Our Obligations from Gratitude
Human interaction is usually divided into two categories, duties and obligations. Obligations are the type of actions that involve repayment of a debt (debts that we have acquired through a voluntary act), and duties are actions that we are required to do, either because we accepted them as part of a positional role (and hence positional duties) or we have them because of our human condition (our natural or moral duties). It is in the interest of governments that their subjects have a muddied view of their obligations and duties, and for this reason they often blur these concepts. This is done surprisingly well by confusing the notions of gratitude and natural duties and the obligations and duties each one entails. The end result is that the common man will perform acts of obedience to his government thinking that he is fulfilling an obligation of gratitude when in reality there is no such obligation he is bound to fulfill.
Let us begin to clear the “mud” so that we can better understand this distinction between obligations of gratitude and political obligations as the theory of gratitude sees them. To do this, we must look at a theory of gratitude and understand under what conditions such an obligation of gratitude is generated. Simmons does a nice job of setting up what this theory would look like. He provides us with five conditions that, while necessary, are not a fully sufficient account of obligation from gratitude, but do a good job of laying out the conditions under which a debt of gratitude would be generated. The conditions are as follows:
“1. The benefit must be granted by means of some special effort or sacrifice.
2. The benefit must not be granted unintentionally, involuntarily, or for disqualifying reasons.
3. The benefit must not be forced (unjustifiably) on the beneficiary against his will.
4. The beneficiary must want the benefit, or, 4a, it must be the case that the beneficiary would want the benefit if certain impairing conditions were corrected.
5. The beneficiary must not want the benefit not to be provided by the benefactor, or, 5a, it must be the case that the beneficiary would not want the benefit not to be provided by the benefactor if certain impairing conditions were corrected.” (178, 179)
The benefit that these five points mention refer to the deed that the benefactor does which then generates a debt of gratitude in the beneficiary.
If the act in question does indeed fulfill these five restrictions then it is likely that an obligation of gratitude is generated. However, there are some cases in which simply meeting these five requirements would obviously not generate such a debt. These are few, but worth noting so that we are clear about what they are. Simmons constructs a very general example to demonstrate this oddity. In it a man is part of an organization whose aim is to raise money and then distribute an equal (or fair) share to all of its members. The man has the right to his fair share of the money and the treasurer of the organization has the (positional) duty to pay the man his fair share. But we would never think that in the fulfillment of this transaction any type of further duty or obligation is generated (be it from gratitude or anything else) because all obligations and duties have been carried out and no one has gone out of his or her way to help someone.
In the above case it should be noted that the duty that the treasurer fulfilled was a positional duty and it did not generate an obligation of gratitude. This is not just an interesting coincidence, but it is a rather important distinction Simmons makes about the gratitude theory. When someone is executing a positional duty it does not generate any further obligations because it is merely the carrying out of previous obligations the executor volunteered upon himself. So, it may be the case that the benefactor went out of his way to give another member of the organization his fair share, but his going out of his way was required by his positional duties, and therefore does not qualify it as an action that would generate an obligation of gratitude.
So then, there are indeed cases where the fulfilling of our duties satisfies the five requirements but does not generate an obligation of gratitude. But when does the fulfillment of a duty that satisfies these requirements generate such a debt? According to Simmons this scenario is actually more common, and in fact most actions that generate obligations of gratitude are actions that fulfill some other duty or obligation:
“I believe that duty-meeting or obligation-meeting conduct can (under certain conditions) generate debts of gratitude…the most common sorts of cases in which considerations of gratitude are involved are precisely cases where the benefactor has a duty to grant the benefits in question…In helping someone in need, we will normally be doing our duty (although we may of course do more than our duty, or less than our duty): the duty to help those in need. But these seem to be just the sorts of cases in which we think a debt of gratitude is owed to the benefactor.” (179)
I do not believe that it is hard for any of us to imagine a scenario that satisfies the five requirements and where the beneficiary would be then indebted to the benefactor. Let us say that Seth has fallen ill and needs to get medicine from the drugstore down the street. But he is too sick to walk down the street and get the medicine he needs and his friend James volunteers to go get the medicine for him. This action satisfies all of our five requirements: James is intentionally going out of his way and making a sacrifice to go get Seth the medication he requires. (If there is a question of whether or not it is really a sacrifice to make a 20 minute walk to the drugstore, let us assume that it is during the latter part of some big sporting event on TV which James is watching, yet he choices to go to the drugstore anyway.) Seth definitely wants the benefit (and it is not being forced on him) and there is no reason to believe that he would not want the benefit to not be given to him by James. In this case, we would say that Seth owes James a debt of gratitude (presumably in the form of some action or type of reimbursement). It is important to note that James has fulfilled a duty like the treasurer in our last example. However, in this case it is not a positional duty that has been fulfilled (at least we will assume that James is not the volunteered house/hall nurse and it was not his positional duty to go to the drug store). What James has fulfilled here is his natural (moral) duty to help those in need.
