Q&A: Philosophical Gratitude
Philosophical Gratitude
Question
Have a good week.
I am unable to understand why the claim of “philosophical gratitude,” as the Rabbi presents it in the fifth notebook, does not suffer from the naturalistic fallacy. After all, it derives a value judgment (gratitude) from a fact (an ontological relation between God and us).
Also, why does the Rabbi see a need to ground our religious obligation in gratitude, even if philosophical, and not as he grounds our moral obligation (in “loaded” rather than neutral facts)?
Answer
And what about ordinary moral gratitude? There too you derive a moral obligation from a fact (that someone has done you a favor). There is a confusion here between levels. Moral obligations are almost always connected to facts. The naturalistic fallacy only says that facts alone are not enough to derive a moral obligation. For example, if some action of mine causes pain to a certain person, I am forbidden to do it. There you have an obligation based on a fact. But the mere fact that the action causes pain is not enough to derive the obligation. One must add a bridging assumption that it is forbidden to cause pain to a person.
Discussion on Answer
That if someone created me and I act and exist by his power, then I have an obligation to obey him.
Rabbi Michi,
Why assume that if someone created me, I must obey him? Is this a basic assumption, or does it have some prior basis?
It is an assumption that seems reasonable to me and to many others. See my article on the matter:
And is gratitude of this kind so great that I would give up my life for the commandments?
This is comprehensive gratitude. Not a response to someone who did something good for me, but to someone who is responsible for my entire existence and for the very fact that I function. If people are willing to give up their lives for a people, a state, or a land, I do not see why they would not be willing to do so for God.
But of course each person should ask himself that. I have no criteria or rules for measuring the extent of gratitude. If the gratitude you feel does not go that far, then apparently you will not give up your life.
One can add that the service of God is also based on recognizing the Holy One, blessed be He’s superiority and importance. One can think of a case that illustrates this. For example, if a person faces a dilemma in which he is offered one of two options: either we kill you, or we kill a million people you do not know. Seemingly, from the moral side, a person has no obligation to give up his life for the lives of others (“your life takes precedence”). But still, it seems to me that the proper act is to give up your life in such a situation, because the lives of a million people are far more important than your life. And one could seemingly object: regarding those million people, you have neither ordinary gratitude nor ontological gratitude toward them (that is, they did not create you), and yet there is still a sense of normative obligation toward them. The same is true toward the Holy One, blessed be He: even without ordinary or ontological gratitude toward Him, through recognition of His importance and superiority, we understand that it is proper to fulfill His will even where it conflicts with our own will, and even if it takes our life.
So what is the assumption that bridges between the fact (the ontological relation between God and us) and the value judgment (that we are obligated to keep His commandments)?