Humility

Humility is a humble virtue, so much so that it even doubts its own virtuousness: to pride oneself on one’s own humility is to lack it.

Which proves nothing, however: virtue is nothing to be proud of, and that is what humility teaches us. Humility makes the virtues discreet, unself-conscious, almost self-effacing. Humility is not, however, a lack of awareness; it is the extreme awareness of the limits of all virtue and of one’s own limits as well. This discretion is the mark—a discreet mark—of perfect lucidity and unwavering standards. Humility is not contempt for oneself, or if it is, it is informed contempt, deriving not from ignorance of what we are but from the knowledge, or rather the acknowledgment, of all that we are not. This acknowledgment is its limit, since humility is concerned with a kind of nothingness. But that is also what makes humility human. “However much of a sage he may be, after all, he is a man; what is there more unable to support itself, more miserable, more nearly nothing?”1 The wisdom of Montaigne, the wisdom of humility. It is absurd to want to surpass our humanity; we cannot and must not.2 Humility is a lucid virtue, always unsatisfied with itself; if it were not, it would be more unsatisfied still. Humility is the virtue of the man who knows he is not God.

And so it is the virtue of saints, a virtue that the wise, apart from Montaigne, sometimes seem utterly without. Pascal criticized philosophers for their arrogance, and not without reason: some have taken the idea of their own divinity quite seriously. Saints are not so easily deluded and invariably reject any suggestion that they are divine. Indeed, anyone who truly believes he is divine either knows nothing about God or else does not know himself. At the very least, humility refuses this second type of ignorance, and it is essentially in this refusal that humility is a virtue. Being humble means loving the truth and submitting to it. Humility means loving truth more than oneself.

Hence all thought that deserves to be so described presupposes humility; humble thought, which is to say, real thought, is the opposite of vanity, which is not thought at all but a form of belief—a belief in the self. Humility, on the other hand, doubts everything, particularly itself. Human, all too human. Could it be that humility itself masks a very subtle form of pride?

But let me first try to define it.“Humility is a sadness born of the fact that a man considers his own lack of power, or weakness,” writes Spinoza.3 This kind of humility is less a virtue than a feeling: it is an emotion, Spinoza says, and therefore a state of mind. Whoever contemplates his own lack of power finds his spirit “saddened.”4 We have all had this experience, and it would be wrong to claim it as a strength. Now, for Spinoza, strength is precisely what virtue is—strength of mind and always joyous. Thus humility, from his perspective, is not a virtue,5 and the wise man has no need of it.

The problem, however, may simply be one of nomenclature. For although Spinoza does not consider humility a virtue, he does allow that it “brings more advantage than disadvantage”6 (it can help the person who practices it to come to the point where he can “live from the dictate of reason,” and the prophets were right to commend it).7 But more important, Spinoza expressly envisions another affect, this one positive, which corresponds precisely to a humility I would call virtuous. “If we suppose,” he writes, “that the man conceives his lack of power because he understands something more powerful than himself, by the knowledge of which he determines his power of acting, then we conceive nothing but that the man understands himself distinctly or that his power of acting is aided.”8 Such humility is indeed a virtue, for great strength can come from the mind’s having adequate knowledge of itself (the opposite of humility is pride, and all pride is ignorance), from its knowing that there exists something greater than itself. Can this knowledge come without sadness? Why not, if one ceases to love oneself only?

Let us not confuse humility with Aristotle’s micropsuchia, which, certain translations notwithstanding, is better rendered by the term lowliness. What is involved here? Recall that, for Aristotle, all virtue is a mean between two vices. So it is with magnanimity or nobility of soul: to exceed this mean is to succumb to vanity; to fall short of it is to succumb to servility, to lowliness. Being lowly means forsaking one’s true worth, underestimating one’s true value, to the point of not allowing oneself to undertake any higher action, which one assumes to be beyond one’s capabilities.9 Lowliness corresponds rather well to what Spinoza calls abjectio, which he distinguishes from humility (humilitas). Lowliness, he writes, means “thinking less highly of oneself than is just, out of sadness.”10 Obviously, lowliness can be born of humility, which is why humility can take on the qualities of a vice.11 But it need not: we can be sad about our powerlessness without thereby exaggerating it—this is what I call virtuous humility—and we can even find in this sadness an added measure of strength with which to fight our powerlessness. It may be said that I am departing from Spinozism here. I am not sure that I am, nor do I care, of course.12 We know from experience, it seems to me, that sadness can sometimes be a source of inner strength or can help us to muster the strength we already have within us; this is something Spinoza himself recognizes and it counts for more than any philosophical system.13 There is a courage that comes from despair and a courage, too, that comes from humility. Besides, we do not choose the source of our courage. Better a true sadness than a false joy.

