Jada Twedt Strabbing Wayne State University This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form will be published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. The Australasian Journal of Philosophy is available online at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Abstract: I argue that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing. A victim is open to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing in virtue of having attitudes and intentions toward the wrongdoer that would reconcile them with respect to the wrongdoing, if the wrongdoer’s attitudes and intentions are what they should be. This view’s main advantage is that, unlike its rivals, it explains the power of forgiveness to effect reconciliation with a repentant wrongdoer. Further, this view reveals and accounts for a previously unnoticed aspect of forgiveness: that we can forgive on different relationship levels – e.g., we can forgive a friend as a friend or as a person. Finally, this view explains the appeal of its rivals by explaining the features that these other views take to constitute forgiveness.

Keywords: forgiveness, reconciliation, resentment, relationships, repentance

Forgiveness is a common human experience. We have all sought forgiveness, and

we have all bestowed it. Yet what is it to forgive? In this paper, I argue that forgiveness

is openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing.

This view’s main advantage is that it explains forgiveness’s power to effect

reconciliation with a repentant wrongdoer. Its main rivals, I will argue, cannot do so.

Further, this view reveals and accounts for a previously unnoticed fact about forgiveness:

that we can forgive on different relationship levels – e.g., we can forgive a friend as a friend

or just as a person. This idea explains why forgiveness only sometimes reconciles a close

relationship with a repentant offender. It therefore accounts for the intuition that we can

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forgive someone without being open to reconciling with her.1 In such cases, I will argue,

the forgiver is not open to reconciling the prior relationship but is open to reconciling on a

lower relationship level.

The paper proceeds as follows. Section 1 sets out intuitive features of forgiveness.

Section 2 argues for the view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the

wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing. Section 3 responds to objections. Finally,

Section 4 demonstrates that the view presented here is superior to three prominent views

of forgiveness.

1. Intuitive Features of Forgiveness

I start by discussing some intuitive features of forgiveness. To be plausible, a view

of forgiveness should, for each intuitive feature, either explain that feature or explain why

we should reject it.

First, forgiving an offender differs from excusing him. When we forgive someone,

we think him responsible for the offense, but when we excuse someone, we think him not

responsible for it.2

Second, forgiveness is at odds with blame and hence with resenting the offender,

as resentment is a form of emotional blame. After all, we think that a victim who blames

or resents an offender has not forgiven him.

1 Other theorists of forgiveness [Murphy 2003; Griswold 2007; Radzik 2009; Pettigrove 2012] discuss connections between forgiveness and reconciliation. However, they posit weaker connections than forgiveness as openness to reconciliation, due primarily to the idea that we can forgive someone without being open to reconciling a close relationship. I discuss this idea below. 2 I use ‘excuses’ broadly to cover conditions that make an agent a non-responsible agent (what are sometimes called “exemptions”) as well as conditions that render a responsible agent not responsible for a particular wrong.

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Third, forgiveness differs from other ways of ceasing to blame a responsible agent,

such as forgetting about the offense or merely moving on from it, which are ways to

extinguish potentially debilitating resentment toward the offender without forgiving her.

Fourth, a victim can forgive without any remorse or apology from the perpetrator

– what I call one-sided forgiveness. Consider the 2015 shooting at Emanuel African

Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The gunman murdered nine

black men and women after sitting with them in a Bible study for nearly an hour. It was a

heinous, racially-motivated crime. Yet at the gunman’s first appearance in court, without

his apologizing or expressing any remorse, family members of the slain powerfully forgave

him. For example, Nadine Collier, who lost her mother, said: ‘You took something very

precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her

again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul’ [Stewart and Pérez-Peña 2015].

These family members were not using the word ‘forgiveness’ incorrectly. They forgave

the gunman. One-sided forgivenesss occurs in secular contexts too. For example, in

therapy we may work toward forgiving parents or ex-partners for offenses for which they

lack remorse.3

Fifth, forgiveness – including one-sided forgiveness – is often virtuous. The

Charleston family members’ one-sided forgiveness is so powerful, I think, because it

displays incredible virtue. Yet even if you disagree about this case, forgiveness for smaller

3 Charles Griswold [2007] rejects the possibility of one-sided forgiveness, claiming that a “baseline condition” for forgiveness is the offender’s “willingness… to take minimal steps to qualify for forgiveness” [2007: 115]. Griswold’s argument for this baseline condition is that offering forgiveness to the unrepentant would likely be interpreted as condoning or as excuse-making, thus compromising the moral point of forgiveness and reducing it to letting go of resentment for other reasons [2007: 121]. This argument is flawed. First, it is at best an argument against expressing one-sided forgiveness to those who might misinterpret it. Further, even if one-sided forgiveness compromises the moral point of forgiveness, which I doubt, the correct conclusion would be that we morally should not forgive one-sidedly, not that we cannot.

