This paper argues for a pragmatic resolution to the conflict between justice and forgiveness. Authors such as Derrida, who see a paradox or aporia in the conflict between justice and forgiveness, often conceive each value in absolute terms. A pragmatic approach deemphasizes absolutism and focuses instead on pluralism and sensitivity to context. One useful example of a pragmatic approach is found in care ethics, as described by Noddings. Care ethics emphasizes the concrete specificity of relationships and (...) the needs and interests of individuals, while downplaying abstract and absolute moral principles. This approach is described in opposition to more traditional religious and moral theories that hold justice or forgiveness as abstract and mutually opposed values. (shrink)

Abstract: Forgiveness of wrongdoing in response to public apology and amends making seems, on the face of it, to leave little room for the continued commemoration of wrongdoing. This rests on a misunderstanding of forgiveness, however, and we can explain why there need be no incompatibility between them. To do this, I emphasize the role of what I call nonangry negative moral emotions in constituting memories of wrongdoing. Memories so constituted can persist after forgiveness and have (...) important moral functions, and commemorations can elicit these emotions to preserve memories of this sort. Moreover, commemorations can be a restorative justice practice that promotes reconciliation, but only on condition that the memories they preserve are constituted by nonangry negative, not retributive, emotions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that we can learn much about wild justice and the evolutionary origins of social morality – behaving fairly – by studying social play behavior in group-living animals, and that interdisciplinary cooperation will help immensely. In our efforts to learn more about the evolution of morality we need to broaden our comparative research to include animals other than non-human primates. If one is a good Darwinian, it is premature to claim that only humans can be (...) empathic and moral beings. By asking the question What is it like to be another animal? we can discover rules of engagement that guide animals in their social encounters. When I study dogs, for example, I try to be a dogocentrist and practice dogomorphism. My major arguments center on the following big questions: Can animals be moral beings or do they merely act as if they are? What are the evolutionary roots of cooperation, fairness, trust, forgiveness, and morality? What do animals do when they engage in social play? How do animals negotiate agreements to cooperate, to forgive, to behave fairly, to develop trust? Can animals forgive? Why cooperate and play fairly? Why did play evolve as it has? Does being fair mean being more fit – do individual variations in play influence an individual''s reproductive fitness, are more virtuous individuals more fit than less virtuous individuals? What is the taxonomic distribution of cognitive skills and emotional capacities necessary for individuals to be able to behave fairly, to empathize, to behave morally? Can we use information about moral behavior in animals to help us understand ourselves? I conclude that there is strong selection for cooperative fair play in which individuals establish and maintain a social contract to play because there are mutual benefits when individuals adopt this strategy and group stability may be also be fostered. Numerous mechanisms have evolved to facilitate the initiation and maintenance of social play to keep others engaged, so that agreeing to play fairly and the resulting benefits of doing so can be readily achieved. I also claim that the ability to make accurate predictions about what an individual is likely to do in a given social situation is a useful litmus test for explaining what might be happening in an individual''s brain during social encounters, and that intentional or representational explanations are often important for making these predictions. (shrink)

In this volume based on her 2014 Locke Lectures, Martha C. Nussbaum provides a bracing new view that strips the notion of forgiveness down to its Judeo-Christian roots, where it was structured by the moral relationship between a score-keeping God and penitent, self-abasing, and erring mortals.

The article examines the political challenge and significance of forgiveness as an indispensable response to the inherently imperfect and tragic nature of political life through the lens of the existential, narrative-inspired judging sensibility. While the political significance of forgiveness has been broadly recognized in transitional justice and reconciliation contexts, the question of its importance and appropriateness in the wake of grave injustice and suffering has commonly been approached through constructing a self-centred, rule-based framework, defining forgiveness in (...) terms of a moral duty or virtue. Reliant on a set of prefabricated moral standards, however, this approach risks abstracting from the historical, situated condition of human political existence and thus arguably stands at a remove from the very quandaries and imperfections of the political world, which it purports to address. Against this background, this article draws on Albert Camus’s and Hannah Arendt’s aesthetic, worldly judging sensibility and its ability to kindle the process of coming to terms with the absurd, and perhaps unforgivable character of reality after evil. As an aptitude to engage the world in its particularity, plurality and contingency rather than seeking to subdue and tame it under prefabricated standards of thought, namely, worldly judgement is able to reveal how past tragedies have arisen from the ambiguity of human engagement in the world and thereby also elicit the distinctly human capacities of beginning anew and resisting such actions in the future. As such, I suggest, it is well-suited to bring into clearer focus and confront the main political challenge and significance of forgiveness: how to acknowledge the seriousness of the wrongs committed, yet also enable the possibility of a new beginning and restore among former enemies the sense of responsibility for the shared world. (shrink)

There are two kinds of forgiveness that appear as radically different from one another: one presents forgiveness as essentially earned through remorseful apology; the other presents it as fundamentally non-earned—a gift. The first, which I label Moral Justice Forgiveness, adopts a stance of moral demand and conditionality; the second, which I label Gifted Forgiveness, adopts a stance of non-demand and un-conditionality. Each is real; yet how can two such different responses to wrongdoing be (...) of one and the same kind? This paper explains how, by showing that the basic role each plays in moral-social life is the same; and that one is conceptually and therefore historically prior to the other. The result is pluralism, with each kind of forgiveness represented as distinctive in both its psychology and its normativity; and yet an ordered pluralism—with Moral Justice Forgiveness revealed as the root kind, and Gifted Forgiveness a culturally contingent iteration. (shrink)

