APA Newsletters
Fall 1999
Volume 99, Number 1

Articles

1. The Debate

As Socrates exhorts on behalf of the laws in Plato’s Crito: "Are you not grateful to those of us laws which were instituted for this end, for requiring your father to give you a cultural and physical education? . . . We have brought you into the world and reared you and educated you, and given you and all your fellow citizens a share in all the good things at our disposal" (Crito, 50d, 51d). The considerable appeal of Socrates’ plea is plain. States unquestionably provide enormous benefits for their constituents; without political order, each of us would be imperiled in the state of nature. Because states provide us with these benefits, we owe them a debt of gratitude. One obvious way of repaying this debt is by obeying the law. Appropriate gratitude may require us to do much more than merely follow the laws, but certainly we would be objectionably ungrateful if we ever violated the law without just cause.

The first worry is that obligations of gratitude are too vague to generate a specific duty to obey the law. As Professor Simmons points out, "when we acknowledge an obligation of gratitude to another, we are acknowledging only a very general sort of indebtedness" (Simmons, p. 185). The problem with the vagueness of this debt is that it can be repaid in a variety of coins, and thus there is no reason why one must perform the very specific chores required by the law. What of a citizen who expresses her gratitude by making "care packages" for the country’s public servants, for instance? Has she not repaid her debt of gratitude? In short, because obligations of gratitude are general and vague, they appear unable to explain why one must, in particular, obey the specific laws of one’s state.

Simmons’s second concern is that anyone who does not want the benefits of political society owes no debt of gratitude. Because states ignore individual preferences and dole out benefits and burdens to all those within their territorial boundaries, there will always be some who are forced to accept these benefits against their will. And if one has benefits forced upon her, it seems ludicrous to suppose that she has a moral duty of gratitude for these unwanted benefits. Therefore, the nonconsensual, territorial nature of states ensures that each country will house numerous citizens who owe no debt of gratitude for whatever political benefits they receive.

Thirdly, Simmons stresses that, because gratitude is owed only to people who make a special effort or sacrifice to supply benefits, governments are not proper objects of gratitude. That is, insofar as governments merely convert taxes into benefits, they make no special effort or sacrifice and, therefore, do not deserve gratitude. The author’s fourth worry is the related but more general suspicion that no institution can deserve gratitude. On Simmons’s view, it seems more accurate to say that one can owe a debt of gratitude to specific individuals within an institution than toward the institution itself. This point spells trouble for the gratitude approach to political obligation because, if one’s debt of gratitude is owed specifically to the individuals within a government who made a special effort or sacrifice, then a more personal and personalized gesture than merely obeying the law appears the appropriate response.

And finally, Professor Klosko contends that obligations of gratitude are not stringent enough to match our intuitions about political obligation. According to Klosko, even proponents of this theory concede that duties of gratitude are easily overridden. This concession is problematic, however, because it suggests that, "[al]though obligations of gratitude undoubtedly exist, they are generally weak and diffuse, too weak to function as prima facie political obligations in the usual sense. Such obligations would be overridden frequently, not just in unusual circumstances. They would not appear generally to require compliance with onerous or burdensome laws" (Klosko 1989, pp. 354–55). In other words, because we believe that we are stringently obligated to obey the law even when obedience requires great sacrifice, whatever duties of gratitude we might have to our country would be too weak to account for our obligation to obey the law.

Although Simmons and Klosko have assembled an impressive list of objections, many believe that gratitude theory can withstand the criticism. The two most notable authors working to vindicate this approach to political obligation are A. D. M. Walker and Terrance McConnell. In the remainder of this section I will quickly survey some of their rebuttals to the five objections outlined above.

Walker and McConnell each have an answer to Simmons’s first concern, the vagueness objection. Walker responds by linking the general debt of gratitude to the specific chore of obeying the law by appealing to the state’s interests. He argues (in Walker 1988, p. 205) as follows:

(1) The person who benefits from X has an obligation of gratitude not to act contrary to X’s interests.