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offenses often reflects well on the forgiver. At the very least, an account of forgiveness

should leave open the possibility that forgiveness, including one-sided forgiveness, is often

virtuous.4

Sixth, forgiveness has the power to restore relationships with repentant offenders.

Often, at least in close relationships, we seek forgiveness to repair a breach in the

relationship, and when such forgiveness is granted, the victim and offender are thereby

reconciled.

Yet, seventh, forgiveness does not always reconcile close relationships with

repentant offenders. A victim can forgive an offender without being willing to continue in

a close relationship with her.

2. Forgiveness as Openness to Reconciliation

I claim that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with

respect to the wrongdoing. Specifically, I embrace the following, where Y is putatively a

wrongdoer without an excuse and W is a putative wrong action or pattern of wrong actions:

Openness-to-Reconciliation View: X’s forgiving Y for W is X’s being open

to reconciliation with Y with respect to W.

This view is doubly relational, in that forgiveness happens with respect to a

particular person and a particular action. The latter is important, since we can forgive

4 Pamela Hieronymi [2001] argues that one-sided forgiveness is typically demeaning. Yet her understanding of forgiveness – forgiveness as foreswearing resentment – is itself neutral on this issue.

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someone for some but not all of his wrongs against us. For ease of exposition, I sometimes

simply discuss forgiving someone, taking the particular wrong to be understood from

context. Further, as noted, forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the putative

wrongdoer with respect to the putative wrongdoing, as you can forgive someone whom

you mistakenly take to be a wrongdoer or whom you mistakenly take to have acted

wrongly. In such cases, forgiveness is inappropriate or misplaced, but it is still forgiveness.

For simplicity, I drop this clarification throughout. Finally, as noted above, in forgiving,

you take the putative wrongdoer not to have an excuse.

In the rest of this section, I clarify and argue for the Openness-to-Reconciliation

View.

2.1. Illustrating and clarifying the view

Start with a straightforward case of forgiveness. Imagine a wife who breaks her

promise to her husband not to get drunk at the office Christmas party and who ends up –

just like in the previous year – telling embarrassing stories about him. The next day, the

husband is angry, and the wife is remorseful. She asks for forgiveness. In asking for

forgiveness, the wife acknowledges her responsibility for the wrong and her husband’s

right to be angry. Yet she does more than that, as she could acknowledge her responsibility

without asking for forgiveness. In asking for forgiveness, she seeks reconciliation with her

husband. She recognizes that she has hurt her husband in a way that has harmed their

spousal relationship, and she wants to restore that relationship to good standing.

Now think about the husband’s reaction. Imagine that he remains angry, arms

folded, and says that he is not ready to forgive. He is not yet open to reconciliation with

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her. Their relationship remains harmed. Now imagine instead that he says that he forgives

her. In this case, if his forgiveness is genuine, they are reconciled. Their relationship is

restored to one of spousal good standing. What makes it the case that the husband forgives

his wife, thus reconciling with her? I answer that his forgiving her is his being open to

reconciliation with her, the wrongdoer. They are reconciled because they are both open to

reconciliation – she through repentance and he through forgiveness.5

What does it mean to be ‘open to reconciliation’ with the wrongdoer? In one sense,

the husband could respond to his wife’s apology like this: ‘I am open to reconciling with

you. But first, I want you to make it up to me by letting me splurge on front row concert

tickets.’ Or he could say: ‘I am open to reconciling with you, but first I need time to cool

off.’ I am not using ‘open to reconciliation’ in this sense. As I understand openness to

reconciliation, the first statement amounts to: ‘I will be open to reconciling with you if you

let me splurge on front row concert tickets.’ The second amounts to: ‘I will be open to

reconciling with you after I have time to cool off.’ After all, such statements do not express

forgiveness but rather that forgiveness will be forthcoming if or after a certain condition is

met.

As I understand openness to reconciliation, the husband is open to reconciliation

with his wife in virtue of having attitudes and intentions toward her that restores their

spousal relationship to one of good standing, if the wife’s attitudes and intentions toward

her husband are what they must be for reconciliation (which we can assume is so, given

5 Certain epistemic conditions must also be met for reconciliation to occur – e.g., the husband must reasonably believe that his wife has repented. I will not flesh out these conditions, as they are not required for openness to reconciliation and so are not required for forgiveness on my account. I thank Meghan Sullivan for this point. Second, remember that the husband and wife are reconciled with respect to the wife’s transgression. Other wrongs may be in play (on either side) that require reconciliation. I say more about this below.

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her repentance). We could think of the husband’s being open to reconciliation as his

playing his part in the reconciliation. This plausibly includes having attitudes and

intentions such as trusting her again, desiring to spend time with her again, and intending

to treat her lovingly, while no longer, say, resenting her and intending to avoid her. These

are just examples. The point is that, to be open to reconciliation, the husband must have

the attitudes and intentions – whatever they are – that restore a spousal relationship of good

standing, if the wife has the attitudes and intentions required for that restoration.

