Abstract
Forgiveness usually counts as a virtue. In this contribution, I challenge this assumption and cast a critical light on forgiveness. My starting point is the “alteration thesis” of forgiveness, recently defended by David Owens and Chris Bennett. Bennett argues that forgiveness is a “normative power”: the forgiver undertakes an obligation no longer to treat the wrongdoer as standing under the obligations generated by the act of wrongdoing. This, I argue, is correct, but the forgiver “changes the normative landscape” not only by committing himself to no longer holding the act of wrongdoing against the wrongdoer, but also by introducing presuppositions into the discourse which often remain unthematized. More precisely, the forgiver presupposes that the addressee of forgiveness is guilty of an offence; he also presupposes that he himself has the standing to forgive and that what he purports to forgive is forgivable. All of these presuppositions may turn out to be highly questionable. Bringing these presuppositions to light will often cast doubt on our positive assessment of forgiveness. It will often lead us to see forgiveness as a way of cloaking one’s own interests under the guise of exercising a virtue rather than as the real exercise of a virtue. It will make us realize the dark side of forgiveness.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Kekes 2009.
- 3.
Murphy 2003, 17–26 (chap. 2). See also Murphy and Hampton 1988, 14–34 (chap. 1), 88–110 (chap. 3) and Murphy 2012, 3–20 (chap. 1). In his later contributions, Murphy moderates his formerly more enthusiastic “cheers for vindictiveness” and expresses some reservations about the moral value of the retributive emotions.
- 4.
- 5.
Bennett 2018, 208.
- 6.
For the conceptions of rights and obligations that defenders of the alteration thesis endorse, see Bennett 2018, 214.
- 7.
Defenders of the alteration thesis take these consequences to be intrinsically related to forgiveness, which is what distinguishes them from merely causal consequences: “Understanding forgiveness as an exercise of a normative power makes clear that forgiveness does not just have the causal consequence of altering certain norms. Many activities can cause norms to be altered: my crying in front of a friend might place her under an obligation to comfort me. Exercises of normative powers, however, are intrinsically related to their results – the alteration of norms is the end state of an act of forgiving. The alteration is a result of forgiving and not simply a causal consequence of forgiving” (Warmke 2016, 691). In the light of this clarification, it would be accurate to say that defenders of the alteration thesis focus not on consequences of forgiveness in general, but on some, namely resultant consequences of forgiveness. Still, they regard these resultant consequences as “the end state” of acts of forgiveness, which means that presuppositions, which are not the end states of acts of forgiveness, do not enter the picture of how forgiveness alters the normative landscape. In what follows, I use “consequence” as shorthand for “resultant consequences” as opposed to “causal consequences”.
- 8.
For the distinction between doing something by doing something and doing something in doing something, see Austin 1962, 121–132 (Lecture X). Whereas the “by”-formula refers to the intended perlocutionary effects of the utterance (as in “He alarmed her by warning her”), the “in”-formula picks out the illocutionary force of the utterance (as in “In saying ´I will shoot you´ he threatened her”). Austin himself hesitates to accept the distinction as a reliable test for distinguishing between illocution and perlocution and thinks that “it is at best a very slippery test for deciding whether an expression is an illocution as distinct from a perlocution or neither” (Austin 1962, 131–132).
- 9.
Austin 1962, 94–120 (Lectures VIII and IX).
- 10.
See Pettigrove 2004. According to Pettigrove, forgiveness is behabitive in that it involves a disclosure of a present emotional condition and commissive in that it involves a committment to a future course of action.
- 11.
- 12.
Grice 1989, 25–26.
- 13.
Austin 1962, 47–51.
- 14.
Lewis 1979, 240.
- 15.
Sbisà 1999, 560.
- 16.
As Langton puts it: “When falsehoods are the problem, they do not always ´grapple´ with truth in an ´open encounter´, as Milton imagined. Often they are not asserted, but merely presupposed. They creep into the stadium through back doors, keeping a low profile, steering clear of the official combatants, and then ascend the podium un-bloodied and untested, winners by default” (Langton 2018a, 145).
