Over the past generation, forgiveness has entered the political sphere in countries all over the globe that are addressing the past injustices of war, dictatorship, genocide, and the maltreatment of native peoples. Among the international community, however, the practice is controversial, criticized as unjust for burdening victims and foregoing deserved punishment. This essay argues that forgiveness is not contrary to justice but rather reflective of it if justice means restoration of right relationship, a concept embedded in the scriptures and traditions (...) of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Conceived of in this way, forgiveness can avoid the potential injustices with which it is charged and contribute positively to the reconstruction of political orders. (shrink)

Time passed after the commission of a wrong can affect how we respond to its agent now. Specifically it can introduce certain forms of complexity or ambivalence into our blaming responses. This paper considers how and why time might matter in this way. I illustrate the phenomenon by looking at a recent real-life example, surveying some responses to the case and identifying the relevant forms of ambivalence. I then consider a recent account of blameworthiness and its development over time that (...) purports to account for this ambivalence. Blameworthiness, on this account, consists in a psychological flaw; time matters because it brings the possibility of change in the agent, and ambivalence arises because it is hard to know to the extent of such change. This account, I argue, mischaracterises responses to the case and misidentifies the source of their ambivalence. Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of emotion, I sketch an alternative approach. Our responses, I suggest, make sense within processes through which we address wrongdoing. Time matters because these processes take time and because time’s having passed raises the question whether and how the wrong has been addressed. Unaddressed wrongs can elicit ambivalence of a specific form. (shrink)

This paper explores what could justify some intuitive temporal asymmetries regarding redemption and the distribution of ills and goods throughout an agent's lifespan. After exposing the inadequacies of causal explanations – based on our differential ability to affect the future, but not the past – a metaphysical explanation is outlined in relation to three competing temporal-ontological profiles of agents, and their varying accounts of a being's development. Only one of those conceptions of agents – supported by Presentism, the thesis that (...) everything is present – offers an account justifying the intuitive temporal asymmetries. Finally, consequences are then drawn for the possibility of true redemption. (shrink)

Are torture and torturers unforgivable? The article examines this question in the light of a Humean account of forgiveness. Initially, the Humean account appears to suggest that torturers are unforgivable. However, in the end, I argue it provides us with good reasons to think that even torturers may be forgiven.

Of the many forgiveness-related questions that she takes up in her novels, the one with which Iris Murdoch wrestles most often is the question, “Is forgiveness possible without God?” The aim of this essay is to show, in the first instance, why the question Murdoch persistently raises is a question worth asking. Alongside this primary aim stands a secondary one, which is to consider how one might glean moral insights from the Christian tradition even if one does not (any longer) (...) endorse its theological commitments. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between our interpretations of another's actions and our readiness to forgive. It begins by articulating an account of forgiveness drawn from the New Testament. It then employs the work of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, and Gadamer to investigate ways in which our interpretations of an act or agent can promote or prevent such forgiveness. It concludes with a discussion of some ethical restrictions that may pertain to the interpretation of actions or agents as opposed to utterances and (...) a look at the significance of these restrictions for forgiveness-promoting interpretation. (shrink)

: What is at stake in the debate between those, such as Sam Harris and me, who contend that we would lack free will on the supposition that we are causally determined agents, and those that defend the claim that we might then retain free will, such as Daniel Dennett? I agree with Dennett that on the supposition of causal determination there would be robust ways in which we could shape, control, and cause our actions. But I deny that on (...) this supposition we would have the control in action required for us to basically deserve to be blamed, praised, punished or rewarded. In this response, I argue that this is the core issue that divides compatibilists and incompatiblists about free will and causal determination, and that the incompatibilist position is the right one to accept. Keywords: Sam Harris; Daniel Dennett; Free Will Skepticism; Compatibilism; Incompatibilism Risposta a Daniel Dennet sullo scetticismo circa il libero arbitrio Riassunto: Qual è la posta in gioco nel dibattito che vede contrapporsi chi – come Sam Harris e me – sostiene che non avremmo libertà di volere sulla scorta dell’ipotesi per cui siamo agenti causalmente determinati e chi, al contrario – come Daniel Dennett – difende l’idea che possa darsi un libero volere? Concordo con Dennett circa il fatto che, anche nell’ipotesi della determinazione causale, resterebbe lo spazio per sostenere che per vari e importanti aspetti saremmo comunque noi a modellare, controllare e causare le nostre azioni. E tuttavia rifiuto che su questa base avremmo il controllo in azioni richieste per meritare di essere biasimati, lodati, puniti o premiati. A mio avviso questo è l’elemento cardine che divide i compatibilisti dagli incompatibilisti all’interno del dibattito sul libero arbitro e sulla determinazione causale e ritengo che la posizione corretta sia quella incompatibista. Parole chiave: Sam Harris; Daniel Dennett; Scetticismo verso il libero arbitrio; Compatibilismo; Incompatibilismo. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to set out a theory for treatment of criminals that rejects retributive justification for punishment; does not fall afoul of a plausible prohibition on using people merely as means; and actually works in the real world. The theory can be motivated by free will skepticism. But it can also be supported without reference to the free will issue, since retributivism faces ethical challenges in its own right. In past versions of the account I’ve emphasized (...) the quarantine analogy for incapacitation together with the value of rehabilitation and reintegration. Here I pay special attention to the permissibility and the limits of general deterrence. (shrink)

