Forgiveness and Reconciliation · 2. Forgiveness as Openness to Reconciliation I claim that...
Transcript of Forgiveness and Reconciliation · 2. Forgiveness as Openness to Reconciliation I claim that...
Jada Twedt Strabbing Wayne State University This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form will be published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. The Australasian Journal of Philosophy is available online at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/.
Forgiveness and Reconciliation
Abstract: I argue that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing. A victim is open to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing in virtue of having attitudes and intentions toward the wrongdoer that would reconcile them with respect to the wrongdoing, if the wrongdoer’s attitudes and intentions are what they should be. This view’s main advantage is that, unlike its rivals, it explains the power of forgiveness to effect reconciliation with a repentant wrongdoer. Further, this view reveals and accounts for a previously unnoticed aspect of forgiveness: that we can forgive on different relationship levels – e.g., we can forgive a friend as a friend or as a person. Finally, this view explains the appeal of its rivals by explaining the features that these other views take to constitute forgiveness.
Keywords: forgiveness, reconciliation, resentment, relationships, repentance
Forgiveness is a common human experience. We have all sought forgiveness, and
we have all bestowed it. Yet what is it to forgive? In this paper, I argue that forgiveness
is openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing.
This view’s main advantage is that it explains forgiveness’s power to effect
reconciliation with a repentant wrongdoer. Its main rivals, I will argue, cannot do so.
Further, this view reveals and accounts for a previously unnoticed fact about forgiveness:
that we can forgive on different relationship levels – e.g., we can forgive a friend as a friend
or just as a person. This idea explains why forgiveness only sometimes reconciles a close
relationship with a repentant offender. It therefore accounts for the intuition that we can
2
forgive someone without being open to reconciling with her.1 In such cases, I will argue,
the forgiver is not open to reconciling the prior relationship but is open to reconciling on a
lower relationship level.
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 1 sets out intuitive features of forgiveness.
Section 2 argues for the view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the
wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing. Section 3 responds to objections. Finally,
Section 4 demonstrates that the view presented here is superior to three prominent views
of forgiveness.
1. Intuitive Features of Forgiveness
I start by discussing some intuitive features of forgiveness. To be plausible, a view
of forgiveness should, for each intuitive feature, either explain that feature or explain why
we should reject it.
First, forgiving an offender differs from excusing him. When we forgive someone,
we think him responsible for the offense, but when we excuse someone, we think him not
responsible for it.2
Second, forgiveness is at odds with blame and hence with resenting the offender,
as resentment is a form of emotional blame. After all, we think that a victim who blames
or resents an offender has not forgiven him.
1 Other theorists of forgiveness [Murphy 2003; Griswold 2007; Radzik 2009; Pettigrove 2012] discuss connections between forgiveness and reconciliation. However, they posit weaker connections than forgiveness as openness to reconciliation, due primarily to the idea that we can forgive someone without being open to reconciling a close relationship. I discuss this idea below. 2 I use ‘excuses’ broadly to cover conditions that make an agent a non-responsible agent (what are sometimes called “exemptions”) as well as conditions that render a responsible agent not responsible for a particular wrong.
3
Third, forgiveness differs from other ways of ceasing to blame a responsible agent,
such as forgetting about the offense or merely moving on from it, which are ways to
extinguish potentially debilitating resentment toward the offender without forgiving her.
Fourth, a victim can forgive without any remorse or apology from the perpetrator
– what I call one-sided forgiveness. Consider the 2015 shooting at Emanuel African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The gunman murdered nine
black men and women after sitting with them in a Bible study for nearly an hour. It was a
heinous, racially-motivated crime. Yet at the gunman’s first appearance in court, without
his apologizing or expressing any remorse, family members of the slain powerfully forgave
him. For example, Nadine Collier, who lost her mother, said: ‘You took something very
precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her
again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul’ [Stewart and Pérez-Peña 2015].
These family members were not using the word ‘forgiveness’ incorrectly. They forgave
the gunman. One-sided forgivenesss occurs in secular contexts too. For example, in
therapy we may work toward forgiving parents or ex-partners for offenses for which they
lack remorse.3
Fifth, forgiveness – including one-sided forgiveness – is often virtuous. The
Charleston family members’ one-sided forgiveness is so powerful, I think, because it
displays incredible virtue. Yet even if you disagree about this case, forgiveness for smaller
3 Charles Griswold [2007] rejects the possibility of one-sided forgiveness, claiming that a “baseline condition” for forgiveness is the offender’s “willingness… to take minimal steps to qualify for forgiveness” [2007: 115]. Griswold’s argument for this baseline condition is that offering forgiveness to the unrepentant would likely be interpreted as condoning or as excuse-making, thus compromising the moral point of forgiveness and reducing it to letting go of resentment for other reasons [2007: 121]. This argument is flawed. First, it is at best an argument against expressing one-sided forgiveness to those who might misinterpret it. Further, even if one-sided forgiveness compromises the moral point of forgiveness, which I doubt, the correct conclusion would be that we morally should not forgive one-sidedly, not that we cannot.
