Self-forgiveness and the moral perspective of humility

This chapter presents the argument that the conception of humility outlined in chapter 7—whose features include radical dependence and other-focus—is important in the process of morally responsible self-forgiveness. The case of Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement illustrates this and allows us to recognize (in line with an insight of Robin S. Dillon’s) a kind of self-forgiveness that includes continued self-reproach. Briony illustrates aspects of the kind of self-absorption about which critics of continued self-reproach (such as Margaret Holmgren) are rightly concerned, but she also illustrates a way of getting beyond this, such that the delicate balance between self-forgiveness and self-condemnation is plausibly upheld. Atonement also shows the significance of a particular kind of narrative continuity in the task of self-forgiveness.

Hope in the task of forgiveness

A second putative virtue key to forgivingness is hope. This chapter compares the hope that Kierkegaard labels as a variety of ‘expectancy’ [Forventning] with what Philip Pettit has called ‘substantial’ (as opposed to ‘superficial’) hope, focusing in particular on their mutual capacity to provide what Pettit calls ‘cognitive resolve’. Such hope, it is argued, can itself be understood as a work of love, returning to the earlier discussion of Helen Prejean’s relation to the Death Row inmate Pat Sonnier in Dead Man Walking to discuss how such hope can ‘scaffold’ normative change. This view of hope is defended against objections in the context of considering the role of hope in the task of interpersonal forgiveness.

Forgiving, forgetting and reframing

This chapter addresses two issues. First, forgiving is often connected with—but distinguished from—forgetting. The chapter returns to Kierkegaard’s typically overlooked distinction between forgetting per se and ‘forgetting in forgiveness’. Like Kierkegaard, Jeffrey Blustein is unusual in taking the idea of forgetting in forgiveness seriously. However, through a dialogue with Blustein, it is argued that ‘forgetting’ is not the best way of capturing the position for which both he and Kierkegaard are trying to make space. The discussion also draws on Blustein to start to explore what might make the disposition of ‘forgivingness’ a virtue. The second issue is the important question of cognitive biases. Through a discussion of some recent work in social psychology and behavioural ethics, the role such biases might play in blocking our ability to forgive is considered, as is how important transcending them might be to the process of ‘reframing’ the wrongdoer.

Agapic love and justice

Does valorizing ‘love’s forgiveness’ amount to prioritizing agapic love over justice? Or is there some other picture, according to which forgiveness manages to combine love and justice? This chapter, addresses this question through a discussion of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s important distinction between ‘benevolence-agapism’ and ‘care-agapism’, and his defence of the latter. The framework for this is laid out (drawing on several key New Testament passages), before showing the reasons for diverging from Wolterstorff on the question of conditional versus unconditional (invitational) forgiveness. It is argued that forgiveness as a work of love need not—as some of its defenders assume—be an instance of benevolence-agapism, but can rather be an instance of care-agapism. This shows that there is available an understanding of forgiveness as a work of love that manages to incorporate both agapic love and a proper concern for justice.

The standing to forgive and the standing to be forgiven

This chapter explores two key questions: who has the standing to forgive? And who has the standing to be forgiven? Under the first, the question whether third-party forgiveness is ever possible or morally fitting is explored, the argument being that since not all third-party forgiveness is forgiveness on behalf of the victim, in at least some circumstances, third-party forgiveness is indeed possible and fitting. The discussion explores primary, secondary and tertiary victims, and the status of moral bystanders. The second question introduces whether forgiveness should be ‘conditional’ or ‘unconditional’, and if ‘unconditional’ forgiveness can be legitimate (as it is argued that it can), of what kind of unconditional forgiveness is this true? The case is put for the value of distinguishing between two types of unconditional, and two types of conditional, forgiveness. Objections that may legitimately be made against one kind of unconditional forgiveness (associated with, e.g. Derrida) are not taken to apply to the other.

Kierkegaard and forgiveness

This chapter introduces Kierkegaard’s contribution to the debate about forgiveness. The first part gives an overview of his explicit accounts of forgiveness, focusing upon the divine forgiveness of sins and its implications for interpersonal (human) forgiveness and self-forgiveness. This incorporates discussion of some key New Testament passages on forgiveness. The second part explores what difference is made by understanding interpersonal forgiveness as a ‘work of love’. Against the objection that ‘love’s vision’ involves wilful blindness, it is argued (drawing on both Kierkegaard and Troy Jollimore) that love has its own epistemic standards and that Jollimore’s claims about romantic love and friendship can in the relevant respects be extended to the case of agapic neighbour-love. In developing this view—which is seen as echoing important themes in Kierkegaard’s Works of Love—the importance of understanding ‘love’s forgiveness’ in the light of other virtues, especially hope and humility, begins to be shown.

On learning humility from the lilies and the birds

This chapter begins to explore what other virtues might complement ‘forgivingness’. After a justification of the use of the very language of ‘virtues’, it is argued that a key part of the answer is a certain view of humility: one that can be teased out from several Kierkegaardian discourses, and which has recently been gaining increasing support against competing views. Humility is understood not in terms of self-abasement, underestimating oneself, or being ignorant of one’s good qualities, but rather in terms of decentring the self, being focused on others and sources of value besides oneself. In exploring the centrality of future-oriented worries to Kierkegaard’s lily and bird discourses, it is argued that such worries often stem from excessive, debilitating self-absorption, which the kind of humility sketched here enables us to avoid. All this is connected to the forgiving person through a discussion of the relationship between humility and gratitude, and the distinction between the virtue of humility and the vice of servility.

Metaphors for forgiveness

This chapter further explores the significance of the accounts of forgiveness found in the Hebrew Bible and (especially) the New Testament, paying particular attention to the resonances of the Greek terms aphesis (letting go or cancelling a debt) and charizomai (gratuitous gift-giving). It next explores (largely through a discussion of the work of Lucy Allais and Christopher Bennett) how such distinctions map on to metaphors for forgiveness that survive into secular philosophical discourse, and the differences between understanding forgiveness in terms of either a wronged party or a wrongdoer ‘wiping the slate clean’ and understanding it in terms of the wronged party ‘turning the other cheek’. In particular, it shows the limitations of the former image as a model of interpersonal forgiveness, and argues that a Kierkegaardian approach enables us to get beyond the element of arbitrariness implied by Allais’s account of forgiveness.

Forgiveness and the range of resentment

This chapter introduces some key questions about forgiveness, its primary focus being the vexed issue of what the precise relationship is between forgiveness and resentment (and related emotions). Through a discussion of several writers, especially Bishop Joseph Butler, Jean Hampton and Margaret Urban Walker, it is argued that resentment has both a potentially more positive resonance, in speaking for justice, and a far broader range of application, being felt on behalf of others, not just oneself, than is often assumed in contemporary philosophical discussions of forgiveness. The chapter then sets out to distinguish a working view of non-idealized, ‘good enough’ forgiveness, from others, including some which it may initially appear to resemble. It also addresses the question of why, if resentment is warranted, one might forgive, starting to sketch the picture which later chapters will fill out as ‘love’s forgiveness’.