Under conditions of high social and political polarization, expressing political anger online toward systemic injustice faces an apparent trilemma: Express none but lose anger's valuable goods; express anger to heterogeneous audiences but risk aggravating inter-group polarization; or express anger to like-minded people but succumb to the epistemic pitfalls and extremist tendencies inherent to homogeneous groups. Solving the trilemma requires cultivating an online environment as a deliberative system composed of four kinds of groups—each with distinct purposes and norms. I argue that (...) applying empirically-guided design principles to this systems framework provides political anger a place where its powers can serve justice without damaging the epistemic, ethical, emotional, and community resources required for a democratic path to correcting systemic injustice. (shrink)

Influentially, Pamela Hieronymi has argued that any account of forgiveness must be both articulate and uncompromising. It must articulate the change in judgement that results in the forgiver’s loss of resentment without excusing or justifying the misdeed, and without comprising a commitment to the transgressor=s responsibility, the wrongness of the action, and the transgressed person=s self-worth. Non-articulate accounts of forgiveness, which rely on indirect strategies for reducing resentment (for example, reflecting on the transgressor’s bad childhood) are said to fail to (...) explain forgiveness. I argue that the articulateness condition is not a necessary condition for forgiveness. I respond to numerous objections advanced against non-articulate accounts, including the claim that the resentment-mitigating practices they involve amount to excusing. Appealing to P.F. Strawson=s distinction between objective and participant attitudes, I argue that forgivers can take transgressors to be detrimentally causally shaped by their past while holding him them to be morally responsible. (shrink)

Although philosophers sympathetic to Peter Strawson's view in “Freedom and Resentment” tend to be compatibilists, they need not be. This paper develops a recent suggestion that Strawson's view can be read as consistent with libertarianism by showing that an important distinction Strawson makes between personal and moral reactive attitudes leaves room to be a Strawsonian compatibilist with respect to personal responsibility and a Strawsonian incompatibilist with respect to moral responsibility. Understanding this possibility reveals a potential gap within Strawson's argument that (...) should be of interest to both Strawsonians and their critics. (shrink)

How can we explain the rational diminution of backward-looking emotions without resorting to pragmatic or wrong kind of reason explanations? That is to say, how can the diminution of these emotions not only be rational but fitting? In this paper, I offer an answer to this question by considering the case of anger. In Sect. 1, I examine Pamela Hieronymi’s account of forgiveness as the rational resolution of resentment. I argue that Hieronymi’s account rests on an assumption about the rationality (...) of emotions —namely, that a rational change in emotion entails a change in the fact that constitutes the reason for the emotion. Then, in Sect. 2, I consider Agnes Callard’s recent criticism of accounts like Hieronymi’s as well as Callard’s alternative account of the rational resolution of anger. I argue that Callard offers a promising account but fails to explain how it avoids the criticism she levels against Hieronymi and others. Finally, in Sect. 3, I reject Hieronymi’s assumption and argue that an emotion can cease to be fitting without any change in the fact that constitutes the reason for it. I also explain how my proposal can complement Callard’s account of the rational dissipation of anger. My discussion of anger leads to a solution to the general problem about backward-looking emotions: a fitting backward-looking emotion can fittingly diminish when it is part of a process that is itself a fitting response to the past occurrence. (shrink)

The paper argues against a widely held synchronic view of emotional rationality. I begin by considering recent philosophical literature on various backward‐looking emotions, such as regret, grief, resentment, and anger. I articulate the general problem these accounts grapple with: a certain diminution in backward‐looking emotions seems fitting while the reasons for these emotions seem to persist. The problem, I argue, rests on the assumption that if the facts that give reason for an emotion remain unchanged, the emotion remains fitting. However, (...) I argue there are rationally self‐consuming attitudes: affective attitudes that become less fitting the longer they endure while the facts that give reason for them persist. A widely held synchronic view of fitting affective attitudes denies that fittingness at a time depends on the agent's attitudes at different times and therefore denies that the fittingness of an affective attitude can depend on its duration. Once we reject the synchronic view, we may see that affective attitudes are often fitting due to the fitting processes of which they are part. These fitting processes explain the fitting diminution of backward‐looking emotions as well as other diachronic aspects of the fittingness of emotions. -/- . (shrink)

