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Dr. Charles Fethe

Department of Philosophy and Religion

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Philosophical Reflections on Personal and Political Forgiveness

Abstract: This paper examines the question of whether the act of forgiveness, which has traditionally been considered a prerogative of individual persons, can be incorporated into the policies of public groups and political organizations. The paper offers an interpretation of forgiveness which justifies its role in political policies, and it suggests criteria for evaluating some of the benefits and risks in reconciliation policies based on forgiveness.

Key words: forgiveness, political forgiveness, performative speech acts

Introduction

Throughout history, people have reflected on the question of what constitutes a good person, a person of honor and virtue. There have been numerous approaches to investigating this question, but one of the most insightful suggestions was offered by Plato in his classic work, The Republic. Plato contended that to understand what makes a person good and worthy of respect we must first know what makes a political society worthy of respect, for the virtues of the state are simply the virtues of a person writ large.

This is indeed a fascinating analogy, perhaps the most famous analogy in the history of political philosophy. Over the centuries philosophers and political theorists have given much thought to determining where the analogy works and where it fails. In recent times, the most intriguing efforts to understand and evaluate the analogy have centered on a moral virtue that Plato and most of his successors would have dismissed as irrelevant to political thought—this virtue is that of forgiveness. Forgiveness certainly is an act we respect in individuals; whether it can be taken up by political groups or incorporated into the function of a state is another matter.

Forgiveness is not a minor moral virtue. When Alexander Pope claimed that “To err is human, to forgive divine” he was asserting a belief that had been pervasive in European moral thought since the beginning of the Christian era. But to Pope and to most Europeans the act of forgiveness represented a personal virtue. It had nothing to do with government, politics, committees and commissions. This view has probably been the traditional understanding of forgiveness for quite some time and so it came as a surprise when organizations such asSouth Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission put issues dealing with forgiveness on the political stage. Many people applauded these political groups for taking an evolutionary step in the understanding of forgiveness; but others, while respecting the intentions of theseorganizations, questioned the premise that forgiveness could function outside the relations between individual persons. Theseskeptics of political forgiveness contend that if Peter robs Paul, Paul can forgive himbut court judges and political organizations cannot, although they may be lenient with Peter and show him mercy. Even the great Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr took a similar position: he believed that justicequalified as a usefulpolitical virtue but forgiveness was an idealistic goal which cannot functionin a broad, practical context.[1] True forgiveness, he seemed to believe, isalways personal, and rare. It does not thrive in political environments.

Skepticism about political or group forgiveness has to be taken seriously, for it raises a number of provocative questions. How do groups or political organizations acquire the authority to forgive? What procedures do they use to decide who should be forgiven—is it by majority vote of the members? If so, how was that policy determined? And how does the judgment of forgiveness madeby a political organization affect the judgments of individuals? If the political group forgives a class of offenders, does that nullify the judgments of victims who refuse to offer forgiveness and demand reparation?

These questions pose a challenge to the concept of political forgiveness, but in this paper I would like to examine only one of the fundamental objections to taking forgiveness out of the personal realm and setting it under the authority of social and political organizations. This objection rests on the premise that the act of forgiveness is an expression of personal feelings and attitudes, and since feelings and attitudes are psychological phenomena which exist only in the minds of individuals, the act of forgiveness can only be an individual and personal affair. On this view, individual members of a political group may each practice forgiveness but the group as a separate entity cannot.

I believe this argument rests on a misunderstanding of the true nature of forgiveness, and so I would like to propose a better model for analyzing the act of forgiveness and determining when it is justified and when it is not.

The nature of forgiveness

Forgiving one’s enemies is not an easy thing to do. It often takes courage and a measure of self-discipline that many of us lack. It is this inner strength which gives forgiveness its moral drama. But are these feelings and attitudes an essential element in offering forgiveness? If they are, then it would seem that those who deny the possibility of social or political forgiveness might be on the right track. After all, feelings are always personal, even when they are expressed by political figures in a political context.When presidential candidate William Clinton made his famous statement “I feel your pain” in response to a supporter who was facing serious problems in his life, his assertion was on a personal level and so he was not committing the Democratic Party to take a similar stance. And even if President Clinton made the same statement under the same circumstances after he won the election, he could not be committing the United Statesgovernment to feeling the same compassion. Feelings and attitudes lie within the psyche of individuals; and so if they are the basis of forgiveness, the concept of political or group forgiveness wouldindeed seem to be out of place.

