Abstract
Making apologies is one of the ways that governments have attempted to deal with past injustices. However, political apologies are often criticised for being meaningless or morally suspect. I will argue that an apology signals the commitment of those who make it, sponsor it and support it to a national undertaking, and whether we can regard an apology as meaningful depends on our reasons for thinking that this undertaking has been initiated and will continue. To defend political apologies from moral criticisms it is necessary to address questions about responsibility: whether citizens can and should take responsibility for past injustices, including injustices of the historical past. The answer to these questions, I will argue, requires an account of the responsibilities entailed in being a citizen of an intergenerational polity.
Keywords
Starting in the 1970s as a response to struggles of indigenous peoples for the redress of past injustices, accelerating after the end of the Cold War when the unfreezing of political relations released a flood of historical grievances, and encouraged by the example of truth and reconciliation processes, governments and other official bodies have been turning to acts of reconciliation and reparation as a way of dealing with demands motivated by historical wrongs. These attempts to deal with the past and repair relationships have taken the form of reconciliation, return of possessions, revival of old treaties, payment of compensation – and in many cases, official acts of apology. 1
Apologies can serve many purposes. They can defuse grievances, help to end conflict and bring about reconciliation; they can make it possible to settle a dispute. They can have a positive psychological effect on both apologizers and those to whom apologies are made. They can force those who have done wrong to face up to their past. They can provide comfort and closure for those who have suffered wrongs, allowing them to put the past behind them and move into the future. They can improve relationships or make peaceful co-existence possible. Apologies, says Lazare, ‘have the power to heal humiliations and grudges, remove the desire for vengeance and generate forgiveness on the part of the offended parties’ (Lazare, 2004: 5).
These good effects provide an explanation for why political leaders and officials make use of the language of apology when they are faced with people who demand an accounting for past wrongs. But the desire of those who apologize to produce favourable effects also gives rise to common criticisms of political apologies. Some critics complain that apologies are a cheap way of wriggling out of obligations of reparation; others think that they are bound to be insincere or meaningless – something that is done merely to achieve a political end. Behind many of these criticisms is the suggestion that political apologies, by their nature, are not likely to be meaningful or trustworthy. But if people to whom an apology is addressed distrust the apologizer’s intentions or commitment, the good effects that apologies are supposed to achieve become far less likely. A bad or suspect apology can do more harm than good.
Criticisms of political apologies – in particular, doubts about their sincerity, validity or meaningfulness – are the motivation for this enquiry. A defence of political apology cannot concern itself merely with the political purposes behind these acts. It must consider whether a political apology can be meaningful and whether it satisfies the moral requirements that are the legitimate expectation of those to whom an apology is made. This investigation will therefore concentrate on answering questions about the meaning of political apologies and what they presuppose concerning responsibilities and entitlements. Can apology, which we generally think of as a personal act, be translated into the political arena without loss of meaning? Who is the agent who gives a political apology and what can an apology from such an agent mean – if anything much at all? In this investigation I will concentrate on apologies offered by political representatives to victims of injustice, survivors, or victimized groups. However, my investigation is also relevant to apologies made by corporations, religious organizations and other collective agents.
There are two basic criticisms of political apology. The first is conceptual: that political apologies are not real apologies because their political purpose or their institutional nature puts them outside the bounds of what we can regard as a real apology. The second criticism is moral: that political apologies are an inappropriate response to the wrong done. To defend political apologies from the conceptual criticism it is necessary not only to give an account of what they mean but also to explain how a political agent can make an apology. Who is this agent: the state? the nation? And how can such collective entities be apologetic? I will argue that an apology signals the commitment of those who make it, sponsor it and support it to a national undertaking, and whether we can regard an apology as meaningful depends on our reasons for thinking that this undertaking has been initiated and will continue. To defend political apologies from moral criticism it is necessary to address questions about responsibility: whether citizens can and should take responsibility for past injustices, including injustices of the historical past. The answer to these questions, I will argue, requires an account of the responsibilities entailed in being a citizen of an intergenerational polity.