4
offenses often reflects well on the forgiver. At the very least, an account of forgiveness
should leave open the possibility that forgiveness, including one-sided forgiveness, is often
virtuous.4
Sixth, forgiveness has the power to restore relationships with repentant offenders.
Often, at least in close relationships, we seek forgiveness to repair a breach in the
relationship, and when such forgiveness is granted, the victim and offender are thereby
reconciled.
Yet, seventh, forgiveness does not always reconcile close relationships with
repentant offenders. A victim can forgive an offender without being willing to continue in
a close relationship with her.
2. Forgiveness as Openness to Reconciliation
I claim that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with
respect to the wrongdoing. Specifically, I embrace the following, where Y is putatively a
wrongdoer without an excuse and W is a putative wrong action or pattern of wrong actions:
Openness-to-Reconciliation View: X’s forgiving Y for W is X’s being open
to reconciliation with Y with respect to W.
This view is doubly relational, in that forgiveness happens with respect to a
particular person and a particular action. The latter is important, since we can forgive
4 Pamela Hieronymi [2001] argues that one-sided forgiveness is typically demeaning. Yet her understanding of forgiveness – forgiveness as foreswearing resentment – is itself neutral on this issue.
5
someone for some but not all of his wrongs against us. For ease of exposition, I sometimes
simply discuss forgiving someone, taking the particular wrong to be understood from
context. Further, as noted, forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the putative
wrongdoer with respect to the putative wrongdoing, as you can forgive someone whom
you mistakenly take to be a wrongdoer or whom you mistakenly take to have acted
wrongly. In such cases, forgiveness is inappropriate or misplaced, but it is still forgiveness.
For simplicity, I drop this clarification throughout. Finally, as noted above, in forgiving,
you take the putative wrongdoer not to have an excuse.
In the rest of this section, I clarify and argue for the Openness-to-Reconciliation
View.
2.1. Illustrating and clarifying the view
Start with a straightforward case of forgiveness. Imagine a wife who breaks her
promise to her husband not to get drunk at the office Christmas party and who ends up –
just like in the previous year – telling embarrassing stories about him. The next day, the
husband is angry, and the wife is remorseful. She asks for forgiveness. In asking for
forgiveness, the wife acknowledges her responsibility for the wrong and her husband’s
right to be angry. Yet she does more than that, as she could acknowledge her responsibility
without asking for forgiveness. In asking for forgiveness, she seeks reconciliation with her
husband. She recognizes that she has hurt her husband in a way that has harmed their
spousal relationship, and she wants to restore that relationship to good standing.
Now think about the husband’s reaction. Imagine that he remains angry, arms
folded, and says that he is not ready to forgive. He is not yet open to reconciliation with
6
her. Their relationship remains harmed. Now imagine instead that he says that he forgives
her. In this case, if his forgiveness is genuine, they are reconciled. Their relationship is
restored to one of spousal good standing. What makes it the case that the husband forgives
his wife, thus reconciling with her? I answer that his forgiving her is his being open to
reconciliation with her, the wrongdoer. They are reconciled because they are both open to
reconciliation – she through repentance and he through forgiveness.5
What does it mean to be ‘open to reconciliation’ with the wrongdoer? In one sense,
the husband could respond to his wife’s apology like this: ‘I am open to reconciling with
you. But first, I want you to make it up to me by letting me splurge on front row concert
tickets.’ Or he could say: ‘I am open to reconciling with you, but first I need time to cool
off.’ I am not using ‘open to reconciliation’ in this sense. As I understand openness to
reconciliation, the first statement amounts to: ‘I will be open to reconciling with you if you
let me splurge on front row concert tickets.’ The second amounts to: ‘I will be open to
reconciling with you after I have time to cool off.’ After all, such statements do not express
forgiveness but rather that forgiveness will be forthcoming if or after a certain condition is
met.
As I understand openness to reconciliation, the husband is open to reconciliation
with his wife in virtue of having attitudes and intentions toward her that restores their
spousal relationship to one of good standing, if the wife’s attitudes and intentions toward
her husband are what they must be for reconciliation (which we can assume is so, given
5 Certain epistemic conditions must also be met for reconciliation to occur – e.g., the husband must reasonably believe that his wife has repented. I will not flesh out these conditions, as they are not required for openness to reconciliation and so are not required for forgiveness on my account. I thank Meghan Sullivan for this point. Second, remember that the husband and wife are reconciled with respect to the wife’s transgression. Other wrongs may be in play (on either side) that require reconciliation. I say more about this below.
7
her repentance). We could think of the husband’s being open to reconciliation as his
playing his part in the reconciliation. This plausibly includes having attitudes and
intentions such as trusting her again, desiring to spend time with her again, and intending
to treat her lovingly, while no longer, say, resenting her and intending to avoid her. These
are just examples. The point is that, to be open to reconciliation, the husband must have
the attitudes and intentions – whatever they are – that restore a spousal relationship of good
standing, if the wife has the attitudes and intentions required for that restoration.
Importantly, being open to reconciliation does not require the husband to adjust his
attitudes and intentions toward his wife to exactly what they were before the offense. What
matters is the restoration of a good spousal relationship, and so his attitudes and intentions
may be different as long as they do not prevent that. For example, the husband can
reconcile with his wife while intending to watch her alcohol consumption at work events.
