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Notes
Earlier versions of this paper were delivered to audiences at Syracuse University and Seton Hall University. I am grateful to the journal editor and anonymous readers for suggesting helpful revisions.
A comprehensive account of the case is provided in Kraybill, D.B., Nolt, S.M., and Weaver-Zercher, D.L., Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy. (San Francisco: Wiley, 2007).
Wilson discussed his forgiveness in a BBC interview available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/8/newsid_2515000/2515113.stm.
Gandhi 1931 “Interview to the Press;" reprinted in Vol. 51 of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes. http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL051.PDF, pp. 301–302.
See, for instance, Charles Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 65.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Second Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958; 1998), pp. 236–237. Of course, there are at some least some cases in which not to forgive, and grant this “redemption” can suggest callousness and even cruelty.
Griswold, p. 65.
Griswold, p. 212.
Griswold, p. 49.
Here, and in Section Four, I draw on Thomas Nagel’s notions of “external” and “internal” perspectives on persons developed in Nagel, The View From Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), esp. pp. 113–120, and implicit in his “Moral Luck”, Chapter Three of Nagel’s Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
Bishop Joseph Butler, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (Gloucester: Dodo Press, 2009 [1827]), Sermon 8 “Upon Resentment” and Sermon 9 on “Upon Forgiveness of Injuries.”
Griswold offers a rich account of the role of narrative in forgiveness. See Griswold, pp. 55–58 and pp. 98–110.
This idea of “release” captures an older intuition that forgiveness cancels the wrongdoer’s “debt” to the wronged party.
Mrs. Walker distinguishes between forgiveness and juridical punishment at http://www.clickliverpool.com/news/local-news/1214426-gee-walker-%5Cmy-son%5Cs-killers-could-still-lead-a-normal-life%5C.html.
Butler draws this distinction in Sermon IX, “Upon Forgiveness of Injuries.”
A compelling example of this process is discussed in Helen Whitney’s book, Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate (Campbell, CA: Fat Pencil, Inc., 2011), pp. 51–58 in the story of “Don Robeson: The Danger of Righteous Anger.” Robeson was abruptly fired in what appears to be punishment for being a whistleblower.
Arendt, p. 237.
Eve Garrard & David McNaughton, “In Defence of Unconditional Forgiveness,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 104 (2003): 39–60. See especially pp. 53–59 which treat “human solidarity” as “a reason for forgiveness,” defining human solidarity in terms of a sense of a shared capacity for wrongdoing (54) and an appreciation of the value of humility (58–59).
Griswold, p. 65.
Not all victims understand the self and its moral importance in the same was, this leads to variation in the ways in which people react to assaults on their worth as persons. A person from a small tightly knit community where the boundary between self and other is quite fluid, and where humility is prized as a fundamental virtue, will react differently to wrongdoing from the person who has a more atomistic understanding of her moral status. But like members of any community, the Amish parents in Nickel Mines, for instance, certainly grieved their losses deeply and faced the challenge of reframing narratives of victimization.
Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 16 of Murphy’s chapter on “Forgiveness and Resentment.”
David Sussman, “Kantian Forgiveness,” Kant-Studien 96 (2005): 85–107 (pp. 88–89).
I am not sanctioning use of the phrase “moral monster,” but noting the frequency of its use.
Nagel discusses this way of thinking about moral luck on pp. 28, 32, 33 of “Moral Luck.” In a related argument, Susan Wolf contends that some people never receive the sort of upbringing that allows them to develop the “resources and reasons on which to base self-correction” and are thus victims of bad moral luck (1987, pp. 58).
Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (New York: Shocken Books, 1997 [1970]).
March 7, 2006; “Vicar struggles to forgive the terrorists who killed her daughter.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/vicar-struggles-to-forgive-the-terrorists-who-killed-her-daughter-468960.html.
This is no doubt why Wiesenthal became a tireless advocate for prosecuting Nazi war criminals (and other agents of mass crimes) and why Rev. Nicholson undertook extensive efforts to see the London bombers legally prosecuted.
Griswold, pp. 48–51, 149–150.
Griswold, pp. 53–59, 174.
Laurence Thomas, “Forgiving the Unforgivable?” in Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust, ed. Gerrard and Scarre (Burlington: Ashgate Publishers, 2003) p. 219.
