Other Types of Forgiveness 5.1 Forgiveness as a Virtue

Within Western monotheistic and philosophical traditions forgiveness has often been regarded as a “high” and “difficult” virtue (Scarre, 2004), and its opposite, unwillingness to forgive, as a vice. Yet this poses an immediate problem of interpretation, namely, whether forgiveness is a “high” and “difficult” virtue in the sense that while it is morally laudable it is beyond duty (i.e. supererogatory). Since supererogatory actions are permissible, not obligatory, it follows that a failure to forgive, at least in circumstances where forgiving would be supererogatory, would not, contrary to the aforementioned view, be a vice.
However, widespread and persistent disagreement within moral philosophy both about supererogation and the deontic nature of forgiveness have led to conflicting views on the relation between forgiveness and moral obligation. Some thinkers have argued that forgiveness is a duty (Rashdall, 1924) while others have maintained that, like a gift with no strings attached, forgiveness is utterly gratuitous (Heyd, 1982). It might also be thought that, similar to the duty of charity in Kant's moral system, forgiveness is properly regarded as an imperfect duty. Unlike perfect duties such as the obligation to justice or honesty, imperfect duties allow for agential discretion over when and with respect to whom to discharge the duty. In this way, forgiveness may be located in a system of moral duties that allows for no supererogatory deeds at all. One contemporary virtue-theorteic conception of forgiveness (Haber, 1991) rejects attempts to establish necessary and sufficient conditions of forgiveness, a strategy employed in many conventional accounts, in favor of analyzing the ordinary meanings of the term. This view attempts to establish that forgiveness is among the most important virtues.
In contrast to duty-based approaches to forgiveness, virtue-based perspectives suggest that the overcoming or forswearing of angry reactive attitudes characteristic of forgiveness must be grounded in or expressive of relatively stable and durable dispositions or character traits. On such views forgiveness is a virtue, or is at least closely aligned with one or more of the traditional virtues such as magnanimity or sympathy. Within ancient Greek thought the views of Plato and Aristotle on the relationship between anger and living virtuously are noteworthy, as is the Christian traditions' understanding of forgiveness as love or compassion.

5.1.1 Self-Control and Good Temper

Although forgiveness is not identified as a distinct virtue in Plato's work, the Platonic perspective on anger illuminates the general emotional landscape in which forgiveness has often been located and from which it derives much of its value. In his discussion on the nature of community and individual morality in Book IV of the Republic, Plato makes clear that demonstrations of anger are generally regarded as manifestations of intemperance, which is a vice, and since angry emotions are ever a threat to overwhelm reason and self-control they must be rationally controlled in the name of a harmonious ordering of the different parts of the soul, which is the essence of a morally good person (Republic, 439–442). By contrast, Aristotle, in his discussion of virtues and vices relative to anger in Book IV of the Nicomachean Ethics,explains that “good temper” is the mean between the extremes of irascibility, an excess of anger, and inirascibility, or what he alternatively calls a “nameless” deficiency of anger, and that the good-tempered person “is not revengeful, but rather tends to forgive” (Nicomachean Ethics 1126a1). Aristotle's general perspective on morally appropriate anger is that the person of virtue is “angry at the right things and with the right people, and, further, as he ought, when he ought, and as long as he ought” (Nicomachean Ethics 1125b32). In general, both Plato's and Aristotle's views suggest that anger controlled by or expressive of reason may be seen as manifesting virtue, whereas anger ungoverned by rationality is a vice.

