Forgiveness as a Virtue of Universal Love

This chapter is about the relation between universal love and a virtue of forgiveness, which Robert Roberts calls the virtue of forgivingness. I argue that forgivingness is a virtue of universal love, so to understand that virtue, one needs to analyze the problematic notion of universal love. This analysis, in turn, requires an understanding of love itself as an emotion directed at particular agents as opposed to (for example) humankind as such. This creates apparent difficulties for universal love. Once these difficulties are resolved, we have a better understanding of problems with forgivingness as a virtue. In particular, I shall argue that love, including universal love, is a bond-based rather than a value-based emotion, and that forgivingness as a virtue of universal love does not require that we should forgive each and every person who has wronged us.

Forgiving Evil

Are evil acts forgivable? This question lies at the intersection of theories about the nature of evil and theories about the nature of forgiveness. Since evil acts seem to be the most plausible candidates for unforgivability, we start with a brief defense of the secular deployment of the idea of evil, and then move to an overview of various theories of evil. After providing an outline of what forgiveness involves, we consider what being unforgivable might actually amount to. Four possible accounts of being unforgivable are canvassed—psychological impossibility, psychological difficulty, lack of reasons for forgiveness, and a moral prohibition on forgiveness—and their implications for the opening question are considered. We conclude that nothing so far considered rules out the moral permissibility of forgiveness for evil acts. Finally, the question of whether forgiveness would enable the evildoer’s slate to be wiped clean at last is briefly considered.

Institutional Apologies and Forgiveness

Recently, many governments, universities, corporations, and other institutions have issued public apologies for the roles they played in serious instances of historical injustice. These apologies are particularly interesting in the case of wrongs that occurred in the distant past, toward individuals who are no longer living or capable of rendering forgiveness for such wrongs. When both the original perpetrators of these wrongs and their original victims are no longer living, one might have doubts about the conceptual and moral intelligibility of such apologies. The aim of this contribution is to try to answer this question, by examining the logic of such institutional apologies and their relation to questions of institutional blame and institutional forgiveness. It focuses, in particular, on whether it makes sense for American colleges and universities to offer apologies for their historical involvement with the practice of chattel slavery.

The Forgiven

For most theorists, paradigm cases of direct blame consist in the feeling and expression of resentment. It has thus seemed natural for these theorists to begin by presenting, and leaning on, an analysis of resentment. But it turns out there are numerous conflicting analyses of it, and these disagreements ramify when theorists use resentment to tell us about the nature of both blame and its resolution in forgiveness. Resentment cannot bear such theoretical weight. So instead of starting at the front end of the blaming exchange with an analysis of resentment, this chapter starts at the back end with an account of what it takes to be successfully forgiven. This approach promises to yield several more determinate conclusions about (a) when the withdrawal of blame and forgiveness are appropriate and why; (b) the nature of the hard feelings that paradigm forgiveness withdraws; (c) why judgment is superfluous to this blaming and forgiving exchange; and (d) why resentment has been the wrong core blaming component to lean on all along.

Forgiveness and Consequences

When should you forgive a wrongdoer? This chapter develops an act-consequentialist approach to answering this question with a view to exhibiting its attractiveness. The act consequentialist holds that one ought always to do whatever would bring about the best reachable outcome, impartially assessed. So this approach conflicts with common beliefs. A second, independent aim of this chapter is to urge the usefulness of a spare idea of what forgiveness is. On the spare account, forgiveness is the extinguishing of certain negative reactive attitudes in a person toward another, these attitudes being directed at what is perceived to be that individual’s wrongdoing or at least subpar behavior that constitutes a wrong or offense either to the person harboring the attitudes or to others with whom that person specially identifies. Forgiving someone, then, may be something that happens to the forgiver, not something she does.

Forgiving as a Performative Utterance

When A wrongs B, A incurs an obligation to make atonement to B by apologizing with repentance, making reparation, and perhaps also doing a bit more for B, which I call “penance.” For B to forgive A (in the morally most important sense of “forgive”) is for B to promise to treat A in the future as someone who has not wronged B. It is normally good for B to forgive A after A has made at least some attempt at making atonement, but B has no obligation to forgive. To wrong someone is analogous to occurring an (unauthorized) debt to the person, and forgiving is deeming the debt to have been paid. Christ taught that, in order to forgive humans, God requires them to apologize with repentance. But God requires no reparation or penance (apart from that provided for us by Christ’s life and death) and imposes a condition on forgiving us—that we should forgive other humans who seek our forgiveness.

Frailty and Forgiveness

My aim in this chapter is to characterize the change of heart that plays a role in forgiveness—in giving up warranted blaming reactive attitudes. I present this in the context of developing a Kantian account of what forgiveness is and why we need it, drawing on his moral psychology to characterize the relevant change of heart. I appeal in particular to Kant’s account of human frailty and its relation to his account of human evil. I argue that it is frail and flawed agents who lack an entirely fixed and stable character for whom forgiveness is a live option and a need. For such agents, there may be space to interpret us in the light of better willing than our wrongdoing indicates.

Fitting Attitudes and Forgiveness

In philosophical discussions of wrongdoing, it is common to find people saying things such as, “If a person has been wronged, she should resent the wrongdoer.” Writers don’t always say why, but, if one wished to defend the claim, a promising place to turn would be to fitting attitude theories of value: One should feel anger or resentment, because that is the fitting (or accurate) response to wrongdoing. Fitting attitude theory can also help explain why some reasons for forgiving strike us as the wrong kinds of reasons. However, in spite of its attractions, I argue that fitting attitude theory fails to support the claim that those who have been wronged should be angry or resentful rather than forgiving. The argument highlights gaps that must be filled by any theory that attempts to move from judgments of fittingness to full-blown moral judgments.

The Sunflower

In Simon Wiesenthal’s book The Sunflower: On the Possibility and Limits of Forgiveness, Wiesenthal tells the story of a dying German soldier who was guilty of horrendous evil against Jewish men, women, and children, but who desperately wanted forgiveness from and reconciliation with at least one Jew before his death. Wiesenthal, then a prisoner in Auschwitz, was brought to hear the German soldier’s story and his pleas for forgiveness. As Wiesenthal understands his own reaction to the German soldier, he did not grant the dying soldier the forgiveness the man longed for. In The Sunflower, Wiesenthal presents reflections on this story by numerous thinkers. Their responses are noteworthy for the highly divergent intuitions they express. In this chapter, I consider the conflicting views about forgiveness on the part of the respondents in The Sunflower. I argue that those respondents who are convinced that forgiveness should be denied the dying German soldier are mistaken. Nonetheless, I also argue in support of the attitude that rejects reconciliation with the dying German soldier. I try to show that, in some cases of grave evil, repentance and making amends are not sufficient for the removal of guilt, and that reconciliation may be morally impermissible, whatever the case as regards forgiveness.

Forgiveness and Freedom to Do Otherwise

Let us say that one has free will with respect to an action if and only if one can both perform it and one can refrain from performing it. In this chapter, I expose and evaluate various considerations for the view that forgiveness and free will are inextricably associated. This view, if correct, generates the worry that since determinism appears to undermine free will, determinism and forgiveness are incompatible. One set of considerations for the view in question, which I reject, exploits the claim that forgiveness presupposes moral impermissibility. Another set of considerations, which I also reject, turns on the proposal that forgiveness is nontrivially associated with moral obligation. A third set of considerations rests on the thesis that forgiveness is essentially linked to prima facie moral obligation. I argue that this third set generates a troubling dilemma.