Philosophers have sometimes drawn a distinction between supererogation and duty. This paper considers the possibility that a religious understanding of hu- man life and history may require what would otherwise be considered praise worthy but not obligatory. The specific example here is forgiveness. The paper sketches a view of forgiveness and suggests that forgiveness is not, at least in contemporary Western thought, considered to be a moral obligation. Several reasons why this might be the case are (...) considered as well as how par- ticular Christian beliefs about God's justice and mercy may transform this situa- tion. The paper concludes that given certain religious beliefs, forgiveness may be both moral prerogative and religious duty. (shrink)

In this essay. I explore questions pertaining to ‘radical’ acts of forgiveness as they relate to considerations of duties and justice. I will survey recent examples and show a possible philosophical basis for understanding them in terms of self-duty. Thus I will try to show that a little noticed basis exists for understanding acts of radical forgiveness as morally required (and not simply admirable or reserved for the saintly). I argue both that considerations of self-duty can provide (...) a secular basis for justifying radical acts of forgiveness and that problems associated with this kind of forgiveness and justice are not as serious as they are often taken to be. (shrink)

This volume considers challenges to forgiveness in the most difficult circumstances, such as in criminal justice contexts, when the victim is dead or when bystanders disagree, and when anger and resentment seem preferable and important. Contributing philosophers include Myisha Cherry, Jonathan Jacobs, Barrett Emerick, Alice MacLachlan, David McNaughton and Eve Garrard. Contributing psychologists include Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Robert D. Enright and Mary Jacqueline Song, C. Ward Struthers, Joshua Guilfoyle, Careen Khoury, Elizabeth van Monsjou, Joni Sasaki, Curtis Phills, Rebecca Young, (...) and Zdravko Marjanovic. (shrink)

Acts of Christian forgiveness that run counter to natural inclinations and ethical intuitions raise questions about the nature of human identity and the basis of moral theology. An assessment of the biblical and theological warrant for Christian forgiveness challenges the ethical misappropriation of the language of covenant, torah and righteousness to that of contract, law and justice. The argument is made that forgiveness should be seen as normative—indeed, obligatory rather than supererogatory. A theological account is (...) then provided of the conditions under which our natural inclinations are transformed so as to facilitate an orientation of forgiveness. It is argued that the doctrines of the incarnation and human participation in the mind of Christ are axiomatic for interpreting the Christian life and thus moral theology. This leads to the conclusion that a combination of ‘reconciled exemplarism’ and ‘semantic externalism’ is key to the exposition of Christian ethics – the language of which tracks God’s historical engagement with humanity rather than denoting immanent, ethical categories. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In ‘Forgiveness: An Ordered Pluralism’, Miranda Fricker aims to show that two seemingly incompatible conceptions of forgiveness are unified insofar as they ascribe the same moral function to forgiveness. Both Moral Justice Forgiveness and Gifted Forgiveness, she maintains, remove redundant blame feeling. In reply, I contend that Fricker’s two targets do not actually share the same function. Gifted Forgiveness of unrepentant wrongdoers often removes blame feeling that is anything but redundant. (...) Fricker’s argument depends on the mistaken assumption that resentment and blame have a single function. Once we see that they are polyfunctional, the question of when resentment and blame are redundant becomes far more complicated. If we want to figure out when and why we ought to forgive, we must carefully distinguish moral ideals concerning forgiveness from definitional questions about the nature of forgiveness. Once we do so, Fricker’s neatly ordered pluralism dissolves into a messier set of options. (shrink)

In ‘Forgiveness, an Ordered Pluralism’, Fricker distinguishes two concepts of forgiveness, both of which are deployed in our forgiveness practices: moral justice forgiveness and gifted forgiveness. She then argues that the former is more explanatorily basic than the latter. We think Fricker is right about this. We will argue, however, that contra Fricker, it is a third more minimal concept that is most basic. Like Fricker, we will focus on the function of our (...) practices, but in a way that is informed by research in ethology (research which seeks to explain the function of animal behaviour and determine how these behaviours evolved). (shrink)

The concept of forgiveness is analyzed as a moral gesture toward the offender designed to help restore that individual's moral standing. Jewish sources on the conditions under which forgiveness is obligatory are explored and two contrasting positions are presented: one in which the obligation to forgive is conditional on the repentance of the offender and another in which people are required to forgive unconditionally. These two positions are shown to represent different ways of framing the offending (...) behavior that rest, in turn, on different ways of balancing the need for justice and for mercy respectively. In the final analysis, Judaism's two contrasting attitudes toward forgiveness are rooted in different theological assumptions and different ways of construing the very goals of the moral life. The author points out the merits and shortcomings of both positions and concludes with the suggestion that the two complement each other in important ways. (shrink)