This intention, we can assume, would not prevent a good spousal relationship.
Keep in mind that openness to reconciliation occurs with respect to specific wrongs.
In the example, I worked with just one wrong, the wife’s broken promise (which led to her
telling embarrassing stories). Hence, if the husband is open to reconciliation with his
repentant wife with respect to it, that restores their spousal relationship of good standing.
If the wife had committed two wrongs, such as also lying to him, then the husband may be
open to reconciliation with her with respect to the broken promise but not the lie. In that
case, his attitudes and intentions toward his wife would prevent a good spousal relationship
– e.g., he might resent her and desire to avoid her, but just because of the lie. He would be
open to reconciliation with respect to the broken promise in that, were it not for the lie, his
attitudes and intentions toward his wife would be those required for restoring their
8
relationship. The broken promise would therefore not be an obstacle to a good spousal
relationship, and so he and his repentant wife would be reconciled with respect to it.
In general terms, a victim is open to reconciliation with an offender with respect to
an offense in virtue of having attitudes and intentions towards the offender that would
reconcile them with respect to the offense, if the offender’s attitudes and intentions are
what they should be for reconciliation. Therefore, on the Openness-to-Reconciliation
View, the attitudes and intentions required for forgiveness depend upon the relationship at
issue. I will discuss forgiveness in other relationships below.
First, though, notice that openness to reconciliation comes in degrees. The husband
may change some attitudes required for reconciliation but not others, or he may gradually
change attitudes that themselves come in degrees. For example, the husband may at first
desire to talk with his wife but not desire to treat her affectionately, and his resentment
toward her may fade gradually. How should we understand forgiveness as openness to
reconciliation, given that openness to reconciliation comes in degrees?6
There are two options, depending upon whether forgiveness is all-or-nothing or
comes in degrees. The former is only plausible if forgiveness results from a process. On
the view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation, this process would be the process
of changing attitudes and intentions so as to become (fully) open to reconciliation with the
wrongdoer. Thus, if the husband is partially open to reconciliation with his wife, he is in
the process of forgiving her but has not yet forgiven her. If forgiveness instead comes in
degrees, then on the Openness-to-Reconciliation View, the degree of forgiveness
corresponds to the degree of openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer. Therefore, if
6 I thank Amy Seymour and Stephen Grimm for raising this question.
9
the husband is partially open to reconciliation with his wife, he has partially but not fully
forgiven her. The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation accommodates either
option.
Finally, the view can accommodate cases in which a victim requires an apology or
penance before forgiving. In such cases, the victim requires an apology or penance before
doing her part in the reconciliation – i.e., before changing her attitudes and intentions to
those required for reconciliation.
2.2. Explaining intuitive features of forgiveness
So far, I have explicated the view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation and
have shown its plausibility in a standard case. I now argue that this view explains the
intuitive features of forgiveness discussed above.
First, this view distinguishes forgiveness from excuse. Being open to reconciliation
with a wrongdoer presumes the wrongdoer’s responsibility for the wrong. After all, if the
wife had an excuse for getting drunk and telling embarrassing stories about her husband –
such as that she reasonably believed that the punch was nonalcoholic and was coerced into
telling the stories – they would need, not reconciliation, but rather an understanding of the
fact that she was not responsible for it. (Of course, such an understanding would not
eliminate all negative emotions. The husband would likely still feel embarrassed, and the
wife would feel badly for her role in that.)
The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation explains why blame, and
resentment in particular, are at odds with forgiveness. Blame generally and resentment in
10
particular are negative, even hostile responses to the wrongdoer. As such, they are at odds
with being open to reconciliation with him.
Next, the view distinguishes forgiveness from forgetting about the offense and
moving on from it, as neither forgetting nor moving on requires openness to reconciliation
with the wrongdoer. In fact, these are strategies for letting go of potentially debilitating
resentment without being open to reconciling with the offender.
Further, the view allows one-sided forgiveness, since a victim can be open to
reconciliation with an unrepentant wrongdoer. For example, if the wife in the above
example were unrepentant, the husband could still be open to reconciliation with her by
having the attitudes and intentions required for doing his part in the reconciliation even
though the wife lacks the attitudes and intentions required for doing her part.
One-sided forgiveness reveals another way in which the husband may be open to
reconciliation with his wife but yet have different attitudes and intentions toward her after
the offense. Notice that the appropriateness of having certain attitudes and intentions
within a relationship – such as the intention to confide in someone – depends upon the
other person’s having certain attitudes and intentions – such as the intention to keep a
confidence. As a result, the husband may be open to reconciliation with his wife but yet
lack some attitudes and intentions required for a good spousal relationship, if the
appropriateness of those attitudes and intentions depends upon his wife’s having attitudes
and intentions that, as it happens, she lacks. But in this case, to be open to reconciliation,
the husband must be ready to have those attitudes and intentions once he recognizes that
his wife has adjusted her attitudes and intentions to those that she should have. For
example, the husband may no longer intend to confide in his wife after the offense, but to
11
be open to reconciling with her, he must be ready to have this intention again once she
repents and has the attitudes and intentions necessary to be an appropriate confidant.7 This
readiness shows that he has done his part in the reconciliation.