Personal and Political Apologies
An obvious objection to political apologies is that their political purpose prevents them from counting as true apologies. This criticism goes beyond the cynicism that attaches to those apologies that are clearly motivated by political or self-interested objectives. A political context, according to the criticism, is enough to rule them out from being true apologies. According to some conceptions of politics, this is obviously so. If all of the actions of political agents must be understood as serving the interests of their state or political faction or their own political ambitions, then no apparent apology that they might offer could count as genuine. But this interpretation of political action seems perverse and contrary to common observation. A political apology will have a number of motivations and some of them will have to do with the political pressures and interests that leaders are responding to. But this doesn’t exclude the possibility that a leader or official is also apologizing because he or she thinks that an apology is morally required. The co-existence of political motivations does not by itself prevent a political apology from being genuine – any more than the desire to re-establish a friendship prevents a personal apology from being genuine.
Moreover, it is not difficult to point to examples of political apology that have all the appearance of being genuine. In 2008 Kevin Rudd, then Prime Minister of Australia, apologized in a special session of Parliament to Aborigines who had been the victims of child removal policies of previous governments (Rudd, 2008). Some of the victims and their survivors were in attendance; funds had been provided by the government and by public subscription so that they could attend. The apology was seconded by the Leader of the Opposition and was endorsed unanimously by members of Parliament. It was witnessed and applauded by many Australians who watched it on television or on screens set up in public places. The Prime Minister pledged to undo the disadvantages that Aborigines suffered because of past injustices and after the speech was over, Parliament was adjourned so that he and other members of Parliament could shake hands with and talk to those who had attended. The Aborigines who were the recipients of the apology and many of those who witnessed it were clearly moved by the occasion and did not doubt that the apology was genuine, whatever its political background and motivation. Why then should anyone deny that it satisfied whatever standards are required in order to be a real apology?
Not everyone in Australia supported apology. A few parliamentarians showed their opposition by not voting. In the Australian population there were undoubtedly citizens, including Aboriginal citizens, who either did not want an apology or who were indifferent to its occurrence. Does lack of unanimity undermine an attempt to make an official apology? The obvious response is to appeal to the consequences of democratic decision-making. The apology was endorsed by an overwhelming majority of the people’s representatives; the minority who didn’t want apology were outvoted. The apology was a proper act of state. But this answer is not entirely satisfactory. Suppose it were discovered by a public opinion poll that most Australians did not favour apology? Or that they did at the time it was made but became less supportive later on? Or suppose that some parliamentarians voted for it for purely pragmatic reasons. These possibilities raise conceptual questions: about the conditions an apology needs to satisfy in order to be genuine and whether an official apology can ever meet these conditions.
Those philosophers and others who provide an analysis of apology present it as an act between a person who did wrong and his or her victim. For example, Gill says that a person truly apologizes to the victim for her wrongdoing if and only if she acknowledges that she committed an inappropriate act, takes responsibility for it, feels remorse for the deed and undertakes to avoid similar transgressions in the future (Gill, 2000). Bovens thinks that a genuine apology requires that the apologizer acknowledges that she did wrong, that she has an appropriate attitude of remorse or sympathy for the victim that predisposes her to make reparation for the harm that she has done (Bovens, 2008). Apology, in other words, is presented as a personal act – something given by a wrongdoer to his victim and requiring an appropriate attitude and admission of guilt. Some of those who investigate apology allow that they are sometimes given for the acts of others (for example, by parents for the behaviour of their children) and Lazare includes as ‘parties’ to apologies, families, businesses, nations, ethnic groups and races as well as individuals (Lazare, 2004: 23). But so long as the paradigm case of an apology consists of an individual expressing remorse for something that he did to his victim, apologies for the deeds of others or apologies of a collective are problematic and difficult to interpret. How can a collective like a state or nation be remorseful? How can it or its people take responsibility for past wrongs? What do its apologies mean?
