There is certainly a level of obligation that parents have with their children, and meeting only that bottom line holds no requirements for gratitude from child to parent. However, when parents go above and beyond that minimum requirement, which I would hold to be almost neglectfully low, then there is a cause for gratitude from child to parent. Do they owe the parent gratitude? Well, maybe. But then if we say that we are entitling parents to something. I would say that children should be grateful when well taken care of, but they are not morally obligated to be grateful.

That's very interesting, Emily, thank you! I take your argument to be that if children "owe" their parents gratitude, then they are morally obligated to be grateful to them (or act in a way that expresses their gratitude), and if they are morally obligated to show gratitude, then their parents must be entitled to it, but since one cannot be entitled to gratitude, children cannot be morally obligated to be grateful to their parents and hence cannot owe gratitude to their parents. But is "owing" gratitude really the same as being "morally obligated" to it? And is it obvious that one cannot be entitled to gratitude? It seems that you want to distinguish moral obligation in the strict sense from something else that can, however, also be expressed by using the word "should". So children "should" be grateful, but they have no moral obligation to be. But what exactly do we then mean by "should"?

What I mean by should is that it would be virtuous for a child to have or show gratitude. However, if a child doesn't I suppose it would be non-virtuous, but not necessarily blame worthy. I suppose the basis for my belief in this is that a child's gratitude and appreciation has to be earned as much as any other human beings. In fact, I imagine it would be easier to gain a child's gratitude, so if it not received it is very likely that it was not earned.

But think of famous literary examples of filial gratitude such as Regan and Goneril in Shakespeare's King Lear, or the two daughters of Balzac's Pere Goriot. In both cases the father gives his daughters everything and once he hasn't anything left to give is treated with disrespect, even disdain. Their behaviour, however, does seem to be worse than merely "non-virtuous". It's not that they are simply not very nice, but rather that they violate one of the most basic duties of all.

I took the weekend to consider your point. Although I believe it is a very good point, I do not believe that it provides a real challenge for mine. I retain my previous opinion that being ungrateful in non-virtuous; despite your compelling examples.

On another note, you could argue that non-maleficence or beneficence is a basic principle or duty that every person must adhere to. In that case you could argue that the child lack of gratitude is instead a form of maleficence, and therefore a violation of a duty. But as it is, I continue to believe otherwise.

Hi Michael,

I wonder what sort of monster would willingly bring children into the world. Ask someone why they want children and the most truthful answer is: 'I don't want to die alone,' or 'I want to continue the lineage' -- meaning that reproduction is not about life but death. I didn't mean to bring my child into the world, but I've have been acting out of guilt ever since. Parents know the world into which they bring unknowing children. If there is an obligation, it begins with the obligation to the innocent (unknowing) which attends knowledge.

How can you assume virtue? Even if you don't accept that the generousity of parents is guilt-based, you have to factor in the force of social obligation and that stupid mechanism by which helpless newborns appear adorable to us. If not guilt, then a cognitive dissonance arising from the fact that that newborn which appeared so cute turns out rather dull and awkward like all humans. And like all humans they must suffer through life's uncertainties and finally die alone unless they shanghai another soul onto the planet, and so on....and we the parents are responsible.... ooops, back to guilt!

I realise that no-one wants to think this way, but when you are considering a lack of filial piety in modernity, you also need to consider how modernity brings that lack into being. (We can see the disappearance of filial piety in modernising China where their most virtuous government recently saw fit to make visiting elderly parents a legal obligation). So if modernity is central to the discussion, we need also think of reproduction as reproducing into the current trajectory of modernity. That is: do children born into a confluence of the greenhouse effects, global overpopulation, and food insecurity (independent of global warming) owe their parents gratitude?

I would argue that we do not owe gratitude for life alone. The child who emerges from the womb is not the creation of the parent. Mother and father have merely given an act of passion/love that has resulted in a pregnancy. In Aristotelian terms that "gift" is not unlike his acorn, the entelechy of which is a full grown oak. Gratitude is not owed for the mere act of conceiving and delivering. Gratitude is owed for giving birth and then seeking to help that life attain its own inherent entelechy. When we can say that parents have sought to help me become all that I could be, to the degree that they could, given their own capabilities, then gratitude is owed. The gratitude is pointed towards a good will and an assumption of the duties and sacrifices necessary to see this "acorn" make its way towards full maturity.

