Abstract
That there are deep questions to be addressed after harm has been inflicted or injustice perpetrated is well understood by Christian theologians, who have long pondered how it is that the passion, death and resurrection of Christ overcomes or undoes sin. How is it, one might say, that God forgives?
God’s forgiveness, blame and punishment are not usually on the agenda in contemporary philosophical considerations of forgiveness. But that does not mean that these interrogations of the subject are without relevance for those whose focus is theological, ethical or pastoral. As I read Blustein, and other philosophers who explore forgiveness, I ask myself whether their analysis informs my understanding of forgiveness stories of various kinds, including biblical ones and those that attract media attention. I also want to know whether such philosophical analyses help me understand the cultural tension I observe between religious and therapeutic enthusiasm for forgiveness and the scepticism about forgiveness that is more prevalent among those for whom it is ‘justice’ that is more compelling – whether it is social, economic or punitive justice that they seek.
Blustein has now written three books in this general area and is among those who argue that the standard philosophical account of (human) forgiveness is too limited and idealized. In The Moral Demands of Memory (2008), his focus was on the moral complexity of remembering and memorializing. And in Forgiveness and Remembrance (2014), he engaged the moral psychology of forgiveness to show that, when we are subject to wrongdoing, we experience a variety of emotions and that moving on from them is complex both psychologically and ethically. He also made the point that while it is often argued that it is important to remember wrongdoing, compulsive dwelling on it can be problematic. There is some sort of forgetting in forgiveness, he argues, while pointing out that, although an ‘amnesia pill’ would help us forget and therefore drop our resentful feelings, that would not be forgiveness in any meaningful sense.
In Holding Wrongdoers Responsible, Blustein develops his thinking yet further and challenges four widely held and closely connected propositions. These are that anger is ‘the most fitting blame response’ towards wrongdoers; that we should blame wrongdoers; that when we forgive we ‘foreswear or renounce’ our ‘angry blame feelings’; and that in forgiving we develop benevolence towards the wrongdoer for which they should be grateful. In terms of his conclusions regarding forgiveness, he is not persuaded by forgiveness sceptics such as Nietzsche and Nussbaum and he comes to the view that, while there are many cases of forgiveness, those that ‘manifest trust represent forgiveness at its moral best’ (p. 236). This leads me to reflect on the relationship between trust and the theological virtue of hope and to wonder whether any form of forgiveness may be possible in situations where the harm inflicted includes the egregious and repeated abuse of trust: a question that has deep theological undertones and ethical and pastoral urgency.