ABSTRACT Some epistemologists hold that all rational norms are fundamentally concerned with the agent’s states or attitudes at an individual time [Hedden 2015, 2016; Moss 2015]; others argue that all rational norms are fundamentally concerned with processes [Podgorski 2017]. This distinction is not drawn in discussions of emotional rationality. As a result, a widely held assumption in the literature on emotional rationality has gone unexamined. I employ Abelard Podgorski’s argument from rational delay to argue that many emotional norms are fundamentally (...) concerned with emotional processes. I also claim that the main response available to the synchronist about belief is not available to the synchronist about emotions and, therefore, fundamental process norms are more plausible than epistemologists tend to believe. (shrink)

When addressing the burdens borne by victims of police wrongdoing, we often overlook moral harms in focusing on the physical and psychological harms that they suffer. These moral harms undermine the moral status of the victim, her ability to consistently pursue the values she endorses, and her character. Victimhood is a morally significant social role. Victimhood imposes normative standards that measure the moral or political status of victim. Conforming to these standards affects our assessment of the conduct of the victim (...) and her moral standing. Considering the victims’ role provides important insights into contemporary practices of policing in the United States. The physical and verbal acts of the police often force race-based degradation upon racially subordinated groups. There is often no morally good way out of racially discriminatory encounters when the choice is to degrade oneself or suffer violence or even death. Worse, how we respond to the threat of police violence morally undermines our relationships with those we would keep safe from police violence. (shrink)

When we forgive, we do so for reasons. One challenge for forgiveness theorists is to explain which reasons are reasons to forgive and which are not. This paper argues that we forgive in response to a perceived change of heart on the part of the offender. The argument proceeds in four steps. First, I show that we forgive for reasons. Second, I argue that forgiveness requires the right kind of reason. Third, I show that these two points explain a common (...) distinction between forgiving and letting go and, in doing so, solve a problem facing many accounts of forgiveness. Finally, I consider candidate reasons to forgive and argue that all of them are either the wrong kind of reason or are instances of a more general reason of the right kind, namely, a perceived change of heart. (shrink)

Wrongdoing is inescapable. We all do wrong and are wronged; and in response we often blame one another. But if blame is a defining feature of our social lives, so is ceasing to blame. We might excuse, justify, or forgive an offender; or simply let the offence go. Each mode of ceasing to blame is a social practice and each has characteristic norms that influence when and how we do it, as well as how it’s received. We argue that how (...) we relinquish blame, and how effective we are, depends on many circumstances only partially within our control. Like any norm-governed practice, one can do it well or poorly, appropriately or inappropriately, successfully or unsuccessfully. To successfully participate in a practice, one’s action must be done for the right reasons and secure uptake. We argue that social and material circumstances can compromise one’s ability to effectively cease to blame in the manner one prefers. But if one can fail, then one can lack access to particular ceasing to blame practices if one is regularly prevented from effectively relinquishing blame. However, uncooperative social and material circumstances do not only arise by chance. Our central argument is that circumstances of oppression can systematically compromise one’s ability and opportunities to effectively perform a variety of ceasing to blame practices. This deprivation is an insidious facet of oppression that is neglected both in theories of oppression and of forgiveness but which has significant implications for how we understand the power and purpose of forgiveness. (shrink)

Abolitionism is the view that if no one is responsible, then we ought to abandon the reactive attitudes. Proponents suggest that reactive attitudes can be replaced in our emotional repertoire by non-reactive analogues. In this paper, I dispute and reject a common challenge to abolitionism according to which the reactive attitudes are necessary for protesting unfairness and maintaining social harmony. While other abolitionists dispute the empirical basis of this objection, I focus on its implications. I argue that even if non-reactive (...) analogues cannot perform the interpersonal and social functions of reactive attitudes, it does not follow that the losses of abandoning them outweigh the gains of retaining them. The force of the challenge rests on a mistake, identified by John Stuart Mill among others, that is common when evaluating entrenched social practices. (shrink)

The idea of self-forgiveness poses a serious challenge to any philosopher interested in giving a general account of forgiveness. On the one hand, it is an uncontroversial part of our common psychological and moral discourse. On the other, any account of self-forgiveness is inconsistent with any general account of forgiveness which implies that only the victim of an offense can forgive. To avoid this conclusion, one must either challenge the particular claims that preclude self-forgiveness or offer an independently plausible account (...) of self-forgiveness. I deploy both strategies in this article, explaining what self-forgiveness is and how it is possible. (shrink)