I think what I was wondering was whether parents had in fact, by conceiving and giving birth to them, incurred a duty to give their children what they need to grow up, and whether, if there is such a parental duty, children still owe gratitude to their parents. Do we owe gratitude to someone who only does what they are duty-bound to do?

As to your first question, at least in terms of positive law, it would appear that human beings have always and everywhere affirmed a positive answer to that. For instance, Article Six of the German Constitution says, "The care and education of children are the natural rights of the parents and are incumbent on them as their first and foremost duty."

As to the second, I think when dealing in the human (and not in the theoretical alone) we do not consider answering to duty alone praiseworthy. Duty is, in a sense, the "safety net" underneath the "good will" I mentioned above. If I give my wife flowers because I consider it my duty and she knows it, something is diminished in my gift. If I give them because I love her and that love includes a sense of duty then the act is appreciated much more than it would have been were it motivated by duty alone.

Along these lines see especially Michael Stocker, “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories” - Stocker, M. 1976, “The schizophrenia of modern ethical theories”, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 73, no. 14, pp. 453-466.

The abovementioned article is available here:

http://zoionpolitikon.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/michael-stocker-1976.pdf

See especially pages 462-464.

The duty of parents to nurture their children they brought to this world does not elimate the excercise of freewill, the act of nurturing taken as a collective term is a deliberate human act, meaning it was a free decision to do so, even if "taken cared of" is a right of a child, the decision to care on the part of the parents remains free and as such, in my humble opinion, we do owe a debt of gratitude for our parents, because they can leave and not nurture us if they have wanted to.

But that seems to imply that we always have to be grateful when we receive someothing from someone even if it is rightfully ours. So if I pay you for something and you give me what I have paid for, then I ought to be grateful that you didn't just run with my money without giving me anything in exchange. Equally I should be grateful to the burglar who does not burgle my house, because even though it is his duty to leave my stuff alone (and my right to not have it taken from me), the burglar clearly "exercises his free will" when he decides not to rob me and hence, according to your argument, I owe him gratitude. Isn't that a rather absurd implication?

Michael, I think you are correct. These answers are all beginning to pivot on 'free will,' generally a problematic notion but in the case of parenthood even more so, and in the case of the offspring dubious indeed. I'd say that the absurdity in the previous answer is firstly the absurdity of free will. Perhaps it is the illusion of free will that brings this question into being in the first place -- that is, in the dissonance between the child's unconscious recognition of an externally imposed life-trajectory and the notion of free will which makes that trajectory bearable.

The absurdity of gratitude enters by other means. We must all be grateful that others fulfil the social contract by repressing their egoism and the violence which attends it. Hobbs assumes that if not for that repression we would have a war of all against all. Whether we agree with Hobbs or not, it doesn't seem out of place to be grateful when others don't fully express their egoism at our expense. But grateful to whom? Ultimately, to a god of some sort -- it doesn't really matter so much.

The real question is: what function does gratitude play? For clarity, let's insert 'tyrant' in place of 'burglar.' If the tyrant's mercy consists of not oppressing the people, isn't the tyrant correct to expect gratitude for that mercy? But only correct from the position of the tyrant. From the position of the people there can be no gratitude. Rather, if they are grateful for the tyrant's mercy then they are guilty of reifying the tyrant's position.

Remembering that the burglar is in the same intersubjective position as the tyrant, we can ask what prevents us from placing the parent (on whose mercy we rely for our 'bare life') in the position of the tyrant. They have, after all and from the beginning, had the power of life and death over us. The question you have asked thus becomes: if the child feels gratitude to the parent for its mere existence, do they not thus displace the parent into the position of the tyrant? Some gratitude!

That's an excellent point, Jonas. And by the way, I do think that transpersonal gratitude is both common and meaningful. By transpersonal gratitude I mean a gratitude that is not directed to someone in particular. One is just grateful (if you wish, to the universe) for the good things that one has received, and this kind of undirected gratitude, that I'm sure most of us are familiar with, is not a (metaphorical) extension of interpersonal gratitude, but rather the phenomenological ground that enables us to be grateful to someone in the first place.

Although the 2 examples presented did not remove freewill from the equation, it has in fact diminished it by introducing intervening variables (obligation to produce after payment was given and obligation to follow the law against robbery violation thereof results to litigation). By the presence of external coercing factors which has intervened in the example cited, freewill cited in the example does not stand in equal footing with the freewill exercised by the parents when they decide to nurture a child.