There can be no doubt that acts of forgiveness are often motivated by personal feelings, but I believe that emotions or attitudes are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for forgiving. If I have seriously offended you and you state that you forgive me, then I have been forgiven and I do not need to know anything about your inner feelings or attitudes. Your statement of forgiveness can do the job by itself.

To say “I forgive you” is an example of what philosophers call a performative speech act. When a person makes a statement which is a performative speech act, she is doing more than just giving a comment or expressing a feeling: she is making a statement which creates obligations and duties. Consider, for example, what you are doing when you make a promise. Making a promise is a performative speech act; it has very little to do with your inner feelings. When you make a promise, you are not simply stating what you intend to do: you are making a verbal commitment, and you can be held responsible for failing to do what you promised. An assertion of forgiveness fits this same pattern, although with more moral complexity.[2]

The speech act interpretation of forgiveness gives support to those who believe that forgiveness can be practiced by political or social groups and not simply by individuals. If forgiveness is a matter of making a statement which involves objective criteria and a commitment to obligations and duties, then we would have good reason to accept it as a public action which can be performed by political or social groups and their leaders. A religious organization, for example, could not sensibly make a general expression of group love, but it might take a public stance of forgiveness to those who had previous been persecutors. This does not mean that all members of the church would agree with this view, but full agreement of all members of a group is often not necessary. Policies and commitments can be made without full agreement and so can declarations of forgiveness.

If this interpretation of forgiveness is correct, then to understand forgiveness we must consider what obligations the act entails and what circumstances are necessary for making the act valid; for just as you cannot logically promise anything anywhere, so you cannot forgive or be forgiven on a whim. There are rules and conditions governing the act. I’ll offer a few examples.

An assertion of forgiveness creates a dyadic relation, a contract of sorts, between forgiver and forgiven. One of the conditions for this contract to be successful is that those who have committed the wrong must recognize their moral failure and be prepared to atone for what happened. If, as is often the case, the offender does not admit to guilt and is not open to remorse, then forgiveness would be inappropriate. Forgiveness is not a cure or therapy for those who remain unalterably committed to wrong-doing.

There are also necessary restrictions on those who offer forgiveness. One restriction is that forgiveness must be joined with leniency in dealing with the offender. If a political organization adopted a policy of forgiveness to its now-defeated oppressors but then inflicted violent punishment on those who were forgiven, their assertion of forgiveness would have little meaning. An act of forgiveness which follows the same path as the proponents of revenge and eye-for-an-eye justicewould lose its moral identity. As is the case with all serious moral judgments, there is no set rule to determining how far leniency should go, but its role in forgiveness is essential.

Another restriction on those who offer forgiveness is that they must recognize that they are making a commitment to foster the moral character of those who are forgiven. This requires a sustained effort to keep the dynamics of forgiveness in place. The common belief that we have the option of following a “forgive and forget “ policy distorts and diminishes the role and duty of the forgiver, for it mistakenly assumes that forgiveness can be a once-done deal, perhaps a feeling that comes and goes. But this is not so. Trudy Govier makes the point well in her comment concerning the role of the moral community in responding to people who have the willingness to recognize their wrongdoing and attempt to do what is right:

“The question of forgiveness arises because no person can establish a moral identity by himself. A person can, as a solitary individual, resolve to reform. But alone, he cannot change his moral reputation, which obviously has public dimensions. To escape a negative label a person needs the co-operation of other people – the moral community. One who forgives will help in the fresh start by offering a wrongdoer the opportunity to begin anew, allowing that better acts and a brighter moral future are possible, and supporting restored status and relationships. Such forgiveness is a matter of words, attitude, and action. Life is a moral endeavor within which people should not be bound by past failures.”[3]

Incorporating the perpetrator into the life of the moral community is certainly no easy task. Indeed, if we are thinking of forgiveness offered by one individual to another, it may often be too onerous a burden. Group efforts would work far more effectively here. Indeed, we already have evidence of their success in the results of political policies which were based on leniency, rejection of vengeance, and recognition of the moral possibilities in those who once were motivated by hatred and prejudice. It may well be that if these policies maintain their effectiveness, political forgiveness will eventually outshinetraditional person-to-person forgiveness.

