Exploring the Ultra 'Ultimate' in Gratitude: Interrogating Gratitude in Thomas Aquinas Through the Lens of Cultural Evolution

This article highlights Thomas Aquinas' specific theological analysis of gratitude as a key to understanding how gratitude is possible in human communities as well as the evolutionary conditions that are likely to have been a prerequisite for its emergence. In particular, the article will probe the philosophical presuppositions within his theological account of gratitude as virtue. Moreover, the article will consider how such theological descriptions might challenge or incorporate insights from the psychological, anthropological, and evolutionary sciences and how theological analysis raises several questions for different scientific explanations of gratitude and vice versa. Finally, the article will offer a brief speculative account of the possible relationship between the evolutionary emergence of religious beliefs and something akin to gratitude; such an account will stand as an alternative to explanations that understand religion in terms of punitive models of restraint to catch would-be defectors in cooperative social contexts in large groups.