Importantly, being open to reconciliation does not require the husband to adjust his

attitudes and intentions toward his wife to exactly what they were before the offense. What

matters is the restoration of a good spousal relationship, and so his attitudes and intentions

may be different as long as they do not prevent that. For example, the husband can

reconcile with his wife while intending to watch her alcohol consumption at work events.

This intention, we can assume, would not prevent a good spousal relationship.

Keep in mind that openness to reconciliation occurs with respect to specific wrongs.

In the example, I worked with just one wrong, the wife’s broken promise (which led to her

telling embarrassing stories). Hence, if the husband is open to reconciliation with his

repentant wife with respect to it, that restores their spousal relationship of good standing.

If the wife had committed two wrongs, such as also lying to him, then the husband may be

open to reconciliation with her with respect to the broken promise but not the lie. In that

case, his attitudes and intentions toward his wife would prevent a good spousal relationship

– e.g., he might resent her and desire to avoid her, but just because of the lie. He would be

open to reconciliation with respect to the broken promise in that, were it not for the lie, his

attitudes and intentions toward his wife would be those required for restoring their

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relationship. The broken promise would therefore not be an obstacle to a good spousal

relationship, and so he and his repentant wife would be reconciled with respect to it.

In general terms, a victim is open to reconciliation with an offender with respect to

an offense in virtue of having attitudes and intentions towards the offender that would

reconcile them with respect to the offense, if the offender’s attitudes and intentions are

what they should be for reconciliation. Therefore, on the Openness-to-Reconciliation

View, the attitudes and intentions required for forgiveness depend upon the relationship at

issue. I will discuss forgiveness in other relationships below.

First, though, notice that openness to reconciliation comes in degrees. The husband

may change some attitudes required for reconciliation but not others, or he may gradually

change attitudes that themselves come in degrees. For example, the husband may at first

desire to talk with his wife but not desire to treat her affectionately, and his resentment

toward her may fade gradually. How should we understand forgiveness as openness to

reconciliation, given that openness to reconciliation comes in degrees?6

There are two options, depending upon whether forgiveness is all-or-nothing or

comes in degrees. The former is only plausible if forgiveness results from a process. On

the view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation, this process would be the process

of changing attitudes and intentions so as to become (fully) open to reconciliation with the

wrongdoer. Thus, if the husband is partially open to reconciliation with his wife, he is in

the process of forgiving her but has not yet forgiven her. If forgiveness instead comes in

degrees, then on the Openness-to-Reconciliation View, the degree of forgiveness

corresponds to the degree of openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer. Therefore, if

6 I thank Amy Seymour and Stephen Grimm for raising this question.

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the husband is partially open to reconciliation with his wife, he has partially but not fully

forgiven her. The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation accommodates either

option.

Finally, the view can accommodate cases in which a victim requires an apology or

penance before forgiving. In such cases, the victim requires an apology or penance before

doing her part in the reconciliation – i.e., before changing her attitudes and intentions to

those required for reconciliation.

2.2. Explaining intuitive features of forgiveness

So far, I have explicated the view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation and

have shown its plausibility in a standard case. I now argue that this view explains the

intuitive features of forgiveness discussed above.

First, this view distinguishes forgiveness from excuse. Being open to reconciliation

with a wrongdoer presumes the wrongdoer’s responsibility for the wrong. After all, if the

wife had an excuse for getting drunk and telling embarrassing stories about her husband –

such as that she reasonably believed that the punch was nonalcoholic and was coerced into

telling the stories – they would need, not reconciliation, but rather an understanding of the

fact that she was not responsible for it. (Of course, such an understanding would not

eliminate all negative emotions. The husband would likely still feel embarrassed, and the

wife would feel badly for her role in that.)

The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation explains why blame, and

resentment in particular, are at odds with forgiveness. Blame generally and resentment in

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particular are negative, even hostile responses to the wrongdoer. As such, they are at odds

with being open to reconciliation with him.

Next, the view distinguishes forgiveness from forgetting about the offense and

moving on from it, as neither forgetting nor moving on requires openness to reconciliation

with the wrongdoer. In fact, these are strategies for letting go of potentially debilitating

resentment without being open to reconciling with the offender.

Further, the view allows one-sided forgiveness, since a victim can be open to

reconciliation with an unrepentant wrongdoer. For example, if the wife in the above

example were unrepentant, the husband could still be open to reconciliation with her by

having the attitudes and intentions required for doing his part in the reconciliation even

though the wife lacks the attitudes and intentions required for doing her part.

