Gratitude : an Intellectual History

351 Pages·2014·1.58 MB·English

by  Leithart

gratitude
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gratitude
an intellectual history
Peter J. Leithart
Baylor University Press
© 2014 by Baylor University Press
Waco, Texas 76798-7363
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leithart, Peter J.
Gratitude : an intellectual history / Peter Leithart.
350 pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60258-449-5 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Gratitude. I. Title.
BJ1533.G8L45 2014
179’.9--dc23
2013016354
to Pastor Douglas Wilson,
with thanks,
for his example of giving thanks for all things
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contents
Acknowledgments ix
Of Circles, Lines, and Soup Tureens 1
I—Circles
1 Circles of Honor 19
2 Benefits and Good Offices 41
3 Ingrates and the Infinite Circle 57
4 Patron Saints and the Poor 79
II—Disruptions
5 Monster Ingratitude 99
6 The Circle and the Line 121
7 Methodological Ingratitude 143
III—Reciprocity Rediscovered, Reciprocity Suspected
8 Primitive Circles 163
9 Denken ist Danken 181
10 Gifts Without Gratitude 195
A Theistic Modernity 217
Notes 231
Bibliography 301
Indices 341
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acknowledgments
I received assistance from many people on this project. Donny Linnemeyer
was an indispensable assistant in researching the crucial thinkers of the early
modern period and the Enlightenment. Ryan Handerman provided me with
a translation of the entry on gratitudo from Johannes de Bromyard’s Summa
Praedicantium. Gary Glenn shared his work on Locke, Joan Tronto pro-
vided me with a copy of her indispensable unpublished paper on Hobbes and
gratitude, and Andrew Galloway gave me direction for medieval conceptions
of gratitude. John Barclay was most generous in giving me an advance look
at his forthcoming volume on Paul and the gift, a book I await with great
anticipation. Early in my research, I was honored to speak on the topic at
Union University, Jackson, Tennessee, and I learned much from the faculty’s
questions and feedback. I also benefited by presenting this material at the
Biblical Horizons Summer Conference in 2011. The graduate students in my
“Gift and Gratitude” seminar were splendid interlocutors during the middle
stages of my research and writing. As always, members of my family were
swept up in my research. My son, Woelke, provided innumerable articles
and other sources, my daughter, Emma, informed me of the ways gratitude
worked in Herodotus, and my wife, Noel, and other members of my family
listened gamely as my ideas gradually took (more or less) coherent form.
As I move on to new ventures in a new/old location, I dedicate Gratitude:
An Intellectual History to Pastor Douglas Wilson, with whom I have worked
for the past fifteen years in Moscow, Idaho. I am grateful for the many pro-
ductive and happy years my family and I have spent in the Moscow commu-
nity. For reasons that will be clear in the book, I do not offer thanks to Doug,
but I do thank God for him, not least for the many things he has taught me,
by word and example, about what it means to live in and out of gratitude.