In questo articolo intendo presentare e discutere le tesi avanzate da Husserl contro il naturalismo epistemologico e psicologico in La filosofia come scienza rigorosa. Intendo mostrare come la sua critica si rivolga a posizioni generalmente più estreme rispetto alle varianti del naturalismo oggi dibattute; e tuttavia le tesi husserliane hanno implicazioni interessanti per la discussione contemporanea. In primo luogo, egli mostra come vi sia un nesso importante tra naturalismo epistemologico e naturalismo psicologico. In secondo luogo, egli mostra come una versione (...) robusta di naturalismo epistemologico indebolisca se stesso, non riuscendo a traslare la cogenza logica in termini psicologici. In terzo luogo – e questo è il tratto più importante per la discussione contemporanea – egli attacca il cartesianesimo in quanto forma di naturalismo psicologico per via del considerare la psiche come sostanza. Contro questa posizione Husserl afferma la necessità di formulare nuovi obiettivi epistemici per le ricerche sulla coscienza, sostenendo che il fattore di maggiore interesse circa la coscienza non sia la sua fatticità empirica, bensì la sua funzione trascendentale, che garantisce accesso conoscitivo a ogni tipo di oggetto. Lo studio di questa funzione richiede un metodo specifico, da non confondersi con i metodi empirici. Nella parte conclusiva intendo sostenere come le analisi husserliane offrano nuove prospettive sulla struttura della coscienza, di cui oggi si sente il bisogno, ma anche argomenti persuasivi contro le incerte speculazioni metafisiche circa il rapporto tra mente e corpo. (shrink)

Forgiveness has been a central issue for humankind since ancient times; it emerged in theology, but in recent decades it has received significant attention from different disciplines, such as philosophy and psychology. More recently, forgiveness has received attention also from organizational and managerial studies, particularly, in studying how individuals respond to interpersonal offenses, or perceived harm and wrongdoing in the workplace. Forgiveness is a complex concept, as it can be understood as a family of related constructs and can be analyzed (...) at different levels. Even if social sciences have widely recognized that the nature of forgiveness can be both conditional and unconditional, the notions of conditionality and unconditionality have not yet received sufficient study, especially in organizational and managerial fields. In these fields, forgiveness has been predominantly studied under a psychological approach, looking for the conditions under which it may occur in the workplace. Unconditional forgiveness has received less attention: with a few exceptions, managerial and organizational literature has limited the conceptualization of forgiveness, weakening its scope and probably not catching a relevant part of forgiving experiences in the workplace. This article proposes to follow a more comprehensive approach to forgiveness in the workplace, according to the social sciences field, which can take into account both conditionality and unconditionality. It focuses on unconditional forgiveness according to Continental philosophy, in particular, to the thought of Jacque Derrida and Paul Ricoeur. Through their contributions, the unconditionality of forgiveness is deepened, and the implications of considering both conditional and unconditional forgiveness are discussed. (shrink)

A critical account of forgiveness and the "unforgivable", with particular reference to Bonaventure and Derrida, among others.

Are torture and torturers unforgivable? The article examines this question in the light of a Humean account of forgiveness. Initially, the Humean account appears to suggest that torturers are unforgivable. However, in the end, I argue it provides us with good reasons to think that even torturers may be forgiven.