One-sided forgiveness reveals another way in which the husband may be open to

reconciliation with his wife but yet have different attitudes and intentions toward her after

the offense. Notice that the appropriateness of having certain attitudes and intentions

within a relationship – such as the intention to confide in someone – depends upon the

other person’s having certain attitudes and intentions – such as the intention to keep a

confidence. As a result, the husband may be open to reconciliation with his wife but yet

lack some attitudes and intentions required for a good spousal relationship, if the

appropriateness of those attitudes and intentions depends upon his wife’s having attitudes

and intentions that, as it happens, she lacks. But in this case, to be open to reconciliation,

the husband must be ready to have those attitudes and intentions once he recognizes that

his wife has adjusted her attitudes and intentions to those that she should have. For

example, the husband may no longer intend to confide in his wife after the offense, but to

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be open to reconciling with her, he must be ready to have this intention again once she

repents and has the attitudes and intentions necessary to be an appropriate confidant.7 This

readiness shows that he has done his part in the reconciliation.

How should we understand ‘readiness’ to have an intention or attitude? Notice that

the husband’s intention to confide in his wife is conditional on her repenting. Conditional

statements of intention are ambiguous between internal interpretations and external ones

[Ferrero 2009]. On the internal interpretation, the husband has the following conditional

intention: to confide in his wife if she repents. On the external interpretation, if the wife

repents, the husband would acquire the unconditional intention to confide in her.

The internal interpretation is more plausible. Recall that the husband is open to

reconciliation with his wife in virtue of having attitudes and intentions toward her that

would reconcile them, if her attitudes and intentions are what they should be. By having

the conditional intention to confide in his wife if she repents, the husband has an intention

that would, along with his other attitudes and intentions, reconcile him to his wife if she

has the attitudes and intentions that she should have. That is not so on the external

interpretation, on which no relevant intention exists until she repents. Further, recall that,

intuitively, being open to reconciliation means playing your part in the reconciliation.

Without the conditional intention, the husband could do more toward reconciliation by

forming the conditional intention, and hence playing his part in reconciling plausibly

requires the conditional intention.8

7 I assume that the repentant wife’s attitudes and intentions would be stable enough to be an appropriate confidant. I thank Christopher Tucker for this point. 8 I thank John Hurst for an illuminating discussion about how to apply to my view the distinction between internal and external interpretations of conditional intentions.

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The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation allows forgiveness,

including one-sided forgiveness, to be virtuous. Being open to reconciliation is typically a

good thing. It is not demeaning, even in one-sided forgiveness, because it does not require

the victim to pretend that the offense did not happen or that it is okay to treat him that way.

As we saw, the husband’s attitudes and intentions toward his wife may be different after

the offense as long as they do not prevent a good spousal relationship, and if the wife is

unrepentant, he need only stand ready to have the attitudes and intentions whose

appropriateness hinge on his wife’s repentance. Hence he can forgive her while

acknowledging that their relationship is not on good terms until she repents.

The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation straightforwardly explains

the power of forgiveness to restore relationships with repentant offenders, and it explains

why forgiveness is often sought and bestowed to bring about reconciliation.

Yet, by definition, the view may seem unable to explain the last intuitive feature of

forgiveness: that a victim can forgive an offender without being willing to continue a close

relationship with her. Contrary to initial appearances, I demonstrate below that the view

can account for this feature.

2.3. Forgiveness within other relationships

So far, I have considered a case of spousal forgiveness to explicate the view that

forgiveness is openness to reconciliation. The view also works well in other close

relationships. Typically, when one friend wrongs another and seeks forgiveness, he seeks

reconciliation. If the wronged friend refuses to forgive, their friendship is not restored to

a friendship of good standing, but if she forgives, the friendship is restored. The right

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explanation for this, I contend, is that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the

wrongdoer with respect to the wrongdoing. The wronged friend is open to reconciliation,

and so forgives, in virtue of having attitudes and intentions that restore a friendship of good

standing, if the offending friend has the attitudes and intentions required for reconciliation

(which we can assume is so, given his repentance). These attitudes and intentions – the

ones in virtue of which the victim is open to reconciliation – plausibly include desiring to

spend time with the friend again and intending to be there for him, while no longer

resenting him or intending to complain about him to other friends. Again, these are just

examples. In being open to reconciliation, the wronged friend has the attitudes and

intentions – whatever they are – that constitute playing his part in restoring a friendship of

good standing.

You might worry that the Openness-to-Reconciliation View is implausible outside

of close relationships. If a stranger harms you, you can forgive him, but talk of

reconciliation may seem out of place. Yet notice that the offense itself puts you in a

relationship with a stranger who harms you. This relationship is not the relationship that

should exist between people who have interacted, and we can think of reconciliation as

restoring the relationship to what should exist between acquaintances, which is a

relationship of good will or regard. After all, as P.F. Strawson [1962] points out, we expect

a certain degree of good will or regard from people, and we respond with reactive attitudes

like resentment and indignation toward someone whose action expresses a lack of good

will. Hence acquaintances of any sort should have a relationship of good will, and

reconciliation restores that relationship.

