Daniel Telech: September 25, 2026

Abstract: Agential gratitude (i.e., gratitude to another for a benefit — henceforth "gratitude") is standardly understood to be fittingly responsive only to a benefactor's manifestation of good will: to be gratitudeworthy is to have benefited another from benevolence. I argue that this view is too narrow. Gratitude can be fitting toward a benefactor who acts with no concern for the beneficiary, provided the event that benefits the recipient constitutes a non-trivial cost to the benefactor. An essential worker who delivers groceries purely for the wage, risking exposure her pay does not compensate, and a bystander gravely injured while absorbing a blow headed toward another, are each fitting targets of gratitude despite lacking good will. They are gratitudeworthy but not praiseworthy. I locate the common ground of gratitude in a benefactor's having invested part of herself in another's benefit, whether through her 'orientation' (volitional gratitude) or her 'substance' (cost-based gratitude). This broader conception of gratitude mirrors recent work on guilt, according to which guilt can be fitting without fault, such that guiltworthiness comes apart from blameworthiness. No-credit gratitude widens the class of those to whom we owe reciprocal action and explains why warm acknowledgment cannot substitute for material return in cases of cost-based gratitude: what a benefactor is owed tracks what was invested, and these modes of return are not interchangeable.