Political apologies, as in the case of Rudd’s apology, are almost always offered by people who had nothing to do with the injustices being apologized for. Their apologies are supposed to be interpreted as apologies of state. A state is organized in such a way that it can act as an agent and take responsibility for its deeds. But can it apologize? If remorse is a necessary property of an apology, then we need to explain how a state can feel remorse. If we think of a state as consisting of institutions of government, then it is difficult to understand how such an impersonal, bloodless entity can be remorseful. Perhaps the condition might be met if public officials feel remorseful. But the worst wrongs committed by a state transcend the actions and responsibilities of particular officials and their remorse, however genuine, cannot answer to the nature of the wrong. If, on the other hand, a state is conceived as a nation – that is, as a collection of citizens who are united by political institutions and in whose name and by whose authority the wrongs were done, then it is easier to understand how a state can be remorseful. It feels remorse if its citizens do. But now we have to wonder how many of them have to be remorseful if the apology is to be legitimate, and we also have to deal with questions about collective responsibility. Should remorse be expected of a citizen who had nothing to do with the injustice?
Both of these conceptions of the state run into further difficulties when we consider what sort of things a state can apologize for. A state’s political and legal institutions are organized in such a way as to make it capable of taking responsibility for the actions of officials who carry out their designated roles. But the injustices for which a state, so conceived, can be blamed are more limited than supporters of apology are generally willing to acknowledge. Kershnar (2002: 263) makes this point when he argues that the United States’ federal government cannot be expected to make reparation for slavery because it had little or no responsibility for the existence or maintenance of slavery. What a state can be held responsible for is limited by its function and power. Many of the wrongs done to Aborigines in Australia or black people in America were done or supported by ordinary citizens or local officials acting on their own initiative, sometimes in defiance of federal government policies. If most people in a democracy engage in, support or tolerate an injustice, then they will make it hard for their government to go against their will. But even if the state does bear some responsibility, any apologies it might offer for injustices that had popular support do not go to the heart of the matter. The worst wrongs, and thus the ones for which apology is most needed, are not merely the result of unjust government policies or the immoral behaviour of officials. They are embedded in social relations and manifested in the everyday actions and attitudes of citizens.
There is a deeper philosophical issue. What a state is, what kind of agency it has and what it can take responsibility for depends ultimately on the will of its leaders and citizens: what they want or are prepared to tolerate. According to liberal political philosophy, the agency of the state, as well as its particular actions, are supposed to be justified by reference to the interests and needs of its citizens. If this requirement is taken seriously, then a justification of political apology requires not merely an appeal to the responsibility of a state for an injustice but an explanation of why the people of a state should support the taking of such a responsibility. Given that this is so, and keeping in mind that many injustices for which apologies are made are not merely injustices committed by political leaders or state institutions, we need a different conception of the agent that is responsible for political apologies. The obvious candidate is the state conceived as a nation, consisting not only of its institutions but also of its people. Making a political apology, like other forms of reparation, is a collective responsibility of the people of a nation.
However, this reasonable conclusion creates difficulties that we have already encountered. The responsibilities of state institutions are reasonably clear; but it is not so easy to determine what a nation is responsible for or what is required for it to make a proper apology. A nation cannot be expected to take responsibility for all of the acts of its citizens. Does an injustice become a national matter when most of its citizens are implicated in one way or another? Are the sins of a majority sufficient? Or is it enough that a majority of citizens fail to act in order to prevent injustices done by a minority? What if some citizens remain unrepentant or are disposed to continue the unjust acts? An apology, according to all accounts, is supposed to carry with it a commitment to respectful behaviour in the future – at least not to repeat or continue the wrongs for which the apology is given. But in the contexts in which they are often given, political apologies present us with a paradox. Apology is supposed to be a remedy for the lack of trust and alienation that is likely to be felt by those who have been subject to injustice. It is supposed to clear the ground for better political and social relationships. But if those to whom an apology is given have reason for distrusting the attitudes and intentions of their fellow citizens they will also have reason to suspect that the apology does not signify a commitment to just treatment in the future. So it seems that the situations in which apology is most called for and most needed are those in which it is least likely to be successful.