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To illustrate, consider again the Charleston family members. What is striking about

their one-sided forgiveness, I contend, is their openness to a relationship of good will with

the gunman. Take this statement by Anthony Thompson: ‘I forgive you, my family

forgives you. We would like you to take this opportunity to repent. ... Do that and you'll

be better off than you are right now.’ Or this statement by Alana Simmons: ‘Although my

grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof — everyone's plea

for your soul is proof they lived in love and their legacies will live in love, so hate won't

win’ [Collins 2015]. These relatives, in their grief, reached out to the gunman, asking him

to repent for his sake and making pleas for his soul. In doing this, they expressed good

will toward him and asked him to do his part in reestablishing a relationship of good will

through repentance. This openness to reconciliation with the gunman, I claim, constitutes

their forgiving him.

Of course, a relationship of good will need not involve pleas for the other’s soul,

and some relationships of good will have more good will than others. At bottom, a

relationship of good will is characterized by a lack of animosity and resentment, by not

taking pleasure in the other’s misfortune, by wishing the other well, by a willingness to

help the other when easily done, and related attitudes.9 Like Strawson [1962], I take the

characteristics of this relationship to be fairly intuitive. When you are open to reconciling

with a stranger, and so forgive a stranger on my view, you are open to restoring this

relationship.

Return to the remaining intuitive feature of forgiveness: a victim can forgive an

offender without being willing to restore a close relationship with him. The Openness-to-

9 Here I am indebted to T.M. Scanlon’s [2008: 142-4] description of those attitudes and intentions partially constitutive of the moral relationship that are not owed to everyone.

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Reconciliation View initially seems unable to account for this; yet, such cases are

commonplace. Consider a wife whose husband has an affair. Imagine that the husband

repents and wants to continue the marriage, but the wife responds: ‘I forgive you, but I do

not trust you anymore, and I want a divorce.’ Or consider a close friend who does not

stand by you through a difficult time. The friend later repents, and you forgive her but opt

not to continue the close friendship.

Rather than counting against the view, such cases illustrate a significant advantage

of it. Because the view analyzes forgiveness in terms of the relational concept of

reconciliation, forgiveness can happen on different relationship levels depending upon

which type of relationship the victim is open to restoring. Normal relationships, from

acquaintances to the closest relationships, are relationships of good will.10 After this, the

closer the relationship, the more additional expectations it has about how the parties in the

relationship will act toward one another and the attitudes that they will have toward one

another. For example, close friends should not only treat each other with good will but

should also make substantial sacrifices for each other and support each other during hard

times. In normal relationships, for forgiveness to happen at all, the victim must be open to

restoring a relationship of good will. Yet because close relationships have additional

expectations, the victim may be open to restoring the relationship of good will but not the

close relationship. In such cases, the victim forgives the transgressor as a person but not

as a party to the close relationship.

To see that this is plausible, return to the above examples. When the unfaithful,

remorseful husband asks for his wife’s forgiveness, desiring to maintain their marriage, he

10 Immoral or perverse relationships may not be relationships of good will. I thank Amy Shuster for pointing this out.

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seeks reconciliation as spouses. If the wife had replied: ‘I forgive you,’ she would have

communicated to her husband that she forgives him as her husband and so would have

communicated that they are reconciled as spouses. By instead saying, ‘I forgive you, but

I want a divorce,’ the wife makes clear that she is not forgiving him as a husband but just

as a person. In other words, she is open to restoring their relationship to one of good will

but is not open to restoring their marriage. Similarly, when you forgive your disloyal,

repentant friend but opt not to remain close friends, you forgive her as a person but not as

friend in virtue of being open to restoring the relationship of good will but not the

friendship. The view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation is powerful in revealing

and explaining that forgiveness occurs on different relationship levels. (I further defend

this idea below.)

With this in mind, the Openness-to-Reconciliation View explains the final intuitive

feature of forgiveness as follows. When a victim forgives an offender without being open

to restoring the close relationship, the victim forgives and is open to reconciliation on a

lower relationship level – e.g., the person level – but is not open to reconciliation and so

does not forgive on the close relationship level – e.g., the friendship level.

Now consider forgiving those who stand as a present threat, such as an abuser.11

On the view that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation, forgiving an abuser does not

entail continuing the abusive relationship. You may forgive an abuser only as a person,

which is compatible with cutting off contact with him. Further, even forgiving an abuser

as a friend or partner does not entail continuing the abusive relationship. After all,

forgiving an abuser, on this view, means being open to reconciliation with him, such that

11 I thank Robert Adams for raising this issue.

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you reconcile with him if he has the right attitudes and intentions. Clearly a current abuser

lacks the right attitudes and intentions. You can therefore forgive him as a friend or partner

on this view while cutting off contact.

The preceding examples bring to the fore questions about our obligations to forgive.