5.1.2 Forgiveness as Love

The traditional Christian perspective on forgiveness contrasts with Butler's and associated views, and with the Greek views on the virtues of self-control and good temper. Konstan (2010) has argued convincingly that neither the common notion of interpersonal forgiveness that derives from Butler's view nor the traditional Christian view of it have roots in the classical Greek and Roman moral conceptual schemes. The Christian perspective on forgiveness, derived from the New Testament, emphasizes the moral necessity of responding to wrongdoing by accepting it, turning the other cheek, and re-embracing the offender in an act of love or compassion; a prominent theme in Jesus' ethic of love (Wolterstorff, 2009). There is disagreement among scholars about whether forgiveness as compassion is unilateral and unconditional, requiring that the victim of wrong forgive wrongdoers irrespective of whether the latter first show signs of repentance (Fiddes, 1989; Jones, 1995), or whether forgiveness is only justifiable if it is premised upon such signs (Swinburne, 1989). One recent interpretation combines forgiveness as love with a conception of forgiveness as absolution, arguing that each is a necessary “moment” of forgiveness in an overall process of reconciliation between wrongdoer and victim (Biggar, 2008). Another account envisions two “aspects” of forgiveness: the act of relinquishing both a claim against a wrongdoer and the negative reactive attitudes occasioned by having been wronged, and the other the act of loving the wrongdoer, viewed as a gift from the victim to the wrongdoer. These two dimensions are expressed in the Epistle to the Ephesians (4:31–32): “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Pettigrove, 2007).
In general, forgiveness as love or compassion is part of a larger narrative that also emphasizes the roles of confession or acknowledgment of one's sins, purification via atonement for them, patience with wrongdoers (Exodus 34. 5–8), and the ultimate mysteriousness of forgiveness (McCord-Adams, 1991). The latter element is linked in this tradition to the idea that each of us is so radically ignorant of what is in another's heart that we can never have the proper moral standing or authority to judge them; a status only God can possess. This is reflected in Hobbes' claim that only God has the absolute authority to forgive or retain human sins since only God knows the heart of man and, thus, whether repentance is real or bogus (Hobbes, 1969). On this view, interpersonal forgiveness is a triadic relation between the wrongdoer, the forgiver, and God. Forgiveness on this view is owed to wrongdoers because God's forgiveness of our sins depends on our forgiving others theirs. The Lord's Prayer involves a petitioner asking God's forgiveness of his sins (Luke 11.4) or his debts (Matthew 6.12) because he has done what is required of him in forgiving others. This view is not straightforwardly egoistic, since forgiveness depends on our inter-connectedness in the sense that we cannot be forgiven our sins, which we inevitably commit, without forgiving others theirs, which they inevitably commit. In this way forgiveness as love directly furthers self-interest through serving the welfare of others.

As noted, this perspective is grounded in an epistemological skepticism that renders the nature and moral value of forgiveness mysterious, especially if the emphasis on our lack of knowledge of other people's hearts and minds is taken to preclude any understanding whatsoever of their behavior. This approach to forgiveness is flatly at odds with other views that assume that we sometimes know a good deal, or at least enough, about other people's motives, intentions, and what is in their heart to ground the propriety of forgiving them for wronging us. In this regard, it is noteworthy that Hobbes' assertion that only God has the “absolute authority” to forgive or retain human sins does not imply that we are completely ignorant of other people's hearts and minds. Instead, we may know enough without knowing everything about other people's psychology to be able reasonably to forgive them the wrongs they do to us, consistently with the idea that God remains the ultimate judge of the value of human forgiveness.
Several virtue-theoretic perspectives contrary both to early Greek notions that anger appropriately mediated by reason is a virtue, and from the Christian view that forgiveness as transcending anger in an act of love is a virtue, should be mentioned. First, Nietzsche's conception of ressentiment as sublimated anger/envy directed at the noble man suggests that both dispositional and episodic anger may be manifestations of weakness or vice, not strength, self-respect, or virtue (Nietzsche, 1967). This is reminiscent of Plutarch's view that anger is like a disease, and extreme or abiding anger such as rage or bitterness are unnatural dispositional states (Plutarch, 2000). We should add to these views the observation that the negative effects of being angrily obsessed by someone's wrongdoing is not by itself a justification for blaming or forgiving him. Put differently, though it might be a bad thing to be angrily obsessed with having been wronged, it does not follow from this that a victim of wrong must forgive the wrongdoer. There are, after all, other ways of transcending or purging recalcitrant anger which might be more appropriate than would be forgiving.
Nietzsche's view suggests the further idea that even episodic angry emotions may be a sign of moral infirmity, insofar as such emotions concede power to others by revealing one's vulnerability to injury. But the truly noble or strong are thought to have, in some sense, no such vulnerabilities. Second, some recent popular views suggest that the uninhibited expression of anger and rage is a good thing, insofar as such venting is cathartic. But on consequentialist grounds alone it seems clear that controlling intense anger rather than its unfettered expression is closer to what a good life requires, for though anger may sometimes be enabling in motivating constructive solutions to personal or political problems, its indiscriminate expression is more likely to be disabling, both for those expressing it and for those around them. This last remark relates to a third disparaging view of angry reactive attitudes, that of the Stoic Seneca, who maintains that all forms of anger are inconsistent with the moral life because they dispose us to cruelty and vengeance, which passions encourage us to see other people as less than fully human. On this view, the person of virtue is one who strives to extirpate anger in all its forms. These three perspectives seem to imply that since anger is never an appropriate emotion, forgiveness cannot be a virtue, at least in the sense of overcoming justified anger

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Other Types of Forgiveness 5.1 Forgiveness as a Virtue

5.1.1 Self-Control and Good Temper

5.1.2 Forgiveness as Love

Other Types of Forgiveness 5.1 Forgiveness as a Virtue :: تعاليق

Other Types of Forgiveness 5.1 Forgiveness as a Virtue

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