These books will prove valuable to philosophy teachers and their students as well as to other readers who share a general interest in philosophy. -/- What is art? Must art be beautiful? Must art be politically or culturally significant? How does art differ from other products of human activity? Joseph Margolis has spent decades thinking through these and related questions. In this book, he introduces his reader to the field of Aesthetics by thinking through the most fundamental philosophical questions about (...) art in a way that is engaging and accessible. This book could be used alongside a textbook of classic readings in Aesthetics, or as a stand-alone text in Aesthetics. THE WADSWORTH PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS SERIES presents readers with concise, timely, and insightful introductions to a variety of traditional and contemporary philosophical subjects. With this series, students of philosophy will be able to discover the richness of philosophical inquiry across a wide array of concepts, including hallmark philosophical themes and themes typically underrepresented in mainstream philosophy publishing. Written by a distinguished list of scholars who have garnered particular recognition for their excellence in teaching, this series presents the vast sweep of today's philosophical exploration in highly accessible and affordable volumes. These books will prove valuable to philosophy teachers and their students as well as to other readers who share a general interest in philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to examine the role that memory and oblivion, forgiveness and unforgiveness play in Hannah Arendt’s thought in relation to acts of violence in the political sphere. Political communities do not always decide to remember the crimes they have committed or the wrongs they have suffered, but neither can they always forget their mutual harms, even when there is already peace between them. Without striving to exhaust the entire subject matter of Arendt’s work, I would (...) like to illustrate the difficulty of understanding the role forgiveness plays in her thought as well as to indicate possible solutions when forgiveness becomes unachievable within the framework of her considerations. Her reflection can be divided into two stages. The first is a focus on the idea of radical evil and the need to forgive perpetrators for their crimes. Second, under the influence of the Adolf Eichmann trial, she developed the idea of the banality of evil. This idea points to situations so terrible that they transcend all human moral judgment, making forgiveness impossible. However, even when the moral possibility of individual forgiveness has been rejected, when the legal possibility of seeking justice has been exhausted and when victims and perpetrators in the community are still unable to live together peacefully, Arendt’s thought leads us to the possibility of political reconciliation. (shrink)

Open Access: Trudy Govier (FR) argues for “conditional unforgivability,” yet avers that we should never give up on a human being. She not only says it is justifiable to take a “hopeful and respectful attitude” toward one’s wrongdoers, she indicates that it is wrong not to; she says it is objectionable to adopt an attitude that any individual is “finally irredeemable” or “could never change,” because such an attitude “anticipates and communicates the worst” (137). Govier’s recommendation to hold a hopeful (...) attitude seems to follow from one’s knowing that an appropriate object of unforgivability is also an agent capable of moral transformation. I appeal to Blake Myers-Schultz’s and Eric Schwitzgebels’ account of knowledge without belief, and Schwitzgebels’ account of attitudes, to argue that a victim’s knowledge that a wrongdoer has the capacities of a moral agent does not entail belief in the possibility that a wrongdoer will exercise those moral capacities, nor does knowledge of a wrongdoer’s moral capacities entail hopeful attitudes toward the prospects of an individual wrongdoer’s moral transformation. I conclude that what victims can hope for should not be that which victims are held to as a moral minimum. (shrink)

Our experiences with many sorts of evils yield debates about the role of forgiveness as a possible moral response. These debates include (1) the preliminary question whether evils are, by definition, unforgivable, (2) the contention that evils may be forgivable but that forgiveness cannot entail reconciliation with one’s evildoer, (3) the concern that only direct victims of evils are in a position to decide if forgiveness is appropriate, (4) the conceptual worry that forgiveness of evil may not be genuine (...) or complete if hard feelings recur, (5) the interest of many in holding that forgiveness is never required, and (6) the concern that analyses of evil ought to prioritize the suffering, and credit the perspectives, of victims of evils, in tension with the possibility that forgiveness concerns the well-being of offenders. In this paper, I critically evaluate these concerns from the perspective of nonideal theory. I conclude that crediting victims’ perspectives is importantly basic to empirically informed moral theory, and that objections to forgiveness including (1) evil’s unforgivability ignore victims’ differing accounts. When we take actualities and experiences to be informative and central, some of the usual debates become less pressing, perhaps even moot. (shrink)

This dissertation is a philosophical investigation of forgiveness, in both interpersonal and political contexts. The aim of the dissertation is to demonstrate the merits of a broad, multidimensional account that remains faithful to the moral phenomenology of forgiving and being forgiven. Previous philosophical work has tended to see forgiveness primarily in terms of reactive attitudes: specifically, the struggle to overcome resentment. Yet defining forgiveness along these lines fails to do justice to common intuitions that, for example, forgiveness may be a (...) gift offered to another, that it may be the remission of a debt or burden, or that it may 'wipe clean' a stain. Against standard philosophical models that limit its nature to a single dimension, the multidimensional model acknowledges its affective, cognitive and socially performative aspects. -/- My investigation begins by considering characteristic features of forgiveness, the reasons we have to forgive, and its potential moral value. In my preliminary chapters, I present my case against narrow theories of forgiveness, particularly those that define it in terms of attitude alone. In Chapter Three, I situate forgiveness in the context of moral considerations, by analyzing its relationship to other important moral values (trust, compassion, and moral sensitivity) and by defending an account of elective forgiveness. My fourth chapter turns from the act of forgiving to the limits of forgiveness. I discuss forgiveness of hostile or absent wrongdoers, forgiveness of injuries to other people ('third party forgiveness'), and the 'unforgivable.' Some philosophical discussions of the unforgivable have confused what is conceptually unforgivable with what is morally or even empirically unforgivable. By disentangling these threads, I argue that there are, in principle at least, no moral limits on what we may forgive. My concluding chapter applies the multidimensional model of forgiveness to recent discussions of the topic in political philosophy. I argue that the multidimensional model can meaningfully connect a range of forgiving practices in a political context, from transitional justice to interpersonal reconciliation. (shrink)

