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3. The "Ideal" of Forgiveness: A Philosopher's Exploration
- University of Wisconsin Press
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3 The "Ideal" of Forgiveness: A Philosopher's Exploration Joanna North Background In 1987 I published an article in which I sought to provide a clear and coherent definition of the concept of forgiveness (North 1987). As a philosopher trained in the British analytic tradition, I present the following in an attempt to use the philosophical method of conceptual analysis to understand forgiveness and related issues in greater detail. To this end we must look at some approaches to the subject and try to see how they might be extended and developed so as to arrive, in the end, at a coherent, useful, and deep understanding of forgiveness. Paradoxically perhaps, my initial interest was stimulated by philosophical concerns with the nature of punishment and the related notions of retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation, and by how these notions were being put into practice within the English legal system. In the 1980s there seemed to be a general confusion about the demands of justice and the purpose of the penal system. Many people, not least those working within the system itself, were unclear about the aims and goals of legal sanctions and penalties. For example, when we impose a prison sentence upon an offender, what exactly are we trying to do? Are we simply punishing him, making him suffer by administering a socially sanctioned form of public retribution? Are we aiming to deter others from similar crimes? Is our goal simply the protection of the public generally? Or are we trying to rehabilitate the offender, to make him a better and more socially useful member ofsociety? Are we trying to do all these things at once, and if so, is a simple prison sentence likely to achieve so complex a result? Amidst all this confusion (which to a large extent still exists) I detected the victim ofcrime, the one who had been wronged-the innocent, injured party. He appeared to stand alone, his feelings largely ignored, his needs unmet. I became interested in the range of possible responses which are open to an injured party and began to reflect upon the ways he or she might 15 16 NORTH: The «[deaF) ofFOr.!Jiveness attempt to overcome a personal experience of having been wronged. My philosophical concerns include an interest in the philosophy of religion, and I began to see that the act offorgiveness might be ofreal practical help to those people who have been wronged by others. What is forgiveness? Some have suggested that forgiveness is a wiping out of the wrong, a making undone what has been done. But how can this be achieved without requiring the wronged party simply to give up on his or her angry and hostile feelings toward the wrongdoer, feelings which are often extremely difficult to overcome and which, in any case, appear to be natural and indeed justifiable reactions to the infliction of harm? Another idea offorgiveness is that it involves, or requires, the forgoing of punishment. But is this not to condone the crime and to forgo the claims of justice? Yet another view of forgiveness equates it with excusing the wrongdoer. Rather than see the wrongdoer as a free agent, responsible for his crime, we are encouraged to see him as subject to natural or social forces way beyond his control. As a result, ifhe cannot be held responsible for his actions, then he cannot have done anything wrong at all. His misdemeanor was not morally reprehensible but only socially unacceptable. In such a view forgiveness is merely a response ofpity and compassion, not a morally significant response in its own right. Each of these views offorgiveness is, I believe, faulty and misguided. Forgiveness does not, indeed cannot, wipe out the fact of wrong having been done. Nor is it a matter of simply giving up one's right to punish (although this decision may in fact be a result of one's forgiveness of another person). Nor do we excuse the wrongdoer in forgiving him. We still see him as the perpetrator ofthe wrong and as the one who is responsible for it. Indeed, as Keith Yandell argues in the next chapter, there must be a real sense of the wrongdoer as responsible and the wrong as real ifforgiveness is to be meaningful at all. After all, ifthere is no wrong and no wrongdoer, then there is nothing and no one to forgive. A Note on Method In what follows, then, I shall try to develop a coherent and persuasive account of...