And in the process, you need to honor the betrayal of yourself or others—the grief, the anger, the hurt, the fear. It can take a long time. And never takes a while. Forgiveness is also not for anybody else. Similarly, I remember sitting with the Dalai Lama and some Tibetan nuns who had survived years of imprisonment and torture. With us were guys who had just been released after 25 years in Texas state prison or 18 years in Ohio in a maximum security prison.
And they were sitting with the Dali Lama and these little nuns who were imprisoned during their teenagers years for saying their prayers out loud. And what we were afraid of was that we would end up hating our guards—that we would lose our compassion. That is the thing we most feared. One of the interesting things about forgiveness is that you find it in all different traditions. There are African indigenous practices of forgiveness. There is the mercy of Allah in Islam. So many of the modern neuroscience studies that researchers like Richard Davidson are doing, using fMRI machines and the like, validate this idea of neuroplasticity.
Indeed, in Buddhism, the teaching in three words is: The Buddha was a list maker: Similarly, here are 12 principles connected with the process of forgiveness.
Understand what forgiveness is and what it is not. Sense the suffering in yourself, of still holding onto this lack of forgiveness for yourself or for another. So you actually sense the weight of not forgiving. Reflect on the benefits of a loving heart. Your dreams become sweeter, you waken more easily, men and women will love you, angels and devils will love you.
- The Ancient Heart of Forgiveness?
- Ancient Forgiveness: Classical, Judaic, and Christian.
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- The Infertility Cleanse.
If you lose things they will be returned. People will welcome you everywhere when you are forgiving and loving. Your thoughts become pleasant. Animals will sense this and love you. Elephants will bow as you go by—try it at the zoo! Discover that it is not necessary to be loyal to your suffering. This is a big one. But is that what defines you? They have destroyed temples, burned our texts, disrobed our monks and nuns, limited our culture and destroyed it in so many ways. Why should I also let them take my joy and peace of mind? Understand that forgiveness is a process.
There is a whole complex and profound teaching in Buddhist psychology about the power of both short-term and long-term intention.
Ancient Forgiveness: Classical, Judaic, and Christian - Google Книги
When you set your intention, it sets the compass of your heart and your psyche. By having that intention, you make obstacles become surmountable because you know where you are going. Setting your intention is really important and powerful. Learn the inner and outer forms of forgiveness. There are meditation practices for the inner forms, but for the outer forms, there are also certain kinds of confessions and making amends. Start the easiest way, with whatever opens your heart.
Then you bring in someone who is a little more difficult to forgive. Only when the heart is all the way open do you take on something difficult. Be willing to grieve. And grief, as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has spelled out, consists of bargaining, loss, fear, and anger. Indeed, he has described how [before he could forgive his captors] he was outraged and angry and hurt and all the things that anyone would feel.
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 see, e.
Some thinkers have argued that forgiveness is a duty Rashdall while others have maintained that, like a gift with no strings attached, forgiveness is utterly gratuitous Heyd 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. 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 Roberts ; Sadler ; Radzik 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.
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 , — A disposition to too readily forgive may be symptomatic of a lack of self-respect, or indicative of servility, ordinarily viewed as moral infirmities or vices Novitz That interpersonal forgiveness does not always serve morally laudable aims suggests that a general account of the criteria for justified and morally permissible or even obligatory forgiveness is needed to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate forgiving.
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. Griswold ; Blustein 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. 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 De Ira , c. 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.
What is the connection between forgiveness and another virtue, that of justice? Forgiveness has long been regarded by some as in conflict with justice, if not incompatible with it. Seneca De Clementia , c. Pardon is given to a man who ought to be punished; but a wise man does nothing that he ought not to do, omits to do nothing which he ought t no do; therefore he does not remit a punishment which he ought to exact. Mercy, unlike pardon and forgiveness, is an exercise of equity, which is an application of justice in light of the unique circumstances of individual cases.
By contrast, the prerogative of pardon associated with such political executives as Presidents, Prime Ministers, and other authorities may be viewed, according to Aristotle, as an exercise of equity in the sense that such duly established authorities are commonly thought to use that power as a way of mitigating the rigors of universal standards of justice in their application to particular cases the specifics of which appear to fall beyond the scope of the universal rule Wolsterstorff ; Bingham What about the morality of individual acts of forgiveness?
Forgiveness
It is commonplace to think that in order for an act of forgiveness to have positive moral status, certain kinds of conditions must be met. Conditionalism is the view that in order for an act of forgiveness to have positive moral status, certain conditions must be met either by the victim or the wrongdoer or both. For example, it might be thought that in order for forgiveness to have positive moral status, the victim must forgive for certain kinds of good reasons.
