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The dilemma of forgiveness
Whether we want to admit it or not, to forgive is not an easy thing to do.
For most of us, the greater the wrong done to us, the harder it is to forgive. It is relatively easy to forgive a âminorâ wrong, such as a forgotten invitation, an unfeeling remark or a âwhiteâ lie. Most people find it much harder to forgive a wrong that they regard as âseriousâ. Of course, which wrongs people regard as serious and which they do not varies from person to person. Nevertheless, the point remains: wrongs can be hard to forgive. If we are honest, sometimes we never manage to forgive some wrongs: we just learn to live around them.
Norman Tebbit, a former British government minister, has described what it means to live around wrongs. He and his wife were injured in a bomb planted by Patrick Magee on behalf of the Provisional IRA at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, in 1984. Tebbit has declined to forgive Patrick Magee because, though Magee âregretsâ what he did, he is unrepentant. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the bombing, Tebbit said, âmost days I donât think about my own scars or the bits of plastic that hold me togetherâ.1 He has also said that the bombing and its effects are not âon my mind most of my lifeâ.2 What he says illustrates how, with the passing of time, he has learned to get on with life, despite the bombing and its aftermath for him and his wife, and despite the fact that he has not forgiven the bomber.
Hidden issues
Most of us pay lip service to the idea that it is morally virtuous to forgive. Often we do not think too carefully about what we mean by âforgivenessâ and about the who, what, where, when, why and how of forgiveness. If we are to be forgiving in a thoughtful and responsible way, we need to face â and begin to answer â some of the hidden issues that to forgive raises. This book explores those hidden issues.
What do we mean by âforgivenessâ?
We may wonder what exactly we mean when we say we forgive. We may ask ourselves, for example, how human beings can exonerate other people from the consequences of their wrongdoing. True, we may want to restore a damaged relationship by offering forgiveness. At the back of our minds, we may still say to ourselves that, though our forgiveness addresses the relational consequences of the wrongdoing, it cannot undo or reverse the moral consequences of the wrongful act. We may think that it is for God alone to do that â and that we are not God and that we do not intend to âplay Godâ.
A well-known definition of the verb âto forgiveâ is that it is to âforswear resentmentâ. What people mean by this is that victims forgive when they irrevocably abandon or renounce (that is, âforswearâ) that indignant sense of injury or insult or those strong feelings of ill-will or anger (âresentmentâ) that can lead them sometimes to want (or even to seek) revenge.
Of course, to forgive is to forswear resentment, but to forswear resentment is only part of a much more complex interpersonal process that we call âto forgiveâ. In particular, to forswear resentment does not take account of justice or of relationships â two elements of forgiveness that today we regard as integral to forgiveness. It also says nothing about the fact that people can forswear resentment for reasons or for motives that we may not regard as forgiving. They may forswear resentment, for example, because they are pathologically passive, or wish to avoid conflict, or because they are without a properly developed moral compass. When driven by such motivations, what people do (if we can properly call it âto forgiveâ) is a less richly textured response to wrongdoing, and one that is of doubtful moral value.
Forgiveness and justice
Many of us are uneasy about forgiveness because we think that to forgive compromises justice. We correctly think that, on the one hand, it is right to hold people to account for what they have done and that, on the other hand, to forgive is a moral virtue. If we were to consider more deeply what we do when we forgive, we would agree that to forswear resentment does not mean we no longer hold a wrongdoer to account. However, for most of us it is difficult â if not impossible â to continue to hold someone to account for a wrong and to forswear resentment about that wrong. For us, justice (with the moral accountability that justice insists on) and forgiveness seem to be in conflict. Seen this way, forgiveness appears to present an uncomfortable challenge â even a threat â to justice.
The longing for justice seems to be âhard-wiredâ into the way human beings think and feel. We see this from an early age in children who, often long before they understand what words like âjusticeâ mean, have a very developed sense of fairness, especially when it comes to their own supposed rights. (I suspect we have all heard children say, âItâs not fair.â)
Our own experience tells us that the longing for justice does not go away in adulthood. For example, The Times reported on 9 April 2010 that a senior US special forces commander, Vice Admiral William McRaven, visited a family in Khataba, Afghanistan, to ask for forgiveness for the actions of soldiers who had been under his command. The soldiers, following faulty intelligence that probably was maliciously directed, killed five people, believing they were terrorists. Those killed had been at a party to celebrate the birth of a child. The troops attempted to cover up their actions. Haji Sharabuddin said to Vice Admiral McRaven on behalf of himself and the surviving family members that the family wanted justice. It was only then, he said, that âI will make a decision [about whether to forgive]. Maybe I will [then] forgive them.â
What makes justice unusual as a moral virtue and as a subject for philosophical enquiry is that it touches almost all of us personally and deeply. It is not a concept from which many of us are detached, in the way that we might think we may be detached from some of the apparently obscure questions that philosophers sometimes rightly explore. Justice â and forgiveness â are day-to-day issues that impinge on how we live, react and treat others. Whoever we are and whatever is our interest in justice (personal, academic or social), we all have a stake in the question, âWhat is justice?â
Justice is a difficult concept to describe. In this book, when I speak of justice I mean what seems fair to you and me. Justice also has to be seen in a psychological and social context as something that promotes personal wellbeing and collective good. Of course, justice is also a virtue that philosophers derive from general moral principles and explicit moral insights. Thus, justice is
- an affect (an emotion or feeling);
- of good effect (from a psychological and social viewpoint); and
- without moral defect (that is, a moral virtue).
Canât, shanât or wonât forgive
We should distinguish victims who do not wish to forgive from victims who cannot forgive. We may ourselves know people who have tried hard (but unsuccessfully) to forgive and even sought professional help (such as from a counsellor), and who still cannot forgive. Perhaps they cannot forgive because the wrongs they have suffered have gravely damaged them psychologically or because they are too dehumanized or too broken by what they have experienced. To ask them to forgive is to ask them to do the impossible. They may change and be able to forgive in time, but for the present, they can no more forgive than fly to the moon.
Some people question whether it is always right to forgive. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written a book entitled No Future without Forgiveness (1999), and most of us rightly believe, along with Archbishop Tutu, that a world dominated by hate, bitterness and revenge is not a world in which we would want to live. Even so, we may sometimes wonder whether to forgive is necessarily the right thing to do every time there is wrongdoing.
Forgiveness as weakness
Some think to forgive means that we no longer hold people to account for what they have done. They say we are âto forgive and forgetâ, as the popular saying goes, because âlife is too shortâ to remember past wrongs or not to forgive. Others may respond that not holding a wrongdoer to account is a sign of weakness on our part, a failure to be tough enough to stand up to the wrongdoer and to name wrongdoing as wrongdoing. Immanuel Kant (1724â1804) cruelly wrote that âone who makes himself into a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on himâ. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844â1900) went so far as to argue that forgiveness was immoral because it exalted weakness and made people deny or repress the natural desire that they have to âget evenâ and to seek revenge.
No right to forgiveness
Wrongdoers can ask for forgiveness but cannot demand or expect it. It may be churlish, heartless or lacking in grace for a victim to decline to forgive a wrongdoer. The refusal may even be spiteful and malicious, driven by the desire to cause as much hurt as possible to the (now r...
