Q&A: Gratitude Toward the Creator | Moral or Philosophical
Gratitude Toward the Creator | Moral or Philosophical
Question
Hello to the honored Rabbi,
In your article about gratitude as moral and logical (in Talelei Orot and here on the site), you presented strong difficulties with the whole idea of gratitude toward the Creator, and proposed a wonderful new approach. In order to get to my point, let me briefly summarize, hoping you’ll correct me if I misunderstood:
First of all, you raised a moral difficulty: after all, He is the One who wanted to create us, and He also creates our deficiencies, so He is simply giving us what we lack without any effort on His part; and in principle, it would have been better for a person not to have been created. And then philosophically, by analogy to wrongful birth and so on, gratitude applies when I lacked something and now the giver supplied it to me, whereas with regard to God, He gave me my entire very self, and so on.
You tried to propose a notion of philosophical gratitude, one that is not connected to effort or to any specific benefit, but is rather a function of the very ontological bond between the creature and its Creator. Of course this is not the simple meaning in Duties of the Heart and other medieval authorities, but one can accept this understanding, which removes the difficulties. But at that point we already need an explanation of what this strange gratitude actually means. Precisely on this point, which is the main difficulty that requires explanation, you wrote that it is hard to answer such questions, and that one can point to a similar intuition in other contexts, such as the rights or obligations of children who received nothing from their parents, and you linked this to copyright in an attempt to infer that the creation itself has obligations toward its creator. This is a higher level of gratitude toward parents, unrelated to the good they did or did not bestow, but rather because I am their product.
When you tried to discuss the connection between the morality of gratitude and a logical obligation derived from a fact (that I am a product of God), you investigated whether philosophical gratitude obligates obedience (to the Holy One, blessed be He, and to parents), because if He created me then He can also instruct me what to do, unlike moral gratitude, which obligates repaying good but does not obligate obedience. If so, these are two types; or perhaps the difference is one of intensity, such that gratitude for existence itself obligates more strongly, and therefore an obligation of obedience is derived from it.
You seemed to incline toward the second side and gave the explanation that in gratitude, the giver has placed something in me, for which I am obligated to repay him with good; and, as Rabbi Hutner explained, this is a kind of subordination to the giver. Accordingly, the ontological-philosophical foundation is the more important and basic element in the obligation of gratitude, including moral gratitude. That makes it easier to understand what that gratitude is which obligates us to obey the Creator even though it is philosophical in nature.
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So first of all, most of the article captivated me and solved problems for me, and already back when I presented you with difficult personal questions and you referred me to this article, it helped me enormously. But for me the main troubling issue is: what is this obligation of gratitude that binds us to the commandments? You wrote much more forcefully that this is an ontological obligation and not a classic moral one, but you explained much more weakly what that obligation actually means. I have a hard time with the attempt to create an intuition that does not exist out of an intuition about honoring parents and about copyright.
I also do not understand why you took philosophical gratitude to be a stronger version of moral gratitude, and therefore something that obligates obedience. In the end, from a moral standpoint, the ontological good is less than the moral good, for it would have been better for me not to have been created, and right now I’m just eating dirt here; this is not a good for me. Period. I have no problem, then, observing commandments because I am obligated, because I accepted the yoke of Torah at Mount Sinai [or because I am part of a community that accepted it upon itself, as we discussed elsewhere], or because of other obligations. But I cannot accept that this is an obligation of gratitude or anything like it. Still, we need to understand the words of the medieval authorities, who base the obligations of the commandments on the foundation of gratitude, and for that I have no explanation.
Second, there is a different and more specific discussion [not a collective one regarding all the commandments]: the obligation to thank God. We thank Him in every prayer in a special blessing, and on countless other occasions we thank and praise Him for all the good. Suppose we have grounded the obligation of obedience in the above moral obligation, but from there to thanking Him for our eyes and mouth and health and livelihood—we are back to all the difficulties you presented at the beginning of the article. Again, this does not concern my obedience or observance of the commandments; there I have “found another source” for my obligations. This concerns the specific point of thanking God, and on this issue I find it very difficult to thank Him in a sincere and truthful way.
I once explained my intention to you at great length, and this is not the place to expand again [one of the arguments was that to say thank You to the Holy One, blessed be He, that I am not blind is ridiculous, because if He put me in a world where the norm is to see, then naturally He should make me a seeing person; otherwise He is cruel. And if anything here requires attention, it is from the side of the blind person who received a great “punishment” here, and the question is about him and not about me. Of course this is a matter of faith / belief, etc., but toward me, the “normal” one, there is no claim. I understand that one can praise the Creator for the wondrous creation of the eye, but not as personal thanks. Someone who gives thanks for the fact that he is not blind is like someone thanking a great robber for not killing him or wounding him. Heaven forbid that this is how we should relate to God. Likewise, I wrote to you that I am prepared to give thanks for benefits that go beyond the norm, that are not self-evident, although even those are offset by unusual troubles…].
In short, I would be glad for a sharper clarification of the philosophical-ontological obligation as a kind of gratitude. And I would also be glad for help in understanding the idea of thanking God.
With great admiration and appreciation
Answer
First of all, no admiration please.
