Q&A: The Validity of 'Philosophical Gratitude'
The Validity of 'Philosophical Gratitude'
Question
According to your view that morality cannot be valid on its own unless it receives validity from God, I do not understand your position regarding 'philosophical gratitude' as the basis for the obligation to obey the Holy One, blessed be He. After all, the obligation to feel gratitude, even of the sort of philosophical gratitude, is an ethical-moral obligation. If so, how can this obligation be valid if it itself is what gives validity to the obligation to obey the Holy One, blessed be He? It cannot be that the validity of the obligation of gratitude comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, because then it would not be clear what gives validity to obeying the Holy One, blessed be He, since according to your view that validity stems from the obligation of gratitude. On the other hand, it also cannot be that the obligation of gratitude is a normative axiom that needs no validity from the Holy One, blessed be He, since according to your view moral norms cannot have validity unless they receive validity from the Holy One, blessed be He.
And if, after all, you mean that the obligation of gratitude has a validity that stands on its own without needing the Holy One, blessed be He, to grant it validity, then I do not understand why we should not say the same regarding the rest of the moral norms—that they too are valid without needing the Holy One, blessed be He, to grant them validity.
Answer
There is an obligation to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, simply by virtue of the fact that He created us. This is philosophical gratitude. My whole claim is that this is not a moral principle but an ontic one.
But how does that solve the naturalistic fallacy (the is-ought problem)? After all, the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, created us is a fact about reality, so how can one derive from that a normative obligation to obey the Creator? And if this is simply an axiomatic normative obligation that is clear to everyone, then by the same token one could say the same about moral principles—that they too are axiomatic normative obligations that are clear to everyone.