If the victim does not forgive for those good kinds of reasons, then she does something morally impermissible or bad, or blameworthy, etc. We can call such conditions victim-dependent. Alternatively, it might be thought that in order for forgiveness to have positive moral status, the wrongdoer must, say, apologize to the victim. This is a kind of wrongdoer-dependent condition. If the wrongdoer does not apologize to the victim, then the victim does something morally impermissible or bad, or blameworthy, etc. On this latter sort of view, the conditions for positive moral status for an act of forgiveness are built into the very constitutive conditions for forgiveness itself.
On this view, forgiveness is, as such, always morally good, morally permissible, or otherwise possesses some other such positive moral status. This is consistent with an act of forgiveness being all things considered wrong if, say, forgiving in some case would cause the death of innocent millions. Of course, both thick and thin conceptions of forgiveness can require or not require that either or both victim-dependent and wrongdoer-dependent conditions were first met.
It is widely thought that in order for an act of forgiveness to have positive moral status, the victim must meet certain conditions. Only some kinds of motivating reasons make forgiveness morally positive. For Haber, then, it seems that unless the wrongdoer repents and the victim forgives her at least in part for this reason, then that forgiveness is morally inappropriate.
Haber therefore has two conditions, one wrongdoer-dependent to repent for the wrong done , and one victim-dependent to forgive at least in part because the wrongdoer repented. Jeffrie Murphy articulates a similar view, claiming that. Examples of the kinds of moral reasons that Murphy has in mind include: There may be other kinds of conditions that a victim must meet in order to effect morally positive forgiveness. It is more controversial whether morally positive forgiveness requires wrongdoer-dependent conditions. Namely, the wrongdoer must: As noted above, Haber claims that repentance is necessary for morally positive forgiveness, as does Wilson Why think that a wrongdoer must apologize, repent, or have a change of heart in order for forgiveness to have positive moral status?
Two general reasons have been given. First, it is thought that in the absence of apology and repentance, forgiving constitutes a failure to take the wrongdoing seriously enough. A second kind of reason is that forgiving in the absence of apology and repentance reveals a lack of self-respect. In reply, Pettigrove b, For discussion of three other objections to the rejection of wrongdoer-dependent conditions—that it has bad consequences, that it is arbitrary, and that absent repentance resentment is still warranted—see Garrard and McNaughton The term itself may be misleading for the kind of conditions on morally positive forgiveness they rejected are what we are calling the wrongdoer-dependent conditions: Their view is unconditional insofar as morally positive forgiveness does not require that the wrongdoer repent, apologize, or make restitution.
Her reasons for forgiving may be bad ones and she may display her forgiveness in an illegitimate manner. Margaret Holmgren articulates a similar view, arguing that once a victim completes a certain kind of process,. Absent this process, however, the victim forgives prematurely, and her forgiveness may therefore be incompatible with her own self-respect and therefore inappropriate On her view, forgiveness that is compatible with self-respect does not depend on the actions or attitudes of the wrongdoer.
What kind of process is required? Holmgren identifies six general elements of this process: All of the views canvassed thus far allow that, at least in some circumstances, forgiveness has positive moral status. But some philosophers have expressed skepticism about the morality of forgiveness as such. A perfectionist view might hold that whatever attitudes or actions we overcome or forbear in forgiveness were not morally good in the first place: And so if one is in a position to forgive, this would reveal only that something morally sub-par had already occurred in how a victim responded to being wronged.
Forgiveness might be thought then as just the mechanism by which we expunge those already morally mistaken reactions. Griswold argues that something like this perfectionist scheme can be found in the ancients from Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans Modern-day skeptics about moral responsibility and blameworthiness might also be committed to a remedial view of the moral status of forgiveness see, e.
If no one is morally responsible and blameworthy for what they do, then morally reactive attitudes like resentment will likely be inappropriate for both epistemic and moral reasons. But if forgiving requires that one hold a wrongdoer morally responsible and blameworthy for what they have done, they are making a kind of moral mistake. According to Martha Nussbaum , another modern critic of forgiveness, not only does forgiveness respond to an already normatively problematic attitude i. The reason is simple: Kolnai ; Zaibert ; Hallich Either way, to forgive would be to do something morally inappropriate.
