Forgiveness and Justice

It is often claimed that in the face of wrongdoing we are frequently torn by conflicting moral intuitions, on the one hand to demand justice from wrongdoers and, on the other, to proffer forgiveness. A correlative thought is that these are alternative responses to wrongdoing, which cannot be melded into one reaction. In his advocacy of truth and reconciliation efforts to address large-scale moral wrongs, Desmond Tutu (1999) makes the point that forgiveness and reconciliation are incompatible with retributive justice, and that the moral value of the former are to be assessed in terms of what he calls “restorative” justice, or the extent to which such public accountings effect healing between perpetrators and victims of wrong. This reflects a growing trend in academic and public policy circles to modify conceptions of justice to incorporate alternatives to retribution as the proper response to wrongdoing, especially wrongdoing in the form of heinous crimes against humanity (Exline, et al., 2003). Despite its appeal, the notion of restorative justice is not entirely clear, for if retributive justice refers merely to punishing wrongs, this sense of justice seems compatible both with forgiveness and reconciliation between wrongdoers and their victims. If instead the concept of retributive justice conveys the idea of getting even with wrongdoers, as in the Old Testament “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” version of justice, then forgiveness and this sort of justice are indeed inconsistent, as is presupposed in the mainstream conception of forgiveness as requiring that a forgiver renounce retributive emotions directed at wrongdoers. Some writers on this topic suggest that forgiveness is not the same as restorative justice, but may be an important component in the larger project of achieving a justice that seeks the moral restoration of those injured in large-scale moral wrongs.
Still, forgiveness has long been regarded as in conflict with justice, if not incompatible with it. Seneca claimed that “Pardon is given to a man who ought to be punished; but a wise man does nothing that he ought not to do, omits to do nothing which he ought to do; therefore he does not remit a punishment which he ought to exact.” Mercy, by contrast, is aligned with justice in the sense that “it declares that those who are let off did not deserve any different treatment” (Seneca, 1998, p.445). Considering the specific circumstances of individual cases is a matter of mercy, “not of forgiveness.” Mercy, unlike pardon and forgiveness, is an exercise of equity, which is an application of justice in light of the unique circumstances of individual cases. By contrast, the prerogative of pardon associated with such political executives as Presidents, Prime Ministers, and other authorities may be viewed, according to Aristotle, as an exercise of equity in the sense that such duly established authorities are commonly thought to use that power as a way of mitigating the rigors of universal standards of justice in their application to particular cases the specifics of which appear to fall beyond the scope of the universal rule (Wolsterstorff, 2009; Bingham, 2009).
Forgiveness in modern ethical theory may also be thought to belong to that realm of morality concerned with goodness rather than with right (justice), as are, pace Kant, benevolence and sympathy, which are regarded as imperfect duties that allow for individual choice over when and with regard to whom to discharge them. From this perspective, forgiveness is not so much directly at odds with justice as it is an element of a different dimension of morality. The debate over the nature and appropriate relation between varieties of justice and forgiveness is ongoing, with much recent philosophical research devoted to these topics.

Forgiveness and Justice

Forgiveness and Justice :: تعاليق

Forgiveness and Justice