As for what you wrote, it is hard to explain intuitions. If you don’t have it—then you don’t.
The thanksgiving in prayer is not connected to what I wrote, because if you receive something, you have to thank for it. That is not the same issue as general gratitude for life and everything in it.
Discussion on Answer
You are making a fundamental mistake. A logical argument is always based on premises. And where do those come from? From intuition (if you like, call it emotions and gut feelings). So everything begins with intuitions, and only from there does logic begin. All one can do regarding premises is illustrate the intuition, and if a person does not find it within himself, then maybe he does not have it.
Gratitude to someone for something he gives you is, again, a simple moral intuition. Like toward parents. I didn’t ask them either, and still, if they give me something, I feel gratitude toward them. Even for ordinary things.
Indeed. But already in your article you twisted yourself up trying to illustrate the intuition, because there are several differences between the examples and our issue. I have no problem with intuition toward parents and the like, and though let another praise you and not your own mouth, for present purposes I’ll say that I too am moral in the classic sense of gratitude, and this is definitely a healthy intuition. So the failure is not in the premises but in the analogy between moral gratitude and philosophical-ontological gratitude. I am only asking to sharpen the analogy. Does intuition really say that I should give up so quickly?
If a person builds a building in front of my window and then makes the house open enough so I can still see the view despite his annoying building, I wouldn’t thank him for that. If God created me against my will and keeps me alive at a tolerable level, one day honey and one day onions, why should I thank Him?
Let me sharpen it a bit more. We can picture two cases of receiving a benefit. Case A: a person gave me bread and milk. The intuition is completely clear: I feel a moral emotion of gratitude toward him. Case B: a person took me against my will to a closed hotel, and he provides me with full room and board, everything I need. As far as I’m concerned, I give up all the pleasure, and I would even prefer not to need his favors and whims. Here I no longer have an intuition of gratitude; the fact that he gives me all my needs is because he still has some humanity left in him and understands that he cannot imprison a person and abuse him without providing his needs. It is not at all simple to thank him for not being cruel.
Now we ask what our feeling is toward God. You argued, in my opinion rather too easily, by analogy, that our relation to God is like Case A, and even a deeper expansion of that case. He gave me my whole life, and therefore this is a more intense gratitude that even obligates obedience. In this way you beautifully solve all the difficulties, but I am trying to understand better why it is so clear to you that this resembles Case A and not Case B.
As for your argument about intuition, surely it is obvious that intuition can be acquired. Parents develop healthy intuition in a child, and someone who grows up in a corrupt environment, for example, will not acquire moral intuition. Do you really think that someone who does not find moral intuition within himself has no chance of connecting to the idea, understanding it, and developing such an intuition within himself?
I know people who grew up in an easygoing and happy home that always looks at the half-full cup; life is wholesome, beautiful, and shining, and creation sings. These people intuitively feel emotions of thanks toward the Creator. I have no doubt that for them this is genuine and true. But a person who grew up in a bitter home of hard-pressed people does not see life as the most successful creation, and his intuition in most periods does not pull him toward feelings of gratitude. Does that latter person have no possibility of connecting to the content of the whole system of thanking God that accompanies the religious person at every point in his religious life?
You keep assuming that a reasonable person would prefer not to have been created. That is why you illustrate it through someone who builds a wall in front of my living room. The comparison is obviously very poor. If specifically there is a person whose life is bad, one could perhaps discuss it, and I also wrote about that—that it affects moral gratitude, not ontic gratitude. But if a person’s life is okay, then he should give thanks for what he received.
I’m done.
As I wrote, it makes sense that someone who feels that everything is good and beautiful—and perhaps that is most people—has excellent and genuine thanksgiving. But there are all kinds. As for those who do not see life on earth as such a great bargain, even though they usually try to contain it and at least enjoy life—do they also need to thank for these benefits?
You again add that this affects moral gratitude and not ontic gratitude, but you built the whole foundation of ontic gratitude on the assumption that it is an extension of moral gratitude, so if there is no morality here, there is no ontology either.
Sorry if I wore you out. Please give it one more chance. This is really important to me, and I wrestle with these questions morning, noon, and night. Maybe others will come and lend a hand too.
I do not understand what the discussion is about, so I do not know how I can help you. I explained what I had to explain, and everything seems simple and clear to me.
[Admiration is a kind of emotion, like intuition, that’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t get it.]
So with one sentence you dismiss the question? After all, even in your article you didn’t really manage to explain that intuition; you only tried to infer it from other intuitions. Let’s leave aside the point that an intuition that needs to be explained or whose existence must be proved is not really an intuition. But what does “if you don’t have it—then you don’t” mean? It seems to me that what always draws me to you is that you explain everything mathematically, without emotions and gut feelings. Is it really the case that if “I don’t have it,” I should just throw up my hands?
True, I separated out the matter of thanksgiving in prayer, but the difficulties at the beginning of your article are certainly connected to this as well. So then, why should I thank Him for my life, which is entrusted to His hand, and for my soul, which is deposited with Him? I never asked for this. As I wrote, if I were to win the lottery or get a sought-after and rare job, I’m prepared to understand. But just like that, for ordinary and normal things—why?