Common Cognates of Forgiveness

Neither the standard definition of forgiveness nor the many philosophical accounts of it attempt to carefully distinguish between forgiveness and the various cognates often associated with it, such as pardoning, excusing, and tolerating or otherwise endorsing wrongs. Forgiveness is sometimes thought to consist, in part, in some of these behaviors and is also sometimes thought to be synonymous with acquittal, absolution, mercy, forbearance, and reconciliation, among others. Forgetting, too, is sometimes associated with forgiveness, as the common suggestion to “forgive and forget” connotes, though the adage also suggests that these notions are distinct, that forgiveness may occur without forgetting and vice versa. Most philosophical conceptions insist that whatever else it involves merely forgetting wrongs is not equivalent to forgiveness (Murphy, 1988: Griswold, 2007).
Used loosely, then, forgiveness is roughly equivalent to the aforementioned behaviors and traits. Although it is generally agreed that forgiveness is at best similar in meaning to any of these, the precise lines of demarcation distinguishing forgiveness from these cognates are not always easy to determine, nor are they uncontested in the literature. For example, Seneca claims that tailoring punishment to the unique circumstances of individual cases of wrongdoing is not a matter of forgiveness but of mercy, in so doing equating forgiveness with pardon, and condemning both as inappropriate ways of straying from the strict demands of justice (Seneca, 1998). Others maintain that forgiveness and reconciliation are equivalent notions, each having the common goal of moving people's lives forward by restoring a past relationship compromised by wrongdoing (Dwyer, 1999). And official acts of legal pardon are strikingly similar to such straightforward acts of forgiving as remitting a debtor's financial obligation by simply waiving it. Moreover, though forgiveness may be a vehicle of mercy, and both are often viewed as in tension with justice, forgiveness is not the same as mercy, the latter of which may be exemplified in various ways including via pardon, generosity, or sympathy. A complete taxonomy and analysis of colloquial cognates of forgiveness and forms of tolerating wrongdoing that have affinities to forgiving but are morally dubious is beyond the scope of this article, though as examples of the intricacies involved in sorting through phenomena related to but different from forgiveness brief discussions of pardon and condonation may be instructive.

3.1 Pardon

The phrase “pardon me” frequently functions as an apology, which might precede an act of forgiveness, or be a plea or request for forgiveness, or some similar act of forbearance. And to pardon a wrongdoer often seems indistinguishable from forgiveness, perhaps especially in cases of minor wrong. With regard to such wrongs, having been pardoned often takes the form of such performative utterances as “don't give it a second thought,” “don't worry about it,” or “I forgive you,” where the speech act itself does the normative work involved in forgiving or pardoning (Pettigrove, 2004). In this sense, pardon and forgiveness are synonymous. However, the concept of pardon also refers to a familiar and important legal and political power quite unlike forgiveness. Black's Law Dictionary defines this sense of pardon as “an act or an instance of officially nullifying punishment or other legal consequences of a crime,” ordinarily “granted by the chief executive of a government” (Garner, 1999, p.1137). In the United States, for example, the President has the authority to grant pardons for federal offenses, and state governors may pardon crimes against the state.
Although reasons for exercising the power of pardon often mimic those given for forgiving wrongdoers, as when President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974 on the ground that the country needed to move beyond an ugly and disruptive criminal transgression, one clear difference between pardon and forgiving is that the former is necessarily exercised by third-parties as opposed to the victims of wrong. As discussed below, standard philosophical views maintain that there are good reasons for thinking that, with one important exception, third-party forgiveness is impossible, inasmuch as forgiveness is the prerogative or right of the victim of wrong. Another difference is that a central idea in the legal and political concept of pardon is that of an offer that must be accepted in order to accomplish its partial or complete end, such as mitigation of a criminal punishment via commutation of a prison sentence (Bingham, 2009). Although on some views forgiveness is also an offer, especially where reconciliation between a victim and wrongdoer is attempted (Tombs, 2006), the main sense of forgiveness seems not to involve the idea of an offer at all, let alone an offer that must be accepted by the wrongdoer in order for forgiveness to occur and accomplish at least some of its ends, for example to discharge one's duty to forgive others as commanded by God, or to move beyond a potentially paralyzing negative emotion. Moreover, legal or political pardons by their nature reduce or even eliminate punishment, whereas forgiveness need not affect punishment in any way. Forgiveness also admits of an entirely self-referential variety (i.e. self-forgiveness), whereas official acts of self-pardoning are at best controversial, and possibly without legal or political justification. These considerations thus suggest that despite some similarities, pardon and forgiveness are significantly different notions.