This paper presents some findings concerning peacemaking in restorative justice conferences. In guidelines and handbooks where the terms and conditions of restorative conferences are exemplified, forgiveness and reconciliation are not explicitly mentioned. However, many proponents of restorative justice assume that ‘coming together voluntarily’ will lead to rapprochement and reconciliation. Research findings in many ways contradict this supposed dynamic. Many victims want to teach the young offender a lesson. Others don’t want ‘closure’ or ‘restoration,’ and experience the pressure (...) to come to terms as threatening. These observations make clear that notions as ‘forgiveness,’ ‘repentance,’ and ‘restoration’ are often too ‘big’ and ill-suited to function as core principles for restorative justice. It seems inappropriate to burden the process of coping with past injuries with these concepts. The process of moral learning within restorative justice conferences might better be conceived in terms of opening up and developing understanding. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper I respond to Fricker’s paradigm-based account of forgiveness, which aims to integrate two seemingly different versions of responses to wrongdoing—conditional forgiveness (what Fricker calls ‘Moral Justice Forgiveness’) and unconditional forgiveness (what Fricker calls ‘Gifted Forgiveness’)—into one explanatory order, as well as, she argues, showing the second to be derivative and parasitic on the basic functioning of the first, and more contingent. My aim is to endorse and draw on Fricker’s (...) paradigm-based strategy and the way it enables us to present a unified account, to endorse her view that both gifted and conditional forgiveness are versions of one loosely unified phenomenon, but to argue for the reverse account of the order of conceptual priority. I will argue that gifted forgiveness is the paradigm, and that once we understand what it is and its role we can see why and how forgiveness also makes sense as something offered in response to a wrongdoer’s remorse, but that this latter form of forgiveness retains an aspect of being something essentially gifted. (shrink)

Dissertation Summary—Mark Taylor My dissertation explores forgiveness and revenge within a narrative conception of human lives. In Chapter One, I lay out an account of human life stories and argue for its advantages in understanding the value of redemption. In particular, I suggest that the goods we care about in our lives depend on their integration into the way we see ourselves as persons who exist through time. Forgiveness and revenge can recontextualize moments from our past and infuse (...) them with a new meaning. Building on Peter Goldie’s work, I identify unity, purpose, direction, and truth as qualities of life stories toward which forgiveness contributes. I examine some of the psychological literature to understand the role our internal narrative plays in making sense of the world (and the lack of sense when that narrative fails). I conclude by defending against a well-known objection from Galen Strawson against narrative analysis. In Chapter Two I take up a qualified defense of the rationality of revenge. My motivation in doing so is a link in the logic between revenge and forgiveness. If revenge is always straightforwardly irrational, forgiveness is undermined. My strategy to defend revenge is to give a taxonomy characterizing it and then pick out its most justifiable form. I argue that revenge at its best is a form of caring about one’s past, or the past of a loved one. I defend this form of revenge against various objections, especially that it is pointless or involves a rational error about one’s own untouchable value as a person. I argue that the point of revenge is to ‘change the ending’ of the offender and victim’s relationship. I also argue that focus on objective value misses the point: what is threatened is not the victim’s objective value as a person, but the value of a life story worth having. In Chapter Three I lay out my own account of forgiveness. I first provide several characteristic features of forgiveness, and then describe two camps in the literature that disagree about whether forgiveness is primarily a private matter of the heart or a public matter of treatment. I then argue for what I call ‘inaugurated forgiveness’ as a synthesis between these emotional and behavioral views. I suggest that forgiveness begins with a commitment toward the offender, but takes time to come to its emotional culmination. The nature of that commitment is a second-order endorsement of the desires of love over the desires of resentment. I also highlight the importance of hope as the operative forward-looking virtue rather than trust. Forgiveness involves committing oneself to openness to eventual redemption and reconciliation, but does not require the unjustified trust that the offender can be redeemed or reconciled at the moment of forgiveness. In Chapter Four I examine the underlying reasons for forgiving and avenging. I argue that personal reasons have a legitimate role to play in these practices, rather than merely impersonal considerations. Impersonal reasons, such as generic respect for personhood, or desert, play a dominant role in the literature where a major concern is to find a justification of forgiveness within a moral justice conception. Personal reasons are tied to the basic cares and commitments of a life, and these projects are what the life is about as a whole. There is thus an important connection between the narrative direction of a life and its ground projects. Forgiving for personal reasons is a way of giving appropriate weight to the particular life one has. I argue that personal reasons give us a way of understanding how forgiveness is elective and generous. I conclude by using this analysis to briefly outline some strategies for arguing for forgiveness over revenge. For example, I suggest that arguments against revenge need to begin from the victim’s ground projects, such as each person’s commitment to seeing the world truly, or the desire for one’s community to flourish; I suggest that forgiveness usually allows better epistemic access, and better protects one’s intimates. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I contend that Miranda Fricker’s ambitious new pluralist account of forgiveness is too inclusive and counts as forgiveness practices that are psychologically and normatively quite different. I raise three worries: First, her account of proleptic Gifted Forgiveness as temporally displaced Moral Justice Forgiveness seems to allow for Preemptive Forgiveness. Second, proleptic Gifted Forgiveness seems to resemble communicative blame more than forgiveness. Finally, an alternative account of forgiveness—explained in terms of (...) reasons to forswear blame—seems capable of meeting Fricker’s desiderata for an adequate theory (e.g., giftedness, pluralism, ambivalence, and genealogy), while avoiding the inclusivity worry. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction and overview; 2. The nature of forgiveness and resentment; 3. The moral analysis of the attitudes of forgiveness and resentment defined; 4. The moral analysis of the attitudes of self-forgiveness and self-condemnation; 5. Philosophical underpinnings of the basic attitudes: forgiveness, resentment, and the nature of persons; 6. Moral theory: justice and desert; 7. The public response to wrongdoing; 8. Restorative justice: the public response to wrongdoing (...) and the process of addressing the wrong. (shrink)

