The Possibilities of Forgiveness

Perhaps the best way to challenge anodyne popular conceptions of forgiveness is to highlight the ways in which “forgiveness,” like “justice” and “freedom,” is a rich and deeply contested term that relies for its content on divergent convictions about who we are and who we should seek to be. The essays in this focus issue articulate some of the many possibilities for practicing and thinking about forgiveness.     

由三个宽恕模型看宽恕研究新进展

西方学者已普遍接受宽恕的本质即为亲社会性动机转变过程。从这一取向出发, 介绍Worthington提出的宽恕压力应对模型、Koutsos等人提出的人际间相关变量模型以及Hall和Fincham提出的自我宽恕模型这三个模型。三个模型从三个不同角度对宽恕的动机转变观点提供支持, 通过论述三个模型之间的关系, 对宽恕的动机转变观点进行更加深入的阐述。同时在宽恕模型论述中总结分析近年来宽恕的认知加工、人际相关变量的作用以及自我宽恕方面的研究进展等。最后对宽恕在西方以及我国的研究进行回顾, 指出中西方宽恕研究发展中存在的研究不全面、缺乏理论支持等问题。     

宽恕的心理学研究

文章介绍了宽恕在汉语、圣经和新约中的含义并对宽恕的操作性定义进行了讨论。简要阐述了宽恕研究中常用的三种研究方法——叙事法、问卷法和实验法。最后阐述了共情、责任归因、侵犯的后果及道歉、人际关系、人格、文化背景对宽恕的影响。     

The Impossible Demand of Forgiveness

Abstract

Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s work, I argue that neither of the two standard accounts of forgiveness offer an adequate understanding of forgiveness. Conditional accounts insist on specifying the conditions an offender needs to satisfy in order to count as deserving of forgiveness. I argue that such accounts not only render forgiveness unintelligible (since forgiveness is intelligibly offered only to the offender qua offender), but also dissolve the ethical decision forgiveness demands of us. Unconditional accounts promise to do justice to both by insisting that forgiveness is a freely granted gift offered to the guilty as guilty. But I argue that when pressed to justify why one should forgive unconditionally and how one avoids the threat of condoning, they typically fall back onto the conditionalist’s ground and lose the electivity of forgiving. I conclude by arguing that genuine forgiveness would have to be purely unconditional but could never appear as such.     

认知抑制与人际宽恕:特质宽恕的调节作用

采用《特质宽恕量表》测量了102名大学生的特质宽恕能力,并通过Flanker任务和情景回忆法评估了被试的认知抑制和人际宽恕水平,目的是探讨特质宽恕、认知抑制与人际宽恕三者之间的关系。结果发现:(1)认知抑制、特质宽恕与人际宽恕各维度之间存在两两显著相关(除认知抑制与仁慈动机之外);(2)特质宽恕对回避、报复和仁慈动机均具有预测作用,而认知抑制则只对报复动机具有预测作用;(3)特质宽恕与认知抑制对回避动机具有负向的调节作用,对仁慈动机具有正向的调节作用。     

The Normative Significance of Forgiveness

P.F. Strawson claimed that forgiveness is such an essential part of our moral practices that we could not extricate it from our form of life even if we so desired. But what is it about forgiveness that would make it such a central feature of our moral experience? In this paper, I suggest that the answer has to do with what I will call the normative significance of forgiveness. Forgiveness is normatively significant in the sense that, in its paradigmatic instances, forgiving alters the operative norms bearing on the interaction between the victim and the wrongdoer in certain characteristic ways. My project here is, first, to clarify the ways that paradigmatic cases of forgiveness alter the norms of interaction between victim and wrongdoer and to argue that it is in this respect that forgiveness is a normatively significant feature of our moral responsibility practices. Second, I show that most extant theories of forgiveness fail to explain the characteristic ways in which forgiving alters norms. Third, I offer a theory of forgiveness that accounts for this significant normative feature. I conclude by addressing two objections to my proposal.     

The Economic Model of Forgiveness

It is sometimes claimed that forgiveness involves the cancellation of a moral debt. This way of speaking about forgiveness exploits an analogy between moral forgiveness and economic debt‐cancellation. Call the view that moral forgiveness is like economic debt‐cancellation the Economic Model of Forgiveness. In this article I articulate and motivate the model, defend it against some recent objections, and pose a new puzzle for this way of thinking about forgiveness.     

The Prudential Value of Forgiveness

Most philosophers who discuss the value of forgiveness concentrate on its moral value. This paper focuses on the prudential value of forgiveness, which has been surprisingly neglected by moral philosophers. I suggest that this may be because part of the concept of forgiveness involves the forgiver being motivated by moral rather than prudential considerations. But this does not justify neglecting the prudential value of forgiveness, which is important even though forgivers should not be prudentially motivated. Forgiveness helps satisfy interests arising from the need for co-operation in such areas as epistemic life, where humans are interdependent. Forgiveness can restore epistemic relationships, and this has the prudential value of helping agents navigate their way through their environment. While the prudential value of forgiveness may be supplementary to its moral value, it would be a mistake to ignore this area of the debate. Exploring the prudential value of forgiveness enriches our understanding of the role that this practice plays in human life, and may contribute to explaining the origin of forgiveness.     