On the Openness-to-Reconciliation View, because forgiveness happens on different

relationship levels, we may be obligated to forgive someone on one relationship level but

not another. For example, we may typically be obligated to forgive an offender as a person,

but our obligations to forgive in close relationships are surely less robust, as abused

partners are not obligated to forgive their abusers as partners. Of course, we have some

obligations to forgive in close relationships. It seems wrong not to forgive an apologetic

friend as a friend for once forgetting your lunch date. I will not here determine the extent

of our obligations to forgive, as I am focusing on the conceptual question of what

forgiveness is. My point is to highlight that the Openness-to-Reconciliation View leads to

a more nuanced and plausible understanding of our obligations to forgive, by revealing that

we may have obligations to forgive on some relationship levels but not others.

The idea that we can forgive on different relationship levels also yields insight into

our reasons for forgiving. On the Openness-to-Reconciliation View, whether you forgive

depends only upon whether you are open to reconciling with the wrongdoer, not upon your

reasons for being thus open. However, because we can forgive on different relationship

levels, our reasons for forgiving will vary for each level. For example, we may forgive

someone as a person – i.e., be open to reconciling a relationship of good will with her –

because of a desire to live peacefully with others. We may forgive a friend as a friend –

i.e., be open to restoring the friendship – because we care deeply about the friendship.

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3. Objections and Replies

In this section, I take up five objections to my argument.

3.1. Is all forgiveness as a person?

Objection:

Perhaps all forgiveness is ‘forgiveness as a person’ – i.e., openness to restoring the

relationship of good will.12

Response:

We should not accept this proposal. To see why, imagine the following variation

of the wife with the unfaithful, repentant husband. Suppose that, rather than saying, ‘I

forgive you, but I want a divorce,’ she simply says, ‘I forgive you’ and then soon after asks

him to move out. In this variation, her husband could reasonably protest, ‘But I thought

that you had forgiven me!’ If forgiveness were just forgiveness as a person, this response

would be unreasonable, since the wife could forgive him as a person but still end their

marriage. Hence the reasonableness of the husband’s response shows that, in simply

saying, ‘I forgive you,’ the wife communicates that she forgives him as a spouse, not just

as a person. This is why, in the original case, the wife must add ‘but I want a divorce’ to

communicate that she is only forgiving him as a person. Thus not all forgiveness is

forgiveness as a person. This makes sense. Forgiveness has the power to effect

12 I thank Andrew Moon for this objection.

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reconciliation in close relationships, but the view that all forgiveness is forgiveness as a

person can only explain how forgiveness restores a relationship of good will.

3.2. Forgiveness as openness to restoring the prior relationship?

Objection:

Perhaps forgiveness is openness to restoring the prior relationship (namely, that

which existed before the offense). In support of this, suppose that a daughter deeply hurt

her mother and asks for forgiveness. The mother expresses forgiveness, ceases to resent

her daughter, and treats her kindly, but she no longer acts toward her daughter with the

same affection and love. In this case, it would be reasonable to say that the mother has not

forgiven her daughter because their prior relationship is not restored.13

Response:

This proposal is flawed because it rules out cases of genuine forgiveness, such as

forgiving a disloyal friend but opting not to continue the friendship. Yet, as the objection

illustrates, it sometimes sounds strange to say that a victim has forgiven when she is not

open to restoring the previous close relationship. Why? To answer this question, first

consider another: why do we talk simply about X forgiving Y, rather than X forgiving Y

as a person or as a friend?

The answer is that context specifies the relationship level. When the repentant

husband asks for his wife’s forgiveness, seeking reconciliation within the marriage, the

marriage relationship is salient. Hence, if the wife simply says, ‘I forgive you,’ she

13 I thank Scott Davison and Stephen Grimm for this objection.

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communicates that she forgives him as a spouse. When she instead says, ‘I forgive you,

but I want a divorce,’ she changes the salient relationship to the relationship of good will.

In support of this point, imagine instead that the husband says: ‘Please forgive me for

betraying you. You deserve someone better, and I hope that my betrayal does not keep you

from trusting that person when you find him.’ Here the husband makes the relationship of

good will salient. In this variation, the wife can simply say, ‘I forgive you,’ to communicate

forgiveness as a person.

In the mother/daughter case, we say that the mother has not forgiven her daughter

because the mother/daughter relationship is salient. This is so for a few reasons. First, the

prior relationship level is often the default one, especially when the wrongdoer seeks to

restore that relationship. Second, the case is described as a daughter asking her mother for

forgiveness, which makes the mother/daughter relationship salient. Third, the

mother/daughter relationship continues despite the mother’s failure to forgive her daughter

as a daughter; the resulting brokenness of that relationship makes it salient. Finally, the

mother plausibly has an obligation to forgive her repentant daughter as a daughter, and her

refusal to do so stands out. For these reasons, the mother/daughter relationship is salient,

and thus, in asking whether the mother has forgiven her daughter, we are asking whether

she has forgiven her as a daughter. As a result, the intuition that the mother has not

forgiven her daughter is consistent with the mother having forgiven her daughter as a

person. Further, it is reasonable to think that the mother has forgiven her daughter as a

person, given that she no longer resents her daughter and treats her kindly. After all, you

may have similar sentiments in forgiving your disloyal friend only as a person.