While most scholars focus on the advantages of forgiveness, the negative effects of hasty forgiveness have been largely neglected in the literature. In this essay I shall argue that in certain contexts granting forgiveness to a wrongdoer could be morally questionable, and sometimes it could even be morally wrong. Following Aristotle’s view of emotion, and, in particular, his notion of virtuous anger, I shall claim that appropriate, righteous anger is instrumental for justice, and, as a result, (...) inappropriate, or imprudent forgiveness could be an impediment to justice, or even a license for the continuation of injustice. (shrink)

The theme of this book is the complex moral psychology of forgiving and remembering in both personal and political contexts. It offers an original account of the moral psychology of interpersonal forgiveness and explores its role in transitional societies. The book also examines the symbolic moral significance of memorialization in these societies and reflects on its relationship to forgiveness.

The paper responds to those who argue that it is morally objectionable to forgive the unapologetic. I argue that it is both possible and permissible to forgive the unapologetic. Along the way the analysis sheds light on the relationship between forgiveness and trust, condonation, self-respect, punishment, justice and apology.

Based on Fricker’s conceptualization of epistemic injustice and moral justice forgiveness, I propose an analysis of the relationship between epistemic injustice and redundant blame. Situated in the Colombian post-conflict context, it is argued that the negative identity prejudices applied to former guerrilla members produce a kind of epis- temic injustice and redundant blame that yields structural violence. It is suggested that a proper understanding of JEP and the Truth Commission’s work, as well as the concept of transitional (...) justice, would work as interpretative resources to favour the ex-rebels testimonial credibility. I conclude that the exercise of power which manipulates the in- terpretative resources available for a collective understanding of practices of justice and forgiveness in the post-conflict, is the cause of the structural violence against ex-rebels. (shrink)

Forgiveness is a compelling Christian ideal. By contrast, to many philosophers it is not clear that forgiveness should be endorsed as a moral requirement; some argue that unconditional forgiveness is morally wrong. Those who are required to exercise forgiveness can feel that their own dignity and moral worthiness is diminished by such requirement if insignificant recognition was given to the harms they suffered as victims. This is particularly significant when thinking about women’s lives. (...) class='Hi'>Forgiveness and justice occasion particularly painful quandaries in feminist ethics. However, an important stream of feminist ethics—namely the ethics of care—can make a convincing case in favor of forgiveness. A main goal of an ethics of care is preserving relationships for which, in the less than ideal conditions of human life, forgiveness is essential. Thus, the ethics of care casts additional light on the tension between pursuing forgiveness and justice. By spelling out these various dilemmas, I illustrate how a feminist ethics and a feminist philosophy of religion can be fruitful intellectual allies. A feminist ethics will benefit from cautious reliance on religious wisdom, concomitantly acknowledging the need for forgiveness and qualifying the requirements of forgiveness such that this ideal does not become, once again, oppressive for women. And a feminist philosophy of religion should be to some extent informed by feminist ethical goals, helping to unveil religious resources that give credit to our ongoing need for forgiveness, without however overlooking the importance of (gender) justice. (shrink)

The question of forgiveness in politics has attained a certain cachet. Indeed, in the fifty years since Arendt commented on the notable absence of forgiveness in the political tradition, a vast and multidisciplinary literature on the politics of apology, reparation, and reconciliation has emerged. To a novice scouring the relevant literatures, it might appear that the only discordant note in this new veritable symphony of writings on political forgiveness has been sounded by philosophers. There is a more-than-healthy (...) cynicism directed at what many philosophers see as an uncritical promotion of forgiveness, which – they fear – risks distorting and cheapening forgiveness as a moral ideal, on the one hand, and ignoring the moral and political values of justice, accountability and the cessation of harmful relationships, on the other. Are philosophical fears about the dangers of thinking about forgiveness in political terms warranted – or do they perhaps depend in part on conceptual conservatism regarding what exactly political forgiveness might be? I argue that most, if not all, standard objections to political forgiveness emerge from theoretical reliance on a picture of forgiveness I will call the Emotional Model. Once we make conceptual space for descriptions of forgiveness in performative and social terms, the concept is more easily adapted to a political account without at least some of the risks feared by philosophers. (shrink)

In “Why Forgiving the Unrepentant is not Demeaning or Insulting: A Reply to Nicholas Wolterstorff,” David E. Wright argues against Wolterstorff’s view in Justice in Love that it is wrong or impossible to forgive the unrepentant wrongdoer. In response to Wolterstorff’s claim that it is impossible to forgive the unrepentant, Wright presents the case of Timothy and Hubert, which seems to show that one can forgive the unrepentant and take the wrong seriously. In response to Wolterstorff’s claim that it (...) is not morally permissible to forgive the unrepentant, Wright employs Trudy Govier and Colin Hirano’s invitational model of forgiveness, in which the act of forgiveness serves as the impetus or “invitation” for reconciliation. To illustrate this, Wright presents the case of Timothy and Jake, which seems to show that forgiving the unrepentant can be respectful of both the victim and the wrongdoer. (shrink)