Gratitude as an effect of the circumstances cited in this example is therefore not necessary.

However the freewill involved in the decision to nurture children although cited in constitutions of some countries as obligatory, is based upon the capacity of the parents to take on this obligation considering all the factors necessary for nurturing a child, if upon serious consideration the parents concludes that they cannot take on this responsibilities, viable and legal alternatives exists such as putting the child for adoption or putting the same in an orphanage. The presence of these alternatives relieves the parent of the burden to care for their children without fear of litigation. The existence of this circumstance makes the decision to nurture the children a contingent one.

The decision being contingent, that is contingent upon the parents, when made is therefore a decision of freewill more or less faithful to its original context and definition. The argument of the question in consideration is founded on the premise that it is the parent’s making that a child is born and is it incumbent upon them by duty and obligation to nurture them, however every society has measures in place such those cited above to remove this obligation from parents who by circumstances cannot perform this duty and obligation, and this measures effectively removes this duty from the parents, this makes the decision to nurture a personal one and not an imposed one.

Gratitude is a state of being appreciative for the benefits receive, if one knows that the benefits he has received had the possibility of not being given (without any consequences on the part of those that should give it) but has in fact been given to him by a personal choice, how should one feel then?

An interesting question, am adding my thoughts here. In the Hindu culture, I can only speak for that amongst all oriental cultures, gratitude is obligatory. It's almost like a given law that gratitude is owed to the people who gave birth to us, amongst others. That fact that I wouldn't exist without my parents thinking of bringing a child on to this planet is the foundation of gratitude.

Also the criminal law in India makes it obligatory to show gratitude by taking care of the. Parents as dependants, apart from the social effect of not showing gratitude.

Yes, it's true, Sai, we wouldn't exist if not for them, or more precisely we exist because something they did (and more often than not probably without any intention to bring a child into the world), but that can be truthfully said about many other things they and other people did (there are a lot of things that had to happen and that had to be done to enable us to exist). So is there anything particularly meritorious about those two people having intercourse and thus initiating our existence? We would probably have to agree that existence itself is a good, so that it's better to exist than not to exist, which has a certain plausibility (unless of course your living conditions are so bad that you curse the day you were born and those who made this possible), but the reason why it appears plausible is that we already exist. But would we be worse off if we had never existed? Does it make sense to compare existence with absolute non-existence? Can we really say that it is better to exist than never to have existed at all?

Another thought in response to Jeus's comment: Suppose someone abducted you while you were asleep or otherwise unconscious and put you in a situation where you cannot survive on your own but are completely dependent for your survival on your abductors. Suppose further that they would then aid you and make sure that you do survive (instead of abandoning you and let you fend for yourself with little chance of survival), would you owe gratitude to your abductors because they could have left you, but didn't? Is there a relevant difference between that case and the case of a child being brought into the world without having asked for it, and thus into a situation where they cannot survive without the help of others?

Michael I have enjoyed your argumentation thus far and found it interesting. I do want to say though that when you write:

But would we be worse off if we had never existed? Does it make sense to compare existence with absolute non-existence? Can we really say that it is better to exist than never to have existed at all?

I must disagree. I understand the contrast you are making and yet I still want to answer "Yes." to all three of the questions you have posed. For the first - (1) Inasmuch as we would be only an unrealised potentiality and nothing more had we never existed, I would argue that a potentiality is less than a reality. Perhaps "worse off" cannot apply to a non-entity, but I believe most human beings would hold that to never have existed at all would mean that much that is significant and meaningful in theirs lives, and in the lives of others, would never have been. For the second - (2) It requires the engagement of our imaginations to really speak to this in the same way that possible worlds theory does. Modal premises and reasoning do not deal with what actually exists in the here and now, rather, they deal with hypothetical parallels to the actual. Such devices do not bring new information to the table. Rather, it is through using them that we call attention to something true about this current reality. Counter-factuals and the like depend on real history and real circumstances to be of any use. They are a device, an artifice for drawing analogies, parallels, and contrasts that help in the project of analysing what actually obtains in this world. I think that in the same way that we use modal thought and counter-factuals, we can also compare existence with absolute non-existence. If I may draw upon the arts a bit (not high art by any means), in Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life, George Bailey has his suicide attempt interrupted in order to get a look at what life and the world might have been like without him there. He realizes the meaningfulness of his existence by seeing what a deficiency of good (by way of comparison) there would have been had he never been. For the third - (3) I think that most all of us, even many who have experienced hellacious pain and suffering would answer in the affirmative. Existence and life are a great good. What usually, in a functional sense (without reference to mental illness) militates against this is some suspicion that an ultimate level, nothing matters at all. At a popular level the deaths of (e.g.) Hemingway and Cobain seem to have arisen from them concluding that life held nothing of meaning for them any longer. I affirm that human life is a great good and to have been deprived of most human lives is to have been deprived of great goods.