It is often claimed both that forgiveness is elective and that forgiveness is something that we do for reasons. However, there is a tension between these two central claims about the nature of forgiveness. If forgiving is something one does for reasons, then, at least sometimes, those reasons may generate a requirement to forgive or withhold forgiveness. While not strictly inconsistent with electivity, the idea of required forgiveness strikes some as antithetical to the spirit of the concept. They argue that (...) forgiveness is essentially elective. In this paper, I dispute these arguments. I argue that the intuitive plausibility of the position diminishes upon reflection and that the best arguments fail to explain why reasons to forgive, unlike most other reasons for action, cannot generate requirements. (shrink)

Philosophers have taken little heed of the fact that people often act contrary to their better judgment not because they suffer a volitional infirmity like weakness of will or compulsion but instead because they care too little about what they judge best (they are unconcerned) or they care too much about something else (they are compromised). Unconcerned and compromised action, being varieties of akratic action that do not involve volitional infirmity, are phenomena worth examining not only in their own right (...) but also for what they reveal about the better known varieties of akratic action for which they might easily be mistaken, such as weak-willed action and action (or inaction) that stems from accidie. Unconcern and compromise also are worth examining for what they reveal about a topic beyond philosophical psychology, namely, moral and legal accountability. Forgiveness, resentment, and retributive punishment each may have less to do with what an offender (morally) believes than with what he cares about. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend my book Conversation and Responsibility in response to three critics: Julia Driver, David Shoemaker, and Manuel Vargas. Driver raises questions about my account of private blame. Shoemaker finds problems with my account of quality of will. And Vargas questions the conversational nature of my account.

An assumption central to some forms of retributivism is that it is noninstrumentally good that a culpable wrongdoer suffers in receiving a deserved punishment. A justification for this can be built from a conversational theory of moral responsibility, and in particular deserved blame. On such a theory, deserved blame is fitting as a response to a wrongdoer insofar as it is conversationally meaningful as a reply to a wrong done. Punishment, it might be argued, has this feature too. The conversational (...) aim in both deserved blame and punishment is for the guilty to grasp the meaning conveyed by those who blame or punish and then respond meaningfully by, for example, apologizing or expressing remorse. Ideally, a culpable agent would experience a form and degree of guilt suitable for a wrong done. So, a conversational theory of punishment can then be justified in terms of providing conditions conducive for a culpable wrongdoer to respond to punishment by manifesting an appropriately pained response of guilt. (shrink)

How ought we to evaluate and respond to expressions of anger and resentment? Can philosophical analysis of resentment as the emotional expression of a moral claim help us to distinguish which resentments ought to be taken seriously? Philosophers have tended to focus on what I call ‘reasonable’ resentments, presenting a technical, narrow account that limits resentment to the expression of recognizable moral claims. In the following paper, I defend three claims about the ethics and politics of resentment. First, if we (...) care about socially just processes of reconciliation, we have good reason to pay attention to the logic of resentments. Second, the account philosophers offer of resentment – its distinctive features, aims, rationality, and gratification – will affect the conclusions we draw about which actual resentments to take seriously, which aspects of resentful claims need addressing, and what it means to address and repair them. In contesting definitions of resentment, I argue, we do more than simply perform housekeeping in philosophical taxonomies of emotion. Restricting our understanding to essentially ‘moral’ cases may cause us to lose sight of expressly political resentments. Instead, I argue, a plausible account of resentment must acknowledge that we resent violations and threats that are not necessarily self-pertaining, may not be expressible as individual, discrete injuries, and cannot always be construed as moral threats. Second, given the dependence of moral judgments on a broader horizon of moral possibility, philosophical standards of ‘reasonable’ or ‘appropriate’ resentment cannot avoid being politically charged. Thus, the widely accepted account of ‘reasonable’ resentment cannot make philosophical sense of the most interesting and perplexing cases. Ironically, a theoretical measure designed to revalue emotional expressions of moral protest may result in the exclusion and silencing of those with the most reasons to protest. (shrink)

Recent literature on forgiveness suggests that a successful account of the phenomenon must satisfy at least three conditions: it must be able to explain how forgiveness can be articulate, uncompromising, and elective. These three conditions are not logically inconsistent, but the history of reflection on the ethics of forgiveness nonetheless suggests that they are in tension. Accounts that emphasize articulateness and uncompromisingness tend to suggest an excessively deflationary understanding of electiveness, underestimating the degree to which forgiveness is a gift. Accounts (...) that emphasize electiveness, on the other hand, tend to weaken the safeguards that keep forgiveness distinct from condonation, excuse, or mere servility. I argue in this paper that we can do justice to the three conditions by understanding forgiveness in terms of the concept of institution that Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed in his work from the early- to mid-1950s. (shrink)