Humility, as a virtue, is this truthful sadness of being merely oneself. And how could one be anything else? We must be merciful toward ourselves: mercy, which tempers humility with a bit of gentleness, teaches us to be content with what we are, which we could not otherwise be without also being vain. Mercy and humility go hand in hand and complement each other. Self-acceptance—but without illusions.

“Self-esteem,” says Spinoza, “is really the highest thing we can hope for.”14 Let us say in turn that humility is the highest thing we can despair of, then all will have been said.

Well, maybe not quite, and not yet, for we have still to consider the most important question: what is the value of humility? I have said it is a virtue, but how important a virtue is it? What is its status? What is it worth?

The problem is obvious: if humility deserves respect or admiration, isn’t it groundlessly humble? And if it is rightly humble, how could we rightly admire it? It seems humility is a contradictory virtue, whose value comes only at its own expense.

“I am very humble” is a performative self-contradiction.

“I lack humility” is a first step toward humility itself.

But how can a subject’s value arise from self-depreciation?

Which brings us, basically, to the two perhaps most important critiques of humility, those of Kant and Nietzsche. Let us look at what they wrote. In The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, Kant legitimately opposes what he calls “false humility” (or servility) to the duty of respecting in oneself the innate dignity of man as a moral being: servility is the opposite of honor, he explains, and the former is a vice as surely as the latter is a virtue.15 Of course, Kant hastens to add that there does exist a true humility (humilitas moralis), which he defines beautifully as “the consciousness and feeling of the insignificance of one’s moral worth in comparison with the law.”16 Far from violating the dignity of the subject, this latter form of humility presupposes dignity (there would be no reason to subject to the law an individual incapable of such internal legislation: humility implies a certain moral elevation); it also attests to that dignity (to submit to the law is to fulfill a moral duty, here the duty of humility).

Nevertheless, Kant holds humility to very narrow bounds, far narrower, I might add, than those prescribed by Christian (or perhaps only Catholic?) custom. In doing so, he excludes a spiritual disposition that, at least for those who take seriously what mystics, Western as well as non-Western, have to say, is valued. “Kneeling down or groveling on the ground, even to express your reverence for heavenly things, is contrary to human dignity,” writes Kant.17 Well put, but is it true? Clearly one should be neither servile nor sycophantic. But must one therefore—and in opposition to the highest and most recognized spiritual traditions—also condemn begging, for instance? Did Saint Francis of Assisi or the Buddha compromise their own—or our—humanity?18 One might allow that “bowing or scraping before another seems in any case unworthy of man.”19 But aside from the fact that humility differs from humiliation and has no need of it (only the proud or the perverse find good in it), should we take entirely seriously the sublimity—to use the Kantian term—of our moral constitution, when it comes to ourselves? Wouldn’t we thereby in fact be demonstrating a lack of humility, of lucidity—and of humor? Man in the system of nature (homo phaenomenon, animal rationale) is a being of little importance, Kant explains, but man as a person, as a moral being (homo noumenon), possesses absolute dignity. “His insignificance as a human animal,” he writes, “cannot injure the consciousness of his dignity as a rational man.”20 Perhaps. But what if the two are really one? The materialists are more humble and never forget the animal within them. Human beings are children of the earth (humus, whence the word humility) and forever unworthy of the heaven they invent for themselves. And as for “comparing oneself with other men,” is it really reprehensible or lowly to bow before Mozart?21 “Whoever makes himself a worm cannot complain when he is then trampled underfoot,” writes Kant, proudly.22 But whoever would make of himself a statue—be it for the glory of man or the sake of the law—cannot complain when he is suspected of being hard-hearted or assuming a pose. Better the sublime beggar who washes the sinner’s feet.

As for Nietzsche, he is, as always, right about everything and wrong about everything, and what he says about humility is part of this maelstrom. Who can take issue with the idea that humility often involves a fair amount of nihilism and resentment? How many people reproach themselves solely in order to better reproach the world or life—and thereby excuse themselves? How many negate themselves only because of their inability to affirm—or to do—anything? Or as Spinoza puts it, “those, who are believed to be most despondent [abjectio] and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.”23 All that is true. But is it true of everyone? There is a humility in Cavaillès, Simone Weil, Etty Hillesum—and even in Pascal and Montaigne—in comparison with which Nietzschean greatness rings of empty hyperbole. Nietzsche takes up the same image as Kant, the image of the worm: “The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of morality: Humility.”24 But is this all there is to humility? Is it what is essential? Do we really believe that this sort of psychologism can account for the humility of Saint Francis of Assisi or Saint John of the Cross? “The most generous people are usually also the most humble,” writes Descartes, who was anything but a worm.25