I like the analogy of being abducted in one's sleep - it is reminiscent of Judith Jarvis Thomson's idea of waking up to discover that you have been surgically connected to a famous violinist. I wish I had the sort of imagination that could conceive these sorts of analogies. However, as with Thomson's analogy, it breaks down rather quickly. In contrast to the idea of abduction, there is simply no way into the human experience and to the place where one can have philosophical discussions of this sort apart from the experience of undergoing an unasked for conception and birth. Unlike abduction, this is the universal experience of all humans. Thus, it is very much unlike abduction. All things being equal, abductors are acting in an evil manner, whereas parents are doing something viewed as a great good. Best Regards, Bill

Actually, Bill, I'm very much inclined to agree with you, that life is a great good and that we, or many of us (myself certainly included) have lots of reasons to be grateful and to appreciate, as Michael Sandel calls it, "the giftedness of life". (I wrote a paper about this, if you are interested: "Human Enhancement and the Giftedness of Life"). I'm just not sure that we owe gratitude to our parents for having conceived us, and even fed and clad us. Perhaps for loving us, and for understanding us, and generally doing more than just make sure that we don't starve and freeze to death, but I'm not even sure about that. Look at it from the other side. I'm looking at my children, I've got three of them, aged 5, 12 and 15, and it seems to me that they don't owe me gratitude because all I've been doing is fulfill my duties towards them, what any decent parent would do. I don't feel that they owe me anything for that.

As for existence being better than non-existence, I'm still not convinced either. If we had never existed, we wouldn't have been anything, not even an "unrealised potentiality". It might be good for us to be alive, but it wouldn't have been bad for us not to exist at all (just as it might be good for us to go skiing in the mountains, from which it doesn't follow that it would have been bad for us if we had stayed home instead). Capra's thought experiment featuring George Bailey (one of my favourite movies, by the way) doesn't prove the contrary. It just shows that George is not "a failure" as he believes, because he has affected the lives of many other people in a good way, which means that their lives would have been worse if George had never existed, but not that it would have been worse for him. That little experiment could, by the way, also have the opposite result. Imagine George learnt that everybody would have been far better off if he had not existed. Can we really be sure that this is not in fact true about ourselves?

I think that in the main we agree with one another quite strongly. I will gladly read that paper Michael. I have appreciated everything of yours that I have seen thus far.

Michael, gratitude is a response from those who has received something good, it might be a duty or obligation to you as a parent to care for your three children, but for your children it might not be case, Im pretty sure that they are grateful to you for taking care of them even if for you it is not necessary for it was your duty and obligation, you are indeed a parent and a good one I presume.

As for the unrealised potentiality, I think we cannot apply the word better or worse in the case of the opposite, to it because it is in other words nothing, meaning it has no entity, a form of existence can only be said better in comparison to another state of existence, non existence do not hold any accidentals which we use then to judge superiority over the other.

Yes, Jeus, you're probably right on both counts. Thank you!

Micheal, I fear you are too polite for your own good, and for the good of the great question you've raised. You are evidently skeptical about the necessity for gratitude (you use the analogies of being abducted, of a thief who does not steal), yet you also entertain distractions -- that is, your question is not about the positive goods a parent brings the child. The question is, in short: is existence a good and thus worthy of gratitude to the bestower? Brilliant question.

Not only too polite, you seem to have decided beforehand that life, existence, IS an absolute good. If so, why ask the question? And you seem to believe that gratitude too is an absolute good, that it is the only virtue which has no dark side, no peverse extreme. How could that be?

We all know that parents give up time, space, dreams, money, patience, adult company, adult thoughts, a sex life, spicy food, alcohol, smooth bellies -- all manner of things -- to raise children. And children might be grateful for that. But that's not what you asked in your question. You asked if existence is something to be grateful for.