The Varieties of Forgiveness Experience: Working toward a Comprehensive Definition of Forgiveness

The definition of forgiveness was explored in a group of 270 young adults, and the underlying dimensions of their definitions compared with those of philosophers, theologians and psychological researchers. Three dimensions were identified: orientation (self, other), direction (passive letting go of negative experiences, active enhancement of positive experiences) and form (emotion, cognition and behavior). Definitions employing a passive letting go of negative experiences were associated with more state forgiveness. Gender differences were found in state forgiveness and in the employment of passive vs. active dimensions of forgiveness. Dr. Kathleen A. Lawler-Row is Professor of Psychology at East Carolina University. Her work focuses on the physiological and health correlates of forgiveness. Correspondence to Dr. K. A. Lawler-Row, e-mail: rowk@ecu.edu. Cynthia Scott and Meirav Edlis-Matityahou are graduate students in the Experimental and Counseling (respectively) programs at the University of Tennessee. Rachel Raines and Erin Moore are undergraduate students working with Dr. Lawler-Row in the department of psychology.     

The Narrative Architecture of Political Forgiveness

Although there is widespread agreement with the argument that Hannah Arendt made more than half a century ago, that forgiveness is “one of the human faculties that make social change possible” (Misztal, 2011, p. 201), beyond this, there is little consensus of what it means. Applying a narrative structure to this discussion, there is a lack of clarity around questions of who, what, where, when, and why to forgive. This article will explore the politics of forgiveness in East Germany, where these issues have been hotly contested for more than 25 years. The data examined in this article suggest that the fraught process of forgiveness embodies not consensus but contest, as people disagree on key questions such as who has the right to forgive whom, for what, how long the window for the opportunity of forgiveness stays open, and even why these questions matter, not only for individuals but for the whole of society.     

The Politics of Apology and Forgiveness

The politics of apologies and forgiveness is present in individual pastoral care and psychotherapy as well as in the broader context of the world in which we live. Forgiveness is a process that names harm and injustices while also offering possibilities for change, ultimately providing individuals, families, and communities with deeper and more profound ways of imagining relational justice. Such a perspective illuminates the ways in which harm and damage can be individual and systemic in nature, as well as how struggles over meaningful forgiveness are part of larger political realities. As one part of this process, apologies that account for the multiple ways power functions can assist individuals and communities in creating more justice-oriented forgiveness processes. Pastoral care specialists are wise to recognize that apologies and forgiveness always engage social, relational, political, and theological realities.     

Inarticulate Forgiveness

Influentially, Pamela Hieronymi has argued that any account of forgiveness must be both articulate and uncompromising. It must articulate the change in judgment that results in the forgiver's loss of resentment without excusing or justifying the misdeed, and without comprising a commitment to the transgressor's responsibility, the wrongness of the action, and the transgressed person's self‐worth. Non‐articulate accounts of forgiveness, which rely on indirect strategies for reducing resentment (for example, reflecting on the transgressor's bad childhood), are said to fail to explain forgiveness. This paper argues that the articulateness condition is not a necessary condition for forgiveness. It responds to numerous objections advanced against non‐articulate accounts, including the claim that the resentment‐mitigating practices they involve amount to excusing. Appealing to P. F. Strawson's distinction between objective and participant attitudes, it argues that forgivers can take transgressors to be detrimentally causally shaped by their past while holding them to be morally responsible.     

Accepting Forgiveness

Forgiving wrongdoers who neither apologized, nor sought to make amends in any way, is controversial. Even defenders of the practice agree with critics that such “unilateral” forgiveness involves giving up on the meaningful redress that victims otherwise justifiably demand from their wrongdoers: apology, reparations, repentance, and so on. Against that view, I argue here that when a victim of wrongdoing sets out to grant forgiveness to her offender, and he in turn accepts her forgiveness, he thereby serves some important ends of apology and reparation, no matter what else he did—or did not do—by way of repair. Although much overlooked, the simple act of accepting forgiveness joins victim and offender in affirming and acting upon some important shared background assumptions, including many of those expressed in standard apologies. Perhaps more surprisingly, I argue that accepting forgiveness also fulfills the duty to counteract any concrete harm wrongfully inflicted. The argument helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of forgiveness, including that a victim can change her offender’s normative status, making him a less fitting target of the resentment, indignation and shunning of others, and even his own guilt pangs, simply by forgiving him.

     

Forgiveness in The Arab and Islamic Contexts

This essay explores the current and historical meaning of forgiveness in Arab and Islamic cultural and religious contexts. It also hopes to encourage further empirical research on this understudied topic in both religious and peacebuilding studies. In addition to the perceived meaning of forgiveness in an Arab Islamic context, this essay examines the links between forgiveness and reconciliation. Relying on religious sources including the Qur'an and Hadith, as well as certain events in Islamic history, the essay identifies various ways to conceptualize and explain the meaning of forgiveness. This theoretical and conceptual segment is followed by a section which explores current perceptions of forgiveness among Arab Muslim teachers in five different communities. The empirical data for this analysis is based on a larger comparative regional study that has been completed through surveys and structured interviews with educators from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel. Our study concluded that the teachers' perceptions of forgiveness were mainly derived from religious sources and identities and that Islamic religious discourse provided a solid foundation for framing the meaning of forgiveness.