Available at: Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher's Overview:
Existential gratitude - gratitude for one's very existence or life as a whole - is pervasive across the most influential human, cultural and religious traditions. Weaving together analytic and continental, as well as non-western and historical philosophical perspectives, this volume explores the nexus of gratitude, existence and God as an inter-subjective phenomenon for the first time.
A team of leading scholars introduce existential gratitude as a perennially and characteristically human phenomenon, central to the distinctive life of our species. Attention is given to the conditions under which existence itself might be construed as having a gift-like or otherwise gratitude-inducing character.
Drawing on a diversity of perspectives, chapters mark out new territory in philosophical inquiry, addressing whether and in what sense we ought to be grateful for our very existence. By analysing gratitude, this collection makes a novel contribution to the discourse on moral emotions, phenomenology, anti-natalism and theology.
Table of Contents
Introduction – Joshua Lee Harris, Kirk Lougheed, and Neal DeRoo
Part I. Gratitude in Human Life
1. Grounding Existential Gratitude: A Social Form Account – Joshua Lee Harris (The King's University, Canada)2. Gratitude and Resentment: A Tale of Two Weddings – Graham Oppy (Monash University, Australia)3. Gratitude and the Human Vocation – Brian Treanor (Loyola Marymount University, USA)
Part II. Gratitude and Existence
4. Generous Existence? Gift, Giving, and Gratitude in Contemporary Phenomenology – Christina Gschwandter (Fordham University, USA)5. Analogia Gratiae: Creation, Existence, and Gift in the Christian Metaphysics of Erich Przywara – Eric Mabry (St. Mary's Seminary and University, USA)6. Gratitude for Life-Force in African Philosophy – Thaddeus Metz (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
Part III. Gratitude and the Divine
7. The Dilemma of Gratitude – Michael Almeida (University of Texas at San Antonio, USA)8. Is Gratitude Necessary? Avicenna on Existential Dependence – Catherine Peters (Loyola Marymount University, USA)9. Do we Owe Gratitude to God for Our Existence? – Kirk Lougheed (University of Pretoria, South Africa)10. Thank You: William Desmond's Ethic of Gratitude and Personal God – Ethan Vanderleek (Marquette University, USA)