The 'parent' in this debate is something of a red herring. And as much as I like your thief and kidnapper analogies, those too are red herrings. And so is my 'tyrant.' (They are about gratitude, not existence -- you are conflating two discrete questions). Suppose you were brought into existence by some process which did not involve parents -- as a by-product of manufacturing strawberry-scented surfboard wax, for example. Would you owe gratitude to the machine which spewed you out? It's not a silly analogy because the body is just such a machine, a machine which when it is supposedly creating pleasure creates babies as a side-effect.

Put this way, we can talk more specifically about the mere transition into existence. Not even the transition into being, which is another thing altogether, but bare existence. I am thinking that the difference between existence and being is consciousness -- but that isn't important. What's important is that existence is, by anyone's definition, neutral. Can existence have an intrinsic value? No. Then if we can be grateful for the bestowal of something without intrinsic value, what is the value of gratitude? Can gratitude, under those conditions, be meaningful?

I, like most parents, spend most of my time trying to convince my child that everything they do is worthy of my attention, perhaps even world attention. I am, in short, lying in order to convince them that their life is an absolute good. The rhetorical keystone here is the auto-deictic implication that they should be grateful to me. But am I really trying to convince them, or myself?

Thanks for trying to remind me what the original question was, Jonas, but I don't quite agree with you. (See, I actually can be impolite!) The question was whether children owe gratitude to their parents, and I suggested that they don't because a) existence is not better than non-existence, and b) what goes beyond bringing them into existence, such as food, clothing, or schooling, parents are duty-bound to provide for their children, and it is not clear that we owe gratitude to someone who merely does what they are morally obliged to do. So that is the original question, and not whether existence is a good. This latter question became more prominent in the discussion, though, but I wouldn't say, as you have me do, that existence is "an absolute good" and that gratitude is, too. Life can be terrible and need not be good at all. But most people most of the time appreciate their being alive. They are not indifferent to their own existence, which means that existence, for the one whose existence it is, is not value-neutral. Existence might not be better than non-existence, but being alive provides opportunities for a variety of valuable experiences and experiences of value, and for that reason it is (for most people most of the time) a good. But that doesn't mean that we owe our parents gratitude for "giving us life", because they haven't really given us life at all. Life is not for any human to give (by which I do not mean to imply that it is only for God to give - I'm not a religious person). As for gratitude, no, I don't think it is an absolute value either. It can be inappropriate or overdone, but generally speaking I do think that gratitude is a virtue (in an Aristotelian sense, that is at the right time in the right situation) and that as an attitude it contributes to a good life. People who are not disposed to feel grateful for the good things that they have received, are too much like Leibnizian monads, and their lives are far from being the best that a human can have.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. You have the unnatural patience of a parent! I still think that question contains several interlinked elements between which the conversation has naturally wandered, and which need to be disaggregated.

If parenthood is a duty -- and we have to admit that much of this idea is socially constructed -- then it might be difficult to separate that part of existence which arises in the child through the duty of the parents from that which arises beyond duty. But we might begin by saying that, unless we all have an innate duty to procreate, the parent comes into existence (as a parent) along with the child. The child gives birth to the parent.

Whether or not being indisposed towards feeling grateful for the goods they receive makes one a Leibnizian monad is somewhat irrelevant if you have already decided that existence is not a good. Irrelevant but interesting because this brings up the question of the interdependence of subjectivity -- and I believe that gets to the heart of the matter by yet another route. Surely the human experience is situated precisely in this ambivalence between the monad and the aggregate. Does the moment of my conception confer a 'self' or does it bring into being another set of selves whose uncertain desires are directed at me? We think of children as being brought into existence by conception, and conflate this existence with being. But existence and being are two discrete phenomena. I like Lacan's stand, here, because he places the subject right in the split between the being of 'self' and the non-being of the social

Seen from the perspective of this split, when the child gives birth to the parent it confers on the parent a tangible, socially-constructed identity. The struggle is not over, but the battlefield becomes less abstract. But when the parent gives existence to the child, they expose the child to the vicissitudes of identity, to an ineluctible and ad hoc process of becoming the 'self' in a vast, unascertainable, undifferentiated perceptual field. Isn't that uncertainty at the heart of teen angst and at the heart of your question? The angsty teen is not wrestling with the question of their self-evident existence but problem of their 'being' into which that existence has brought them: if I am not all these others then who am I?

