What can the Romans teach us about politics? This thematic introduction to Roman political thought shows how the Roman world developed political ideas of lasting significance, from the consequential constitutional notions of the separation of powers, political legitimacy, and individual rights to key concepts in international relations, such as imperialism, just war theory, and cosmopolitanism. Jed W. Atkins relates these and many other important ideas to Roman republicanism, traces their evolution across all major periods of Roman history, and describes Christianity's important contributions to their development. Using the politics and political thought of the United States as a case study, he argues that the relevance of Roman political thought for modern liberal democracies lies in the profound mixture of ideas both familiar and foreign to us that shape and enliven Roman republicanism. Accessible to students and non-specialists, this book provides an invaluable guide to Roman political thought and its enduring legacies.

Roman Political Thought

Growing evidence indicates that gratefulness and gratitude are important for well-being and happiness. Yet, research to date has been hindered by a lack of conceptual clarity into the nature of these constructs. The present paper reviews existing literature and argues for a distinction between gratefulness and gratitude. While both gratefulness and gratitude are types of appreciative functioning and both involve benefit appraisals, only the latter concerns perceived agency. A set of triggers, moderating factors, and motivation and behavioural processes involved in gratefulness and gratitude are outlined, and differences are highlighted. From this vantage, it is argued that appreciative functioning can be adequately represented as a complex dynamic system, which involves a plurality of interacting processes. Some of these processes are common to gratefulness and gratitude and some are unique to each. The proposed conceptualisation of appreciative functioning spans aspects of attention, cognition, emotion, motivation and social behaviour, integrating the diverse approaches to gratefulness and gratitude taken in the literature. It is suggested that grateful dispositions can be understood as characteristic self-reinforcing patterns in which this complex system functions. The paper also highlights the need to measure gratitude and gratefulness more independently and to both qualitatively and quantitatively determine the unique contribution of the two constructs to well-being.

Gratitude or Gratefulness? A Conceptual Review and Proposal of the System of Appreciative Functioning

This paper proposes that gratitude has a place in enabling us to understand students’ experiences of higher education, and this has an implication for higher education (HE) marketing. This research examines the evidence for and focus of gratitude within the context of an undergraduate course with high levels of student satisfaction. It finds that final-year students report feelings of gratitude and that students report that those feelings of gratitude are at their height within the final year. This exploratory research proposes that feelings of gratitude are driven by four factors: helping behaviors; care; perceived effort; and environment. For HE marketers, this suggests that there is merit in placing emphasis on academic-student interactions at the heart of marketing strategies, including branding strategies, open day events, marketing communications and social media content. There are clear opportunities for academics and marketing departments to benefit from the intention to give back that is ...

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Gratitude and its drivers within higher education

Gratitude may be an important yet largely untapped aspect of media-practice education This research uses an exploratory approach with media-practice academics and students in order to examine the evidence and nature of gratitude within media-practice education Given the exploratory nature of the study, interim findings are reported The research finds media-practice students to be open to gratitude having a place within their educational experiences; indeed, students exclusively speak about situations in which they feel grateful, as positive aspects of their student experience However, academics see gratitude in a more varied way For some, gratitude and its cyclical nature resonate; for others, gratitude is inappropriate and loaded with notions of power These different perspectives may be partially explained by the different ways in which students and academics perceive gratitude Whereas initial student voices suggest that gratitude is a positive emotion associated with a desire to reciproca

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Gratitude: does it have a place within media-practice education?

This supplement tabulates the articles identified through the ProQuest search described in the main article. These articles relate to concepts of gratefulness, gratitude and thankfulness, and are listed in increasing order of publication year. The search was run on 7 August, 2014 using the following search phrase: “(IF(gratitude OR gratefulness OR thankfulness) OR SU(gratitude OR gratefulness OR thankfulness)) AND PEER(yes) AND SCHOL(yes) AND LA(English).” A second table is provided, listing the 97 additional articles found through forward and backward reference searching as described in the main article.

http://link.springer.com/content/esm/art:10.1007/s10902-015-9675-z/file/MediaObjects/10902_2015_9675_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Gratitude or gratefulness? A conceptual review and proposal of the System of Appreciative Functioning (Supplement 1)

Twenty years ago the noted political commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. published a short book, Gratitude, M to promote his version of a plan for national public service. His proposal proved highly controversial, especially W among conservatives, with some assailing it as a dangermmous expansion of state power and others praising it as a way to rebuild patriotism. Views on the idea of national service at the time were already so firmly fixed, however, that few commentators bothered to consider Buckley's novel justification for the program, which was encapsulated in the work's title. Buckley introduced his essay by recounting a touching short story by Anatole France, which drew on an old medieval legend. It describes a humble young monk who arrives as a postulant at a monastery possessing the one talent of juggling. Ashamed how this skill compared to the refined proficiencies of the other brothers, who excelled in singing, musical instrumentality, and poetic expression, the young monk slipped furtively into the sanctuary in the dead of night to perform his juggling act before the statue of Our Lady. This gift was all he could offer; but in its very simplicity and sincerity it represented "gratitude reified." Buckley then posed the question of how young Americans might display devotion to their heritage--not just to the country, but to its laws and practices that have given them their liberty. His answer? A term of public service that would include such nonheroic jobs as helping to care for the old and the sick: "By asking them to make sacrifices we are reminding them that they owe a debt, even as the juggler felt a debt to Our Lady." And if these young citizens do not feel a need to repay this debt, or perhaps even acknowledge that they owe one, still, Buckley insisted, performing service is important, for "the failure to express gratitude ... brings on the coarsening of the sensibilities, a drying out of the wellsprings of civic and personal virtue." In the end, Buckley's primary goal was less to provide the concrete benefits from service activities than to "shape the national ethos" of the citizenry by developing a capacity for gratitude. Today, two decades removed from this proposal, little enthusiasm and no funds are available for a program of this kind. The whole idea has vanished from public discussion. What remains of interest, however, are the questions that Buckley introduced about gratitude and its role in political life. In what measure do public actors (or the state) have a stake in expressing or promoting gratitude? Is the virtue of gratitude diminishing in modern America, and if so, what are the sources or causes of its decline? What is gratitude? gratitude IS one of the most fundamental and complex of the virtues, overlapping with and undergirding many of the others. Cicero once characterized it as "the mother of all the virtues." Although precision of definition in such matters is neither possible nor desirable--some things being better investigated by what Pascal called an esprit de finesse rather than an esprit de geometrie--there is need for at least a rough idea of gratitude's meaning. And where better to begin, at least in an American context, than by consulting our greatest lexicographer, Noah Webster? Webster commences his r828 dictionary entry on gratitude as follows: "An emotion of the heart, excited by a favor or benefit received; a sentiment of kindness or good will towards a benefactor; thankfulness. Gratitude is an agreeable emotion, consisting in or accompanied with good will to a benefactor, and a disposition to make a suitable return of benefits or services, or when no return can be made, with a desire to see the benefactor prosperous and happy." The characterization of gratitude as an "emotion" or "sentiment" seems to identify it as a feeling that wells up spontaneously. Even so, it has been subjected to the strongest kind of moral judgment. …

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ949548.pdf

James W. Ceaser

Papers

No Thanks to Gratitude