How should we understand ‘readiness’ to have an intention or attitude? Notice that
the husband’s intention to confide in his wife is conditional on her repenting. Conditional
statements of intention are ambiguous between internal interpretations and external ones
[Ferrero 2009]. On the internal interpretation, the husband has the following conditional
intention: to confide in his wife if she repents. On the external interpretation, if the wife
repents, the husband would acquire the unconditional intention to confide in her.
The internal interpretation is more plausible. Recall that the husband is open to
reconciliation with his wife in virtue of having attitudes and intentions toward her that
would reconcile them, if her attitudes and intentions are what they should be. By having
the conditional intention to confide in his wife if she repents, the husband has an intention
that would, along with his other attitudes and intentions, reconcile him to his wife if she
has the attitudes and intentions that she should have. That is not so on the external
interpretation, on which no relevant intention exists until she repents. Further, recall that,
intuitively, being open to reconciliation means playing your part in the reconciliation.
Without the conditional intention, the husband could do more toward reconciliation by
forming the conditional intention, and hence playing his part in reconciling plausibly
requires the conditional intention.8
7 I assume that the repentant wife’s attitudes and intentions would be stable enough to be an appropriate confidant. I thank Christopher Tucker for this point. 8 I thank John Hurst for an illuminating discussion about how to apply to my view the distinction between internal and external interpretations of conditional intentions.
12
The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation allows forgiveness,
including one-sided forgiveness, to be virtuous. Being open to reconciliation is typically a
good thing. It is not demeaning, even in one-sided forgiveness, because it does not require
the victim to pretend that the offense did not happen or that it is okay to treat him that way.
As we saw, the husband’s attitudes and intentions toward his wife may be different after
the offense as long as they do not prevent a good spousal relationship, and if the wife is
unrepentant, he need only stand ready to have the attitudes and intentions whose
appropriateness hinge on his wife’s repentance. Hence he can forgive her while
acknowledging that their relationship is not on good terms until she repents.
The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation straightforwardly explains
the power of forgiveness to restore relationships with repentant offenders, and it explains
why forgiveness is often sought and bestowed to bring about reconciliation.
Yet, by definition, the view may seem unable to explain the last intuitive feature of
forgiveness: that a victim can forgive an offender without being willing to continue a close
relationship with her. Contrary to initial appearances, I demonstrate below that the view
can account for this feature.
2.3. Forgiveness within other relationships
So far, I have considered a case of spousal forgiveness to explicate the view that
forgiveness is openness to reconciliation. The view also works well in other close
relationships. Typically, when one friend wrongs another and seeks forgiveness, he seeks
reconciliation. If the wronged friend refuses to forgive, their friendship is not restored to
a friendship of good standing, but if she forgives, the friendship is restored. The right
13
explanation for this, I contend, is that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the
wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing. The wronged friend is open to reconciliation,
and so forgives, in virtue of having attitudes and intentions that restore a friendship of good
standing, if the offending friend has the attitudes and intentions required for reconciliation
(which we can assume is so, given his repentance). These attitudes and intentions – the
ones in virtue of which the victim is open to reconciliation – plausibly include desiring to
spend time with the friend again and intending to be there for him, while no longer
resenting him or intending to complain about him to other friends. Again, these are just
examples. In being open to reconciliation, the wronged friend has the attitudes and
intentions – whatever they are – that constitute playing his part in restoring a friendship of
good standing.
You might worry that the Openness-to-Reconciliation View is implausible outside
of close relationships. If a stranger harms you, you can forgive him, but talk of
reconciliation may seem out of place. Yet notice that the offense itself puts you in a
relationship with a stranger who harms you. This relationship is not the relationship that
should exist between people who have interacted, and we can think of reconciliation as
restoring the relationship to what should exist between acquaintances, which is a
relationship of good will or regard. After all, as P.F. Strawson [1962] points out, we expect
a certain degree of good will or regard from people, and we respond with reactive attitudes
like resentment and indignation toward someone whose action expresses a lack of good
will. Hence acquaintances of any sort should have a relationship of good will, and
reconciliation restores that relationship.
14
To illustrate, consider again the Charleston family members. What is striking about
their one-sided forgiveness, I contend, is their openness to a relationship of good will with
the gunman. Take this statement by Anthony Thompson: ‘I forgive you, my family
forgives you. We would like you to take this opportunity to repent. ... Do that and you'll
be better off than you are right now.’ Or this statement by Alana Simmons: ‘Although my
grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof — everyone's plea
for your soul is proof they lived in love and their legacies will live in love, so hate won't
win’ [Collins 2015]. These relatives, in their grief, reached out to the gunman, asking him
to repent for his sake and making pleas for his soul. In doing this, they expressed good
will toward him and asked him to do his part in reestablishing a relationship of good will
through repentance. This openness to reconciliation with the gunman, I claim, constitutes
their forgiving him.
Of course, a relationship of good will need not involve pleas for the other’s soul,
and some relationships of good will have more good will than others. At bottom, a
relationship of good will is characterized by a lack of animosity and resentment, by not
taking pleasure in the other’s misfortune, by wishing the other well, by a willingness to
help the other when easily done, and related attitudes.9 Like Strawson [1962], I take the
characteristics of this relationship to be fairly intuitive. When you are open to reconciling
with a stranger, and so forgive a stranger on my view, you are open to restoring this
relationship.