I know someone who keeps a running tally of all the goods they have provided their children individually so that the inheritance can be fairly distributed when the day comes. Of course, this attempt at equity becomes farcical and pathetic because it ignores the asymmetrical intersubjectivity at work in reproduction (that it is the parent, not the child, who comes into being). The children are not interested in the calculus of debts of gratitude; they want to know that they 'are' and that this being has value -- a question which is never resolved but passed like a relay baton down the generations.

Ephesians 6:1-2 comes close to this question. It does *not* say that children owe gratitude (though I'm cautious about arguing from silence). It tells children to honour and obey parents. In canonical context, Jesus--we are told--was himself obedient to his *step*-dad (if we run with the virgin birth for the sake of argument). But the *reason* to honour and obey that Paul offers is that of the ten commandments themselves. The fifth commandment actually comes with a promise, he notes, that you may prosper. This is not quite Divine Command Theory stuff. Whether we accept it or not, a rationale of *self interest* is offered. It is technically "covenant" language. Hittites and others made contracts for land and tribute and alliances and marriage, with written documents, and gods called as witnesses, and blessings and curses (carrots and sticks) for conformity or breach of these "social contracts." The Pauline-taken-from-Mosaic-taken-from-ANE idea seems to be to remain in the covenant God has made with your parents, honour and obey them as part of you inheriting that same covenant of life in the promised land. Subtlety of social context is provided in the next verse (3) where fathers are admonished not to *exasperate* their children (natural or adopted) but raise them into participation in the new covenant of Christianity.

I only offer the above as an example of traditional thinking in Christendom for the sake of contrast. It is different to the other frameworks proposed in discussion above. I think it is compatible with the original question's presumed answer of No. However, without appeal to God, I would be inclined to answer Yes. And the reason has nothing to do with the situation of the ethical question. Gratitude is not something that is given. It is an acknowledgement of having received something: in Malay, "thank you" is _terima kasih_ (I have received kindness). Gratitude may or may not involve emotions. Those emotions may or may not prompt return gifts in kind. So my inclination would be to say that when parents fulfil social obligations to provide for their children (and this is organised rather differently in different cultures), they still give and failing to acknowledge the cost of the gift (I don't believe in free will, but cost is an empirical matter of time and other quantities) is simply to deny an empirical fact. Ergo, the rational beneficiary of an act merely asserts a true proposition when saying "thank you."

To tidy up loose ends here: I would agree that children don't *owe* the articulation of the proposition of having received something. A trojan horse is not a genuine gift, even if accepted as one (so parents can make mistakes and kids mistakenly evaluate a parental hindrance as a parental help). More significantly, kids probably owe aging parents no debt to look after them, in *exactly* the same way as parents don't owe kids ongoing support. It is a matter of social convention, and perhaps evolved psychological preference, that biological parents normally raise their kids (though this is less and less the norm in the west, and has exceptions elsewhere), and perhaps it is mainly a peculiarity of our very long lived society that there is a growing social issue of who looks after the aged, and kids regularly feel guilty if they don't feature strongly in that stage of life. Finally, whether existence is better than non existence is, I think, perhaps a little too sophisticated. A non existent thing might not be a proper referent upon which to predicate the addition of properties, especially a property directly contradictory with non existence. In other words, I'm not really sure what it means to say we give existence to something. I can change the properties of a tree trunk to form a table, is not quite the same as saying I can give existence to a non-existent table.

Absolutely fabulous question! Too little space here to engage with more of it. :)

Thanks for this, Alastair! You alerted me to a question that I hadn't considered before, namely whether denying that children owe their parents gratitude simply for being their parents entails that children have no obligation to look after their aging parents. I don't think that this follows, because one can have obligations to somebody without owing them gratitude. Thus I have obligations to my children for having brought them into this world - I am responsible for their well-being as long as they cannot look after themselves -, but I do not owe them gratitude. Similarly I may have obligations to my parents, namely to look after them when they are old and frail and in need of my help, without owing them gratitude. Even I don't owe them gratitude, I may well owe them other things.

I'm inclined to think people's needs generate obligations within their communities with an irritating lack of specificity, that cultural conventions answer for us in particular settings. There are many good solutions, at both ends of life: foster care, welfare states, kibbutzim, extended or immediate family. Am I obliged to save a drowning man? If there are many observers? If I'm the only one? Is gratitude appropriate? Does returning a good deed for a good deed cancel the goodness of the deeds by reducing them to an exchange? Is all trade good deed of supply for good deed of payment? I love this subject! But it's a head spin! All the best to you cutting through the questions! The particular issue of gratitude for being brought into life by parents is one I think you're getting by the throat. Cheers!