We have explored both a case of the five requirements being met and no obligation of gratitude being generated, and a case of the five requirements being met and an obligation of gratitude being generated which we would expect to be repaid in the form of an action. What we have yet to consider is a case where the five requirements are met and an obligation is generated and yet the reimbursement expected for said debt is less than an action. Let’s say that the next day while Seth is still in bed sick, he has an assignment due for a class, and it must be turned in (in person, not by email) or else he fails the assignment. So, James once again volunteers and takes the paper to Seth’s class. Just as last time James has fulfilled all five requirements to generate an obligation of gratitude, but is it on the same level as getting a person medicine? The assignment is not as critical as the medicine; Seth would receive a less than desirable grade for the work, but it is not as if his college career rests on one homework assignment, and the medicine is a much more dire situation. But would we think that Seth owes his friend no debt of gratitude for his action? Most certainly not, yet we would be willing to say that the debt generated from the assignment is considerably less than that generated by the medicine. We would even be reasonable in saying that the debt from the assignment could be paid by simply feeling grateful, and expressing that gratitude. (Where we would be sensible to expect more than a mere expression of gratitude for missing the critical final moments of a sporting game to walk down the street to pick up medicine; say a few beers at the local pub, or a lunch at the café.)
What we should note from the above account is that the actions that generate the strongest debts of gratitude are fulfillments of moral duties. This is important to consider, and we will revisit this idea shortly.
Having laid out a general theory of obligation from gratitude we can reasonably conclude whether an action should generate an obligation of gratitude and in what form the debt should be repaid (be it through action or feeling). So, if we were to try to make an account of political obligation from a theory of gratitude, which direction should we go? To figure this out, we should define what a political obligation is (for we have already found out what actions generate obligations of gratitude and what magnitude these debts are likely to be of).
Simmons makes an important distinction between the two:
“[The gratitude account of political obligation] must…show that the content of these debts [that is to say the actions required by the debt] is such that we will be willing to call them political obligations… if political obligation is to include supporting the government and obeying the law, the obligation would require a very specific performance, namely obedience.” (185)
Another way of looking at this requirement Simmons has pointed out is to say that a political obligation is an obligation we have to act in a certain way. (167) I think then that we would be reasonable to think that the direction we should go then is the second account we looked at earlier; the account that fulfilled the five requirements to generate an obligation of gratitude which suggested that the debt be repaid in the form of an action. (This was the fulfillment of our moral duties.) It would seem then that if we are to make a case that obligations of gratitude can generate political obligations then we are to make the case that the fulfillment of moral duties by the government will generate obligations of gratitude toward the government.
This is not as simple as it sounds though. The obvious question that arises is this: “Are the actions that the government carries out actions required by moral duties or positional duties?” (For our case that gratitude can generate political obligations we would need for these actions to be the fulfillment of moral duties.) And then, “If they are the fulfillment of moral duties, do they meet the five requirement and as a result generate an obligation of duty which is to be repaid in the form of an action?”
We will start our dissection of these questions with the first query. To answer the question of the nature of the government’s actions, we have to look at the origin of positional duties, the origin of natural duties, and the structure of the government that is carrying out these actions. Positional duties are duties that an individual takes upon himself or herself when they voluntarily step into a role to which those duties are tied. Natural duties on the other hand are duties that every man has toward every other man because of the mere fact he is a human being. However, these two duties can overlap. For an example of this, let us look at a doctor. Every human has the moral duty to help those in need. A doctor also has the positional duty to help those in need. So, if a doctor treats a patient, is an obligation of gratitude generated?