If a political apology must be conceived as a collective act that is supposed to make a difference to how citizens as well as officials behave, then its genuineness depends critically on what leaders and citizens do before and after the ceremony in which the act is performed. A political apology is not just the act itself. A political and social process is needed to render the words meaningful. Apology requires preparation: debates and discussions that encourage the people of the nation to understand why an apology is necessary and what it should mean to their future relations with those to whom it will be given. An apology should aim to be an event inscribed in the history books, a watershed in the history of the nation that its citizens take as a reference point for their actions. It should be accompanied by other acts of contrition – by apologies or other symbolic acts from prominent individuals and groups that were implicated in the injustice. Policies should be initiated within government institutions to remedy the injustice for which the apology is being made. The paradox of political apology can only be avoided by actions that demonstrate that an apology expresses a national commitment, particularly of the groups that were perpetrators or supporters of injustice. There will always be some people who refuse to go along with this commitment, but if the process surrounding apology is successfully carried out, they will be regarded by victims, as well as other citizens, as recalcitrant individuals who are out of step with the sentiment of the nation. 2
Apology and Responsibility
Giving an apology and making the commitments that apology requires are best understood as a collective responsibility of the people of a nation or the part of the nation that was responsible for injustice. But this account of political apology gives rise to another problem. Collective responsibility, as it is usually conceived, is the shared responsibility of individuals acting as members of a collective. Individuals can share responsibility for the wrongdoing of their collective by helping to inflict it, by supporting the injustices of others or, at least, by failing to oppose what their fellows are doing. I have argued that many political apologies have to be conceived as national apologies because ordinary citizens share responsibility for the injustice. But there are bound to be people in the nation who had nothing to do with the wrong and perhaps did what they could to fight against it. They have no reason to accept any responsibility, and thus, it seems, have no reason to apologize.
The problem of responsibility is even more obvious when the wrong in question is a historical wrong: when it happened before the birth or coming to maturity of present citizens. How can members of a nation meaningfully offer an apology for wrongs that they didn’t commit or support and couldn’t have prevented? This is not a mere philosopher’s quibble. It is an objection that is frequently made by those who oppose the giving of national apologies. John Howard, the Prime Minister of a previous Australian Government, refused to offer an apology to Aborigines on the grounds that present citizens should not be expected to take responsibility for what was done by people of the past. In the debate about whether Britain ought to apologize for the slave trade, the objection of non-responsibility was frequently voiced (Cunningham, 2008).
Theories of collective responsibility generally insist that people share responsibility only for what they had the power to effect. Apologies require the taking of responsibility for a wrong done in the past and they also entail a commitment to avoid wrongdoing in the future. Standard theories of collective responsibility thus threaten the practice of political apology in two ways. First of all, by putting in doubt the ability of members of collectives to apologize for what their predecessors did, and secondly by putting in doubt their ability to make commitments that their successors must honour. There are two ways of dealing with this problem. The first is to put forward a deflationary account of political apology that does not require either commitments or the taking of responsibility. The second is to make a case for saying that people who are not implicated in a wrong can nevertheless be required to take responsibility for it. Let us examine each of these strategies in turn.
A number of writers on apology point out that when people say that they are sorry they are sometimes merely expressing a regret that a bad thing occurred or that people were hurt. Political apologies, at least those about historical wrongs, might be similarly interpreted as expressions of regret that a wrong was done. Being regretful or sympathetic doesn’t require the taking of responsibility and it need not involve a commitment to any future course of action. 3 Expressing regret may also have some of the good effects that apology often produces. Acknowledging that a wrong happened may provide recognition and closure for those who care about what their forebears suffered.