Forgiveness and mercy are both generous responses to wrongdoing. Forgiveness is a personal reaction to wrongful harm. It can be expressed in emotional, verbal, or relational terms, and it can potentially express a number of important moral values. Controversial topics with regard to forgiveness include the possibility of unforgivable actions and of third-party, self, and group forgiveness. Recent political developments have invited philosophical reflection on public forgiveness. Mercy is usually theorized in relation to punishment, (...) and it is understood to provide the basis for more lenient treatment than that demanded by justice, interpreted strictly. It remains controversial as to whether mercy should be understood apart from justice or incorporated within it. (shrink)

What can Stoicism offer to contemporary debates about forgiveness? Given their outright rejection of a reactive attitudes framework for responding to wrongdoing and their bold suggestions of how to revise our moral practices, the Stoics provide a valuable lens through which to re-evaluate various central claims in the debates about forgiveness. In this chapter, I highlight four common assumptions that the Stoics would consider problematic: firstly, that forgiveness is opposed to justice; secondly, that anger and (...) resentment are necessary for registering wrongdoing; thirdly, that anger and resentment are generally reliable at tracking the severity of wrongdoing; fourthly, that reconciliation with wrongdoers is an option rather than an imperative of virtue. Insofar as the Stoics provide defensible and often compelling alternatives to these positions, Stoicism offers a number of philosophical resources to re-conceptualize the way we think about forgiveness and suggests ways in which forgiveness might be better integrated into a virtue ethical framework. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between tolerance, forgiveness, and justice. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, it argues that tolerance and forgiveness are not independent virtues vying with justice for our allegiance, but that they fall under justice’s imperative to judge other people objectively and treat them as they deserve. Misguided extensions of tolerance and forgiveness imperil the very values that ethics is designed to promote. Thus tolerance and forgiveness are neither virtues nor vices; they (...) are appropriate only when authorised by justice. The paper clarifies the common confusion of tolerance with respect for individuals’ rights, and argues that forgiveness is not a supererogatory act of generosity, but is sometimes morally required. (shrink)

Moral Repair examines the ethics and moral psychology of responses to wrongdoing. Explaining the emotional bonds and normative expectations that keep human beings responsive to moral standards and responsible to each other, Margaret Urban Walker uses realistic examples of both personal betrayal and political violence to analyze how moral bonds are damaged by serious wrongs and what must be done to repair the damage. Focusing on victims of wrong, their right to validation, and their sense of (...) justice, Walker presents a unified and detailed philosophical account of hope, trust, resentment, forgiveness, and making amends - the emotions and practices that sustain moral relations. Moral Repair joins a multidisciplinary literature concerned with transitional and restorative justice, reparations, and restoring individual dignity and mutual trust in the wake of serious wrongs. (shrink)

It centers on the capacity of victims and creditors to release transgressors and debtors from their moral and financial debts. "If justice is a matter of receiving one's due," he says, "then political forgiveness entails releasing one's due." Neverthless, political forgiveness remains connected to justice in important ways.".

The notion of "justice for all" has been a noble ideal and a foundation of human relationships in enlightened society for millennia. The Greeks and Romans viewed justice as the basis for the rule of law that governed interactions and that served as the standard for determining rights and responsibilities. Today the notion of social justice permeates political dialogue and has become the justification for social unrest and discord. The focus of this book is on the personal (...) side of justice and its importance in individual lives. Although justice is a lofty concept and is often spoken of as if its meaning is clear to all, it is nonetheless a complex and often subjective standard with conflicting meanings. Though these meanings may not be universally clear, understood, or agreed upon, as a standard of human relations justice is nonetheless deeply important and profoundly personal in its impacts. Like any metric, justice may be misused and manipulated by the self-justifying and the dishonest. However, properly understood, justice remains a noble ideal despite its complexity. Writing about justice has given us the opportunity to appreciate its significance and the nuances of its meanings. At its noblest, justice must ultimately be equated with wisdom, integrity, and love. Improperly understood, justice can impede wisdom and purpose and become an excuse for self-serving behavior that is later regretted. Although justice is often accompanied by a set of defining rules, it is also intended to be both compassionate and fair - caring for those whose rights need to be protected, as well as those best served by forgiveness and help rather than punishment. Perhaps justice is at its pinnacle when it is accompanied by mercy. Justice is far more than a mere set of rules, laws, or policies when it serves the purposes of enriching lives and benefiting those who need care and guidance. The study of justice affirms that its greatest value is in providing much more than order and consistency. We suggest that without forgiveness, mercy, and caring justice is simply insufficient. Perhaps, justice, when it enables individuals to learn from their mistakes and change their lives, actually fulfills its highest potential. We invite readers to read and reflect on the importance of justice and its importance in their own lives. In this volume we provide guidelines, insights, and recommendations to assist others to more fully incorporate those principles and ideals of justice as they seek to become the best version of themselves. (shrink)

