Apologies and Moral Repair

Rights, Duties, and Corrective Justice

Andrew I. Cohen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367901035
• eBook ISBN: 9781000077230
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This book argues that justice often governs apologies. Drawing on examples from literature, politics, and current events, Cohen presents a theory of apology as corrective offers.

Many leading accounts of apology say much about what apologies do and why they are important. They stop short of exploring whether and how justice governs apologies. Cohen argues that corrective justice may require apologies as offers of reparation. Individuals, corporations, and states may then have rights or duties regarding apology. Exercising rights to apology or fulfilling duties to provide them are ways of holding one another mutually accountable. By casting rights and duties of apology as justifiable to free and equal persons, the book advances conversations about how liberalism may respond to historic injustice.

Apologies and Moral Repair will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in ethics, political philosophy, and social philosophy.

1 Toward a Theory of Apology

Mapping Some Terrain of Corrective Justice

When things break or wear out, we often try to repair them. If a tire goes flat, we try to fix it. We put on the spare. We might instead call a mechanic.

Suppose you are the driver. You might have various reasons to fix the tire. Showing that you know how to replace damaged tires might provide important social capital. Replacing the tire might be rewarding exercise. Doing it yourself might save some money or time.

Fixing a flat tire is ordinarily not a step in moral repair unless you were somehow culpable for the flat. Moral repair is a process of responding to moral reasons in the wake of some wrongdoing.¹ If the flat tire were a function of your wrongdoing, you would then have at least some moral reasons to fix it. Arranging to fix the tire would then repair a loss that wrongly harmed others. Since the loss was then a wrongful harm, there would be moral reasons to fix the tire. Among such reasons would be: you owe repair to those you wrongly harm. As moral reasons, they would typically be especially powerful reasons. Fixing a flat tire might then be part of moral repair.

Consider more broadly any sort of case involving a transgression, which can be any act that wrongs others or inflicts wrongful harm. If the transgressor inflicted some material loss, providing compensation can be a crucial part of redress. That redress can include restitution of wrongly taken items. Transgressors might also owe additional compensation to offset other related losses. This material redress might restore those who suffered a wrongful harm to a condition they would have or should have occupied but for the harm.² Sometimes, however, complete (if indeed any) material redress is inappropriate. Sometimes it is impossible. Sometimes the loss is irreparable.

Whether some loss is materially reparable or not, there may still be reasons to offer some form of repair. Apologies are among the measures that offset moral wrongs. Of course, that is not all that apologies do. Offering repair for wrongs, however, is among the common functions of apologies. That an apology might provide some such repair is, I argue, an important reason to provide one. It can also be a reason supporting a claim to one.

This chapter begins by considering features of the terrain of human interactions where we find apologies. Apologies typically show some from a family of features. They also typically serve many important functions. I offer a map of this terrain. Even though this map highlights certain features, it must be adequate to common understandings and for satisfying important theoretical aims. The chapter sets out some elements of an account of apologies as corrective offers.

Not all corrective offers are apologies. Apologies respond in a family of ways to different sorts of losses. Sometimes apologies provide some correction without making everything “all right.” I discuss how apologies can compensate, but that is not the only way apologies correct. Some (and perhaps many) apologies are reparation for wrongdoing.

I What Are Theories of Apologies About?

In this section, I begin to consider what we should expect from a theory of apologies. I discuss some of the problems with theorizing apologies. Many challenges stem from theorizing a social practice that variably fulfills many functions.

Apologies are not natural kinds. There are few, if any, clear joints that mark out all and only apologies. They are from a family of social practices. What apologies are or do and what forms they might take vary among and within cultures, context, the particularities of relationships, and according to reasonably differing understandings.

To begin understanding apologies, we might then start by examining shared characteristics. For instance, apologies involve communication among two or more parties. They often involve language, but they need not. A gesture can be an apology. They often involve expressions of regret. We could add to the inventory, noting further properties common to many or all examples of apologies, such as some reference to a transgression, some acceptance of blame, some pledge of reform, and many other features.

This list of common properties or traits would alone be insufficient to resolve evaluative questions about what is an apology, what reasons there are to provide one or what reasons there are supporting a claim to one, and to whom such reasons apply. We need more than an inventory for a fruitful account of apology. The account should help to identify apologies and understand their normative significance. We need some elements of a theory.

When theorizing about apology, we might alternately focus on many possible targets, such as an action, an interaction, an object, an event, a quality or feature of an action or object, a feeling, a disposition, an intention, or an attitude. Apologies also carry with them multiple and varying dimensions of meaning, including showing remorse, giving renewed grounds for trust, reaffirming shared normative commitments, and acknowledging history. In what follows, I focus on a context common to typical apologies: they are interactions. They involve two or more parties knowingly communicating.

