An Aristotelian Virtue of Gratitude

Topoi 34 (2):499-511 (2015)
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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to offer a reconstruction of gratitude as an Aristotelian virtue. The account I propose is meant to be essentially Aristotelian although it is clearly not Aristotle’s own account. I start in section “Current Discourses on Gratitude” with an overview of recent discourses on gratitude in philosophy and psychology. I then proceed, in section “Putting the Aristotelian Pieces Together”, to spell out a formal characterisation of gratitude as an Aristotelian emotional virtue. Section “Reappraising Aristotle on megalopsychia and Gratitude” pauses to explore how such a characterisation can be squared with Aristotle’s apparently unambiguous remarks about gratitude as a non-component of the virtuous makeup of the megalopsychoi. Finally, I conclude in section “Gratitude and Poetic Justice” by demonstrating the virtuosity of gratitude—what makes it intrinsically valuable as part of eudaimonia—by elucidating its association with the overarching emotional virtue of nemesis

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Citations of this work

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Motivating propositional gratitude.Michael Rush - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (5):1191-1211.
Is gratitude a moral virtue?David Carr - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (6):1475-1484.

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References found in this work

Modern Moral Philosophy.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1958 - Philosophy 33 (124):1 - 19.
Nicomachean Ethics.Terence Irwin & Aristotle of Stagira - 1999 - Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.
Modern Moral Philosophy.G. E. M. Anscombe - 1997 - In Thomas L. Carson & Paul K. Moser, Morality and the good life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Aristotle and the Virtues.Howard J. Curzer - 2012 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

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