3.2 Condonation

Forgiveness is also closely related to yet importantly distinct from such morally questionable behavior as colluding in evil by condoning or otherwise tolerating it (Kolnai, 1973). Because condoning and other forms of tolerating wrongdoing may involve transcending negative emotions caused by having been wronged, making exceptions to moral rules, or re-accepting a wrongdoer in the wake of a relationship compromising wrong, condonation may to this extent resemble the standard conception of forgiveness. Moreover, in its definition of condonation the OED asserts that to condone is to “forgive or overlook (an offense) so as to treat it as nonexistent.” It is tempting to gloss this as a kind of forgiveness in which the wrong done is excused, for no good reason, by the person condoning it. But this would be to ignore the central idea that condoning wrongdoing is a form of accepting or endorsing it, which seems not to be an element of forgiveness. This is made clear in Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1986) definition of condonation as “pardon of an offense; voluntary overlooking or implied forgiveness of an offense by treating the offender as if it had not been committed.” The phrase “as if it had not been committed” suggests that a condoner willfully turns a blind eye to that which he knows or at least believes is wrong. To overlook a wrong as if it does not exist is a form of tolerating it, which is clearly not the same as recognizing that it is excused. Moreover, Leo Zaibert (2009A, 2012) has argued that forgiveness is the deliberate refusal to punish (for a contrary view see Warmke, 2011, 2013) and that it may be silent, not communicated in any way to the wrongdoer, and that (by implication) neither of these constitutes acquiescing in or condoning wrongdoing. Thus, condoning wrongdoing is not the same as forgiving it.

4. Forgiveness as a Process of Overcoming Anger

Since Bishop Butler's well known sermons on resentment and forgiveness (Butler, 1846), forgiveness has been regarded by many philosophers as a process of overcoming resentment, a uniquely personal form of anger occasioned by having been injured or wronged (French, 1982; McGary, 1989). What is uniquely personal about resentment is that it seems to be an exclusively self-regarding form of anger, aroused on behalf of or in defense of the self, whereas other forms of anger, such as indignation or scorn, may be aroused on behalf of oneself or for the sake of others (Hughes, 2001). In his taxonomy of anger, Butler distinguishes “hasty and sudden” anger, a kind of instinctive anger linked to self-preservation, from “settled and deliberate” anger, which is anger partly constituted by beliefs or other cognitions about how we are perceived and treated by others (Butler, 1846). Butler's notion of resentment is thus what Strawson (1974) referred to as a “reactive attitude,” or personal feelings that depend upon or involve our beliefs about the intentions, attitudes, and actions of others towards us. Resentment is a paradigmatic reactive attitude inasmuch as it involves taking offense, umbrage, or exception to the deeds and intentions of others, which in turn typically presuppose such moral judgments about other people as that they are moral agents who are responsible for their behavior. In his refinement of Butler's view, Jeffrie Murphy defines forgiveness as “the principled overcoming of feelings of resentment that are naturally (and perhaps properly) directed toward a person who has done one a moral injury” (Murphy, 2001). Note that this definition goes beyond Butler's in requiring that the resentment transcended in forgiveness be overcome for a moral reason, and that the behavior which occasions it be understood as the action of a moral agent who may be held accountable for what he does. Murphy's emphasis on the principled overcoming of resentment helps distinguish forgiveness proper from other modes of transcending resentment, such as its dissipating as a consequence of forgetting the wrong that caused it; or silencing it by an act of will in order to maintain a relationship with a wrongdoer. Murphy and others who agree with Butler's general conception have also suggested that forgiveness may involve overcoming other “retributive emotions” like indignation, contempt, or hatred (Murphy and Hampton, 1988). Some recent accounts of interpersonal forgiveness deny that Butler's view involves overcoming resentment simplicitur and that, instead, it requires forswearing a particular type of resentment (Garcia, 2011) or a form of vengeful anger linked to a desire for revenge (Konstan, 2010; Griswold, 2011). Other philosophers have argued that forgiveness includes overcoming all negative feelings caused by and directed towards a perceived wrongdoer, including feelings of disappointment and sadness (Richards, 1988; Narayan, 1997). Since it is empirically true that some people react to injury with reactive attitudes that are not forms of anger at all, it should be borne in mind that not all forgiveness, even as a process of overcoming negative reactive attitudes, involves angry reactive attitudes. However, because resentment, inasmuch as it involves the belief that we have been personally wronged by another, is a paradigmatic case of the sort of reactive attitudes occasioned by having been wronged, overcoming that reactive attitude for moral reasons seems to be a canonical instance of forgiveness.
The aforementioned general account of forgiveness is sometimes supplemented by the requirement that in overcoming negative feelings caused by having been wronged a forgiver must also renounce or modify her critical judgments of the wrongdoer. This raises questions about the nature of the cognitions typically involved in responses to having been wronged. The standard view of forgiveness as a process of overcoming moral anger or other unhappy reactive attitudes suggests that people who have been wronged characteristically form judgments about those who wrong them, such as that they deserve to be punished, can no longer be trusted, or have unjustifiably failed to uphold their end of a relationship. On some views, then, forgiveness as a process involves not only overcoming negative reactive attitudes caused by and directed at a wrongdoer, it also involves revising, modifying, or abandoning such critical moral judgments about a wrongdoer, sometimes in the light of such considerations as whether he or she deserves another chance, or whether mercy, compassion, or other considerations seem to warrant forgiveness.