_A deeply researched and poignant reflection on the practice of forgiveness in an unforgiving world__ “Broad in its philosophical sweep and fine in its literary analysis, this work redefines forgiveness as the modest yet heroic ability to hold pain and anger together with hope and nonviolence.”—Joie Szu-Chiao Chen, _Lion’s Roar__ Matthew Ichihashi Potts explores the complex moral terrain of forgiveness, which he claims has too often served as a salve to the conscience of power rather than (...) as an instrument of healing or justice. Though forgiveness is often linked with reconciliation or the abatement of anger, Potts resists these associations, asserting instead that forgiveness is simply the refusal of retaliatory violence through practices of penitence and grief. It is an act of mourning irrevocable wrong, of refusing the false promises of violent redemption, and of living in and with the losses we cannot recover. Drawing on novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, Marilynne Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and Toni Morrison, and on texts from the early Christian to the postmodern, Potts diagnoses the real dangers of forgiveness yet insists upon its enduring promise. Sensitive to the twenty-first-century realities of economic inequality, colonial devastation, and racial strife, and considering the role of forgiveness in the New Testament, the Christian tradition, philosophy, and contemporary literature, this book heralds the arrival of a new and creative theological voice. (shrink)

In Anger and Forgiveness, Martha Nussbaum offers a magisterial brief against what she calls “retribution” and “garden‐variety anger.” She does not write as a Christian, but there is much for a Christian ethicist to admire in her learned and creative treatment of moral emotion, including her defense of generosity. Professor Nussbaum is not far from the kingdom of God. I argue, nevertheless, that she blurs or erodes four important distinctions, between justice and love, anger and hatred, retribution (...) and revenge, and utility and sanctity. The upshot is that her call for compassion degenerates into injustice. To justify this appraisal, I lay out Nussbaum’s normative case, identify three major theoretical difficulties with that case, examine briefly the teachings of Socrates and Jesus in relation to revolutionary justice, then note an admitted complexity. (shrink)

How we envision God’s forgiveness shapes our thinking about human forgiveness as well. Whereas some contemporary Christians such as Miroslav Volf struggle to square victims’ demands with a God who forgives and keeps no record of wrongs, many early Christians expected God to fastidiously punish or reward every deed. In contrast to both extremes, I revisit recent philosophical work on purgatory, which emphasizes sanctification over satisfaction. This approach reveals how God’s forgiveness is consonant with restorative justice. (...) By considering an alternate vision of God’s justice, we can thereby reimagine how our forgiveness too is compatible with—and in fact necessitates—the work of moral repair. (shrink)

Most current talk of forgiveness and reconciliation in the aftermath of collective violence proceeds from an assumption that forgiveness is always superior to resentment and refusal to forgive. Victims who demonstrate a willingness to forgive are often celebrated as virtuous moral models, while those who refuse to forgive are frequently seen as suffering from a pathology. Resentment is viewed as a negative state, held by victims who are not "ready" or "capable" of forgiving and healing. Resentment's Virtue (...) offers a new, more nuanced view. Building on the writings of Holocaust survivor Jean Améry and the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Thomas Brudholm argues that the preservation of resentment can be the reflex of a moral protest that might be as permissible, humane or honorable as the willingness to forgive. Taking into account the experiences of victims, the findings of truth commissions, and studies of mass atrocities, Brudholm seeks to enrich the philosophical understanding of resentment. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1 Introduction 1 -- 2 Central themes and critical issues 10 -- Introduction 10 -- Core themes 11 -- Differences which have surfaced in the move from -- margins to mainstream 15 -- The claims of restorative justice: a brief examination 21 -- Some limitations of restorative justice 25 -- Some dangers of restorative justice 29 -- Debunking restorative justice 32 -- 3 Reviving restorative justice traditions 36 -- The rebirth of (...) an ancient practice 36 -- Pre-modem criminal justice 37 -- The renaissance of native justice traditions 43 -- Navajo peacemaking 44 -- Can one characterise ancient and indigenous -- justice as restorative? 47 -- Can one revive restorative justice traditions? 49 -- Conclusion: did restorative justice ever die? 59 -- 4 Healing the victim 62 -- Introduction 62 -- The experiences and needs of victims 64 -- The inadequacy of punitive justice for the victim 67 -- Victim reforms 70 -- Restitution from the offender 74 -- Beyond restitution: restoring victims 76 -- Restorative justice or 'clubbing together'? 78 -- Using victims to rehabilitate offenders 81 -- Paternalism towards victims 83 -- Balancing the needs of the victim with those of society 84 -- 5 A restorative approach to offenders 87 -- Introduction 87 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to retributive justice 88 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to treatment 94 -- The goals and methods of restorative justice in relation -- to offenders 95 -- An alternative to punishment or an alternative form of -- punishment? 106 -- An alternative to treatment? 111 -- 6 Shame, apology and forgiveness 114 -- Introduction 114 -- Restorative cautioning 115 -- The psychological routes of restorative conferencing 116 -- The idea of reintegrative shaming 118 -- Some questions about shaming 123 -- Apology and forgiveness 132 -- 7 Mediation, participation and the role of community 136 -- Introduction: handling criminal conflicts 136 -- The rationale for the restorative justice process 140 -- Achieving restorative goals 141 -- Moral development and the strengthening of community 144 -- The role of community 151 -- 8 The future of restorative justice 161 -- Introduction 161 -- Implementing restorative justice: the paths less likely 163 -- The implementation of restorative techniques 166 -- Restorative justice and the pattern of penal control 169 -- The future of restorative justice research 170 -- Appendix to chapter 3: the theological roots of judicial -- punishment 172. (shrink)