Return to the remaining intuitive feature of forgiveness: a victim can forgive an
offender without being willing to restore a close relationship with him. The Openness-to-
9 Here I am indebted to T.M. Scanlon’s [2008: 142-4] description of those attitudes and intentions partially constitutive of the moral relationship that are not owed to everyone.
15
Reconciliation View initially seems unable to account for this; yet, such cases are
commonplace. Consider a wife whose husband has an affair. Imagine that the husband
repents and wants to continue the marriage, but the wife responds: ‘I forgive you, but I do
not trust you anymore, and I want a divorce.’ Or consider a close friend who does not
stand by you through a difficult time. The friend later repents, and you forgive her but opt
not to continue the close friendship.
Rather than counting against the view, such cases illustrate a significant advantage
of it. Because the view analyzes forgiveness in terms of the relational concept of
reconciliation, forgiveness can happen on different relationship levels depending upon
which type of relationship the victim is open to restoring. Normal relationships, from
acquaintances to the closest relationships, are relationships of good will.10 After this, the
closer the relationship, the more additional expectations it has about how the parties in the
relationship will act toward one another and the attitudes that they will have toward one
another. For example, close friends should not only treat each other with good will but
should also make substantial sacrifices for each other and support each other during hard
times. In normal relationships, for forgiveness to happen at all, the victim must be open to
restoring a relationship of good will. Yet because close relationships have additional
expectations, the victim may be open to restoring the relationship of good will but not the
close relationship. In such cases, the victim forgives the transgressor as a person but not
as a party to the close relationship.
To see that this is plausible, return to the above examples. When the unfaithful,
remorseful husband asks for his wife’s forgiveness, desiring to maintain their marriage, he
10 Immoral or perverse relationships may not be relationships of good will. I thank Amy Shuster for pointing this out.
16
seeks reconciliation as spouses. If the wife had replied: ‘I forgive you,’ she would have
communicated to her husband that she forgives him as her husband and so would have
communicated that they are reconciled as spouses. By instead saying, ‘I forgive you, but
I want a divorce,’ the wife makes clear that she is not forgiving him as a husband but just
as a person. In other words, she is open to restoring their relationship to one of good will
but is not open to restoring their marriage. Similarly, when you forgive your disloyal,
repentant friend but opt not to remain close friends, you forgive her as a person but not as
friend in virtue of being open to restoring the relationship of good will but not the
friendship. The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation is powerful in revealing
and explaining that forgiveness occurs on different relationship levels. (I further defend
this idea below.)
With this in mind, the Openness-to-Reconciliation View explains the final intuitive
feature of forgiveness as follows. When a victim forgives an offender without being open
to restoring the close relationship, the victim forgives and is open to reconciliation on a
lower relationship level – e.g., the person level – but is not open to reconciliation and so
does not forgive on the close relationship level – e.g., the friendship level.
Now consider forgiving those who stand as a present threat, such as an abuser.11
On the view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation, forgiving an abuser does not
entail continuing the abusive relationship. You may forgive an abuser only as a person,
which is compatible with cutting off contact with him. Further, even forgiving an abuser
as a friend or partner does not entail continuing the abusive relationship. After all,
forgiving an abuser, on this view, means being open to reconciliation with him, such that
11 I thank Robert Adams for raising this issue.
17
you reconcile with him if he has the right attitudes and intentions. Clearly a current abuser
lacks the right attitudes and intentions. You can therefore forgive him as a friend or partner
on this view while cutting off contact.
The preceding examples bring to the fore questions about our obligations to forgive.
On the Openness-to-Reconciliation View, because forgiveness happens on different
relationship levels, we may be obligated to forgive someone on one relationship level but
not another. For example, we may typically be obligated to forgive an offender as a person,
but our obligations to forgive in close relationships are surely less robust, as abused
partners are not obligated to forgive their abusers as partners. Of course, we have some
obligations to forgive in close relationships. It seems wrong not to forgive an apologetic
friend as a friend for once forgetting your lunch date. I will not here determine the extent
of our obligations to forgive, as I am focusing on the conceptual question of what
forgiveness is. My point is to highlight that the Openness-to-Reconciliation View leads to
a more nuanced and plausible understanding of our obligations to forgive, by revealing that
we may have obligations to forgive on some relationship levels but not others.
The idea that we can forgive on different relationship levels also yields insight into
our reasons for forgiving. On the Openness-to-Reconciliation View, whether you forgive
depends only upon whether you are open to reconciling with the wrongdoer, not upon your
reasons for being thus open. However, because we can forgive on different relationship
levels, our reasons for forgiving will vary for each level. For example, we may forgive
someone as a person – i.e., be open to reconciling a relationship of good will with her –
because of a desire to live peacefully with others. We may forgive a friend as a friend –
i.e., be open to restoring the friendship – because we care deeply about the friendship.
18
3. Objections and Replies
In this section, I take up five objections to my argument.