One would also be wrong to treat humility as merely the flip side of a kind of self-hatred or confuse it with bad conscience, remorse, or shame. The point is to pass judgment not on what we have done but on what we are. And we are so insignificant. Is there even anything within us to judge? Remorse, bad conscience, or shame presupposes that we might have done things differently and better. “Could do better”: this stock phrase, so dear to teachers, accuses rather than encourages. Remorse says the same. Humility says, “Is what he can be.” Too humble to accuse or excuse, too lucid to blame unequivocally. Again, humility and mercy go hand in hand. Remorse is an error—because it assumes free wilt—rather than a failing; the Stoics and Spinoza challenge it on that ground. Is humility more a science—a form of knowledge—than a virtue? A sad science? Perhaps, but it is more useful to man than blissful ignorance. Better to look down on oneself than to misjudge oneself.

Without confusing shame and humility, one might apply to the latter what Spinoza says of the former: “Though a man who is ashamed of some deed is really sad, he is still more perfect than one who is shameless, who has no desire to live honourably.”26 Even sad, the humble man is more perfect than the impudent braggart. Better the decent man’s humility than the bastard’s self-satisfied arrogance: this everyone knows, and it proves Nietzsche wrong. Humility is the virtue of slaves, he says; the masters, “noble and brave,” have no use for it: to them, all humility is worthy of contempt.27 Granted. But isn’t contempt more contemptible than humility? And is “self-glorification,” that mark of the aristocrat, compatible with the lucidity that elsewhere Nietzsche correctly takes to be the philosophical virtue par excellence?28 “I know myself too well to pride myself on anything,” the humble man protests; “I need all the mercy I am capable of just in order to put up with myself.” What could be more ridiculous than playing at being a superman? Why bother to stop believing in God if it is only to be so utterly self-deceived? Humility is atheism in the first person: the humble man is an atheist with respect to himself, just as the nonbeliever is an atheist with regard to God. Why destroy all idols if it is only to glorify this one last effigy (the self) and worship it? “Humility equals truth,” said Jankélévitch: how much truer, and more humble, a notion than Nietzschean glorification!29 Honesty and humility are sisters: “Pitiless, lucid honesty, an honesty without illusions, is for those who are honest a continual lesson in modesty; and, conversely, modesty, for the modest, is an aid to honest self-regard.”30 Psychoanalysis operates in this same spirit (in psychoanalysis, Freud says, “his majesty the self” loses his throne), wherein lies its principal merit. Love the truth or love thyself. All knowledge is a narcissistic wound, a blow to our self-esteem.

Is it therefore necessary to hate ourselves, as Pascal would have us do? Certainly not. To do so would be to lack charity, to which everyone (including oneself) has a right, or rather which gives everyone, above and beyond all questions of right and deserts, the love that illuminates him, like a grace, gratuitous and necessary, unjustified but nevertheless due—the small measure of true love, even for ourselves, of which we are sometimes capable!

Love thy neighbor as thyself, and thyself as thy neighbor; “Wherever there is humility,” says Augustine, “there is also charity.”31 This is because humility leads to love, as Jankélévitch reminds us,32 and all true love presupposes humility; without humility, the self comes to occupy all the available space and sees the other person as an object—not of love but of concupiscence!—or as an enemy. Humility is the effort through which the self attempts to free itself of its illusions about itself and—since these illusions are what constitute it—through which it dissolves. Therein lies the greatness of the humble, who penetrate the depths of their pettiness, misery, and insignificance—until they reach that place where there is only nothingness, a nothingness that is everything. Behold, they are as we all are: alone, naked, and revealed, exposed to love and to the light.

Love without illusions, love without lust—are we even capable of such a thing? Which is to say, are we capable of charity?

I shall not try to answer that question just yet. But even supposing that charity were beyond our capabilities, there is always compassion, its humblest face and common approximation.

