Abstract
Forgiveness is a serious and significant issue in both the secular and religious worlds. It remains one of the most critical social aspects which most world religions have found legitimate spaces in their theological arenas to attend to. In spite of the socio-centric nature of forgiveness in practice, scholars seem to have paid only diminutive attention to it beyond being an aspect of religion. As a result, there has been very insignificant theorising into it as a concept, theory or practice. Most scholars who interrogate forgiveness mostly do so from the point of view of religion and theology until a renewed attention was drawn to it in recent time by scholars such as Arendt, Derrida and Kasper who even considers it criminally neglected. Though this discussion is motivated particularly by three disciplines: philosophy, theology and psychology towards interrogating the existing dominant theory of forgiveness; it nevertheless problematised the concept of forgiveness mainly from philosophical and theological perspectives. It is argued that true and sincere apology is not just saying ‘sorry’ but entails following some prerequisites including contrite, confession, remorse, and responsibility. Employing the illustrative example of the incident of the ‘Reitz Four’ the paper explored the theoretical blend of hermeneutics, phenomenology, and logic towards interrogating previous conceptions of forgiveness and suggesting an alternative theoretical approach.
‘The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.’ (Mahatma Gandhi)
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Notes
- 1.
The International Conference on Black Theology was held at University of South Africa (UNISA) on the 11th–13th August 2015.
- 2.
The term ‘catharsis’ is used in both its philosophical and psychological sense. It may be useful to briefly indicate what these are.
- 3.
The International Conference on Black Theology was held at Unisa on the 11th–13th August 2015.
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Koenane, M.L.J., Olatunji, CM.P. (2022). The Struggle to Forgive: Some Philosophical and Theological Reflections. In: Chimakonam, J.O., Etieyibo, E., Odimegwu, I. (eds) Essays on Contemporary Issues in African Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70436-0_19
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