Pub Date : 2021-06-17DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190602147.003.0008
Eleonore Stump
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.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-17DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190602147.003.0009
E. Garrard, D. Mcnaughton
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.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-17DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780190602147.003.0004
Derk Pereboom
In this chapter, Derk Pereboom defends the claim that forgiveness is essentially the renunciation of a stance of moral protest. Forgiveness need not be preceded by actual resentment or by any angry emotion. Rather, by virtue of regarding wrongdoers as blameworthy for past wrongdoing, forgivers regard the stance of moral protest against them as having been appropriate. In forgiving, they then renounce this stance. This renunciation is norm-changing, first of all because it involves moral protest changing from being appropriate to being inappropriate. Other alterations in norms may also accompany this change: earlier the wronged party perhaps legitimately demanded apology and amends, while upon forgiving, the request for new apologies and additional amends becomes inappropriate.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-17DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190602147.003.0002
David W. Shoemaker
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.
{"title":"The Forgiven","authors":"David W. Shoemaker","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780190602147.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190602147.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":106466,"journal":{"name":"Forgiveness and Its Moral Dimensions","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129309272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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