instances of thanking—that is, which fall into category (1), and which fall into category (2). The remaining sections of my article can answer that question for subscribers to the narrow view by showing them whether and when we can be grateful to others being there for us, for being good intimates or professionals to us, for loving us, and for believing in us. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to make this point.
In this sense, being there for someone is perhaps not completely different from other sorts of gratitude-worthy phenomena, like giving someone a beneficial object. When Raul gave Yvon his car, he made a commitment to Yvon to hand over the keys, to not dispute Yvon’s ownership of his car in the future, and to do other things to protect Yvon in the possession of the car. This is especially true if Raul’s announcement that he’s giving his car to Yvon precedes Yvon’s actually taking possession of the car. The big difference between giving someone a gift or doing a helpful action for them, on the one hand, and being there for them, on the other, is that the favor or gift only requires, typically, a moment of attention and deliberate intentional action, while being there for someone requires an extended duration of attention.
It is possible, of course, to help someone on several occasions but still not have been there for them all that time.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this example.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to make this point.
My use of the term “testimonial benevolence” is inspired by Miranda Fricker (2007)’s notion of testimonial justice.
This possibility raises intriguing questions about how the norms of testimonial or credibility benevolence should be weighed against other norms. When and how might they conflict with norms of epistemic rationality, and how should such conflicts be resolved? When can testimonial or credibility benevolence be objectionably infantilizing? When and how might it conflict with epistemic justice, and how should such conflicts be resolved? I cannot answer these questions here. But I hope the case of Detective Rogan and Yohan shows them to be worthy of further inquiry.
Some have argued, for instance, that gratitude is not a fitting response to loving because loving someone is not voluntary, intentional, or deliberate, and one or more of those features are features R’s ϕ-ing must have in order for Y’s gratitude to R for ϕ-ing to be fitting. We have reason to doubt this argument’s decisiveness, though. For one thing, we might indeed owe gratitude for ϕ-ing that wasn’t intentional, deliberate, or voluntary. If you protect me from danger with a split-second reflex, I might still owe you gratitude, if that reflex was ultimately rooted in your care for me. And loving may sometimes constitutively involve some deliberate, intentional, volitional elements—such as a deliberate commitment to develop or preserve one’s feelings or behavioral dispositions. I thank an anonymous referee for pressing me to note this.
See, for instance, Um (2020: 224).
Um (2020: 222–223).
As I noted in note 5, this is an inference that Um seems to make.
These are more or less the characteristics outlined in section 3 of Um (2020).
Many friends aren’t comfortable saying “I love you,” or even “I love you, as a friend,” to one another, so they might find “Thanks for being such a good friend” to be a less gushy way of conveying the same sentiment. Someone might object that there are times when it seems appropriate for one person to thank another for being a good friend but not appropriate for the former to say “I love you” to the latter. Imagine A and B are friends, and B has fallen in love with A, but A does not reciprocate B’s romantic feelings. When B confesses his love to A, it might be reasonable for A to thank B for being a good friend, but not appropriate for her to say, “I love you too.” That seems true. But it may still be reasonable for her to say, in response to his confession, “I love you too, but as a friend.” This scenario thus need not undermine the possibility that expressing properly specified love can be part of what we do when we thank our friends for being a good friend. I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising this objection.
“Thanks for being a good intimate” might also be used to convey shotgun gratitude for acts that we should have thanked our intimates for but failed to, because of shortcomings for which we are responsible. Insofar as that is true, shotgun thanks could also be used to convey a sort of contrite humility as well as appreciation, praise and gratitude. I thank Terrance McConnell for pointing that out to me.
One philosopher who sees it as an open question whether we can be grateful to certain professionals for being good professionals is Um (2020: 229).
Some might have the intuition that gratitude is owed in this case. It might seem to some that the attorney deserves her evil client’s gratitude since the client benefited non-accidentally from the attorney’s commitment to a morally noble motivation (helping decent people). This would seem to show that a benefactor’s benevolence toward a particular client is not necessary for that client’s gratitude to be fitting. Ultimately, though, I believe this intuition, that the remorseless client’s gratitude is fitting, rests on the assumption that the attorney in this case is subtly benevolent toward him. If we specify this example a little further to eliminate that possibility, the intuition seems less plausible. Imagine that the public defender is assigned a client she knows is guilty and remorseless, and she despises him because she knows he is guilty and remorseless, but she nonetheless fights tooth and nail for him in the courtroom. Imagine that although she gives him a zealous defense, she loses the case, and he is given a severe sentence. Imagine further that the attorney feels completely satisfied by the outcome of the case: she feels good about how she performed as an attorney and she is happy for the long sentence her client is about to face. And, let’s suppose, her client is aware of all this. Gratitude does not seem fitting in this case. We would not blame the client for not feeling grateful to his attorney. Now, someone might object that it is not the absence of benevolence in this case that renders gratitude unfitting, but the presence of the benefactor’s hostility. But I don’t think this is right. If we replace the public defender’s hostility toward the client in this case with cold indifference, that would not seem to suddenly render gratitude fitting. In other words, if the attorney in this case were not happy about her client’s severe sentence, but were instead coldly indifferent, it is hard to see how that renders his gratitude to her fitting. I take it, then, that benevolence toward a particular client is necessary for a client’s gratitude to be fitting—and the benefactor’s acting from morally noble motives is not sufficient for gratitude to be fitting. For other examples that make this point, see Manela (2018). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to make this point here.
Of course, some people enter certain professions out of care for all potential clients. Imagine, for instance, a firefighter who becomes a firefighter because she cares about all people, in the sense that she doesn’t want any person to perish in a fire. Gratitude to such a person might be a fitting response from anyone she saves. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to make this point.
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Acknowledgements
I thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I also thank Sungwoo Um, Terrance McConnell, Mark Formichelli, Brian Hyer, Hichem Naar, Paddy McShane, and Ryan Fuchs for their assistance as I developed the arguments in this article. I appreciate their insights, praise them for their thoughtfulness and patience, and owe them my gratitude for their time, attention and support as I worked to answer this article’s central questions.
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Manela, T. Thanks for being, loving, and believing. Philos Stud 179, 1649–1672 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01725-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01725-x