In speaking of humility, Jankélévitch rightly observes that “the Greeks hardly knew this virtue.”33 Could it be that they did not give themselves a God so great that man might appear as small as he really is? One cannot be sure, however, that they were mistaken as to their own greatness. (Jankélévitch, in my opinion, misunderstands “Stoic pride,” just as Pascal does: there is in Epictetus a form of humility through which the self knows it is not God and knows it is nothing.)34 It could be that they had less narcissism to fight against or at least fewer illusions about themselves to dispel. Whatever the case, our God (the God of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims), whether we believe in him or not, offers all of us, in his difference, an invaluable lesson in humility. The ancients defined themselves as mortal; death alone, they believed, set them apart from the gods. Ours is a different perspective, and we now know that even immortality could not, alas, make us different from what we are (and would for that reason probably be an unbearable prospect). Who is there that does not sometimes long for death in order to be freed from the self? Humility, in this respect, may well be the most religious of virtues. How one yearns to kneel down in churches! Why deny oneself? Speaking only for myself, I would say it is because I would have to believe that God created me—and that pretension, at least, is one of which I have freed myself. What little things we are, how weak and how wretched! Humanity makes for such a pathetic creation: how can we believe a God could have wanted this? So it is that humility, born of religion, can lead to atheism.To believe in God would be a sin of pride.

1

Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Montaigne, trans. George B. Ives, Harvard University Press, 1925, vol. 2, book 2, ch. 2 , p. 59.2

Ibid., book 2, ch. 12, p. 403; see also book 3, ch. 13. (These are the concluding remarks of, respectively, Montaigne’s longest essay and last essay. Montaigne’s last words are of an appeased and joyful humility.)3

Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics, in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley, Princeton University Press, 1994, III, def. 26 of the affects, p. 192.4

Ibid., III, P55 and schol., p. 182.5

Ibid., IV, P53, p. 227.6

Ibid., IV, P54, schol., p. 228.7

Ibid.8

Ibid., IV, P53, dem., p. 228. On the difference between “humility as a virtue” and “humility as a vice,” see Descartes as well: René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, III, arts. 155 and 159, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch, Cambridge University Press, 1985-91.9

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, IV, 9.10

Spinoza, The Ethics, III, def. 29 of the affects, p. 193.11

Ibid., exp. of def. 28 of the affects.12

We might say about humility, mutatis mutandis, what Alexandre Matheron writes about repentance: “This true knowledge of evil makes us sensitive to liberating truth” (Alexandre Matheron, Le Christ et le salut des ignorants chez Spinoza, Aubier-Montaigne, 1971, p. 113). Humility, even as a sadness, can help a person lose his fondness for himself; it is an antidote to narcissism. In fact, it is at least as much a part of the prophetic (Spinoza, The Ethics, IV, P54, schol.) and evangelical (Christ’s “gentle and humble of heart,” Matthew 11:29) message as repentance; and, as we know, Spinoza sees himself as the express heir to this message.13

“The greater the sadness, the greater is the part of the man’s power of acting to which it is necessarily opposed. Therefore, the greater the sadness, the greater the power of acting with which the man will strive to remove the sadness” (Spinoza, The Ethics, III, P37, schol., p. 173). There is material here for a “dynamic of resistance”; see Laurent Bove, “Spinoza et la question dc la résistance,” L‘enseignement philosophique, no. 5 (May-June 1993).14

Spinoza, The Ethics, IV, P52, schol., p. 227.15

Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, trans. James W. Ellington, Library of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964, Introduction to the First Part of the Elements of Ethics, p. 81.16

Ibid., ch. 2,§ 11, pp. 97-98.17

Ibid., § 12, p. 99.18

Ibid.19

Ibid., Casuistical Questions, p. 99.20

Ibid., 11, p. 97.21

And no longer with the law: bid., § 11, p. 98.22

Ibid., Casuistical Questions, p. 100.23

Spinoza, The Ethics, III, def. 29 of the affects, exp., p. 193. See also IV, XXII (as well as Descartes’s The Passions of the Soul, art. 159).24

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici, Maxims and Missiles, aph. 31, in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Oscar Levy, Russell & Russell, 1964, vol. 16, pp. 5-6.25

René Descartes, Passions of the Soul, III, art. 155, vol. 1, p. 385; see also the condemnation of pride in art. 157. On humility in the Christian tradition, see Jean-Louis Chrétien’s essay L’humilité in the journal Autrement, no. 8 (1992), pp. 37-52.26

Spinoza, The Ethics, IV, P58, schol., p. 230.27

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern, aph. 260, Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, vol. 12, p. 229.28

Ibid., p. 228.29

Vladimir Jankélévitch, Traité des vertus, Champs-Flammarion, 1986, vol. 2, ch. 4 (“L’humilité et la modestie”), p. 286.30

Ibid., p. 285.31

Cited in Vocabulaire de théologie biblique, Editions du Cerf, 1971, s.v. “Humilité.”32

Jankélévitch, Traité des vertus, vol. 2, pp. 287 and 401, for example.33

Ibid., p. 289.34

Ibid., pp. 308-09.