If an account of forgiveness had no such requirement, however, then forgiveness would not be inappropriate simply because it required one to adopt a false belief about the past. Second, the argument assumes that when a wrongdoer is blameworthy, then either blame or forgiveness is appropriate, but not both. Yet if one can forgive while still judging truly that the wrongdoer did wrong, then it may be appropriate either to continue to blame or to instead forgive.
For much of the history of modern psychology, the topic of forgiveness was largely ignored. Piaget discussed the capacity of forgiveness so far is it is related to the development of moral judgment. Litwinski produced a study on the kind of affective structure that would provide one with a capacity to forgive. Emerson was the first to explore the association of forgiveness with mental health, and Heider proposed an early working definition of forgiveness as the forgoing of vengeful behavior. In the recent decades, forgiveness has enjoyed a significant increase in empirical attention McCullough, et al.
Important early work during this time included papers by Boon and Sulsky , Darby and Schlenker , and Weiner, et al. Yet even after decades of sustained empirical enquiry, psychologists remain divided about how forgiveness ought to be defined. Some psychologists forward interpersonal models of forgiveness. According to these approaches, forgiveness is an activity involving communication perhaps verbal, perhaps not between agents.
According to these views, forgiveness evolved as a mechanism for affirming mutual cooperation between agents after an act of defection. Others have sought to define forgiveness by way of intrapersonal models. McCullough and various colleagues have posited a motivational model that understands forgiveness as a process involving a decrease in motivations to avoid or seek revenge, and an increase in benevolent and conciliatory motivations e.
1. Forgiveness as a Response to Wrongdoing
Cognitive models conceive of forgiveness as a reframing of the narrative about the transgression, the transgressor and the forgiver e. Emotion-based models see forgiveness as being accomplished by the replacement of negative, unforgiving emotions e. Still others have suggested mixed models , according to which forgiveness has both interpersonal and intrapersonal modes or aspects.
Baumeister, Exline, and Sommer suggest that when one feels forgiving towards an offender but does not communicate as much, one has silently forgiven. Alternatively, when one does not feel forgiving but tells the offender that she is forgiving her, she accomplishes hollow forgiveness. When one both feels forgiving and tells the offender so, she has accomplished full forgiveness. Enright and Fitzgibbons have argued that in order to forgive, cognitive, affective, and behavioral changes must be made.
Forgiveness as a Response to Wrongdoing 2. The Ends of Forgiveness 4. Standing to Forgive 5. Theories of Forgiveness 5. The Ethics of Forgiveness 9. Forgiveness as a Response to Wrongdoing An inevitable and unfortunate fact of life is that we are often mistreated by others.
Griswold makes two suggestions: Standing to Forgive It is standard to assume that not just anyone can forgive a wrongdoer for a certain wrong. Jeffrie Murphy expresses such a view when he says that I do not have standing to resent or forgive you unless I have myself been the victim of your wrongdoing. Charles Griswold also appears to have in mind a kind of moderate emotionalism: Although he once argued that forgiveness ought to be construed narrowly as the overcoming of resentment, Murphy has now, citing the influence of Richards and others, become more ecumenical, writing that we should think of forgiveness as overcoming a variety of negative feelings that one might have toward a wrongdoer—resentment, yes, but also such feelings as anger, hatred, loathing, contempt, indifference, disappointment, or even sadness.
Margaret Holmgren, for example, allows that resentment can reoccur: Responding to the view that forgiveness is the same wherever it occurs, William Neblett writes that if there is anything about forgiveness that is always the same, no matter the context, it is very little, and it is none of the various things that philosophers are prone to say that it is, that it must be like the wiping away of all resentment and ill-will.
Self-forgiveness In the recent years, the topic of self-forgiveness has drawn considerable attention see, e. As one author puts the point, The difference between the human and the divine should not be underestimated, and it is possible that it would not just be over optimistic but actually dangerous to expect people to model their behavior on God. Political Forgiveness The power of pardon enjoyed by duly established political authorities may be at best a loose cognate of forgiveness, but this is not to say that all legal or political analogues to forgiveness are implausible for discussion see MacLachlan , cf.
Jeffrie Murphy articulates a similar view, claiming that acceptable grounds for forgiveness must be compatible with self-respect, respect for others as moral agents, and respect for the rules of morality and the moral order. Margaret Holmgren articulates a similar view, arguing that once a victim completes a certain kind of process, forgiveness is always appropriate and desirable from a moral point of view, regardless of whether the wrongdoer repents and regardless of what [the wrongdoer] has done or suffered. The Science of Forgiveness For much of the history of modern psychology, the topic of forgiveness was largely ignored.