3.1. Is all forgiveness as a person?
Objection:
Perhaps all forgiveness is ‘forgiveness as a person’ – i.e., openness to restoring the
relationship of good will.12
Response:
We should not accept this proposal. To see why, imagine the following variation
of the wife with the unfaithful, repentant husband. Suppose that, rather than saying, ‘I
forgive you, but I want a divorce,’ she simply says, ‘I forgive you’ and then soon after asks
him to move out. In this variation, her husband could reasonably protest, ‘But I thought
that you had forgiven me!’ If forgiveness were just forgiveness as a person, this response
would be unreasonable, since the wife could forgive him as a person but still end their
marriage. Hence the reasonableness of the husband’s response shows that, in simply
saying, ‘I forgive you,’ the wife communicates that she forgives him as a spouse, not just
as a person. This is why, in the original case, the wife must add ‘but I want a divorce’ to
communicate that she is only forgiving him as a person. Thus not all forgiveness is
forgiveness as a person. This makes sense. Forgiveness has the power to effect
12 I thank Andrew Moon for this objection.
19
reconciliation in close relationships, but the view that all forgiveness is forgiveness as a
person can only explain how forgiveness restores a relationship of good will.
3.2. Forgiveness as openness to restoring the prior relationship?
Objection:
Perhaps forgiveness is openness to restoring the prior relationship (namely, that
which existed before the offense). In support of this, suppose that a daughter deeply hurt
her mother and asks for forgiveness. The mother expresses forgiveness, ceases to resent
her daughter, and treats her kindly, but she no longer acts toward her daughter with the
same affection and love. In this case, it would be reasonable to say that the mother has not
forgiven her daughter because their prior relationship is not restored.13
Response:
This proposal is flawed because it rules out cases of genuine forgiveness, such as
forgiving a disloyal friend but opting not to continue the friendship. Yet, as the objection
illustrates, it sometimes sounds strange to say that a victim has forgiven when she is not
open to restoring the previous close relationship. Why? To answer this question, first
consider another: why do we talk simply about X forgiving Y, rather than X forgiving Y
as a person or as a friend?
The answer is that context specifies the relationship level. When the repentant
husband asks for his wife’s forgiveness, seeking reconciliation within the marriage, the
marriage relationship is salient. Hence, if the wife simply says, ‘I forgive you,’ she
13 I thank Scott Davison and Stephen Grimm for this objection.
20
communicates that she forgives him as a spouse. When she instead says, ‘I forgive you,
but I want a divorce,’ she changes the salient relationship to the relationship of good will.
In support of this point, imagine instead that the husband says: ‘Please forgive me for
betraying you. You deserve someone better, and I hope that my betrayal does not keep you
from trusting that person when you find him.’ Here the husband makes the relationship of
good will salient. In this variation, the wife can simply say, ‘I forgive you,’ to communicate
forgiveness as a person.
In the mother/daughter case, we say that the mother has not forgiven her daughter
because the mother/daughter relationship is salient. This is so for a few reasons. First, the
prior relationship level is often the default one, especially when the wrongdoer seeks to
restore that relationship. Second, the case is described as a daughter asking her mother for
forgiveness, which makes the mother/daughter relationship salient. Third, the
mother/daughter relationship continues despite the mother’s failure to forgive her daughter
as a daughter; the resulting brokenness of that relationship makes it salient. Finally, the
mother plausibly has an obligation to forgive her repentant daughter as a daughter, and her
refusal to do so stands out. For these reasons, the mother/daughter relationship is salient,
and thus, in asking whether the mother has forgiven her daughter, we are asking whether
she has forgiven her as a daughter. As a result, the intuition that the mother has not
forgiven her daughter is consistent with the mother having forgiven her daughter as a
person. Further, it is reasonable to think that the mother has forgiven her daughter as a
person, given that she no longer resents her daughter and treats her kindly. After all, you
may have similar sentiments in forgiving your disloyal friend only as a person.
21
3.3. Forgiving the dead
Objection:
The Openness-to-Reconciliation View cannot account for forgiving the dead, since
we cannot reconcile with the dead.14
Response:
This view can account for forgiving the dead. To forgive a dead wrongdoer is, on
this view, to be open to reconciliation with her, which means that you have attitudes and
intentions toward her such that, if she were alive and repentant, you would be reconciled.
You can think of forgiving a dead person as playing your part in a hypothetical
reconciliation, which you can do even when the other person cannot play her part. This is
so because having the attitudes and intentions that constitute being open to reconciliation
does not depend upon the other’s attitudes and intentions or even upon whether she is still
capable of having attitudes and intentions, nor does it require aiming at reconciliation.
Note that the same explanation holds for forgiving agents who are alive but incapable of
reconciliation for other reasons, such as because they are suffering from dementia.