André Comte-Sponville

A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues

Gratitude

 Gratitude is the most pleasant of virtues, though not the easiest. And why would it be easy? There are pleasures that are difficult or rare and that are no less pleasing, indeed are perhaps even more pleasing for being so. Still, in the case of gratitude, the surprising thing is not the pleasure so much as the difficulty. After all, who wouldn’t rather accept a gift than receive a blow? Or express thanks than show forgiveness? Gratitude is a second pleasure, one that prolongs the pleasure that precedes and occasions it, like a joyful echo of the joy we feel, a further happiness for the happiness we have been given. Gratitude: the pleasure of receiving, the joy of being joyful. What could be easier? That gratitude is a virtue, however, should suffice to indicate that it cannot be taken for granted, that it is something we can be lacking in, and that consequently, in spite of or perhaps because of the pleasure, there is merit in experiencing it. But why? Gratitude is a mystery, not because of the pleasure it affords us but because of the obstacles we must overcome to feel it. It is the most pleasant of virtues and the most virtuous of pleasures.But what about generosity and the pleasures of giving that we hear so much about? The interested nature of that argument—it has become a staple of advertising, after all—should put us on our guard. Were there really such pleasure in giving, why would we need advertisers to remind us to give? If generosity were a pleasure, or rather, if it were only a pleasure or primarily a pleasure, why would we be so lacking in it? Giving always involves loss, which is why generosity is the opposite of and counter to selfishness. But receiving? Gratitude takes nothing from us: it is a gift given in return with no loss and almost no object or objective. Gratitude has nothing to give, except this pleasure of having received. What lighter, brighter, what more Mozartian virtue, I am inclined to say, and not just because Mozart inspires it in us but because he celebrates it and incarnates it, because he carries within him this joy, this boundless gratitude for who knows what—for all and everything—this generosity of gratitude. What happier and more humble virtue, what easier and more necessary grace than that of giving thanks with a smile or a dance step, with a song or with happiness itself? The generosity of gratitude. This expression, which I owe to Mozart, I find particularly enlightening: if so often we lack gratitude, might it not be more because we cannot give than because we cannot receive, more because we are selfish than because we are insensitive? To thank is to give; to be gracious means to share. This pleasure that I owe to you is not for me alone. This joy, this happiness, they belong to both of us. The egoist enjoys receiving; but his enjoyment is his alone and he keeps it for himself. Or if he shows his pleasure, it is because he wants to make others envious, not because he wants to make them happy: he displays his pleasure, but it is his pleasure. He has already forgotten that others might have had something to do with it. But what does he care about others? The egoist is ungrateful not because he doesn’t like to receive. He is ungrateful because he doesn’t like to acknowledge his debt to others and gratitude is this acknowledgment; because he doesn’t like to give in return and gratitude is giving thanks in return; because he doesn’t like to share and he doesn’t like to give. What does gratitude give away? It gives away itself, like a joyful echo, as I said; and in this it is love, it is sharing, it is a gift. It is pleasure upon pleasure, happiness upon happiness, gratitude upon generosity. Aware only of his own satisfactions and his own happiness, hoarding them as a miser hoards his coin, watching over them as a miser watches his purse, the egoist cannot be grateful. Ingratitude is not the incapacity to receive but the inability to give back—In the form of joy or love—a little of the joy that was received or experienced. This is why ingratitude is so pervasive a vice. We absorb joy as others absorb light, for egoism is a black hole.Gratitude is a gift, gratitude is sharing, gratitude is love: it is a joy accompanied by the idea of its cause, as Spinoza would say, when the cause is another person’s generosity, or courage, or love.1 Joy in return is love in return. Strictly speaking, therefore, gratitude can be addressed only toward living persons. Nevertheless, it is worth asking ourselves whether any gotten joy, whatever its cause, might not be the object of this joy in return for which is gratitude. How could one not be grateful to the sun for existing? To life, to flowers, to birds? I could feel no joy were it not for the rest of the universe (since without the rest of the universe, I would not exist). In this respect all joy, even a purely internal or introspective one (Spinoza’s acquiescentia in se ipso), has an external cause that is the universe, God, or nature—in other words, all and everything.2 No one is the cause of himself or, in the end, of his own joy. All causal chains, of which there are an infinite number, are themselves infinite: all things are interrelated, and related to us, and flow through us. All love, taken to its logical extreme, should therefore love all things: all love should be a love of everything (the more we love individual things, Spinoza might say, the more we love God),3 a universal gratitude, then, one