However, the deflationary account fails to answer to what victims and their supporters expect from an apology. This is why those concerned with the moral value of apology regard the use of ‘sorry’ to express regret or sympathy as a poor excuse for a real apology. 4 The unsatisfactory nature of the deflationary interpretation of apology is no less obvious in political contexts. Howard was willing to express regret for wrongs done to Aborigines but refused an apology. This response was regarded as inadequate by Aborigines and their supporters.
If a deflationary account of apology is inadequate then a defence of political apology must explain how members of a nation can be required to take responsibility for an injustice that they did not themselves commit. There are two common suggestions about how to do this: to point out how identity with their nation causes, or ought to cause, people to feel shame for what their predecessors did; and to insist that present people owe something to the victims of injustice or their heirs because they have benefited from the unjust deeds of their national predecessors (Lazare, 2004: 41–42).
As a justification for reparative responsibilities, both of these reasons are problematic. Not all people identify with their nation – at least not in a way that causes them to take responsibility for past misdeeds. Injustices may not create benefits – or these benefits may extend to heirs of victims and to outsiders as well as to heirs of perpetrators. But the most serious difficulty is that they do not seem to be the right sort of reasons for making an apology. If we identify with our nation we might feel shame when contemplating the deeds of our forebears, but is shame a proper motivation for an apology? An expression of regret seems more appropriate. Nor does apology for a past injustice seem to be the right response to being the involuntary recipient of ill-gotten gains. A true apology, as many people have pointed out, requires the taking of responsibility for an injustice; it is not merely an expression of shame for being the member of a group that did wrong or a matter of being sorry that we have benefited from an injustice. However, both of these attempts to provide a basis for political apologies make an important contribution to the solution of the problem of responsibility. The first emphasizes that a nation is an intergenerational association in which present members are predisposed to regard themselves as having a connection to people of the past. The second suggests that injustices and responsibilities for them can be intergenerational. In the next section I will explain how these insights can be used to interpret and justify political apologies.
Citizenship and Responsibility
A true apology requires taking responsibility for a wrong and a commitment to just behaviour in the future. How can political apologies satisfy these requirements when not all, and perhaps none, of the citizens of a nation are implicated in the wrong and when the future depends on what their political successors choose to do? My strategy for answering this question is, first of all, to explain what accepting responsibility means in an intergenerational political society and why citizens should accept it; secondly, to provide an interpretation of a political apology that explains what it means in the context of these intergenerational relationships; and thirdly, to explain why the language of apology is suited to the role that it plays in these relationships.
A nation state is an intergenerational association in which members of each generation assume the task of maintaining and repairing institutions and practices that they have reason to value and passing them on to their successors. Among their responsibilities is to maintain institutions of justice and the practices that are intrinsic to them and this requires that they fulfil commitments made by their predecessors (providing that these commitments are judged to be just and not unreasonable) and to make recompense for failures of their predecessors to be just. The agency of the state – its ability to keep its commitments and to be worthy of trust – depends on the maintenance of such practices, and the agency of the state is underwritten by the willingness of citizens to maintain them: that is, on their acceptance of these practices and the sacrifices they require as a responsibility of citizenship. Why they ought to accept this responsibility – what moral or pragmatic reasons they have for doing so – has been explained by philosophers in various ways. Some think that this acceptance follows from their identity with the nation as an intergenerational association; some think that it is best justified by a moral commitment to justice and just institutions; others prefer a pragmatic justification in terms of the need of citizens for a state that can function as a reliable agent. My own preference is for a view of state agency that rests on citizens as individuals with lifetime-transcending interests who are predisposed to make commitments, demands and promises that they believe that their successors ought to fulfil, and who need a political framework that underwrites intergenerational relationships (Thompson, 2007). But all of these justifications insist that citizens have reason to accept intergenerational responsibilities, whatever disagreements and doubts they may sometimes have about the sacrifices that are required of them. Citizens have obligations to future generations, and they also have a duty to keep the commitments and repair the injustices of their predecessors. This is what taking responsibility means in an intergenerational polity.