If you're interested in these kinds of questions, Alastair, then you should like this: http://hauskeller.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Williams%20Bernard

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about that problem.

Best

Michael

I like that, Alastair, thank you: Yes, the educational aspect is indeed important.

Excellent clear paper, Michael. I wonder if admitting "the lesser of two evils" as being permissible, logically implies "shades of grey" -- a reductio ad absurdum on the axiom of good and evil as black and white. An ethic of mathematically minimal harm, or conversely maximal benefit, *assumes* shades of grey which thought experiments regarding utilitarianism seek to highlight. I suspect our world is very much utilitarian in practice. Augustine's just war theory strikes me as being ultimately utilitarian, and yet extreme pacifism does have problems of its own. But to finish on a more optimistic note, I would like to think that even history suggests that "all things are never equal": although there will have been examples of people choosing as students do on Jim's behalf, there are historical Jims whose refusal to kill even one to save 19 confronted and changed the ethics of officers making decisions. Intercultural contact, over time, may have led Homo sapiens to adaptive changes in ethical thinking. It takes a really clear head to imagine oneself in Jim's position, taking a long view, having a kind of brave humility to realise the shootings could not be made his responsibility, but that educating his violent hosts over time might indeed have become his responsibility. How's that for an argument from Jim's setting to a categorical imperative for ethical scholarship! ;)

PS I believe the Vietnam photo is a picture of the summary execution of a murderer, by the lawful, moderate and popular local police chief. The guilt of the man executed was widely known on the testimony of many eyewitnesses. It is possible that although we distant observers cannot simply see that justice was being done in this case, perhaps justice *was* in fact being done. But when justice is done, perhaps the lesson is that it is of great importance for our social integrity that it also be seen to be done.

I didn't know what you're telling me about the Vietnam photo. I have to think about whether that makes a difference.

General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Pulitzer winning photographer Eddie Adams.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988783,00.html

Yes, if parents finance a child's education through grad school out of their own pockets (sacrificing their retirement funds), the least the child can do is show some gratitude.

Gwren

Parents who do their duties towards their children within their capacities certainly owe gratitude from the children. The duties and responsibilities of the parents may actually be situation dependent. Some parents may be poor, which is why it may be that their children may not get proper education. Still, the children must be grateful to their parents anyway.

Some parents do not put much importance on their duties and responsibilities towards their children. Such children may not actually show any gratitude to their parents.

From the Indian perspective however, children do owe gratitude to their parents unconditionally!

Your question is kind of humorous and promises to yield a concept of being (to me, anyway). Before being, there is no one to be grateful, no one who owes, no one, therefore, to be neurotically guilty for feeling inappropriately vengeful toward mom and dad. So being becomes an entrance into a set of unwanted obligations. Why am I channeling Woody Allen?

Maybe, Scott, because he is so totally cool. Although many have questioned Woody's ethics, judging from your posts elsewhere, you probably wouldn't hold ethics (or a lack thereof) against Woody or anyone. Or, would you?????

Gwen

Not only to parents, we owe gratitude to our teachers as well. In fact, in India, it is accepted that we owe more gratitude to our teachers than to our parents. Now if one is grateful to neither to one's parents nor to one's teachers, hardly anything can be done about that!

Ethics? What ethics? And why can little or nothing be done if children are ungrateful? How does one insist on gratitude? (We might get Kantian from here on in.) What would demonstrate the gratitude?

Suppose I raise my child to be a rebel with only questions for authority. Doesn't my child fulfill the teaching by questioning my authority? Would that be gratifying to me?

Suppose my child says, "I hate the food, hate my room, all you let me watch are Disney movies and mom is so yesterday!" Do I have the right to cut off her food, shelter, Disney movies and parental care?

Scott, I have been thinking about your questions and I think that you might get away with cutting off Disney movies; but cutting off the other three would land you in jail if the child is under 18 -- no matter where in America you reside. You cannot purposely make your flesh and blood a ward of the state as long as you have the wherewithal to provide for her financially (i.e., give her food, shelter, and parental care). Sorry -- Not even your hero Woody Allen escaped Mia free of child support obligations for the minor children he didn't marry and take with him.

Gwen

aside from the main question, why were children brought into this world if we already know that life is an inevitable series of challenges? have we not seen a person suffering from the illnesses of old age, for instance? why then do we impose this burden of existence onto our unknowing children?