A well-known example is the surrender of Vietnam War opponent Kathryn Ann Power, who turned herself in after twenty-three years as a fugitive to stand for prosecution for her role in a 1970 protest that resulted in the death of a policeman. See Helen Whitney “Kathy Power: Perpetrator Turned Penitent,” in Forgiveness: A time to love and a time to hate (2011), pp. 72–88. Power asserts that “I had to surrender so that my life wouldn’t be divided anymore.” p. 80. It was no until her incarceration that she expressed recognizable repentance.
Thus I disagree with the conclusions that Thomas draws about the hypothetical repentant Nazi, in “Forgiving the Unforgivable.” Helpful insights about the difficult connections between trust and forgiveness can be found in an article by Richard H. Toenjes, “Forgiveness and Trust” published online at http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/contemp/toenjes.html.
Aurel Kolnai, “Forgiveness,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74 (1973–1974): 91–106; See p. 96.
Thomas Nagel. The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 113–114.
Michele Moody-Adams, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 57–58.
Griswold, p. 57.
Griswold, p. 57.
Macintyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), p. 199.
Moody-Adams, “On the Old Saw that Character is Destiny,” in Identity, Character and Morality: Essays in Moral Psychology, ed. Owen Flanagan and Amelie O. Rorty (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 111–131.
Griswold contends that sympathetically entering into the offender’s situation may actually increase the victim’s resentment. I contend that the reverse is true.
Laurence Thomas, “Forgiving the Unforgivable?” in Moral Philosophy and the Holocaust, ed. Gerrard and Scarre (Burlington: Ashgate Publishers, 2003). Thus I agree with Thomas’s view that it is not possible to judge anyone unforgivable. Forgiving is not excusing or condoning, and certainly not pardoning (as some theorists wrongly conclude). Nor can forgiveness be an appropriate substitute for retributive justice.
As I understand it, to say that a person is unforgivable is to say that it is not possible simultaneously to (a) adequately acknowledge the wrong that person has committed and (b) plausibly believe that the person could repent and be a better person in the future. My view is that this could not be true of any living person who remains capable of intelligent action. Particular victims may, as Arendt observes (p. 241), prove unable to forgive. But to remain unforgiven is not the same thing as to be unforgivable.
Laurence Thomas, “Evil and Forgiveness: The Possibility of Moral Redemption;” in Evil, Political Violence and Forgiveness: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card, ed. Veltmann and Norlock; Claudia Card The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 174.
I follow Randy Nelson in distinguishing “horizontal” forgiveness—the forgiveness that human beings can grant each other—from what in Christian theology might be called “vertical” forgiveness (God’s forgiveness of human beings). Nelson considers the debate between Christian theologians who understand horizontal forgiveness to be conditional and those who understand it to be unconditional. He goes on to provide a textually grounded argument for the unconditional interpretation. See Randy Nelson, “The Case for Unconditional Forgiveness,” in Evangelical Theological Society Regional Conference (3/19/10), pp. 1–2. http://www.nwc.edu/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=9021370d-4b12-4c41-a4a1-706faf926a17&groupId=12124.
See Bishop Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999). Of course, there is disagreement about how broad the influence of forgiveness has really been in South Africa, and about whether it has really resulted in reconciliation. See, for instance, Tristan Anne Borer, “Reconciling South Africa or South Africans? Cautionary Notes from the TRC,” African Studies Quarterly 8 (2004): 19–34.
Bishop John Rucyahana, The Bishop of Rwanda: Finding Forgiveness amidst a Pile of Bones. Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Catherine Claire Larson, As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervanm, 2009).
It is not easy to assess the success of reconciliation efforts, in part because there is so little agreement about what reconciliation really is. Is reconciliation a “thick” notion, a matter of individuals being reconnected with each other after forgiveness and apology? Or should we adopt a “thin” notion on which reconciliation is more a matter of nations “getting on” with the work of reconstructing institutions? See Borer, “Reconciling South Africa or South Africans? Cautionary Notes from the TRC.” See also Susan Dwyer “Reconciliation for Realists.” Ethics and International Affairs 12 (1999): 81–98.
Geoffrey Scarre, “Political Reconciliation, Forgiveness and Grace,” Studies in Christian Ethics 24(2) (2011): 171–182.
Scarre, p. 180.
See Moody-Adams, “Memory, Multiculturalism and Democracy”, in Interpreting Modernity: Essays on the work of Charles Taylor, ed. Levy and Weinstock (Montreal: McGill University Press, forthcoming).
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Moody-Adams, M. The Enigma of Forgiveness. J Value Inquiry 49, 161–180 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9467-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9467-4