Abstract

This study of forgiveness between persons takes as a point of departure a question that Kant suggests in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone: How does the sinner become assured of forgiveness? I conduct my inquiries from the perspective of the sinner, and with Kant's account of radical evil as a context. To begin to answer this question, I took a look at a set of contemporary philosophical accounts of forgiveness between persons. I outline these findings here to provide a context for my purpose and method. ;Many of these accounts fail to address the substance of Kant's question. They ignore the sinner and his or her sin almost altogether, and focus instead on the victim's angry and bitter response. On such a view, what makes forgiveness necessary is the victim's "resentful" response to sin or offence. I identify this as the "resentment-based" view of forgiveness, and contrast it with the "moral inequality" view that is also represented in the philosophical literature considered. The moral inequality view focuses on offender rather than offended, and on the fact of rather than the response to sin and offence. This last view is more compatible with Kant's concerns. The resentment-based and moral inequality views are incommensurable. This study cuts across the resentment-based and moral inequality views, and engages theological analogues and justifications explicitly. ;These preliminary findings informed the purpose and structure of this project. I realized that I could not begin to address Kant's question without developing a concept of forgiveness that cuts across the resentment-based and moral inequality views, and that incorporates some of the distinctive concerns that more recent hybrid accounts introduce. ;The purpose of Part I is to provide a context for my constructive position. In Chapter 1 I draw on Kant to establish the sinner's perspective, emphasize the problem of radical evil, and anticipate a theoretical structure for my own definition of forgiveness. In Chapter 2 I analyze the two incommensurable views of forgiveness, and make the negative and positive case for forgiveness as bilateral. ;The purpose of Part II is to construct a concept of forgiveness that cuts across the distinctions identified in Chapter 2, and that permits shared discourse among philosophers, and between philosophers and theologians. In this section I argue for three features in particular. Forgiveness is not only bilateral: it is also morally restorative and unearned. ;The purpose of Part III is to endorse a particular understanding of forgiveness between persons that is compatible with the concept developed in Part II, and that anticipates the limits of human forgiveness. To forgive another is to provide him or her with the opportunity to do and to be good. I begin in Chapter 5 to focus on the limits of what the human forgiver can do for the person who sins against him. Finally, in Chapter 6, I the consider the limits of both human repentance and human forgiveness. This exploration is part of a negative argument for an understanding of Divine forgiveness as that which transcends the weight of human sin and the capriciousness of human forgiveness