(In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Psychology of Forgiveness, edited by Glen Pettigrove and Robert Enright) This chapter discusses forgiveness conceived as primarily a volitional commitment, rather than an emotional transformation. As a commitment, forgiveness is distal, involving moral agency over time, and can take the form of a speech act or a chosen attitude. The purpose can be a commitment to repair or restore relationships with wrongdoers for their sake or the sake of the relationship, usually by forswearing (...) one’s hostile attitudes toward a particular wrongdoing; the commitment may also be to oneself for one’s own sake, to be a person with a virtue of forgivingness. It can be incident-specific, that is, a response to a particular occasion of harm, or a forward-looking disposition, an aim to cultivate the habit of being a forgiving person in advance. The enabling conditions of forgivingness as a virtue may be more basic master virtues including integrity and humility, motivations that also underpin commitments to be unforgiving, so this chapter concludes with some careful consideration of the ethics of unforgivingness to others, and the commitment to be unforgiving of oneself. (shrink)

What is right in the corporation is not what is right in a man's home or in his church," a former vice-president of a large firm observes. "What is right in the corporation is what the guy above you wants from you." Such sentiments pervade American society, from corporate boardrooms to the basement of the White House. In Moral Mazes, Robert Jackall offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and of how big organizations shape moral (...) consciousnss. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. It is a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might; where intense competition is masked by cheerfully bland public faces; where intentions are cloaked and frankness is simply one of many guises; and where words are always provisional and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional verities. Moral issues are translated into practical concerns and into issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managrs ask themselves: How does one act in such a world and maintain a sense of personal integrity? Moral Mazes is a brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality. It is an analytical work of great importance, one filled with compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the business of America. It is a book for anyone interested in how big organizations actually function, or who is concerned with the current moral malaise in our public life. (shrink)

phenomenology and logical analysis. John Searle and Bert Dreyfus are for me two of the paradigm figures of contemporary philosophy, so I am extremely proud to have been offered the opportunity to engage with their work. The editors of The Harvard Review of Philosophy, it seems to me, have shown a keen sense of what is deep and important in our discipline by publishing extended interviews with these two influential thinkers. At the same time, writing this article meant entering into (...) a debate between Searle and Dreyfus about the priority of their respective philosophical methodologies, and this, I am afraid, is at best a no-win situation. My strategy, therefore, has been to try to engage as sympathetically as possible with the programs of each philosopher, and to draw from their work lessons that seem to me important for any philosophical account of intentionality and social reality. I have not shied away from criticism; indeed the whole paper is an extended series of criticisms of the work of both philosophers. But I hope they will recognize this for what it is: an engagement with the work of each that is based on the deepest respect and admiration. Before I jump into the fray, I should mention that I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Searle and Dreyfus as well. They were not only my two advisors in graduate school, but were the two main reasons I entered philosophy. Having become dissatisfied with the formal worlds of mathematics and computer science, their respective critiques of artificial intelligence and cognitivism showed me the rich possibilities of philosophy and struck me as a reason to become a philosopher. It is a difficult discipline, sometimes unforgiving; but I am glad I followed them into it. (shrink)

What distinguishes evils from ordinary wrongs? Are some evils unforgivable? How should we respond to evils? Card offers a secular theory of evil--representing a compromise between classic utilitarian and stoic approaches--that responds to these and other questions.