The concept of forgiveness is analyzed as a moral gesture toward the offender designed to help restore that individual's moral standing. Jewish sources on the conditions under which forgiveness is obligatory are explored and two contrasting positions are presented: one in which the obligation to forgive is conditional on the repentance of the offender and another in which people are required to forgive unconditionally. These two positions are shown to represent different ways of framing the offending (...) behavior that rest, in turn, on different ways of balancing the need for justice and for mercy respectively. In the final analysis, Judaism's two contrasting attitudes toward forgiveness are rooted in different theological assumptions and different ways of construing the very goals of the moral life. The author points out the merits and shortcomings of both positions and concludes with the suggestion that the two complement each other in important ways. (shrink)

Adherents to reconciliation, restorative justice, and related approaches to dealing with social conflict are well known for seeking to minimize punishment, in favor of offenders hearing out victims, making an apology, and effecting compensation for wrongful harm as well as victims forgiving offenders and accepting their reintegration into society. In contrast, I maintain that social reconciliation and similar concepts in fact characteristically require punishment but do not require forgiveness. I argue that a reconciliatory response to crime that includes (...) punitive disavowal but not necessarily forgiveness is supported by an analogy with resolving two-person conflict and by relational facets of human dignity. I also specify a novel account of the type of penalty that is justified by reconciliation, namely, burdensome labor that is likely to foster moral reform on the part of wrongdoers and to compensate their victims, which would serve neither retributive nor deterrent functions. I illustrate this conception of punishment in contexts that include having cheated on an exam at a university, engaged in criminal behavior such as robbery, and committed atrocities during large-scale social conflict. (shrink)

It is natural to wonder how mercy is related to justice. I focus in this essay on a more limited question: how should we relate mercy and retributive justice? My suggestion is that attending to our situation as moral agents can help us solve this conundrum. I offer a pessimistic reading of our situation. Because of original sin and related forms of bad moral luck, we have limited control over our attitudes and actions. This has a (...) surprisingly hopeful upshot, since our unfortunate condition makes it appropriate to respond to one another mercifully. I suggest that this response can take two forms. Without collapsing justice into mercy, it is right to make our approach to justice and punishment more merciful and to recognize the fittingness of “erring” on the side of mercy when we are uncertain how to apportion blame. (shrink)

The government of Rwanda has pursued reconciliation with great determination in the belief that it is the only moral alternative to post-genocide social challenges. In Rwanda, communities must be mobilised and reshaped for social, political and economic reconstruction. This creates a rather delicate situation. Among other strategies, the state has turned to the concepts of confession and forgiveness which have deep religious roots, and systematised them both at the individual and community or state level in order to bring (...) about reconciliation, justice, social cohesion and ultimately economic development. In view of these strategies and challenges, some of the important questions are: Does forgiveness restore victims and empower them to heal their communities? What empirical evidence exists that religiously inspired justice and reconciliation processes after mass political violence make a difference? In what areas might the understanding of religious thought and activity towards transitional justice be deepened? These questions provide the backdrop against which I examine the case of post-genocide Rwanda in this article. A hermeneutic interpretative analysis is used to situate the phenomena of forgiveness, confession and social transformation within the specific context of post-conflict societies. (shrink)

As Japan marks the 75th anniversary of World War II in 2020, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not offer a fresh apology and maintained that future generations should not have to keep apologizing for past mistakes. This paper uses the unresolved war issue of the military comfort women system as a context to discuss what it means for political apologies to be more than mere political gestures founded on political interests and discusses what it takes to facilitate forgiveness. It (...) will examine the features of a repentant wrongdoer who deserves forgiveness based on how one relates to one’s past wrongdoing in order to distinguish political apologies that are genuine from those that are mere gestures aimed at hasty reconciliation. This will be discussed through the works of Jacques Derrida and Vladimir Jankélévitch. Next, through Jankélévitch’s and Paul Ricoeur’s ideas of forgiveness, it will be discussed how matters of justice and forgiveness should be understood as well as how the history of past wrongs and injustice is necessary for a genuine apology and makes forgiveness possible. It is also a moral responsibility for both perpetrators and victims to remember history in order to achieve personal forgiveness as well as begin social and political reconciliation. (shrink)