3.4. Self-Forgiveness
Objection:
The Openness-to-Reconciliation View cannot explain self-forgiveness because it
makes no sense to reconcile with oneself.15
14 I thank Michael Almeida for this objection. 15 I thank Alexander Arnold for this objection.
22
Response:
Although it may sound odd, reconciling with oneself is what happens in self-
forgiveness. First notice that we should have certain attitudes and intentions toward
ourselves. For example, we should have good will toward ourselves – e.g., we should hope
that things go well for ourselves, should intend to avoid things that will impede realizing
our valuable aims, etc. Now consider someone who needs to forgive himself. Such a
person has repented for his wrong but yet continues to be very hard on himself about it. For
example, he might not pursue some valuable aim because he thinks that he does not deserve
it, or he might out of anger toward himself undermine important relationships. Such a
person is not reconciled with himself with respect to his wrongdoing. In forgiving himself,
he reconciles with himself by having good will and whatever other attitudes and intentions
toward himself that constitute a good self-relationship. (Notice that, for self-forgiveness,
being open to reconciliation entails reconciliation, since self-forgiveness presupposes
repentance.)
3.5. Forgiveness too cheap?
Objection:
The Openness-to-Reconciliation View makes forgiveness too cheap because, on
that view, a victim could forgive by taking a pill that puts her in a state of being open to
reconciliation with the offender.16
16 I thank Robert Audi for this objection.
23
Response:
First recall that openness to reconciliation occurs with respect to particular wrongs.
Thus, we must stipulate that the pill makes the victim open to reconciliation with the
offender with respect to the particular offense. This blunts the objection’s force. Even if
the pill makes the victim so happy that he ceases to resent the offender and continues in a
close relationship with him, it does not follow that he forgives on the Openness-to-
Reconciliation View. After all, these things are consistent with simply moving on from
the offense.
Suppose that the pill causes the victim to be open to reconciliation with the offender
with respect to the particular offense. The Openness-to-Reconciliation View then says that
the victim forgives. This is correct because the pill does not affect whether the victim
forgives but rather how we should view the forgiver. Normally, when a victim forgives, it
is a credit to her. (Set aside cases in which forgiving may be impermissible.) However, if
forgiveness results from a pill, the victim either deserves no credit for forgiving or deserves
only derivative credit for forgiving, in the event that she takes the pill in order to forgive
and deserves direct credit for that. Thus, it is not a problem for the view that pills or other
external interventions could put someone in a state of being open to reconciliation. In such
cases, the victim forgives but deserves no direct credit for it.
24
4. Other Views of Forgiveness
So far, I have presented my positive argument for the view that forgiveness is
openness to reconciliation and responded to objections. In this section, I argue that we
should prefer this view to three prominent views.
On the most influential view, forgiveness is foreswearing resentment toward the
wrongdoer [e.g., Butler 1846; McGary 1989; Hieronymi 2001; Murphy 2003; and
Strawson 1962]. This view fails to account for forgiveness’s power to reconcile
relationships with repentant offenders. This is because letting go of a negative emotion,
on whatever grounds, does not capture the emotional movement toward the offender
necessary for forgiveness to effect reconciliation with a repentant offender. We should
therefore reject the view.
The view’s proponents could respond by denying that forgiveness has the power to
reconcile relationships. In fact, many theorists of forgiveness would deny that forgiveness
has this power. These theorists posit a weaker connection between forgiveness and
reconciliation, claiming that forgiveness often but not always leads to or aims at
reconciliation with repentant offenders, based on the fact that a victim can forgive without
being willing to reconcile a close relationship [e.g., Murphy 2003: 14-15; Griswold 2007:
111; Radzik 2009: 117; Pettigrove 2012: 100, 107, 149].
This response assumes that we cannot accept both that a victim can forgive without
being willing to reconcile a close relationship and that forgiveness has the power to
reconcile relationships with repentant offenders. (In other words, it assumes that Section
1’s sixth and seventh intuitive features of forgiveness are mutually inconsistent.) As we
have seen, this assumption is wrong. We can accept both ideas by accepting that
25
forgiveness happens on different relationship levels. Theorists of forgiveness have failed
to see this possibility.
Further, denying that forgiveness has the power to reconcile relationships with
repentant offenders incurs a significant cost. As I have argued, this power is manifest in
close relationships. It explains why, in typical cases, both the victim and offender take
their close relationship to be restored when the offender asks for forgiveness and the victim
forgives. It also explains why the victim who forgives but is unwilling to restore the close
relationship must say something like “I forgive you, but I can no longer continue this close
relationship” in order not to mislead the offender into thinking that their relationship is
restored. Thus, to explain forgiveness in close relationships adequately, a view of
forgiveness must accept that forgiveness has the power to restore close relationships with
repentant offenders. Moreover, explaining forgiveness in close relationships is especially
important, as most actual cases of forgiveness take place in them.
One might object that saying ‘I forgive you’ expresses more than forgiveness when
a repentant offender seeks restoration of a close relationship; in that context, it also
expresses openness to restoring the close relationship. I think that we should reject this
alternative explanation. To start, the intuitive and straightforward explanation for the
phenomenon is that forgiveness itself has the power to reconcile relationships with
repentant offenders. Further, third parties also assume that forgiveness effects
reconciliation with repentant offenders. To see this, suppose that a friend, who has been
separated from an abusive partner, tells you that the partner has repented and that he has
forgiven her. You would reasonably assume that they are partners again unless your friend
gives you reason to think otherwise. You could imagine breathing a sigh of relief if your
26
friend adds, ‘but I told her that I cannot be in a relationship with her anymore.’ The fact
that third parties take forgiveness to effect reconciliation with repentant offenders indicates
that forgiveness itself has the power to restore relationships with repentant offenders, not
expressing forgiveness in certain contexts. The view that forgiveness is foreswearing
resentment cannot account for this feature of forgiveness.