But there is disagreement over this component of forgiveness. Some writers suggest that such cognitive alterations are a necessary prelude or accompaniment to successfully eliminating or at least diminishing the force of the reactive attitudes typical of having been wronged. This seems plausible if such attitudes are partly constituted by those cognitions or beliefs, in which case one might expect a change in them to yield a corresponding change of heart regarding the wrongdoer. The reality that changes in beliefs need not necessarily lead to changes in feelings qualifies this view. Ghandi's saying, “hate the sin, love the sinner,” contradicts it, directing such reactive attitudes as hatred toward the wrongful act, not toward the person who committed it. But this, too, seems compatible with retaining negative moral judgments of the agent, such as that he has committed a culpable wrong for which he ought to be punished, a belief one might hold while simultaneously loving the offender. The parable of the Prodigal Son whose father forgives him but does not give up his judgment of his son's prodigality is an example (Luke 15: 1–32). And Butler's view that forgiveness involves overcoming resentment (of some sort) or vengeful anger directed at a wrongdoer does not include revising one's critical judgments of wrongdoers. Thus, while some writers maintain that forgiveness requires a complete overcoming of negative emotions and judgments aimed at or about a wrongdoer, others claim that retaining negative moral judgments and feelings about a wrongdoer are compatible with forgiveness. Whether retaining such convictions but in a way that does not constitute “holding it against” the wrongdoer is enough for forgiveness, or whether forgiving yet punishing a wrongdoer are compatible actions, particularly if punishing a wrongdoer just is a way of holding the wrong against him, remain a matter of contention (Radzik, 2008; Zaibert,2009A). Whether forgiveness may be unconditional and unilateral, dependent in no way on whether wrongdoers acknowledge having caused wrong, are apologetic or punished for it, show remorse or regret, or attempt to atone for it, a view sometimes linked to the Christian idea that our own forgiveness by God depends only on our forgiving others their wrongs, is also a debated issue about the nature of forgiveness.
Other views diverge in more radical ways from Butler's and derivative conceptions of forgiveness as a process of overcoming disagreeable or unhappy reactive attitudes for moral reasons, inasmuch as they ground forgiveness in dispositions or character traits. In the Christian tradition forgiveness is often aligned to such virtues as love and compassion, which are regarded as virtues that implicate relatively abiding dispositions or characterological tendencies, and some recent philosophical analyses have treated forgiveness or “forgivingness” as a relatively stable and durable trait that is enacted over a period of time by particular acts of forgiveness (Roberts, 1995). It is interesting to note in this connection both the OED's aforementioned sense of ‘forgivable’ as a condition which merits forgiveness, as well as Butler's typology of anger which acknowledges a third type that includes such stable postures as irritability, sullenness, or churlishness, which link anger more to relatively fixed character traits than to instincts, cognitions, or actions. Both forgivingness and contrary characteristics suggest a distinction between dispositional and episodic forgiveness, and another between forgiveness as a trait and forgiveness as an act. As I have characterized them, Butler's and similar views articulate a conception of forgiveness as a process, which may involve dispositions or actions, the aim of which is to overcome episodic moral reactive attitudes occasioned by what others do to us, rather than a response to characterological shortcomings in others that may engender that wrongful behavior. The notion of forgiving others for what they are (Macalaster, 2008) or, perhaps, for what they were, if it is possible to forgive the dead, as opposed to what they do is not, it seems, part of this mainstream philosophical conception of forgiveness.