that, though certainly not undifferentiated (how could we have the same gratitude for birds as for snakes, for Mozart as for Hitler?), would nevertheless be comprehensive or at least thankful for everything. Excluding nothing and rejecting nothing, not even the worst of things, this gratitude would have to be a tragic gratitude, in the Nietzschean sense, since the real must be accepted or rejected as is, since the real in its totality is the only reality4Gratitude is gratuitous in that one cannot ask of it, or for it, any recompense whatsoever. Gratitude may be a duty, or in any case a virtue, but, as Rousseau notes, it cannot be demanded as a right and nothing can be demanded in its name.5 Gratitude is love, not a quid pro quo. It is responsive and inclined to act in behalf of the person who inspires it, not as an exchange of one favor for another (this would no longer be gratitude but barter)6 but because love wants to delight the person who delights us. It is in this way that gratitude almost invariably fosters generosity, which in turn fosters gratitude. Whence Spinoza’s characterization of gratitude as a “reciprocal love,” an “eagerness of love.” “Thankfulness or gratitude is a desire or eagerness of love, by which we strive to benefit one who has benefited us from a like affect of love.”7 Here is where we go from a purely affective gratitude (to use a Kantian term) to an active gratitude, from joy in return to action in return.8 To my mind, Spinoza does not so much define gratitude here as describe its consequences (we can, for example, be grateful to someone who is dead and whom we cannot benefit). But the distinction is unimportant. What is certain is that gratitude differs from ingratitude precisely in its ability to see in the other the cause of its joy (unlike self-love, which sees the cause of its joy only in the self).9 This is why ingratitude is dishonorable 10 and why gratitude is good and makes us good.“All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare,” Spinoza writes.11 In the case of this excellent thing called gratitude, it is the strength of self-love that accounts for its rarity or difficulty. We all tend to see the love we have received as reason for self-congratulation rather than as cause for gratitude, which is love for the other.12 “Pride refuses to owe, self-love to pay,” writes La Rochefoucauld.13 How could pride be anything but ungrateful, if it can only love, admire, and extol the self? There is humility in gratitude, and humility is difficult. Is it a sadness? According to Spinoza it is, a point we will return to in the next chapter. What gratitude teaches us, however, is that there is also such a thing as joyful humility, or humble joy, humble because it knows it is not its own cause or its own principle and, knowing this, rejoices all the more (what a pleasure to say thank you!); because it is love, and not primarily love of self; because it knows it is indebted, or rather—since there is nothing to repay—because it knows it has all it could wish for and more, more than it had hoped for or could have expected, all thanks to the existence of the very person or thing responsible for this joy—God if you are a believer, or the world, or a friend, or a stranger, or anything at all. Gratitude is humble because it knows it is graced, graced by existence, or by life, or by all things, and gives in return, not knowing to whom or how, simply because it is good to offer thanks—to give grace—in return, to rejoice in one’s own joy and love, whose causes are always beyond our comprehension but which contain us, make us live, and carry us along. The humility of Bach, the humility of Mozart, each so different (the former gives grace with unequaled genius; the latter, we might say, is grace itself) but both overwhelming in their happy gratitude, their true simplicity, their almost superhuman power; even in anguish and suffering, they have a serenity to them that stems from the knowledge of being an effect and not a cause, an effect contained in the very thing they sing, to which they owe their existence and which carries them along. Clara Haskil, Dinu Lipatti, or Glenn Gould could express this, it seems to me, at least when they were at their best, and the joy we feel in listening to them reveals to us what gratitude essentially is, namely joy itself, in as much as it is something received and received undeservedly (yes, even for the best of us!), a state of grace that is always giving itself over to an even higher state of grace, the grace of existing, or rather of existence itself, the essence of being, the principle behind all existence, all beings, all joy, all love. Yes, what we read in Spinoza’s Ethics we can also hear in music; best of all, it seems to me, in the works of Bach and Mozart (in Haydn what we hear is more on the order of politeness and generosity, in Beethoven courage, in Schubert gentleness, in Brahms fidelity). And so we see how lofty a virtue gratitude is, a virtue more for giants than for dwarfs. Not that we are thereby exempted from it: let us be grateful for grace, and first of all to those who reveal it to us by celebrating it.No man is the cause of himself: the spirit, Claude Bruaire says, “is in debt for its being.”14 That is not quite accurate, however, for no one ever asked to come into being (it is the loan, not the gift, that results in a debt), and no one could ever repay such a debt. Life is not a debt: life is a state of grace, and being is a state of grace; therein lies gratitude’s highest lesson.