On another prominent view, forgiveness is foreswearing hostile attitudes toward
the wrongdoer plus having some positive regard toward him.17 Different versions of this
view understand ‘positive regard’ differently. For example, Eve Garrard and David
McNaughton [2010] understand it as good will, Aurel Kolnai [1973] as trust, David Novitz
[1998] as compassion, and Jean Hampton [1988] as reapproval. This view rightly brings
in emotional movement toward the offender, but even so, we should not accept it, as it still
cannot account for forgiveness’s power to effect reconciliation with a repentant wrongdoer.
To see this, focus on Garrard and McNaughton’s version of the view. Foreswearing
hostile attitudes toward the wrongdoer plus having good will toward him seem sufficient
to reconcile a victim with a repentant wrongdoer when the wrongdoer was a stranger before
the wrongdoing, but surely it is insufficient to reconcile parties in a close relationship, since
more than good will toward the wrongdoer is required to restore close relationships.
Importantly, this issue arises no matter how we understand positive regard. Whether we
understand it as trust, reapproval, compassion, or something else, the view may account
for forgiveness’s power to reconcile some relationships, but it will not work across the
spectrum of relationships, particularly not in close relationships that require more
complicated positive attitudes to restore.
17 This formulation of the view follows [Pettigrove 2012: 8-9].
27
Finally, consider Dana Nelkin’s [2013] view that forgiveness is releasing the
offender from the personal obligations incurred by his wrongdoing. Like the view that
forgiveness is foreswearing resentment, this view focuses just on letting go of something
– in its case, of obligations owed. Thus it cannot account for forgiveness’s power to
reconcile relationships with repentant offenders, since that requires emotional movement
toward those offenders.
Unlike the above three views, the view that forgiveness is openness to
reconciliation accounts for forgiveness’s power to restore relationships with repentant
offenders. Hence only this view adequately explains forgiveness in close relationships,
where forgiveness primarily occurs. Further, and importantly, this view accounts for the
features of forgiveness that the above views take to constitute forgiveness: being open to
reconciliation with a wrongdoer plausibly requires foreswearing resentment toward him,
foreswearing hostile attitudes plus having positive regard toward him, and releasing him
from the personal obligations incurred by his wrongdoing. The Openness-to-
Reconciliation View thus accounts for the appeal of the other views. A further advantage
of the Openness-to-Reconciliation View is that it explains which hostile attitudes must be
eliminated and which positive attitudes must be adopted toward the wrongdoer in forgiving
him: namely, those required for reconciliation of the relationship at issue. We should
therefore accept that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with
respect to the wrongdoing.
28
Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Lara Buchak, Stephen Grimm, and anonymous referees for very helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. I also thank audiences at The Ohio State University, University of Notre Dame, City University of New York Graduate Center, Wayne State University, Southern Methodist University, the Fordham University Philosophy of Religion Workshop, the Inaugural Theistic Ethics Workshop at Wake Forest University, and the Rutgers Value Theory and Philosophy of Religion Workshop for valuable comments and questions.
References
Butler, Joseph 1846. Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel, in The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Joseph Butler, D.C.L., Late Bishop of Durham, ed. Samuel Halifax, New York: Carter. Collins, Jeffrey 2015. ‘‘Hate won’t win,’ families of Charleston church victims tell shooter,’ Associated Press. http://www.dallasnews.com/news/news/2015/06/19/hate-wont-win-families-of-charleston-church-victims-tell-shooter Ferrero, Luca 2009, ‘Conditional Intentions,’ Noûs, 43/4: 700–741. Garrard, Eve and David McNaughton 2010. Forgiveness. Durham: Acumen. Griswold, Charles L 2007. Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hampton, Jean 1988. The Retributive Idea, in Forgiveness and Mercy, ed. Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 111–161. Hieronymi, Pamela 2001. ‘Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62/3: 529-555. Kolnai, Aurel 1973. ‘Forgiveness.’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74: 91–106. McGary, Howard 1989. ‘Forgiveness,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 26/4: 343–350. Murphy, Jeffrie G 2003. Getting Even: Forgiveness and Its Limits. New York: Oxford University Press. Nelkin, Dana 2013. Freedom and Forgiveness, in Free Will and Moral Responsibility, ed. Ishtiyaque Haji and Justin Caouette, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press: 165–188.
29
Novitz, David 1998. ‘Forgiveness and Self-Respect.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58/2: 299–315.
Pettigrove, Glen 2012. Forgiveness and Love. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Radzik, Linda 2009. Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law, and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Scanlon, T.M. 2008. Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, and Blame. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Stewart, Nikita and Richard Pérez-Peña 2015. ‘In Charleston, Raw Emotion at Hearing for Suspect in Church Shooting,’ NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/us/ charleston-shooting-dylann-storm-roof.html Strawson, P.F. 1962 (2003). Freedom and Resentment, in Free Will (Second Edition), ed. Gary Watson Oxford: Oxford University Press: 72–93.