This article challenges the widespread assumption that forgiveness transpires under voluntary control. I explain that that assumption underlies the lively debate of the question of whether forgiveness is or ought to be free or conditional. I then critically examine two accounts of forgiveness, those of Avishai Margalit and Pamela Hieronymi, to which the assumption of control is pivotal, and argue that they are compromised by that assumption. The premise that forgiveness is voluntary leads Margalit to incorrectly dissociate it from forgetting, (...) and Hieronymi to grant judgment a role it can't reliably fulfill on its own. Drawing on works of theory and literature, I suggest that elements outside our control, such as time, other persons, identification and circumstances can play significant parts in bringing forgiveness about. I thus try to pave the way for a more complete view of forgiveness. (shrink)

One influential tradition holds that blame is a moral attitude: blame is appropriate only when the target of blame has violated a moral norm without excuse or justification. Against this, some have recently argued that agents can be blameworthy for their violation of epistemic norms even when no moral norms are thereby violated. This paper defends the appropriateness of aesthetic blame: agents can be blameworthy for their violation of aesthetic norms as such, where aesthetic norms are the norms of social (...) practices that aim at aesthetic values. I adapt a generic account of blame as protest, which can take variable forms, and then argue that aesthetic distortion cases—cases in which an existing artwork is distorted in its presentation—most clearly warrant blame even in the absence of violations of moral norms. (shrink)

In large, impersonal moral orders many of us wish to maintain good will toward our fellow citizens only if we are reasonably sure they will maintain good will toward us. The mutual maintaining of good will, then, requires that we somehow communicate our intentions to one another. But how do we actually do this? The current paper argues that when we engage in moral responsibility practices—that is, when we express our reactive attitudes by blaming, praising, and resenting—we communicate a desire (...) to maintain good will to those in the community we are imbedded in. Participating in such practices alone will not get the job done, though, for expressions of our reactive attitudes are often what economists call cheap talk. But when we praise and blame in cases of moral diversity, expressions of our reactive attitudes act as costly signals capable of solving our social dilemma. (shrink)

Many theorists have found the notion of forgiveness to be paradoxical, for it is thought that only the blameworthy can be appropriately forgiven but that the blameworthy are appropriately blamed not forgiven. Some have appealed to the notion of repentance to resolve this tension. But others have objected that such a response is explanatorily inadequate in the sense that it merely stipulates and names a solution leaving the transformative power of repentance unexplained. Worse still, others have objected that such a (...) response cannot succeed because no amount of repentance can render the blameworthy not blameworthy. I argue that this latter objection is based on a mistaken assumption, the acknowledgement of which has the power to resolve the paradox in a way that meets the explanatory adequacy challenge, and, more generally, has significant implications with which any full theory of forgiveness must engage. (shrink)

This paper seeks to apply some of the tools of analytic philosophy to a text written by a 'continental' philosopher, in order to evaluate the quality of its arguments. In 'On Forgiveness', Jacques Derrida seems to be making two different claims about forgiveness. First, he claims that an act of forgiveness is only truly meaningful as forgiveness when one is forgiving the unforgivable. Second, he is also recommending that we change our understanding of the concept of forgiveness for ethical reasons. (...) I examine three lines of argument used in the essay to support the first claim. I find each of these lines of argument problematic. Since these arguments are unconvincing, I argue that this leaves only the second claim for Derrida to defend. (shrink)

This paper addresses a recent puzzle in the ethics of emotions concerning the fitting duration of emotions. On the one hand, many of our emotions tend to fade with time and can seem to do so fittingly. Think of attitudes like anger, grief, and regret. On the other hand, it's difficult to see how it could be fitting for these feelings to fade since the facts that make them fitting can seem to persist. This is the puzzle in brief; that (...) of explaining how certain feelings can fittingly fade with time. This paper argues that this puzzle has no general solution: in a wide range of true‐to‐life cases our fitting feelings remain fitting forever, until the day that we die. I conclude by exploring the normative significance of this result and its implications for the ethics of attitudes more generally. (shrink)

Forgiveness is one of the most valued decisions in contemporary culture, although it has been emphasised that imprudent forgiveness can cause more harm than good in human relationships. In this article, I focus on the rarely discussed aspect of forgiveness, namely the recovery of subjectivity by the victim in their relationship with the perpetrator. I divide my reflection into three parts. In the first, I deal with the issue of the subjectivity of individuals in social relations. In the second part (...) I present the consequences of the victim’s experience of harm, which include, first, the evoking of negative emotions, and subsequently the impact of these emotions on the way the victim functions as a subject in the relationship with the perpetrator. In the third part I show how – thanks to forgiveness – the victim regains subjectivity. Furthermore, I address the moral value of forgiveness. I argue that the regaining of subjectivity by the victim is a premise for recognising forgiveness as a morally good act and illustrate that forgiveness – properly defined – does not pose a threat to the good of people creating a relationship with the perpetrator. (shrink)

Sentimental cosmopolitans argue that cultivating empathy for distant others is necessary in order to motivate action to address global injustices. This paper accepts the basic premises of the senti...