This dissertation is a philosophical investigation of forgiveness, in both interpersonal and political contexts. The aim of the dissertation is to demonstrate the merits of a broad, multidimensional account that remains faithful to the moral phenomenology of forgiving and being forgiven. Previous philosophical work has tended to see forgiveness primarily in terms of reactive attitudes: specifically, the struggle to overcome resentment. Yet defining forgiveness along these lines fails to do justice to common intuitions that, for (...) example, forgiveness may be a gift offered to another, that it may be the remission of a debt or burden, or that it may 'wipe clean' a stain. Against standard philosophical models that limit its nature to a single dimension, the multidimensional model acknowledges its affective, cognitive and socially performative aspects. -/- My investigation begins by considering characteristic features of forgiveness, the reasons we have to forgive, and its potential moral value. In my preliminary chapters, I present my case against narrow theories of forgiveness, particularly those that define it in terms of attitude alone. In Chapter Three, I situate forgiveness in the context of moral considerations, by analyzing its relationship to other important moral values (trust, compassion, and moral sensitivity) and by defending an account of elective forgiveness. My fourth chapter turns from the act of forgiving to the limits of forgiveness. I discuss forgiveness of hostile or absent wrongdoers, forgiveness of injuries to other people ('third party forgiveness'), and the 'unforgivable.' Some philosophical discussions of the unforgivable have confused what is conceptually unforgivable with what is morally or even empirically unforgivable. By disentangling these threads, I argue that there are, in principle at least, no moral limits on what we may forgive. My concluding chapter applies the multidimensional model of forgiveness to recent discussions of the topic in political philosophy. I argue that the multidimensional model can meaningfully connect a range of forgiving practices in a political context, from transitional justice to interpersonal reconciliation. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to examine the role that memory and oblivion, forgiveness and unforgiveness play in Hannah Arendt’s thought in relation to acts of violence in the political sphere. Political communities do not always decide to remember the crimes they have committed or the wrongs they have suffered, but neither can they always forget their mutual harms, even when there is already peace between them. Without striving to exhaust the entire subject matter of Arendt’s work, I (...) would like to illustrate the difficulty of understanding the role forgiveness plays in her thought as well as to indicate possible solutions when forgiveness becomes unachievable within the framework of her considerations. Her reflection can be divided into two stages. The first is a focus on the idea of radical evil and the need to forgive perpetrators for their crimes. Second, under the influence of the Adolf Eichmann trial, she developed the idea of the banality of evil. This idea points to situations so terrible that they transcend all human moral judgment, making forgiveness impossible. However, even when the moral possibility of individual forgiveness has been rejected, when the legal possibility of seeking justice has been exhausted and when victims and perpetrators in the community are still unable to live together peacefully, Arendt’s thought leads us to the possibility of political reconciliation. (shrink)

The English Puritan Richard Baxter (1615-1691) developed an account of forgiveness that resonates with twentieth-century virtue ethics. He understood forgiveness as one component of a larger disposition of character developed in community as human beings recognize themselves as sinful creatures engaged in complex relationships of dependency and responsibility, with both God and one another. In the midst of these relationships, persons experience divine and human forgiveness and discover opportunities to practice forgiveness in return. Baxter thus negotiated (...) a distinctive relationship between Christian hope for reconciliation and more stereotypical Puritan emphases on punishment, civil order, and justice. At the same time that recent moral reflection allows us to raise questions about some features of Baxter's argument (such as his treatment of anger), his work provides important resources for correlating dispositions with concrete obligations, establishing a place for forgiveness in the public realm, and counterbalancing the modern emphasis on individual rights. (shrink)

This paper examines Miranda Fricker’s method of paradigm-based explanation and in particular its promise of yielding an ordered pluralism. Fricker’s starting point is a schism between two conceptions of forgiveness, Moral Justice Forgiveness and Gifted Forgiveness. In the light of a hypothesis about the basic point of forgiveness, she reveals the unity underlying the initially baffling plurality and brings order into it, presenting a paradigmatic form of forgiveness as explanatorily basic and other forms (...) as derivative. The resulting picture, she claims, is an ‘explanatorily satisfying ordered pluralism.’ But what is this ordered pluralism and how does Fricker’s method deliver it? And to what extent can this strategy be generalised to other conceptual practices? By making explicit and critically examining the conception of ordered pluralism implicit in Fricker’s procedure, I assess the promise that her approach holds as a way of resolving stand-offs between warring conceptions of ideas or practices more widely. I argue that it holds great promise in this respect, but that if we are to avoid reproducing just the schismatic debates that the pluralism of paradigm-based explanation is supposed to overcome at the level of what is to be regarded as a paradigm case, we need to take seriously the thought that what counts as a paradigm is partly determined by our purposes in giving a paradigm-based explanation. (shrink)

L’objet de la présente recherche est d’interroger les mérites de la théorie utilitariste relative aux faillites personnelles, qui est dominante dans la littérature juridique depuis que le courant Law and Economics a gagné en importance. Nous démontrons que l’argumentation utilitariste, qui est assignée aux doctrines de l’acquittement des dettes personnelles par les spécialistes de Law and Economics travaillant dans le domaine du droit des faillites, soulève des questions normatives de taille et créée des tensions quand il s’agit de décrire le (...) phénomène. Ces deux problèmes invitent les théoriciens à proposer des modèles alternatifs pour décrire les conditions dans lesquelles nos systèmes juridiques soulagent les dettes des individus qui ne sont pas en mesure de les honorer. Dans notre ouvrage à paraître, The Virtue of Bankruptcy, nous embrassons ce projet. Ici, nous proposons une étape préliminaire à ce projet plus ambitieux en démontrant que les théories utilitaristes sur lesquelles s’appuient les contributions les plus importantes de la littérature sur la question à ce jour sont perfectibles lorsqu’il s’agit de comprendre les raisons et les circonstances dans lesquelles il est possible d’offrir un nouveau départ à ceux qui n’ont pas respecté leurs obligations financières. (shrink)

An ethic for wrongdoers -- Repaying moral debts : self-punishment and restitution -- Changing one's heart, changing the past : repentance and moral transformation -- Reforming relationships : the reconciliation theory of atonement -- Forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and redemption -- Making amends for crime : an evaluation of restorative justice -- Collective atonement : making amends to the Magdalen penitents.