(2) Every citizen has received benefits from the state.

(3) Every citizen has an obligation of gratitude not to act in ways that are contrary to the state’s interests.

(4) Noncompliance with the law is contrary to the state’s interests.

(5) Every citizen has an obligation of gratitude to comply with the law.

McConnell adds to this his own response. He urges us to recognize that our duty of gratitude to the state requires much more than merely obeying the law, but clearly he believes that it includes this obedience. He contends both that (1) an obligation of gratitude requires a beneficiary to provide her benefactor with "a commensurate benefit if and when a suitable occasion for doing so arises," and that (2) "citizen-beneficiaries are required to contribute to the well-being of their state when asked, or to explain why they will not" (McConnell, p. 206). In general, McConnell argues that our obligations of gratitude can require quite specific actions when an appropriate opportunity to assist our benefactor arises. The political instantiation of this principle is that citizens have a specific duty of gratitude to obey the law because legal commands present each of us with a salient opportunity to express our gratitude. In short, to disobey our state’s legal commands after all that our country has done for us would be to display obvious and objectionable ingratitude.

In response to Simmons’s worries about having a debt of gratitude to an institution like the government, Walker offers a twofold response. First, he suggests that the gratitude is actually owed to our compatriots rather than to the government as such. In addition, he contests Simmons’s more general claim that an institution cannot be the object of gratitude. Walker concedes that we often feel grateful to particular individuals within an institution, but this does not preclude us from also feeling grateful toward the institution itself. If one has been treated for a number of ailments at a particular hospital, for instance, then one might well be grateful to that institution itself rather than merely appreciative of the particular doctors and nurses that helped one. McConnell echoes this reasoning and suggests that one might feel indebted to one’s alma mater even if those who made special efforts on one’s behalf have long since left the school or even if no one sacrificed anything substantial on one’s behalf while one was a student. Thus neither Walker nor McConnell worries that the institutional nature of states presents an insurmountable problem for the gratitude account of political obligation.

And finally, in response to the stringency objection, Walker counters that Klosko has mistaken the general diffuseness of obligations of gratitude for their lack of stringency. Specifically, Walker admits both that many obligations of gratitude do not require a specific action and that many such obligations may be easy to fulfill, but he emphasizes that this is distinct from how strongly the obligation holds. For example, one might have a very strong obligation to perform some relatively trivial chore that requires little sacrifice. Furthermore, even if it were true that obligations of gratitude are generally weak, this does not mean that none is strong. As Walker exclaims: "What may be true of obligations of gratitude in general is irrelevant; what matters is the status of the particular obligation of gratitude generated by the benefits citizens receive from the state" (Walker 1989, p. 363).

More could be said on behalf of both these objections and the responses, but I will leave these particular concerns to explore two new ones. In the remainder of this paper I will argue first that the coercion used to generate political benefits undermines any obligations of gratitude that these benefits might otherwise generate, and second, that no duties of gratitude exist because gratitude is better understood as a virtue than as a source of moral obligations.

2. Gratitude for Forced Benefits

Consider the following paradigmatic debt of gratitude imagined by Joel Feinberg:

Suppose that the now middle-aged Beneficiary decides that he would rather buy a new water-skiing boat than help his Benefactor. What do we make of Beneficiary’s behavior? Most of us are appalled by his ingratitude. Surely it is appropriate for Beneficiary to feel grateful to Benefactor and to express this gratitude by (at least!) helping Benefactor with his medical bills. Such behavior indicates that Beneficiary has an insufficient appreciation for Benefactor’s goodwill and an excessive concern for his own interests. In short, Beneficiary’s blatantly ungrateful behavior demonstrates a serious character flaw.