Gratitude rejoices in what has taken place or in what is. It is therefore the opposite of regret or nostalgia (which aches for a past that never was or is no more); it is also the opposite of hope or apprehension, one desiring, the other fearing (both of them desiring and fearing) a future that is yet to come and in fact may never be but that tortures by its absence. Gratitude or anxiety, the joy of what is or was, versus the dread of what could be. “The fool’s life,” says Epicurus, “is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future”15 Those who are incapable of gratitude live in vain; they can never be satisfied, fulfilled, or happy: they do not live, they get ready to live, as Seneca puts it.16 Or as Pascal would say, they hope to live17 and then regret the life they lived or, more often, the life they did not live. They miss the past as well as the future. The wise man, on the contrary, takes delight in living and also rejoices in having lived. Gratitude (charis) is this joy of memory, this love of the past—it neither suffers over what no longer is nor regrets what has been but joyfully recalls what was. It is time regained—the past recaptured, if you will—“the grateful recollection of what has been,” says Epicurus—by which we understand that the idea of death is made immaterial, as Proust says, for even death, take us though it will, cannot take from us what we have lived.18 These are immortal blessings, observes Epicurus, not because we do not die but because death cannot nullify what we have lived, lived fleetingly but definitively.19 Death deprives us only of the future, which does not exist. Gratitude frees us from death, through the joyous knowledge of what was. Gratitude is acknowledgment, which is to say, knowledge (whereas hope is merely imagination); this is why gratitude touches on truth, which is eternal, and inhabits it. Gratitude is the enjoyment of eternity.Yet someone will say, in answer to Epicurus, that the recollection, however grateful, of what has been will not give us back the past or return what we have lost. But what can? Gratitude does not abolish grief; it completes it. “We must heal our misfortunes by the grateful recollection of what has been and by the recognition that it is impossible to make undone what has been done.”20 Is there any more beautiful formulation of the mourning process? Mourning is about accepting what is, hence also what no longer is, and loving it as such, in its truth, in its eternity, so that we can go from the unbearable pain of loss to the sweetness of remembrance, from unfinished mourning to its completion (“the grateful recollection of what has been”), from amputation to acceptance, from suffering to joy, from love rent apart to love appeased. “Sweet is the memory of the departed friend,” says Epicurus: gratitude is this sweetness itself, when it becomes joyous. Yet suffering at first is the stronger: “How awful that he should have died!” How can we ever accept it? That is why mourning is necessary, and so difficult and so painful. But joy returns in spite of everything: “How fortunate that he should have lived!” The process of mourning is a process of gratitude.

Kant and Rousseau think gratitude a duty.21 I’m not convinced. Moreover, I don’t really believe in duties. But that gratitude is a virtue, in other words, an excellence, of this we find ample proof in the obvious baseness of those who are incapable of gratitude and in the mediocrity of all of us, who are lacking in it. How easily hatred outlasts love! How much stronger resentment is than gratitude. Gratitude sometimes even turns into resentment, so exquisitely sensitive is self-love. As Kant writes, ingratitude toward one’s benefactor “is an extremely detestable vice in the public judgment, yet man is so notorious for it, that one thinks it not unlikely to make an enemy even by rendering a benefit.”22 The greatness of gratitude, the pettiness of man.And yet for all that, gratitude itself can sometimes warrant suspicion. La Rochefoucauld sees it as mere disguised self-interest,23 and Chamfort observes, correctly, that “there is a base kind of gratitude”— a disguised servility, a disguised egoism, disguised hope.24 Sometimes we offer thanks only so that we might continue to receive (we say “thank you” but we think “more!”). This is not gratitude but flattery, obsequiousness, mendacity. It is not a virtue but a vice. In fact, even sincere gratitude cannot exempt us from any other virtue or justify any wrongdoing. It is a secondary, though not a second-rate, virtue and must be kept in its proper place: justice or honesty might warrant a breach of gratitude, but gratitude never warrants a breach of justice or good faith. Suppose someone has saved my life: am I therefore obliged to give false testimony on his behalf and cause an innocent person to be condemned? Of course not! Whatever we may owe someone, we do not become ungrateful by keeping in mind what we owe everyone else, and ourselves. He is not ungrateful, writes Spinoza, “who is not moved by the gifts of a courtesan to assist her lust, nor by those of a thief to conceal his thefts, nor by those of anyone else like that. On the contrary, he shows firmness of mind who does not allow any gifts to corrupt him, to his or to the general ruin.”25 Gratitude is not connivance; nor is it corruption.