- 17.
- 18.
For a detailed analysis of excuses, see Austin’s seminal “Plea for Excuses” (1956/57).
- 19.
Pace Pettigrove 2004, 376: “The locution “I forgive you” not only presupposes some wrong has been done by the one being forgiven, it also thematizes this supposition”. To support this claim, Pettigrove points to situations in which we avoid invoking explicit forgiveness-language. Confronted with an awkward apology, we may, for example, prefer to say “Don’t worry about it” or “It’s okay” rather than “I forgive you”. We would do this because, as Pettigrove correctly observes, to say “I forgive you” would mean that we claim as our own the moral high ground, and we may want to avoid that impression. However, this does not mean that “I forgive you” thematizes the wrongness of the act being forgiven. To presuppose guilt does not mean making this assumption explicit in the discourse, i.e. thematizing it.
- 20.
Ibsen 2016. The play was first performed in 1879.
- 21.
Ibsen 2016, 180 (Act III).
- 22.
Ibsen continues to rub in this interdependency between forgiveness and suppression, infantilization and disenfranchisement in the exquisite passage that follows shortly after the one just quoted: “[Helmer:] [...] before long I won’t need to repeat how I’ve forgiven you; you will feel unshakeably that I have done so. How can you think it would cross my mind to reject you, or even to reproach you for anything? Oh, you don’t know the stuff of a real man’s heart, Nora. For a man there is something so indescribably sweet and gratifying in knowing that he’s forgiven his wife – that he has forgiven her with a full and honest heart. Yes, in a way she has become his property in a double sense; in a way, he has brought her into the world afresh; she is, in a sense, not only his wife, but also his child. That’s how you’ll be for me from today, you helpless, confused little creature” (Ibsen 2016, 181 [Act III]).
- 23.
Wiesenthal 1997, 1–98 (Book I).
- 24.
For a detailed discussion of the standing to forgive, see Pettigrove 2009. Pettigrove convincingly criticizes the idea of a “victim prerogative”, i.e. the view that only the victim has a standing to forgive. – In the present context, it is important to note that we do not have to accept a victim prerogative in order to subscribe to the view that in Wiesenthal’s narrative, Simon lacks the standing to forgive the crimes done to other Jews. The reason that he lacks this standing is the monstrosity of the crimes done to other Jews. This monstrosity confers on them the right to decide for themselves whether they want to forgive or not. In the case of minor offences, we would have little qualms about conceding the possibility of third-party-forgiveness. If, for example, 10 years ago you betrayed confidential information that my sister gave you and thereby wronged my sister, it seems unproblematic to say that, if my sister deceased in the meantime or is unable to forgive you for whatever reason, I may forgive you for the wrong you did to my sister 10 years ago.
- 25.
For a detailed discussion of the standing to forgive, see Pettigrove 2009. Pettigrove convincingly criticizes the idea of a “victim prerogative”, i.e. the view that only the victim has a standing to forgive. – In the present context, it is important to note that we do not have to accept a victim prerogative in order to subscribe to the view that in Wiesenthal’s narrative, Simon lacks the standing to forgive the crimes done to other Jews. The reason that he lacks this standing is the monstrosity of the crimes done to other Jews. This monstrosity confers on them the right to decide for themselves whether they want to forgive or not. In the case of minor offences, we would have little qualms about conceding the possibility of third-party-forgiveness. If, for example, 10 years ago you betrayed confidential information that my sister gave you and thereby wronged my sister, it seems unproblematic to say that, if my sister deceased in the meantime or is unable to forgive you for whatever reason, I may forgive you for the wrong you did to my sister 10 years ago.
- 26.
- 27.
For the details of the Fritzl-case, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case
- 28.
- 29.
This is a distinction that Hallich (2017, 43–45) generously overlooks.
- 30.
Nietzsche 2006, 77 (part 2, chap. 29).
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Hallich, O. (2022). The Dark Side of Forgiveness. In: Satne, P., Scheiter, K.M. (eds) Conflict and Resolution: The Ethics of Forgiveness, Revenge, and Punishment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77807-1_9
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