The answer to that question can be found by looking at the context in which the doctor treats the patient. If the doctor was on vacation at the beach with his family, and while strolling across the sand with his wife he happened upon a child who has been stung by a jellyfish (and thus in need of help) then the doctor has the moral duty to help the child because he knows what type of care the kid needs and he is able to provide it. The doctor has gone out of his way to help the kid (let us say that he and his spouse were on their way to a fancy dinner and by stopping and helping the kid they were late or missed their reservation) and has satisfied the other requirements to generate an obligation of gratitude. In such case we would expect that the child now has a debt of gratitude to the doctor (he has made the doctor miss his special dinner he had planned for his wife) and it would not be unthinkable for the doctor to expect more than a simple “thank-you” from the child (let us suppose he is a teenage to make the case simpler).
Now on the other hand, let us look at the same case only this time let’s place the doctor in his office, on duty, with the sole aim of waiting to help those that come into his clinic and expecting them to pay him. And let us suppose that the same teenager this time has broken his arm, and pays a visit to the doctor. Do we expect a debt of gratitude to be generated from this occasion? It is not unreasonable to think that the child could express some form of gratitude, some feeling of gratitude because the doctor knows what he is doing and is able to help the patient. But to say that an obligation of gratitude is generated is going too far. For one, this scenario violates at least two of the five requirements we set out at the start of our discussion. There are disqualifying reasons here that discredit any claim that an obligation of gratitude is generated. Namely that the doctor is performing these benefits so that he can be paid and make a living, and it is not as if he is only charging the patient what it cost the doctor perform the benefit; the doctor is making a profit (and a very nice profit in some cases). But beyond that, the doctor is making no sacrifice to perform this benefit; he is sitting in his office all day precisely for the reason of having people come to him for his services. So right off the bat this case violate the first two requirements we set in place for the generation of an obligation of gratitude.
If we look at this example and replace the doctor with the government, we will see that the government too does not perform moral duties when they act, but instead they simply perform the positional duties that they put themselves in the position to perform (in other words they are not going out of their way because that is precisely the reason they exist in the first place.)
It would seem then that the government is by nature incapable of fulfilling moral duties. But, for the sake of furthering the argument, assuming that the actions the government undertakes are those that fulfill moral duties, do they meet the five requirements in place so that they would generate an obligation of gratitude? The easiest place to start to look for a kink in the system is with the first requirement laid out by Simmons. For this we can look back at our earlier example. If an act is to generate an obligation of gratitude, the benefactor must go out of their way and make a significant sacrifice to grant the benefit. Is this something that a government can do? (Can the government go out of its way for an individual?) Surely we could think of an outlandish example where this may be the case, but let’s think instead of what the likely case would be, that of the government helping an individual, presumably in some financial way. Is this a sacrifice to the government? Simmons seems to think that it is not:
“[S]urely, any ‘sacrifice’ which the government makes for me is a very small one. The expense involved in extending the benefits of government to one additional person must be negligible at best.”(189)
We must agree with Simmons here. Not only is the government in control of a large amount of money, they get that money from taxing the very people that they would then extend said benefits to. This does not seem to meet the first requirement we have set. So then, is the theory of obligations of gratitude a satisfactory account of political obligation? I trust that we would be right in concluding that it is not.
We can see that if a government provides a benefit that is part of its description then it is the fulfillment of a positional duty, and thus does not produce an obligation of gratitude. For if the president runs the country, we may be thankful that he is doing his job, but we are not obligated to show our gratitude, simply because it is his (positional) duty to run the country. And, if someone goes above and beyond his or her positional duties to help someone in need, which by doing so generates an obligation of gratitude that is to be repaid by an action, then we are obligated to them, not the governmental office they reside in. Thus we have shown that the gratitude theory is not a sufficient account of political obligation, but of obligation out of gratitude to an individual person that is generated by fulfilling their moral duties to others.