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3.3. Forgiving the dead

Objection:

The Openness-to-Reconciliation View cannot account for forgiving the dead, since

we cannot reconcile with the dead.14

Response:

This view can account for forgiving the dead. To forgive a dead wrongdoer is, on

this view, to be open to reconciliation with her, which means that you have attitudes and

intentions toward her such that, if she were alive and repentant, you would be reconciled.

You can think of forgiving a dead person as playing your part in a hypothetical

reconciliation, which you can do even when the other person cannot play her part. This is

so because having the attitudes and intentions that constitute being open to reconciliation

does not depend upon the other’s attitudes and intentions or even upon whether she is still

capable of having attitudes and intentions, nor does it require aiming at reconciliation.

Note that the same explanation holds for forgiving agents who are alive but incapable of

reconciliation for other reasons, such as because they are suffering from dementia.

3.4. Self-Forgiveness

Objection:

The Openness-to-Reconciliation View cannot explain self-forgiveness because it

makes no sense to reconcile with oneself.15

14 I thank Michael Almeida for this objection. 15 I thank Alexander Arnold for this objection.

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Response:

Although it may sound odd, reconciling with oneself is what happens in self-

forgiveness. First notice that we should have certain attitudes and intentions toward

ourselves. For example, we should have good will toward ourselves – e.g., we should hope

that things go well for ourselves, should intend to avoid things that will impede realizing

our valuable aims, etc. Now consider someone who needs to forgive himself. Such a

person has repented for his wrong but yet continues to be very hard on himself about it. For

example, he might not pursue some valuable aim because he thinks that he does not deserve

it, or he might out of anger toward himself undermine important relationships. Such a

person is not reconciled with himself with respect to his wrongdoing. In forgiving himself,

he reconciles with himself by having good will and whatever other attitudes and intentions

toward himself that constitute a good self-relationship. (Notice that, for self-forgiveness,

being open to reconciliation entails reconciliation, since self-forgiveness presupposes

repentance.)

3.5. Forgiveness too cheap?

Objection:

The Openness-to-Reconciliation View makes forgiveness too cheap because, on

that view, a victim could forgive by taking a pill that puts her in a state of being open to

reconciliation with the offender.16

16 I thank Robert Audi for this objection.

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Response:

First recall that openness to reconciliation occurs with respect to particular wrongs.

Thus, we must stipulate that the pill makes the victim open to reconciliation with the

offender with respect to the particular offense. This blunts the objection’s force. Even if

the pill makes the victim so happy that he ceases to resent the offender and continues in a

close relationship with him, it does not follow that he forgives on the Openness-to-

Reconciliation View. After all, these things are consistent with simply moving on from

the offense.

Suppose that the pill causes the victim to be open to reconciliation with the offender

with respect to the particular offense. The Openness-to-Reconciliation View then says that

the victim forgives. This is correct because the pill does not affect whether the victim

forgives but rather how we should view the forgiver. Normally, when a victim forgives, it

is a credit to her. (Set aside cases in which forgiving may be impermissible.) However, if

forgiveness results from a pill, the victim either deserves no credit for forgiving or deserves

only derivative credit for forgiving, in the event that she takes the pill in order to forgive

and deserves direct credit for that. Thus, it is not a problem for the view that pills or other

external interventions could put someone in a state of being open to reconciliation. In such

cases, the victim forgives but deserves no direct credit for it.

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4. Other Views of Forgiveness

So far, I have presented my positive argument for the view that forgiveness is

openness to reconciliation and responded to objections. In this section, I argue that we

should prefer this view to three prominent views.

On the most influential view, forgiveness is foreswearing resentment toward the

wrongdoer [e.g., Butler 1846; McGary 1989; Hieronymi 2001; Murphy 2003; and

Strawson 1962]. This view fails to account for forgiveness’s power to reconcile

relationships with repentant offenders. This is because letting go of a negative emotion,

on whatever grounds, does not capture the emotional movement toward the offender

necessary for forgiveness to effect reconciliation with a repentant offender. We should

therefore reject the view.

The view’s proponents could respond by denying that forgiveness has the power to

reconcile relationships. In fact, many theorists of forgiveness would deny that forgiveness

has this power. These theorists posit a weaker connection between forgiveness and

reconciliation, claiming that forgiveness often but not always leads to or aims at

reconciliation with repentant offenders, based on the fact that a victim can forgive without

being willing to reconcile a close relationship [e.g., Murphy 2003: 14-15; Griswold 2007:

111; Radzik 2009: 117; Pettigrove 2012: 100, 107, 149].

This response assumes that we cannot accept both that a victim can forgive without

being willing to reconcile a close relationship and that forgiveness has the power to

reconcile relationships with repentant offenders. (In other words, it assumes that Section

1’s sixth and seventh intuitive features of forgiveness are mutually inconsistent.) As we

have seen, this assumption is wrong. We can accept both ideas by accepting that

25

forgiveness happens on different relationship levels. Theorists of forgiveness have failed

to see this possibility.

