 Conceptualizing gratitude as a virtue, however, presents certain theoretical pitfalls and drawbacks. For instance, conceptualizing gratitude as a virtue has tempted some philosophers (e.g., Wellman 1999b) to infer that there is no such thing as an obligation of gratitude, though this inference may not be warranted (Manela 2019). Furthermore, if gratitude were a virtue, then it should be natural to ascribe it to certain people as a general, global character trait, the way temperance, patience, or thoughtfulness might be ascribed to someone. More often than not, however, people are not grateful or ungrateful tout court, but grateful only vis-à-vis certain people, and ungrateful vis-à-vis certain others. A man might be reliably predisposed to form and maintain grateful feelings, beliefs and conations in response to benevolence from strangers, but radically disinclined to form them in response to, say, a sibling or a parent. A person might not generally be disposed to form grateful dispositions toward anyone, but might still form a proper and lasting grateful disposition toward a particular benefactor for a particular act of beneficence she performed for him. Alternatively, a person might be generally inclined to form grateful dispositions toward the right people at the right times, but might lapse and fail to do so toward a particular person on a particular occasion. Are such beneficiaries grateful? The lack of an easy answer, and the commonness of such cases, reminds us that when it comes to gratitude, we are often interested in particular episodes or instances of gratitude, not always global character traits like the virtue of gratitude (Carr 2013; Manela 2019). 