ABSTRACT
Notwithstanding their somewhat specialised academic concerns, the essays in this volume all nevertheless aim to celebrate the large significance and value of gratitude in social and public life. Moreover, in advance of any detailed social scientific or other statistical research, one might reasonably guess that most people – if asked – would also affirm the general personal and social importance of gratitude. That so, it might also be generally supposed that the more personal or public gratitude there is around the better, and/or that if there is presently not enough of it in (perhaps especially) affluent contemporary western liberal democracies– as several of the essays in this volume suggest – something needs to be done to promote or encourage this sentiment, attitude or response more widely. In that event, the practical question of how to go about such wider promotion of gratitude becomes pressing. The most general answer to this question would probably be that we need better “education” in such matters. But, from the essays in this volume, it may by now also be evident that given the conceptual, psychological and moral complexities of gratitude, this enterprise is not altogether simple or straightforward.