Now consider a variation on Feinberg’s story. Imagine Benefactor’s relationship with Beneficiary to be just as Feinberg describes it, except that Benefactor presents his "gift" in a somewhat different fashion. When Beneficiary gushes in appreciation of Benefactor’s generosity, the latter protests that such lavish praise is surely unwarranted. After all, the Benefactor explains, the gift can be thought of as an investment. In response to Beneficiary’s quizzical look, Benefactor explains that he has amassed his wealth because of his entrepreneurial risk taking and that this aggressive approach might very well ultimately leave him impoverished. In recognition of this, Benefactor has decided that it would be prudent to give a portion of his money to a younger person who might later be in a position to support him. Upon hearing this rationale, Beneficiary tries to decline the "gift." Unfortunately, Benefactor forces Beneficiary to "accept" the offer; whether or not he would like the financial help, Beneficiary must accept it and then help Benefactor in the future if necessary. What is more, Benefactor threatens to harm Beneficiary should the latter ever fail to come to the former’s rescue in the future. Benefactor expresses his regret that he must coerce Beneficiary into this arrangement, but he quickly adds that Beneficiary cannot rightfully complain since he is benefiting from the gift (insofar as he will be much better off financially regardless of whether he is called upon in the future). Even if this arrangement did not benefit Beneficiary, however, Benefactor would still require Beneficiary to accept the money for tuition since his real motivation for forcing the "gift" and the "debt" upon Beneficiary is Benefactor’s concern to secure his own future.

In light of my changes to Feinberg’s scenario, how should Beneficiary respond to Benefactor’s "gift"? (For the remainder of this section, I shall use "Beneficiary" and "Benefactor" to refer to the two principals in the second, amended scenario unless I explicitly specify my reference to Feinberg’s original.) How should Beneficiary feel? How is it appropriate for Beneficiary to act? Does Beneficiary have any special obligation to help Benefactor in the future? I doubt it, but the answer to this more general question is not crucial to us here. What is paramount is that, whether or not Beneficiary would have happily accepted Benefactor’s offer, he need neither feel grateful to Benefactor nor fulfill any obligation of gratitude toward him. Even if Benefactor benefited Beneficiary, he forced this benefit upon Beneficiary, and ultimately he did so in the name of his own security. Thus, regardless of whether or not Beneficiary wants the money for tuition and is grateful that he now need only help Benefactor as necessary, we think that Beneficiary owes Benefactor no debt of gratitude.

I presume that this much is uncontroversial: we do not blame Beneficiary for feeling no gratitude toward Benefactor for forcing the money upon him. I contend that the coercive nature of states similarly precludes citizens from incurring a debt of gratitude for the benefits of political society. Thus, our disgust with the ingratitude exhibited by Beneficiary in Feinberg’s initial story is no grounds for a gratitude theory of political obligation because a citizen receives political benefits in a fashion that is more akin to the manner in which Beneficiary receives the tuition from Benefactor in the second scenario. In short, the coercion of states undermines any debts of gratitude that might otherwise be created by the benefits these governments supply.

Although I am confident that no one would condemn Beneficiary for his lack of gratitude toward his Benefactor, a gratitude theorist is likely to question my analogy between Beneficiary and a citizen. In particular, one might protest that a citizen is importantly disanalogous to Beneficiary because the former is permissibly coerced. The reason that Beneficiary has no debt of gratitude to Benefactor, it may be suggested, is not merely because he was coerced, but because he was impermissibly coerced. According to this objection, not all coercion defeats debts of gratitude; only unjustified coercion does.

I acknowledge that not all coercion undermines the appropriateness of gratitude, and I concede that (some) states permissibly coerce their citizens, but I still contend that political benefits do not deserve gratitude. I suggest that a close study of the justification of political force reveals why citizens owe no debt of gratitude for the resulting benefits. To see this, we must revisit earlier discussions of gratitude for coerced benefits. Simmons considers two cases of forced benefits (pp. 175–76). In the first, a mad scientist imprisons and then benefits you with an experimental procedure, and in the second, your closest friend follows you around seizing alcohol from you for months until you are cured of your addiction. In both cases you benefit from being forced against your will. Simmons thinks that gratitude is owed only in the second instance and that the impermissibility of the mad scientist’s action is the best explanation for why no gratitude is due in the first example. McConnell concurs and applies this analysis to the benefits of political society by first adopting the condition that "The benefit must not be forced (unjustifiably) on the beneficiary against his will" and then quickly adding that "We have not discussed [this] condition here, but it seems clear that it can be satisfied in the relationship between citizens and the state" (McConnell, p. 202).

