Ontology for an Uncompromising Ethical Realism

I begin by distinguishing two general approaches to metaethics and ontology. One in effect puts our experience as engaged ethical agents on hold while independent metaphysical and epistemological inquiries, operating by their own lights, deliver metaethical verdicts on acceptable interpretations of our ethical lives; the other instead keeps engaged ethical experience in focus and allows our reflective interpretation of it to shape our metaphysical and epistemological views, including our ontology. While the former approach often leads to deflationary views, the latter may lead us to enrich our metaethical picture as needed to capture robust objectivity and categorical normative authority for ethics. Assuming, as I have argued elsewhere, that this requires positing irreducibly evaluative or normative properties and facts, the question I take up here is what ontological implications this has. I argue against quietist (or nonmetaphysical) non-naturalist views, which maintain that positing such properties and facts either has no ontological implications (Parfit) or has only domain-specific ontological implications that likewise imply nothing about what the world contains (Scanlon). Against these views, I advocate a worldly, dual-aspect view, locating irreducibly evaluative or normative properties as features of relevant worldly things. But while I have previously defended this view as a form of non-naturalism, I here explore the possibility of instead seeing it as a new, more expansive form of naturalism—what might be called “Non-Scientistic Naturalism”—inspired by parallel attempts in the philosophy of mind to accommodate irreducibly phenomenal properties within a more expansive physicalism.     

Reconciliation and Forgiveness in an Unjust Society

Justification by faith necessarily leads to justice in society. IN post–apartheid South Africa, reconciliation has required truth telling plus confession and, most importantly, land redistribution. Failure at land redistribution in Zimbabwe has reduced the effectiveness of the post–colonial reconciliation program and perpetuated previous injustice.     

Articulating a Mystical Theology

Book reviewed in this article
Mark A. McIntosh Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology     

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.

     

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.     

论儒家的"忠恕"与基督教的"宽恕"

真正、本源意义的恕是一种创生力量,这一创生力量使被恕者从过与罪的萎颓中毅然决然地抽身而返,返至一种中正、至善、洁静的创化中.无论儒家"恕",还是基督教的"恕"都具有这一力量.二种文化恕的方式与路经不同,但殊途同归,儒家与基督教的恕皆能使被恕者劈碎自己生命中的嚣浮不实、剔除内心非诚、非仁、非智的虚伪蔽障,从而过一种真切笃实、修德进业的生活.     

Forgiveness in Context

Book reviewed:
Fraser Watts and Liz Gulliford (eds). Forgiveness in Context: Theology and Psychology in Creative Dialogue.     

Forgiveness and recidivism

The teaching of Jesus on limitless forgiveness is a difficult one with which to reckon, especially when an offense is repeated again and again (recidivism), sometimes by the same offender. This article finds in the gospel of Matthew (Matt. 18:15–17) and Paul's letters to the Corinthians (I Cor 5:2–11 and II Cor 2:5–8) a model of forgiveness that is assertive, confrontative and direct in style, pastoral in application and reconciling in spirit.Dr. Donnelly (Ph.D. Claremont Graduate School) is an Associate Professor of Theology and Spirituality at St. John's University, New York, and a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. She has published over a dozen articles on the subject of forgiveness and reconciliation as well as two books:Learning to Forgive (Macmillan 1979; Abingdon, 1982) andPutting Forgiveness into Practice (Argus, 1982).     

Blame After Forgiveness

When a wrongdoing occurs, victims, barring special circumstance, can aptly forgive their wrongdoers, receive apologies, and be paid reparations. It is also uncontroversial, in the usual circumstances, that wronged parties can aptly blame their wrongdoer. But controversy arises when we consider blame from third-parties after the victim has forgiven. At times it seems that wronged parties can make blame inapt through forgiveness. If third parties blame anyway, it often appears the victim is justified in protesting. “But I forgave him!” In other cases, however, forgiveness seems irrelevant: B can forgive A, but it can still seem that third parties can aptly blame A for the wrong against B. This perplexity adds a dimension to ongoing discussion regarding criteria for apt blame and the related issues of standing and fittingness. This paper explores the status of third party blame after forgiveness. I argue that while post forgiveness blame is often inapt, in many other cases forgiveness is irrelevant. This difference is explained by appeal to the various relationships third parties might have to wronged parties, and how these differences affect the ways we blame and thereby blame’s aptness.     

集体主义背景下的宽恕研究及其对心理治疗的启示

以往的宽恕理论和宽恕干预的方法多是基于西方个人主义文化背景的, 缺乏集体主义背景下的相关研究。在集体主义背景下, 被冒犯者应对伤害的方式、宽恕的策略以及影响宽恕的人格特质都与个人主义有明显的区别。此外, 跨文化的宽恕模型也从不同角度描述了集体主义背景下的宽恕, 决定性宽恕和情绪性宽恕模型区分了不同形式的宽恕在不同文化中的表现; 基于自我和人格特质的宽恕模型描述了不同背景下影响宽恕的人格因素; 宽恕的动态过程模型描述了宽恕过程中的文化影响因素。对于这些内容的总结也对集体主义背景下的宽恕干预具有一定的启示作用。     

Against Elective Forgiveness

It is often claimed both that forgiveness is elective and that forgiveness is something that we do for reasons. However, there is a tension between these two central claims about the nature of forgiveness. If forgiving is something one does for reasons, then, at least sometimes, those reasons may generate a requirement to forgive or withhold forgiveness. While not strictly inconsistent with electivity, the idea of required forgiveness strikes some as antithetical to the spirit of the concept. They argue that forgiveness is essentially elective. In this paper, I dispute these arguments. I argue that the intuitive plausibility of the position diminishes upon reflection and that the best arguments fail to explain why reasons to forgive, unlike most other reasons for action, cannot generate requirements.     

Supererogatory Forgiveness 1

While forgiveness is widely recognised as an example of a supererogatory action, it remains to be explained precisely what makes forgiveness supererogatory, or the circumstances under which it is supererogatory to forgive. Philosophers often claim that forgiveness is supererogatory, but most of the time they do so without offering an adequate explanation for why it is supererogatory to forgive. Accordingly, the literature on forgiveness lacks a sufficiently nuanced account of the supererogatory status of forgiveness. In this paper, I seek to remedy this shortcoming by offering a systematic account of forgiveness as an example of a supererogatory action. In terms of explaining the supererogatory status of forgiveness, I will argue that, to qualify as supererogatory, a forgiving action must fulfil three conditions: (i) it must be permissible; (ii) it must not be obligatory; and (iii) it must be good or praiseworthy, that is, it must have a certain moral value. Moreover, a distinction is drawn between “unconditional” and “conditional” forgiveness. I argue that conditional forgiveness (i.e., forgiveness of repentant wrongdoers) is sometimes a duty and sometimes supererogatory, whereas unconditional forgiveness (i.e., forgiveness of unrepentant wrongdoers) is typically supererogatory or beyond duty.     

Forgiveness and Standing

Despite broad agreement that forgiveness involves overcoming resentment, the small philosophical literature on this topic has made little progress in determining which of the many ways of overcoming resentment is forgiveness. In a recent paper, however, Pamela Hieronymi proposed a way forward by requiring that accounts of forgiveness be “articulate” and “uncompromising.” I argue for these requirements, but also claim that Hieronymi’s proposed articulate and uncompromising account must be rejected because it cannot accommodate the fact that only some agents have the standing to forgive. I end by sketching an alternative account which, I claim, explains the phenomenon of standing.