Even if we understand apologies as interactions, there are challenges given the many functions they might serve. They can expiate guilt, assuage hurt feelings, restore reputation, curry favor, repair relationships, humiliate the apologizer, bolster a victim’s self-confidence, improve feelings of safety, substitute for material compensation, request amnesty, be a punishment, discharge a debt, and much else. Just like promises, apologies can also be duplicitous or conniving. One can apologize without meaning it. One can apologize with an eye to minimizing one’s reputation damage.

A theory of apology might miss some instances or fail to capture some of their dimensions of meaning. It might do this because we are concerned with the question of justice. It might also do this because, after all, we would be theorizing. Theorizing involves generalizations. Theorizing about social phenomena will miss some nuances of particulars.

A theory of apologies might offer a basis for understanding what an apology is or means. The theory could then offer accounts of apology (the term) or apologies (the interactions). The theory might then serve either or both of two purposes. First, the theoretical account should be adequate to our experiences of apologies. This is a form of extensional adequacy. The account the theory offers should include on its map some landmarks that persons familiar with apologies expect to be there. If the account omits certain features of the terrain of apology, it should provide an even better map that is ultimately worth the cost. The second function a theoretical account of apology might then offer is presenting a fruitful platform for understanding and assessing apologies. It should provide coherent, clear and reasonably complete bases for analyzing and understanding key features of apologies. This would be a form of analytical adequacy.³

At times one theoretical aim may crowd out the other. Which one to privilege in such circumstances depends on the theorist’s aims. Analytic precision may be incompatible with the muddy incoherence of a family of variable social practices. Aristotle once cautioned against expecting too much precision when theorizing ethics.⁴ By focusing on certain features of common practices, however, we might provide a theoretical rubric sufficiently robust for understanding key features and normative implications of many apologies. We can then explore how and whether justice bears on apologies.

Many theoretical accounts focus on providing a definition. I next consider whether an account of apologies in terms of a definition would be suitable for assessing the normative questions we are likely to face in exploring how justice bears on apologies.

II Definitional Accounts

Philosophers discuss many different senses and functions of definitions.⁵ Definitions can help us to simplify our understandings, settle disputes about the boundaries or scope of concepts, identify instances of terms, or clarify the use of a term. Sometimes the targets of definitions are concepts. Other times we target a feature of the world. Sometimes we define something by considering how people commonly use a term or by pointing to an instance. We might define a term by distinguishing it from others in its type. And sometimes for purposes of analysis or discussion we can simply stipulate a definition. Some definitions offer necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be an instance of a type. A definition of apology might serve any or many such functions. As I discuss, however, definitions are secondary to key factors that help us to understand and assess apologies.

To a child we might say, “An apology means that” and point to a particular interaction between two parties. This can help a child to form a concept of apology. A child might begin to generalize based on instances adults identify as paradigmatic. That can help a child to understand what sorts of things apologies are.

Sometimes we tacitly draw on other sorts of definition to identify how apologies might go awry. We might say to others that their act was not an apology because it was not a proper instance of one, or was inconsistent with how people commonly use the term, or lacked certain essential characteristics of one.

Any adequate definition one might offer for apology would need to attend to some important features of usage. For instance, a satisfactory definition would need to be consistent with apologies’ being of a particular family of social practices. Any definition that clashed with this aspect of apologies would be mistaken. A definition of apology need not mention being in a family of social practices. Any adequate definition of apology must, however, allow that apologies can be among such a family or practices.

Beyond requiring consistency with being a family of social practices, it becomes harder to fasten on what should belong in a definition of apology. Louis Kort sets out “five conditions which are separately necessary and conjointly sufficient for the performance of an apology.”⁶ His conditions include accepting responsibility, expressing regret, and acknowledging offense.⁷ He focuses on spoken apologies, though his account might generalize to other interactions. Kathleen Gill also provides several necessary conditions for apologizing that alternately draw on history, beliefs, attitudes, and moral assessment.⁸ Angelo Corlett sets out conditions of a “genuine apology” in which wrongdoers “communicate effectively” what wrong they did, why they did it, how they will fix the wrong, and how they are committed not to repeat the wrong.⁹ Corlett describes each such condition as “equally necessary for a genuine apology.”¹⁰

Other theorists point to central “components” of an apology. Richard Joyce, for instance, includes “the expression of regret, th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Toward a Theory of Apology: Mapping Some Terrain of Corrective Justice
• 2 Some Incomplete Accounts of Apologies
• 3 Apology as Relationship Repair
• 4 Relationships and Mutually Justifiable Demands
• 5 Rights and Duties of Apology
• 6 Apologies, Corrective Justice, and Relationship Repair: Some Puzzles
• 7 Corporate Apologies
• 8 Political Apologies
• 9 Apologies for Historic Injustice
• Works Cited
• Index