Seminario a Milano

Venerdì 10 dicembre, ore 15:30 Aula Seminari del Dipartimento di Filosofia (3° piano) Università degli Studi di Milano, via Festa del Perdono 7

Juha Räikkä (University of Turku, Finland)
On forgiveness

I will consider the question why demands for forgiveness sound typically if not always incongruous and disturbing. When an offender demands forgiveness, he does not merely ask or beg that the victim would consider once again the excuses and explanations he has offered. Instead, he blames the victim.

Forgiveness can refer to a variety of things. The understanding of forgiveness adopted in my presentation is closely related to Joseph Butler’s (1692-1752) classical definition, based on the idea that forgiveness is connected to moderation of resentment. For the purposes of my argument it is enough to assume that when a victim forgives the offender, she typically makes a commitment to work toward a frame of mind in which resentment has gone. When a victim has made a commitment, she personally thinks that resentment is not an appropriate emotion anymore – whether or not she still feels it. A victim has not forgiven if she feels resentment and thinks that her feelings are appropriate in this respect.

It seems clear that in some circumstances it would be cruel not to forgive the offender, i.e. if the crime committed was not serious and happened a long time ago, if the offender has felt remorse because of it and explained why he was so stupid to have done it, and so on. But if this is so, then it seems to follow that in some circumstances demands for forgiveness may be perfectly acceptable and morally unproblematic. Surely we are free to demand not to be treated cruelly and wrongly. We can blame those who treat us so.

I aim to explain why demands for forgiveness sound typically incongruous and disturbing. I will introduce two explanations that have been defended, and criticize both of them. I will then present my own explanation and argue that it satisfies all the main conditions which the acceptable explanation should meet. The conditions I have in mind are the following. (1) The explanation should tell us why demands for forgiveness are morally and not merely practically incongruous. (2) The explanation should clarify why such demands are typically but not always morally incongruous. (3) The explanation should explain why demands presented by offenders are typically more disturbing than demands presented by third parties.