Abstract
In this comment on Thomas Nisters’ “Gratitude, Anger and the Horror of Asymmetry” I propose a different reading of Schnitzler’s short story that serves as a basis for Nisters’ reflections. On my interpretation, the behaviour of Franz is best understood on the background of a traditional understanding of gratitude, one that we can find, for instance, in Thomas Aquinas.
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Notes
For these three elements see Summa Theologiae (STh) II-II, q. 107, a. 2 (cited in footnote 3 of Nisters’ article). It is noteworthy that much of Aquinas’s discussion of gratitude and benefaction is based on Seneca’s De beneficiis and other classical sources. I am not making any claims here about Aquinas’s originality.
On the circumstances of human action see Thomas Aquinas, STh I‑II, q. 7, and Nisters 1992.
For instance, Peter John Olivi, a Franciscan philosopher and theologian from the end of the 13th century, famously considers gratitude an emotion. See q. 57 of his Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum (Olivi 1926).
Nisters himself examines the question of whether gratitude is an emotion or a virtue in Nisters 2012. The nature of gratitude is a notable point of debate in Aristotle scholarship. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle counts gratitude among the emotions, but the Nicomachean Ethics makes it sound as if gratitude is a virtue.
This is what Aquinas seems to suggest in STh II-II, q. 106, a. 3 ad 2.
References
Nisters, Thomas. 1992. Akzidenzien der Praxis. Thomas von Aquins Lehre von den Umständen menschlicher Handlungen. Freiburg: Alber.
Nisters, Thomas. 2012. “Utrum gratitude sit virtus moralis vel passio animae, or: Gratitude – An Aristotelian Virtue or an Emotion?” In Politics of Practical Reasoning: Integrating Action, Discourse, and Argument, 65-77. Ed. Ricca Edmondson and Karlheinz Hülser. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Peter John Olivi. 1922–1926. Quaestiones in secundum librum Sententiarum. Edited by Bernard Jansen. Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae.
Strawson, P.F. 1962. Freedom and Resentment. Proceedings of the British Academy 48, 1–25.
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Pickavé, M. Gratitude, justice, and the emotions. ZEMO 4, 161–167 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42048-021-00095-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42048-021-00095-7