It bears noting, as well, that there may even be a kind of forgiving as forgetting, in the sense that people sometimes discover that the resentment they harbor towards a wrongdoer has disappeared, not because they have done anything to transcend it, but simply because it has dissipated over time. It is not unusual for such people to assert that they have come to realize that they have forgiven an offender, after all. This, too, is a process of overcoming resentment, though it is not one directed willfully and for moral reasons by wronged parties.
And so from Butler we get the core notion that forgiveness is a complex affective and cognitive reaction to having been wronged by others. This response typically involves a process of overcoming angry or otherwise unhappy moral reactive attitudes directed toward a perceived wrongdoer. Refinements to this view add that overcoming moral anger or other relevant reactive attitudes must be tendered for moral reasons, and that forgiveness perhaps includes rejecting or modifying associated judgments of the wrongdoer such that the victim no longer holds the wrong against the wrongdoer, as would be the case were the victim to bear a grudge.
In cases of serious injury or wrongdoing, forgiveness often involves a struggle on the part of the forgiver to overcome or renounce strong reactive emotions such as resentment or hatred of the wrongdoer. Such struggles may be time consuming, and admit of degrees of success. It thus makes sense to say that a victim of wrong may be trying to forgive an offender, is making progress towards doing so, has partially forgiven the wrongdoer, and so forth. On this approach, forgiveness involves volitions or efforts of will, as when a victim of wrong tries to overcome angry emotions caused by having been wronged, or refrains from chastising or punishing a wrongdoer, in so doing demonstrating a willingness to let bygones be bygones. Self-control and strength of will are involved, also, in our efforts to manage our tempers such that we do not hold grudges against those who wrong us. Forgiveness as a process of overcoming strong negative emotions may thus be seen as an accomplishment, one that requires moral and psychological resources to effect the relevant emotional or attitudinal transformation, which resources may be undermined by being devastatingly wronged (Tombs, 2008).

Even when responding to wrongs involves overcoming negative reactive attitudes, it is important to observe that since not all injuries or wrongs are serious, forgiveness does not always involve a struggle or much effort at all to overcome angry emotions or renounce negative moral judgments of others. Some forgiveness, in particular the forgiveness accomplished by such performative utterances as “don't mention it,” “forget about it,” or “I forgive you,” reflects the fact that injuries may be relatively trivial and engender no, or at most weak, negative reactive attitudes. The ease with which a victim of a trivial wrong typically forgives the wrongdoer is more aptly viewed as anact of forgiveness, rather than as a process that takes time or effort. Much like waiving a financial debt, such forgiving may be viewed as a simple and straightforward transaction or exchange. This distinction is reflected in the two main senses of the Hebrew and Greek words translated as “forgive” found in the Bible, one of which refers to the annulling of financial debts, and the other to re-establishing personal relationships that have been disrupted by wrongdoing (Metzger and Coogan, 1993).

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Common Cognates of Forgiveness

3.1 Pardon

3.2 Condonation

4. Forgiveness as a Process of Overcoming Anger

Common Cognates of Forgiveness :: تعاليق

Common Cognates of Forgiveness

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