University of Chicago Press. Princeton University Press, Harvard University Press first edition A Theology , Eugene: University of California Press. Handbook of Forgiveness , New York: Fitzgibbons, , Helping Clients Forgive: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought , Oxford: Prince of Peace , Cambridge: A Philosophical Exploration , New York: Haber, Joram Graf, , Forgiveness , Lanham: Puzzles, Proposals, and Perplexities , New York: Heyd, David, , Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory , Cambridge: The Scholar Press Limited.
Responding to Wrongdoing , Cambridge: Konstan, David, , Before Forgiveness: Origins of a Moral Idea , Cambridge: Moral Prerogative or Religious Duty? Theory, Research, and Practice , New York: Moore, Kathleen Dean, , Pardons: Becker and Charlotte B. Forgiveness and its Limits , New York: Norlock, Kathryn, and Veltman, Andrea eds. Resentment, Generosity, Justice , New York: Harvard University Press, pp. Radzik, Linda, , Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law, and Politics , Oxford: A Treatise on Moral Philosophy , 2 volumes, Oxford: Responding to Wrongdoing , Burlington, VT: Smith, Nick, , I Was Wrong: Its being granted by the victim is "conditionally obligatory -- that is, due the sinner who asks for it" Morgan includes a brief but provocative discussion of the question whether there are exceptions to this conditional obligation, whether, that is, some sins are unforgiveable.
The next two essays dwell on texts to be found in Luke. Hawkins's "A Man Had Two Sons" subjects the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 to scrutiny, concluding that although neither son is a pillar of motivational probity, the father in the parable "forgives both sons without conditions and in doing so gives each an opportunity to become either more responsible or more gracious than he has been" What class of people is covered by Jesus' petition? Is the forgiveness unconditional or is it conditional on the repentance of members of the class?
We can add two more. Even if repentance is necessary for forgiveness, is it universally sufficient? Is every sinner always able to repent? Knust discusses evidence that suggests that the omission of Luke And deicide, even if repented, is as good a candidate as any for the role of unforgiveable sin. Ramelli's essay, "Forgiveness in Patristic Philosophy," documents the career of the doctrine of apokatastasis or universal salvation in the thought of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.
One of the more beguiling arguments for the doctrine that everyone will be saved -- eventually, conditional on repentance -- hinges on the consideration that punishment must be commensurate to sin. Add the claim that no sin can be infinitely evil and it follows that no punishment can be infinite. The argument by itself doesn't deliver salvation, for it is compatible with universal post-mortem oblivion. The Church Fathers appealed to God's boundless grace to finish the case for universal salvation.
Augustine seems to have parted company with his predecessors in rejecting the first part of the argument on grounds that "eventually" does not entail "without limit"; post-mortem repentance, according to Augustine, is impossible. Jonathan Jacobs's "Forgiveness and Perfection" surveys some of the retrofitting required when one occupies an Aristotelian edifice whose landlord is no longer a remote unmoved mover but rather the biblical God. The essay's subtitle, "Maimonides, Aquinas, and Medieval Departures from Aristotle," is a bit misleading.
Maimonides' views receive more nuanced discussion than Aquinas's. One opinion of Maimonides ties together some of the themes that surfaced in the four proceeding essays. Maimonides holds that forgiveness is conditional on repentance while also holding that some sins, such as the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, are unforgiveable.
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There are two accounts one could offer here. One is to maintain simply that some sins are so intrinsically monstrous that no amount of repentance is sufficient for forgiveness. The other adds the consideration that the very commission of these sins renders their agent incapable of repentance. Jacobs favors the second account as an interpretation of Maimonides. If I were to claim that the modern concept of a wheel did not exist until the s you would rightly regard me as having overly restrictive standards.
Be they on chariots or Lamborghinis, wheels are wheels. To be sure, they have been improved over time, but their function has remained the same -- to facilitate ground transportation by minimizing friction. If the function of forgiveness is to try to effect reconciliation in distinction from the mere cessation of hostilities, we should similarly be wary of claims about its relatively late appearance on the moral landscape.
There is reason to suppose, moreover, that it has been around for a long time among humans. Part of my skepticism concerning claims about the recent inception of forgiveness stems from the semantic methodology employed in support of those claims. Here I will cite two examples. Recall Konstan's depiction of the Stoics rejecting forgiveness on grounds that it is incompatible with justice. It is hard to see how that depiction could be accurate unless the Stoics already had a concept of forgiveness, and equally hard to see how they acquired the concept if not from witnessing or hearing about instances of its exercise.
A term will come to apply to a phenomenon if it is witnessed repeatedly.