Conflict and Resolution: The Ethics of Forgiveness, Revenge, and Punishment by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030778071
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

9.1 Introduction

Forgiveness usually counts as a virtue. We often praise it as the exercise of our ability to overcome moral harm and to “achieve closure”, and we normally esteem it as a way of restoring damaged moral relationships. However, philosophers have sometimes challenged this assessment. They have called into question the moral value of forgiveness. Depending on our understanding of forgiveness, different routes of criticizing forgiveness are possible. Critics of forgiveness have predominately referred to the sentimentalist tradition that starts from Butler and takes forgiveness to be – according to the standard definition – “the overcoming, on moral grounds, of […] the vindictive passions – the passions of anger, resentment and even hatred that are often occasioned when one has been deeply wronged by another.”1

For example, John Kekes, on the basis of the sentimentalist definition of forgiveness, argues that, given that these negative emotions are appropriate and that reasonable blame is in place, there can never be reasons to forgive an act of wrongdoing and that doing so amounts to blinding oneself to evil or, even worse, to condoning.2 Similarly, Jeffrie Murphy sheds a critical light on forgiveness by defending the value of vindictive emotions. Harboring these emotions, Murphy argues, can be a way of affirming the victim’s worth and of negating the degrading message that is sent out by an act of wrongdoing (“I count but you do not”). Vindictive emotions may also stand as a testimony to our allegiance to the moral order in cases in which we are not victimized ourselves. Furthermore, they may serve as informal sanctions and steer actions. Therefore, overcoming them is not always right. Forgiving, i.e. forswearing these emotions, may exhibit a defect of character.3

In this paper, I will criticize forgiveness from a different perspective. My starting point will not be a sentimentalist understanding of forgiveness, but the understanding of forgiveness as a way of bringing about “a change in the normative landscape”. The view that forgiveness does bring about such a change is often labelled the “alteration thesis” of forgiveness. In part 2, I sketch the basic idea of the “alteration thesis” and its main components and I explain in what sense I intend to criticize it. My aim is to criticize it not by showing its falsity but rather by pointing out that its defenders ignore an important part of how forgiveness alters the normative landscape: the forgiver brings about a change in the normative landscape not only as a consequence of forgiveness but also by presupposing the truth of propositions which, if made explicit, may well be open to criticism. Part 3 contains some general remarks on how forgiveness, taken as a speech act, may presuppose the truth of propositions that may enter the discourse without being addressed explicitly. Part 4 offers a more detailed examination of what forgiveness presupposes and of how bringing to light its presuppositions may shed a critical light on forgiveness. The forgiver presupposes that the addressee of forgiveness is guilty of an offence (4.​1), he also presupposes that he himself has the standing to forgive (4.

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