Again, gratitude is joy; it is love. In this respect it borders on charity, which Jankélévitch has likened to “an inchoate gratitude, an unfounded, unconditional gratitude, just as gratitude is a secondary or hypothetical charity.”26 Joy upon joy; love upon love. Gratitude, then, is the secret of friendship, not because we feel indebted to our friends, since we owe them nothing, but because we share with them an overabundance of common, reciprocal joy. “Friendship goes dancing round the world,” says Epicurus, “proclaiming to us all to awake to the praises of a happy life.”27 Thank you for existing, friends say to one another, and to the world and all the universe. This kind of gratitude is certainly a virtue, for it is the happiness of loving, the only happiness there is.

GRATITUDE1

Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics, in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works, ed. Edwin Curley, Princeton University Press, 1994, III, def. 6 of the affects, p. 189 (“Love is a joy, accompanied by the idea of an external cause”).2

Spinoza’s term means self-esteem or, literally, peace with oneself, which he defines as “a joy born of the fact that a man considers himself and his own power of acting” (Spinoza, The Ethics, III, def. 25 of the affects, p. 192).3

Spinoza, The Ethics, V, P24.4

See, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Will to Power, IV, nos. 462, 463, and 464.5

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, in The First and Second Discourses and the Foundations of Inequality among Men, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch, Harper & Row, 1985, p. 188: “Gratitude is indeed a duty that ought to be performed, but it is not a right that can be exacted.”6

Spinoza, The Ethics, IV, P71, schol.7

Ibid., III, def. 34 of the affects, p. 194; see also III, P39 and 41, as well as P41, schol. (for the expression “reciprocal love”).8

Immanuel Kant, “Concerning the Duty of Gratitude,” in The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, trans. James W. Ellington, Library of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964,p.119.9

Spinoza, The Ethics, III, P41, schol.10

Ibid., IV, P71, schol.11

Ibid., V, P42, schol., p. 265.12

Ibid., 111, P41, schol. This is why “men are far more ready for vengeance than for returning benefits” (p. 176).13

François La Rochefoucauld, Maxims and Reflections, trans. Leonard Tancock, Penguin, 1959, maxim 228, p. 67.14

Claude Bruaire, L’être et l‘esprit, PUF, 1983, p. 60. See also p. 198.15

Cited by Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales (The Epistles of Seneca), trans. Richard M. Gummere, William Heinemann, 1925, XV, 9, p. 101. Epicurus also says: “The ungrateful greed of the soul makes the creature everlastingly desire varieties of dainty food” (Epicurus: The Extant Remains, trans. Cyril Bailey, Clarendon Press, 1926, LXIX, p. 117). See Marcel Conche’s enlightening remarks in his edition of Epicurus, Lettres et maximes, PUF, 1987, pp. 52-53.16

Epicurus: The Extant Remains, XLV, 13, p. 299 (“non vivunt, sed victuri sunt”).17

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter, Modern Library, Random House, 1941, no. 172, pp. 60-61.18

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 122, in Epicurus: The Extant Remains, p. 183. Epicurus’s expression seems to indicate (for otherwise it would be pleonastic) that, for him as for us, gratitude can apply to the present—even if, in the writings of Epicurus that have come down to us, it seems primarily linked to memory. But what is conscience, if not memory in and of the present?19

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus, 135.20

Epicurus: The Extant Remains, LV, p. 115. On mourning, see also my essay “Vivre, c’est perdre,” in the journal Autrement, no. 128.21

Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, II, p. 188; Kant, The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, § 32, p. 119.22

Kant, The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, § 36, p. 124.23

At least as far as “most men” are concerned, for whom it is “but a covert desire to receive greater gifts” (maxim 298, Maxims, p. 76). See also maxims 223-26.24

B. Chamfort, Products of the Perfected Civilization: Selected Writings of Chamfort, trans. W. S. Merwin, Macmillan, 1969, p. 203.25

Spinoza, The Ethics, IV, P71, schol. See also P70, dem. and schol.26

Vladimir Jankélévitch, Traité des vertus, Champs-Flammarion, 1986, vol. 2, p. 250. See also vol. 1, pp. 112ff.27

Epicurus, Sentences vaticanes, 52, in Epicurus: The Extant Remains, p. 115.

About the Author

André Comte-Sponville is one of the most important of the new wave of young French philosophers. He teaches at the Sorbonne and is the author of five highly acclaimed scholarly books of classical philosophy as well as the hugely popular A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, which is being translated into nineteen languages. Comte-Sponville lives in Paris.