I here defend an account of the will as practical reason —or, using Kant's phrase, as " reason in its practical employment"—as against a view of the will as a capacity for choice, in addition to reason, by which we execute practical judgments in action. Certain commonplaces show distance between judgment and action and thus seem to reveal the need for a capacity, in addition to reason, by which we execute judgment in action. However, another ordinary fact pushes in the (...) other direction: the activities of the will are activities for which the person is answerable in a very particular sort of way. This answerability is most easily understood if willing involves settling a question. Settling a question seems to be a capacity of reason. Thus it can seem that activities of will are activities of our capacity for reasoning. I will suggest that we can accommodate the commonplaces while still understanding the will as reason in its practical employment, by abandoning the assumption that practical reasoning concludes in a judgment. Rather, reasoning which concludes in a judgment—reasoning directed at the question of whether p—is theoretical reasoning. In its practical employment, reason is directed at the question of whether to x; it concludes, not in a judgment about x-ing, but rather in an intention to x. (shrink)

I argue to a conclusion I find at once surprising and intuitive: although many considerations show trust useful, valuable, important, or required, these are not the reasons for which one trusts a particular person to do a particular thing. The reasons for which one trusts a particular person on a particular occasion concern, not the value, importance, or necessity of trust itself, but rather the trustworthiness of the person in question in the matter at hand. In fact, I will suggest (...) that the degree to which you trust a particular person to do a particular thing will vary inversely with the degree to which you must rely, for the motivation or justification of your trusting response, on reasons that concern the importance, or value, or necessity of having such a response. (shrink)

A common line of thought claims that we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, while less sophisticated creatures are not, because we are, and they are not, self-aware. Our self-awareness is thought to provide us with a kind of control over ourselves that they lack: we can reflect upon ourselves, upon our thoughts and actions, and so ensure that they are as we would have them to be. Thus, our capacity for reflection provides us with the control over ourselves (...) that grounds our responsibility. I argue that this thought is subtly, but badly, confused. It uses, as its model for the control that grounds our responsibility, the kind of control we exercise over ordinary objects and over our own voluntary actions: we represent to ourselves what to do or how to change things, and then we bring about that which we represent. But we cannot use this model to explain our responsibility for ourselves and our actions: if there is a question about why or how we are responsible for ourselves and our actions, it cannot be answered by appeal to a sophisticated, self-directed action. There must be some more fundamental account of how or why we are responsible. I replace the usual account with a novel but natural view: responsible mental activity can be modeled, not as an ordinary action, but as the settling of a question. This shift will require abandoning the tempting but troublesome thought that responsible activity involves discretion and awareness—which, I argue, we must abandon in any case. (shrink)

Forgiving wrongdoers who neither apologized, nor sought to make amends in any way, is controversial. Even defenders of the practice agree with critics that such “unilateral” forgiveness involves giving up on the meaningful redress that victims otherwise justifiably demand from their wrongdoers: apology, reparations, repentance, and so on. Against that view, I argue here that when a victim of wrongdoing sets out to grant forgiveness to her offender, and he in turn accepts her forgiveness, he thereby serves some important ends (...) of apology and reparation, no matter what else he did—or did not do—by way of repair. Although much overlooked, the simple act of accepting forgiveness joins victim and offender in affirming and acting upon some important shared background assumptions, including many of those expressed in standard apologies. Perhaps more surprisingly, I argue that accepting forgiveness also fulfills the duty to counteract any concrete harm wrongfully inflicted. The argument helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of forgiveness, including that a victim can change her offender’s normative status, making him a less fitting target of the resentment, indignation and shunning of others, and even his own guilt pangs, simply by forgiving him. (shrink)

