Q&A: Ontic Gratitude
Ontic Gratitude
Question
With God's help,
Hello,
I wanted to ask: is your concept of ontic gratitude part of morality? Or is it more of an expansion meant to make room also for religious values such as the worship of the Creator? Seemingly, the source of all values is God, and if so it would appear that even the understanding that one ought to show gratitude in such a case is derived from that. But still.
Answer
I'm not sure I understood the question. The obligation of ontic gratitude is not part of morality. That is all I argued here. In the end I even suggested the opposite: that moral gratitude is a particular kind of ontic gratitude.
And indeed, I think the source of all values is the Holy One, blessed be He, both moral values and religious values.
From here, we should discuss the very obligation toward Him, which seemingly originates in ontic gratitude, but the source of that too is the Holy One, blessed be He. And the question why one should obey norms whose source is Him gets an easier answer, because His very existence obligates this. Seemingly there is a kind of loop here, but I don't think that is problematic. There is always the question: even if the reason for upholding values is X, what is the reason to obey X?
I think the obligation to fulfill God's commandments is the fundamental one. Ontic gratitude is a derived obligation, because that itself is a commandment of God. Ontic gratitude is directed toward anyone who created me, including parents, but it is true that it can also be applied in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed there is no fundamental difference. Both are God's will, except that one is more understandable and clearer to us in our intuition.
Thanks, but if so, why do we need the categorical division? Just because that's how it is, right? Isn't there an issue of Occam's razor, where it would be simpler to assume only a command rather than needing the intermediate springboard of gratitude?
I don't need it; I simply think it's true. Occam's razor is used when you don't have a substantive position of your own.
It simply doesn't seem plausible to me to explain ordinary Jewish laws in moral terminology. It isn't related to that, and at times it even contradicts it.
If I may ask, then where exactly is the distinction between a moral obligation and a religious value, of which the first is ontic gratitude? It seems like this is a categorical division, but not necessarily an essential one, because everything signifies God's will or something like that. And in general, why invoke ontic gratitude at all and not just say directly that God commanded it?