Should we be concerned with, or alarmed or outraged by, the insincerity and hypocrisy of politicians who apologize for historical injustice? This paper argues that the correct reply to this question is: sometimes, but not always. In order to establish what types of insincerity must be avoided, Judith Shklar?s hierarchy of ordinary vices is critically revisited. Against Shklar?s overly benign account of hypocrisy, the paper then tries to demonstrate that only institutional and harmful forms of hypocrisy must be rejected in (...) political apologies for historical injustice. Employing Melissa Nobles? ?membership theory?, this paper defends the claim that the sincerity standard for political apologies is, in stark contrast to apologies between individuals, agent independent. This means that in political apologies, rather than focusing on the remorse and regret of the agent who apologizes, we must primarily examine the apology?s consequences in terms of renegotiating the legal, political and affective dimensions of citizenship. In domestic affairs, the paper shows that apologies can only be considered sincere if they push the polity towards a more inclusive conception of membership in the political community. (shrink)

Forgiveness has been a central issue for humankind since ancient times; it emerged in theology, but in recent decades it has received significant attention from different disciplines, such as philosophy and psychology. More recently, forgiveness has received attention also from organizational and managerial studies, particularly, in studying how individuals respond to interpersonal offenses, or perceived harm and wrongdoing in the workplace. Forgiveness is a complex concept, as it can be understood as a family of related constructs and can be analyzed (...) at different levels. Even if social sciences have widely recognized that the nature of forgiveness can be both conditional and unconditional, the notions of conditionality and unconditionality have not yet received sufficient study, especially in organizational and managerial fields. In these fields, forgiveness has been predominantly studied under a psychological approach, looking for the conditions under which it may occur in the workplace. Unconditional forgiveness has received less attention: with a few exceptions, managerial and organizational literature has limited the conceptualization of forgiveness, weakening its scope and probably not catching a relevant part of forgiving experiences in the workplace. This article proposes to follow a more comprehensive approach to forgiveness in the workplace, according to the social sciences field, which can take into account both conditionality and unconditionality. It focuses on unconditional forgiveness according to Continental philosophy, in particular, to the thought of Jacque Derrida and Paul Ricoeur. Through their contributions, the unconditionality of forgiveness is deepened, and the implications of considering both conditional and unconditional forgiveness are discussed. (shrink)

Focusing on Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology to the Stolen Generations, this article asks: can colonial-settler states obtain forgiveness through political apologies? The article first defends Jacques Derrida’s observation that political apologies resemble the Christian practice of confession. In doing so, it subsequently draws on Michel Foucault’s detailed treatise on confession in order to assess the potential for absolution. For Foucault, the process of engaging in exhaustive truth-telling of sin before a demarcated authority provides a route to such (...) atonement. By contrast, any potential unburdening of sin is lost when there is either no adequate authority to coax the confession or if the confession is less than full. The problem for the settler state is that it is predisposed to re-evoking the imaginary of the settler nation and Westphalian sovereignty in the very process of apologising. Consequently, there is no scope to submit before a higher sovereign body and any truth-telling is necessarily partial. As such, the central argument is that forgiveness for the settler state must remain elusive. The political opportunities arising from this for Indigenous peoples are discussed in the final section. (shrink)