The justification of forgiveness

The problems concerning the validity of group or political forgiveness raise a number of questions, but perhaps the most serious problem facing any advocate of forgiveness is the moral question of determining when forgiveness should be given and when it should be denied. This is obviously a complex and challenging issue, but I would like to make a few closing observations which I believe should be taken into account in considering the consequences of fostering a policy of forgiveness

Let us begin with some commonplace questions: Is it always wise to forgive? Are we always taking the moral highroad when we choose not to be part of the great masses of the unforgiving?

If we think of forgiveness on a personal level, I believe we would often sympathize with those who reject forgiveness and refuse to put aside the rage which comes from thinking about the wrong that was inflected on them. Consider, for example, the final scene in Katherine Anne Porter’s brilliant short story “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” The closing paragraphs describe the chaotic thoughts and feelings going though the mind of the old lady in the moments before her death. All the strange and wonderful past events of Granny Weatherall’s life are sweeping through her dying consciousness—the memories of her children, her grandchildren, the joys of her life. But at the very moment before death, one memory surges forward: she was a young girl waiting at the alter, waiting to be married. The groom never appeared. The story and her life end with these lines: “She could not remember any other sorrow because this grief wiped them all away. Oh, no, there’s nothing more cruel than this – I’ll never forgive it. She stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the light.”[4]

Should we say that Granny Weatherall was at the moment of her death a vindictive person? Perhaps. But I think we should also recognize that there is a certain courage in the way she ended it all. Sometimes it is easy to forgive, too easy.

I do not believe that we can readily provide the rules, the moral guidelines which would help us to determine when a person should give up the fury of revenge and the demand for personal justice; but if we consider forgiveness as an act of an organization or a political entity, then we might gain a clearer understanding of the moral justification for forgiveness.

When we think of public agencies and organizations, the most common arguments to support policies of political forgiveness reflect consequentialist moral principles which hold that the morally right action or policy is one which will provide the greatest benefit and least harm to as many people as possible. There are many arguments to support the belief that political forgiveness is a policy with long term benefits for everyone, even for the forgivers themselves. Donald Shriver noted that the desire for revenge has a long and penetrating history, and those who give little value to forgiveness may take to reviving the memories of the past and adopting a policy of violence and delayed retribution: “The world cringes at a Serb’s willingness to kill a Muslim in revenge for ancestors who fought the battle of Kosovo in the year 1389; but in fact every nation has among its citizens those who have vast unresolved sentiments against the descendants of some other group of citizens. The majority of us are apparently a long way from ceasing to hold the sins of the ancestors against their living children. Were the ancestors still living, we might be willing to refight our wars with them.”[5]

This positive outlook on the beneficial consequences of a policy of forgiveness has often been criticized as being too optimistic and lacking an understanding of the thinking of those who might exploit the policy. Jeffrie Murphy, putting himself in the mind of the perpetrator, comes to the conclusion that forgiveness may be an open door to exploitation. “Those who have vindictive dispositions toward those who wrong them give potential wrongdoers an incentive not to wrong them,” says Murphy. “If I were going to set out to oppress other people, I would surely prefer to select for my victims persons whose first response is forgiveness rather than persons whose first response is revenge.” [6]

There is no doubt that forgiving those who have committed serious and intentional wrong opens the forgiver to risk. But this is a problem we face throughout life, whenever we deal leniently with people who violated the rules of good and decent behavior. Suppose we learned that criminals who are given a mild sentence for a serious act of violence are often tempted to do it again. Does this lead to the conclusion that giving milder, more lenient sentences should be abolished? I think a better conclusion would be that the problem is not in the sentencing but in the failure to determine whether the perpetrator has changed. We noted earlier that the act of forgiveness, especially on a political and social level, is not a simple approach for dealing with those who have inflicted violence on others. Forgiveness does not involve dismissal of past wrongs, and it does not naively welcome with open arms people or groups who have been susceptible to the forces of hate, contempt and prejudice. President Kennedy’s quip “Forgive your enemies but never forget their names” is a good first step to a viable policy of forgiveness—but only a first step. What we see developing now in many countries is a propaedeutic for forgiveness, and an experiment in personal and social reform, an experiment which hopefully will replace hatred with moral understanding. We have no certainty about what will work and what will backfire. The military budget will not be cut to provide resources for organizations promoting political forgiveness and reconciliation. But history shows us the long-term effects of vengeance and retribution, and we would be foolish not to look for alternatives. Perhaps we can take some comfort in the fact that one of the most influential and revered moral leaders in history asked God to forgive his persecutors because “they know not what they do.” Forgiveness must be an experiment in learning.