Further, denying that forgiveness has the power to reconcile relationships with

repentant offenders incurs a significant cost. As I have argued, this power is manifest in

close relationships. It explains why, in typical cases, both the victim and offender take

their close relationship to be restored when the offender asks for forgiveness and the victim

forgives. It also explains why the victim who forgives but is unwilling to restore the close

relationship must say something like “I forgive you, but I can no longer continue this close

relationship” in order not to mislead the offender into thinking that their relationship is

restored. Thus, to explain forgiveness in close relationships adequately, a view of

forgiveness must accept that forgiveness has the power to restore close relationships with

repentant offenders. Moreover, explaining forgiveness in close relationships is especially

important, as most actual cases of forgiveness take place in them.

One might object that saying ‘I forgive you’ expresses more than forgiveness when

a repentant offender seeks restoration of a close relationship; in that context, it also

expresses openness to restoring the close relationship. I think that we should reject this

alternative explanation. To start, the intuitive and straightforward explanation for the

phenomenon is that forgiveness itself has the power to reconcile relationships with

repentant offenders. Further, third parties also assume that forgiveness effects

reconciliation with repentant offenders. To see this, suppose that a friend, who has been

separated from an abusive partner, tells you that the partner has repented and that he has

forgiven her. You would reasonably assume that they are partners again unless your friend

gives you reason to think otherwise. You could imagine breathing a sigh of relief if your

26

friend adds, ‘but I told her that I cannot be in a relationship with her anymore.’ The fact

that third parties take forgiveness to effect reconciliation with repentant offenders indicates

that forgiveness itself has the power to restore relationships with repentant offenders, not

expressing forgiveness in certain contexts. The view that forgiveness is foreswearing

resentment cannot account for this feature of forgiveness.

On another prominent view, forgiveness is foreswearing hostile attitudes toward

the wrongdoer plus having some positive regard toward him.17 Different versions of this

view understand ‘positive regard’ differently. For example, Eve Garrard and David

McNaughton [2010] understand it as good will, Aurel Kolnai [1973] as trust, David Novitz

[1998] as compassion, and Jean Hampton [1988] as reapproval. This view rightly brings

in emotional movement toward the offender, but even so, we should not accept it, as it still

cannot account for forgiveness’s power to effect reconciliation with a repentant wrongdoer.

To see this, focus on Garrard and McNaughton’s version of the view. Foreswearing

hostile attitudes toward the wrongdoer plus having good will toward him seem sufficient

to reconcile a victim with a repentant wrongdoer when the wrongdoer was a stranger before

the wrongdoing, but surely it is insufficient to reconcile parties in a close relationship, since

more than good will toward the wrongdoer is required to restore close relationships.

Importantly, this issue arises no matter how we understand positive regard. Whether we

understand it as trust, reapproval, compassion, or something else, the view may account

for forgiveness’s power to reconcile some relationships, but it will not work across the

spectrum of relationships, particularly not in close relationships that require more

complicated positive attitudes to restore.

17 This formulation of the view follows [Pettigrove 2012: 8-9].

27

Finally, consider Dana Nelkin’s [2013] view that forgiveness is releasing the

offender from the personal obligations incurred by his wrongdoing. Like the view that

forgiveness is foreswearing resentment, this view focuses just on letting go of something

– in its case, of obligations owed. Thus it cannot account for forgiveness’s power to

reconcile relationships with repentant offenders, since that requires emotional movement

toward those offenders.

Unlike the above three views, the view that forgiveness is openness to

reconciliation accounts for forgiveness’s power to restore relationships with repentant

offenders. Hence only this view adequately explains forgiveness in close relationships,

where forgiveness primarily occurs. Further, and importantly, this view accounts for the

features of forgiveness that the above views take to constitute forgiveness: being open to

reconciliation with a wrongdoer plausibly requires foreswearing resentment toward him,

foreswearing hostile attitudes plus having positive regard toward him, and releasing him

from the personal obligations incurred by his wrongdoing. The Openness-to-

Reconciliation View thus accounts for the appeal of the other views. A further advantage

of the Openness-to-Reconciliation View is that it explains which hostile attitudes must be

eliminated and which positive attitudes must be adopted toward the wrongdoer in forgiving

him: namely, those required for reconciliation of the relationship at issue. We should

therefore accept that forgiveness is openness to reconciliation with the wrongdoer with

respect to the wrongdoing.

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Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Lara Buchak, Stephen Grimm, and anonymous referees for very helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. I also thank audiences at The Ohio State University, University of Notre Dame, City University of New York Graduate Center, Wayne State University, Southern Methodist University, the Fordham University Philosophy of Religion Workshop, the Inaugural Theistic Ethics Workshop at Wake Forest University, and the Rutgers Value Theory and Philosophy of Religion Workshop for valuable comments and questions.

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