The “paradox of forgiveness” can be described as follows: Forgiving, unlike forgetting, is tied to reasons. It is a response to considerations that lead us to think that we ought to forgive. On the other hand, acts of forgiveness, unlike excuses, are responses to instances of culpable wrongdoing. If, however, the wrongdoing is culpable, there is (or seems to be) no reason to forgive it. So two mutually exclusive theses about forgiveness both seem to be equally warranted: Forgiveness is related (...) to reasons, but there can be no reasons for forgiveness. In this paper, I attempt to dissolve this paradox. I argue that the paradox arises as a result of a too narrow conception of “reason” and that it can be dissolved if we acknowledge different kinds of reasons for forgiveness. More specifically, I examine three kinds of reasons for forgiving an act of wrongdoing: (1) Moral reasons that make forgiveness morally mandatory. (2) Prudential reasons for forgiveness. (3) Moral reasons that pertain to the character of the forgiver and that favor forgiveness without making it morally mandatory. I show that while the paradox of forgiveness arises when we consider reasons of the first kind, it can be dissolved with recourse to reasons of the second and third kind. The upshot of the argument is that we can be rational in deciding to overcome our feelings of resentment towards an act of unjustified and unexcused wrongdoing—and this is a strong point in favor of forgiveness. (shrink)

One of the oldest traditions in the Eastern Orthodox church is Forgiveness Sunday. It’s a festive occasion: the last day to eat dairy before the onset of the fa.

Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s work, I argue that neither of the two standard accounts of forgiveness offer an adequate understanding of forgiveness. Conditional accounts insist on specifying the conditions an offender needs to satisfy in order to count as deserving of forgiveness. I argue that such accounts not only render forgiveness unintelligible (since forgiveness is intelligibly offered only to the offender qua offender), but also dissolve the ethical decision forgiveness demands of us. Unconditional accounts promise to do justice to both (...) by insisting that forgiveness is a freely granted gift offered to the guilty as guilty. But I argue that when pressed to justify why one should forgive unconditionally and how one avoids the threat of condoning, they typically fall back onto the conditionalist’s ground and lose the electivity of forgiving. I conclude by arguing that genuine forgiveness would have to be purely unconditional but could never appear as such. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that Christianity enjoins its followers to practice universal, unconditional forgiveness. But universal, unconditional forgiveness is regarded by many as morally problematic. Some Christian scholars have denied that Christianity in fact requires universal, unconditional forgiveness, but I believe they are mistaken. In this essay, I show two things: that Christianity does enjoin universal, unconditional forgiveness of a certain sort, and that Christians, and perhaps other theists, are always justified in exercising unconditional forgiveness. Though most philosophers treat forgiveness (...) as grounded in our beliefs about the offender's current state, I argue that we might more fruitfully ground forgiveness in hope for the wrongdoer. Christianity's commitment to the existence of an omnipotent God who is concerned about the moral status of His creatures always justifies such hope and thus always justifies forgiveness. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 62, Issue 3, Page 295-311, September 2021.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the question of whether we have a duty to forgive those who repent and apologize for the wrong they have done. I shall argue that we have a pro tanto duty to forgive repentant wrongdoers, and I shall propose and consider the norm of forgiveness. This norm states that if a wrongdoer repents and apologizes to a victim, then the victim has a duty to forgive the wrongdoer, other things being equal. That (...) someone has a pro tanto duty to forgive a repentant wrongdoer means that he or she ought to forgive unless other considerations outweigh the norm of forgiveness. Furthermore, a distinction is made between what are termed 'general considerations' and 'case-relative considerations', and it is argued that only after all the relevant considerations have been examined can it be determined whether there is a duty to forgive, all things considered. (shrink)

While forgiveness is widely recognised as an example of a supererogatory action, it remains to be explained precisely what makes forgiveness supererogatory, or the circumstances under which it is supererogatory to forgive. Philosophers often claim that forgiveness is supererogatory, but most of the time they do so without offering an adequate explanation for why it is supererogatory to forgive. Accordingly, the literature on forgiveness lacks a sufficiently nuanced account of the supererogatory status of forgiveness. In this paper, I seek to (...) remedy this shortcoming by offering a systematic account of forgiveness as an example of a supererogatory action. In terms of explaining the supererogatory status of forgiveness, I will argue that, to qualify as supererogatory, a forgiving action must fulfil three conditions: (i) it must be permissible; (ii) it must not be obligatory; and (iii) it must be good or praiseworthy, that is, it must have a certain moral value. Moreover, a distinction is drawn between “unconditional” and “conditional” forgiveness. I argue that conditional forgiveness (i.e. forgiveness of repentant wrongdoers) is sometimes a duty and sometimes supererogatory, whereas unconditional forgiveness (i.e. forgiveness of unrepentant wrongdoers) is typically supererogatory or beyond duty. (shrink)

