Contested Emotions: Pity and Gratitude from the Stoics to Swift and Wordsworth

Abstract

Pity and gratitude are often classified among the moral emotions: pity responds to an undeserved ill that has befallen another, while gratitude affirms as good something given to us, as well as the agent who gave it. To some philosophers, however, pity and gratitude are never or rarely appropriate. For the Stoics, pity is unnecessary suffering for the person who pities, grounded in a mistaken view of what constitutes privation; Wollstonecraft and Godwin add that in a just society, there would be no pitiably needy people. Similarly, if assistance is reconceived as something due a person as a right, then the obligation to feel or express gratitude, or to render reciprocal service, is largely eliminated. Godwin'sEnquiry concerning Political Justiceis indebted to the Stoical, pitiless, and gentle Houyhnhnms ofGulliver's Travels, and it prompts in turn Wordsworth's representations of interpersonal encounter in “Simon Lee,”The Ruined Cottage, andThe Prelude.

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