Abstract

In this work I examine contemporary philosophical accounts of forgiveness and then develop an alternative account in which forgiveness is considered an act of absolution that alters the relation of moral debt between wrongdoer and victim. This model differs from the traditional model, which focuses on the victim's forswearing and overcoming resentment towards the wrongdoer. My model has several advantages over the traditional model: it explains the victim's special ability to forgive; it explains the relationship of resentment to injury; it avoids a number of problems which plague the traditional models, including Kolnai's Paradox; it helps our understanding of why forgiveness is morally good; and yet it explains why forgiveness is supererogatory. ;The traditional model focuses primarily on the change of heart in the victim. According to that model, forgiveness is just the forswearing of resentment. In that model forgiveness is something that goes on entirely within the forgiver. By contrast, my model of forgiveness describes it as a remission of a kind of moral debt, what I call 'onus'. When a person injures or wrongs another, he owes something to the victim. It is that debt which explains and justifies resentment. Unlike the traditional models, my model focuses on the importantly relative quality of resentment and debt. When one injures another, that person alone, the injured party, has the right to resent the wrongdoer, and the power to offer forgiveness. Injury establishes a special relation between the offender and victim. My model relies on this relation to explain key features of forgiveness, and to rescue forgiveness from moral problems that arise when it is viewed as a mere change of heart. My model solves the major problems that vex the understanding of forgiveness, it explains a number of the features we routinely ascribe to the concept, and it paves the way to explain why forgiving is morally good yet supererogatory