Our ideas about forgiveness seem to oscillate between idealization and scepticism. How should we make sense of this apparent conflict? This paper argues that we should learn something from each, seeing these views as representing opposing moments in a perennial and well-grounded moral ambivalence towards forgiveness. Once we are correctly positioned, we shall see an aspect of forgiveness that recommends precisely this ambivalence. For what will come into view will be certain key psychological mechanisms of moral-epistemic influence – other-addressed and (...) self-addressed mechanisms of moral social construction – that enable forgiveness to function well when it is well-functioning, but which are also intrinsically prone to deterioration into one or another form of bad faith. Thus forgiveness is revealed as necessarily containing seeds of its own corruption, showing ambivalence to be a generically appropriate attitude. Moreover, it is emphasized that where forgiver and forgiven are relating to one another in the context of asymmetries of social power, the practice of forgiveness is likely to be further compromised, notably increasing the risk of negative influence on the moral-epistemic states of either the forgiver or the forgiven, or both. (shrink)

I aspire to answer two questions regarding the concept of a corrective duty. The first concerns what it means to wrong others, thus triggering a demand for corrections (the ground question). The second relates to the proper content of corrective duties. I first illustrate how three prominent accounts of corrective duties—the Aristotelian model of correlativity, the Kantian idea that wronging corresponds to the violation of others’ right to freedom, and the more recent continuity view—have failed to answer the two questions (...) satisfactorily. I then introduce my proposal, which holds that we wrong others when we fail to treat their status as moral agents as a source of stringent constraints on our action. I call it the moral neglect account. Once we have identified a common aim of corrective duties (counterbalancing moral neglect), we can fill their content in the various contexts in which wronging has occurred. I conclude by observing that it is not the primary role of corrective justice to assign responsibilities for damage reparations; in fact, requests for compensation make more sense if framed in distributive rather than corrective terms. (shrink)

When a Christian refers to the future full realization of the kingdom of God in an afterlife, it is typically assumed that she is expressing beliefs about the existence and activity of God in conjunction with supernatural beliefs about an otherworldly realm and the possibility of one’s personal survival after bodily death. In other words, the religious language is interpreted in a realist fashion and the religious person here is construed as a religious believer. A corollary of this widely-held realist (...) view is the assumption that if one were to conclude that there is no good reason to believe the asserted claims—for example, no reason to believe that we may survive our bodily deaths in a heavenly realm—then there is no reason to engage in the use of such religious language and the practices which accompany it. I argue that this assumption is false—that there is a meaningful way to use such language in a religious context that does not rest on believing supernatural claims. Against the backdrop of Kant’s discussion of a kingdom of ends understood as a regulative ideal, I argue that religious discourse about the kingdom of God being brought to fruition may be reinterpreted as a useful fiction to draw our attention to and engage our emotions with a distinctive ideal of restorative justice. Though I and others have previously offered fictionalist accounts of language about God, I extend the view here to some religious language about the afterlife. (shrink)

This paper points out neglected considerations about the standing to blame. It starts from the observation that the standing to blame debate largely focusses on factors concerning the blamer or the relation of blamer and wrongdoer, mainly hypocrisy and meddling, while neglecting the victim of wrongdoing. This paper wants to set this right by pointing out how considerations about the victim can impact a third party’s standing. The first such consideration is the blamer’s personal relation to the victim. It is (...) argued that persons close to the victim thereby gain standing even in the presence of factors that would normally undermine it. Arguing from the well-known sexual assault case of Chanel Miller and the public reactions to it, the paper then introduces two more considerations about standing hitherto neglected. First, given that blame has an expressive function and serves to contradict expressive aspects of wrongdoings, it is argued that third-party blame can morally support the victim in the face of wrongdoing and that such support matters to victims. It is argued that this importance of third-party blame can ground standing. Thirdly and relatedly, the paper argues that insufficient collective responses to wrongdoing, i.e. when other bystanders do not respond with sufficient blaming responses, can equally ground standing of third parties. It is argued that these considerations are relevant not only for an ethics of blame broadly conceived but also for standing to blame in particular. Thereby, the paper establishes that considerations about the victim are central for discussion of the standing to blame. (shrink)

What is the relation between moral reasons and moral requirement? Specifically: what relation does an action have to bear to one’s moral reasons in order to count as morally required? This paper defends the following answer to this question: an action is morally required just in case the moral reasons in favor of that action are enough on their own to outweigh all of the reasons, moral and nonmoral, to perform any alternative. I argue that this decisive moral reason view (...) satisfies three key desiderata: it is compatible with either affirming or denying the existence of moral options; it vindicates moral rationalism, the thesis that an action can be morally required only if one ought to do it all things considered; and most distinctively, it explains why unexcused moral wrongdoing necessarily shows disregard for moral reasons. (shrink)