A national apology is best understood as a symbolic act, performed by someone who is recognized as the representative of the nation; one that signals that the citizens of the nation take responsibility for an injustice and commit themselves to repair or reparation and to ensuring that it will never be repeated in the future. Citizens, including those who did no wrong, can and should take this responsibility because of the requirements of their membership in an intergenerational society. As citizens they have responsibilities in respect to the past. They can commit their successors to ensuring that the injustice is not repeated because a nation as an intergenerational polity is entitled, and sometimes required, to make intergenerational commitments. Present members cannot, of course, ensure that their successors will fulfil these commitments. But they can educate the young to accept their responsibilities, and by making an apology a historical reference point – by investing it with significance – they can make it more likely that a commitment will be fulfilled.
The Semantics of Political Apology
Is apology an appropriate expression for an act that signals the responsibility that citizens are supposed to assume? One reason for doubt comes from accounts that put so much weight on apology understood as an expression of remorse for a wrong for which the apologizer is guilty. A national apology cannot be interpreted as either an expression of remorse or as an admission of guilt. Guilt may belong to some of its citizens – those who were implicated in the wrong or who failed to do anything to prevent it. These individuals may have reason to apologize to those whom they harmed. However, it is inappropriate to attribute guilt to a nation. Indeed doing so encourages the morally reprehensible tendency to regard everyone in the nation as forever tainted by an injustice done by some of its members. But if a national apology is not an expression of remorse or acceptance of guilt, then how can it be a true apology?
This objection turns out to rest on a semantic decision. If we take personal apology as a paradigm case of apology – as do so many of those who have discussed apology – and insist that a true apology must have the features of such apologies, then any apology that fails to have them becomes a doubtful case. A political apology is not the same as a personal apology. But like a personal apology, taking responsibility for a wrong and making a commitment to avoid similar wrongs in the future are central to it. If we take these features to be central to apology, then a political apology becomes as good an example as a personal one.
However, ‘taking responsibility’ can mean a number of things. Miller (2007: 83–86) makes a distinction between outcome responsibility: the responsibility that comes from being causally responsible for an injustice; and the remedial responsibility of those who are in the position to do something about an injustice. If the responsibility of people of a polity has to do with their joint ability to address the wrongs done by present and past generations, then it seems that they are being asked to assume remedial responsibility. But apology is surely only appropriate from those who bear outcome responsibility.
However, Miller’s distinction does not cover all the ways in which people can be held responsible. Remedial responsibility, according to his account, is something that anyone who is in the position to remedy a wrong can acquire. But citizens of a nation have a remedial responsibility because of their moral and political relationship to past and future generations. They are obliged to take responsibility because they are participants in intergenerational political relationships that impose obligations on them, and repairing past wrongs is one of the things that they are required to do. It is not enough for them simply to pledge to do right in the future. They have to repudiate the wrongs of the past, make this repudiation into something of national significance and thus a reference point for future generations. They have to act as present representatives of an intergenerational polity. In doing so it is natural and appropriate for them to reach for the language of apology.
Conclusion
This paper is a defence of political apologies as national apologies. But it is a defence that sees them as different in important respects from personal apologies. They do not involve an acceptance of outcome responsibility by the individuals who did wrong (since many individuals in the nation are not themselves culpable); they are therefore not expressions of remorse for doing these wrongs (although citizens who contemplate the wrongs of the their nation’s past may well feel shame or regret). Because political apologies are different from personal apologies some critics refuse to accept that they are true apologies. I have explained why I think that this is a mistake. Nations can apologize, though the requirements they must satisfy and how their apologies should be understood need to be explained. This I have attempted to do. Whether the apologies that have been given by representatives of nations satisfy these conditions, whether they count as real apologies, and whether they have had the good effects that apology is supposed to achieve are matters that require a different kind of investigation.