I concede that gratitude is not required for benefits generated from impermissible coercion, but I question whether gratitude is always appropriate whenever benefits are derived from permissible coercion. The key here is that, even if Simmons and McConnell are right that forced benefits need not be disqualified from deserving gratitude as long as the force is justified, the permissibility of coercion is just one of a number of necessary conditions, not a sufficient condition. Thus, even if political coercion permissibly creates benefits, it does not follow that these benefits generate a debt of gratitude. As I will argue below, when one examines why states are justified in coercing their citizens, it becomes clear that these citizens owe no debt of gratitude to their states.

Having looked more closely at what justifies political coercion, we are in a better position to see why the standard appeals to gratitude miss the mark. To appreciate this, recall our evaluations of Benefactor and Beneficiary. It is appropriate for the Beneficiary in Feinberg’s original example to feel grateful to his Benefactor because the latter spontaneously benefited the former out of goodwill. We do not blame Beneficiary for his lack of gratitude toward Benefactor in the second version, however, because, although Benefactor benefited Beneficiary in this instance too, he did so out of self-interest. For analogous reasons, a citizen has no debt of gratitude to her country because, although the state may be justified in forcing benefits upon her, the justification invokes the necessity of coercing all in order to benefit any rather than the goodwill that the state feels toward a particular unwilling subject. In short, since a state ultimately justifies its force by appealing to the importance of helping others, it is an inappropriate object of gratitude.

It is important to notice that I am not merely reiterating Simmons’s point that gratitude cannot form a solid foundation for a general theory of political obligation because those citizens who do not want the political benefits need not feel grateful. Certainly my analysis confirms this objection, but I am making a more sweeping claim here. Specifically, given that the state will coerce each of us whether or not we want to participate in the political cooperative, no citizen incurs a debt of gratitude since the state clearly lacks the benevolence and goodwill necessary to ground an obligation of gratitude. Just as we recognize that Beneficiary owes no moral debt to Benefactor even if Beneficiary would have voluntarily accepted the terms of Benefactor’s "gift," we must similarly conclude that even citizens who are happy to participate in their states do not have obligations of gratitude. Those who want the political benefits might be grateful that they have been included in their state, but they have no moral debt of gratitude for the benefits the state forces upon them. To emphasize: None of us owes a debt of gratitude to the state because, for each one of us, the state will coerce us, whether or not we will benefit, in order to secure essential benefits for our compatriots.

At this point a gratitude theorist might renew her objection to my comparison of the state to Benefactor by noting that not all citizens are unwillingly coerced and that some citizens do contribute to the state out of goodwill. After all, this objection continues, political benefits do not grow on trees; they are made possible only because of the collective sacrifices of citizens, and we owe gratitude to those citizens who happily sacrifice in order to help produce these political benefits. In short, one might try to salvage the theory by insisting that the proper object of gratitude is one’s compatriots, not the actual government. Indeed, the government consists only of people who are paid to convert our collective sacrifices into benefits; the real benefactors are those who make the initial sacrifices, our fellow citizens.

This move proves less promising than it initially appears, however, because the coercion of political society is relevant here as well. In particular, even if the average citizen sacrifices mightily for her government, she typically does so only to avoid legal sanction. We may be thankful that our compatriots have been forced to sacrifice for the collective good, but this does not mean that gratitude is owed to our fellow citizens. Just as I incur no moral debt toward a lifeguard who rescues me only because my mother holds a gun to the lifeguard’s head, there is nothing inappropriate about feeling no gratitude toward one who incidentally benefits you while pursuing her own interest. Therefore, since most citizens would not cooperate with the state unless they were threatened with punishment, they deserve no gratitude no matter how much we benefit from their forced sacrifices.

Here a gratitude theorist might object that I underestimate the number of people who would freely sacrifice to create the necessary political benefits. According to this line of reasoning, political coercion is not necessary to secure the benefits of political society because a sufficient proportion of people would sacrifice out of goodwill toward one another. Even if this claim were not unrealistically optimistic, however, it is self-defeating. The problem is that if political coercion is inessential to secure the requisite political benefits, then there is no justification for the nonconsensual force that states exert. And if political coercion is impermissible, then (as even proponents of the gratitude theory like McConnell admit) those who benefit from it owe no debt of gratitude.

A more promising move, I think, is to admit that most citizens obey the law out of self-interest but to speculate that some would sacrifice for their compatriots even if they were not coerced. This claim seems true, but its force is more limited than might appear at first glance. In particular, not everyone who would obey the laws in the absence of coercion deserves our gratitude; only those who do so out of a concern for their compatriots are owed gratitude. I suspect that the overwhelming majority of those who would obey the law in the absence of force would do so from a vague sense either that they had somehow consented to do so or that reciprocity demands that they do their part. I think that both of these motivations are confused, but we need not establish that here. The important point for our purposes is that any benefits we receive as a result of these sacrifices are incidental. Just like those who contribute only out of self-interest, those who do so from (confused) understandings of fidelity or reciprocity do not sacrifice out of goodwill toward us. And if so, then even the majority of those who would sacrifice in the absence of force are not owed a debt of gratitude.

Finally, notice that my worry is particularly damaging because my reasons for denying the appropriateness of gratitude are quite conservative. While some might object either that (1) one never owes gratitude for benefits that are forced upon one or (2) one owes no gratitude to a second party who has merely fulfilled a duty, I press neither of these claims. Instead, I suggest only that a person cannot deserve gratitude for an action unless she would freely do so out of concern for the person who is benefited. This slender requirement is fatal to the gratitude theory of political obligation because, although a state typically secures crucial benefits for all those within its territory, it does so by threatening to punish its self-interested constituents. Thus, although one might be quite grateful that one lives under a political regime rather than in the state of nature, it is not inappropriate to feel no gratitude to the overwhelming majority of one’s compatriots. If one ever came across a fellow citizen who cheerfully contributes to the country out of concern for the welfare of others, then one might owe this person a debt of gratitude, but this is quite different from each citizen having a general obligation to obey the laws of her state.

In sum, the coercion states employ to generate the benefits of a country place gratitude theorists on the horns of a dilemma. Advocates of this theory must posit a debt of gratitude either to one’s government or to one’s compatriots under this common government. The fact that a government may permissibly coerce us only because it produces vital benefits for our compatriots implies that we need not feel grateful to our government, and the fact that our compatriots are typically inspired to sacrifice only in order to avoid legal sanctions entails that they do not deserve our gratitude. In the end, my comparison between a citizen’s relationship to her state and Beneficiary’s relationship to Benefactor is both apt and revealing. Benefactor benefits Beneficiary, and a state benefits its citizens; but both force these benefits upon their subject, neither does so out of goodwill toward the party it forces, and thus neither deserves gratitude.

3. Gratitude as a Virtue

The first and most important reason to view gratitude in terms of virtue theory is that it best accords with our moral phenomenology. In particular, I think that the principal subject of our moral evaluation regarding gratitude is the agent rather than her action. To see this, consider Feinberg’s initial case involving the elderly Benefactor and the now middle-aged Beneficiary. If Beneficiary decides he would rather buy a new water-skiing boat than help Benefactor, we are right to be disgusted. But notice. Our dramatic disapproval is not because Beneficiary has failed to do his duty; instead, it is because his behavior reveals him to be a horribly self-centered person. Thus, we protest: "How can you care so little about the plight of your benefactor?" rather than "You must do your duty and help your benefactor whether you want to or not!" The point is that we are especially disturbed by what we learn about Beneficiary’s character. Put plainly, his actions reveal him to be excessively consumed with his own welfare and insufficiently interested in the welfare of a special person who has shown him an enormous amount of goodwill. Because we find this self-centeredness morally repugnant, we disapprove of Beneficiary.

Fred Berger’s excellent work in this area confirms my assertion that culpable ingratitude reflects badly upon a person because of what it reveals about her character. In his article, "Gratitude," Berger writes:

With this in mind, recall our disapproval of Feinberg’s initial Beneficiary for his decision to buy a new water-skiing boat instead of assisting his Benefactor. Given the goodwill Benefactor extended toward Beneficiary, we expect the latter to be moved by the former’s fellow-feeling and to want to reciprocate. We do not look for such reciprocity to come from a respect for moral requirements; rather, we anticipate that Beneficiary will naturally be inclined to take a more active interest in Benefactor’s well-being. The fact that Beneficiary decides against helping Benefactor in his time of need reveals disturbing things about Beneficiary’s character: (1) unimpressed with Benefactor’s expression of benevolence, he remains lamentably disinclined to respond in like fashion, and (2) he does not appropriately identify with Benefactor’s interests. There is room to disagree about the details, but clearly our discomfort arises because of what Beneficiary’s actions reveal about his character rather than because he disrespected moral rules that require a specific action. If this is correct, then our moral phenomenology provides our first and most telling reason to couch moral judgments concerning gratitude in terms of virtue theory rather than deontology.

Armed with this account of gratitude as a virtue, we can return to our principal concern—political obligation. The implications of my argument are clear: if there are no obligations of gratitude, then there can be no political obligations of gratitude. Thus, even if I am wrong to insist that citizens owe no debt of gratitude to their state, this is not enough to confirm the gratitude theory of political obligation. Because appropriate gratitude is a matter of virtue ethics rather than deontology, the moral appropriateness of a citizen expressing gratitude to her state does not constitute an obligation and it may not be enforced by third parties. As a consequence, even if we could explain why each citizen has a debt of gratitude to her government, we would still have to look elsewhere for a solid foundation upon which to build a plausible theory of political obligation.

Conclusion

Notes

1. I am grateful to Terrance McConnell and Carl Wellman for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

2. See Plato, Crito 48b–52d; J. S. Mill, On Liberty (London: Collins, 1979); W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930); and Richard Kraut, Socrates and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

3. For the purposes of this paper, I do not distinguish between duty and obligation.

4. A. John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 157–190, George Klosko, "Four Arguments Against Political Obligation from Gratitude," Public Affairs Quarterly 5 (1991): 33–48; and Klosko, "Political Obligation and Gratitude," Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989): 352–38.

5. A. D. M. Walker, "Political Obligation and the Argument from Gratitude," Philosophy and Public Affairs 17 (1988): 191–211; and "Obligations of Gratitude and Political Obligation," Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (1989): 359–364; and Terrance McConnell, Gratitude (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 180–208.

6. Joel Feinberg, "Civil Disobedience in the Modern World," reprinted in Philosophy of Law, third ed., ed. Joel Feinberg and Hyman Gross (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1986), pp. 136–7.

7. See my article, "Liberalism, Samaritanism, and Political Legitimacy," Philosophy and Public Affairs 25, no. 3 (1996): 211–37.

8. My essay, "Gratitude as a Virtue," forthcoming in Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, is dedicated entirely to this thesis. Given the present paper’s focus on political obligation, I will merely sketch briefly a few of the arguments I develop at greater length there.

9. H. L. A. Hart, "Are There Any Natural Rights?" reprinted in Political Philosophy, ed. Anthony Quinton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 56n.

10. Fred Berger, "Gratitude," Ethics 85 (1975): 305.

11. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 47–8.