The privatization of France Telecom in 1997 led to the implementation of a profit-oriented financialization strategy. An unforgiving work environment was developed, which has unsettled many employees. Between February 2008 and October 2011, 69 employees took their own life. Many left notes blaming management for having privileged the interests of shareholders over those of employees. Through interviews with employees and professional practitioners associated with FT, we reveal that employees strongly resented the company’s use of financialization policies to maximize shareholder value. (...) Pursuit of such policies led to the de-institutionalization of socially prescribed norms that were applied commonly in Continental European workplaces. Feelings of anomie, disgrace, futility and isolation ensued among employees. This case highlights an important effect of a modern corporation’s adoption of financialization policies. It points to the need to improve workplace sensitivities and the ethical dispositions of companies and their managers. (shrink)

This article defends the principle of giving a fresh start to individuals who come to consider that they have mismanaged their share of resources at an earlier stage of their life. The first part challenges the ethical intuition that it would be unfair to tax the steadfast frugal in order to help the regretful spendthrift and argues that the possibility of changing one’s mind is an important freedom. The second part examines the disincentives induced by fresh-start policies. It shows that (...) even when individuals can strategically misrepresent their preferences, there remains a significant difference between unforgiving and forgiving policies. It shows that the optimal policy does not only redistribute funds, but also puts protective constraints on early individual decisions (for example, compulsory saving through social security taxes). Key Words: fairness • freedom • fresh start • incentives • preference changes • regret. (shrink)

According to standard philosophical analyses, only victims can forgive. There are good reasons to reject this view. After all, people who are neither direct nor indirect victims of a wrong frequently feel moral anger over injustice. The choice to foreswear or overcome such moral anger is subject to most of the same sorts of considerations as victims’ choices to forgive. Furthermore, bystanders’ reactions to their experiences of moral anger often reflect either virtues or vices that are of a piece with (...) what we normally describe as a forgiving or unforgiving disposition. In this paper, I reject the view that only victims can forgive by comparing the experience and regulation of moral anger by victims and bystanders. The virtues of victims and bystanders with regard to moral anger are so similar that there is no good reason to apply different labels. However, the recognition of forgiveness in bystanders offers us more than simple consistency. It also leads us to think about the role moral bystanders play in the maintenance of the moral community, as well as the ways in which this role can be abused or overstepped. (shrink)

By now “continental” philosophy has long since ceased to be a geographical term; there are “continental” philosophers in the Midwestern United States. Likewise, “analytical” philosophy is now widely practiced in most areas where academic philosophy is practiced. Moreover, many of the old jabs at each side have lost much of their force. The idea of a pox on both their houses—that analytical philosophers are a bunch of small-minded logic choppers, and continental philosophers are a bunch of wooly minded gasbags—has long (...) since failed to carry the punch it once did. What I want to suggest here is that they are both the same type of philosophy in one crucial, determining aspect: That one of the key experiences of modern philosophy, maybe even the great motivating experience of modern philosophy, is that of a certain type of skepticism, the idea that “we” both collectively and individually are prone to fool ourselves, be misled by conclusions that are attractive but unsupportable, or be misled even by our own experience and ways of thought to come to conclusions that turn out later to be insupportable. Certainly something like this underwrites the motivational power in those parts of contemporary philosophy that can be called “analytic” or are at least inspired by the analytical philosophers of the first two thirds of the twentieth century. Why else the careful attention to argument, the constant recasting of theses so that their implications can be better viewed, the deep ethos of attacking papers given by colleagues with a barrage of counter-examples, and of subjecting our colleagues to ruthless, sometimes unforgiving examination? What often seems perhaps petty to those more irritated than enlightened by analytic philosophy—that it is only tedious logic-chopping or “academic in the worst sense” niggling—is inspired by a brooding sense of skepticism, a sense that without such very intensely rigorous policing of our arguments and our explications, we are simply too prone to slide off into assertions that feel good, that may even seem to some of us like really very deep matters, but which, alas, may on closer inspection or in the light of later hindsight just turn out to be dreadfully false. Better to jump on the arguments now than to be embarrassed by them later. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:After a transgression has occurred within an organization, a primary concern is the reintegration of the affected parties back into the organizational community. However, beyond offenders and victims, reintegration depends on the views of organizational peers and their desire to interact with these parties. In two studies, we demonstrated that offender amends and victim forgiveness interact to predict peer reintegrative outcomes. We found evidence of backlash against unforgiving victims: Peers wanted to work the least with victims who rejected appropriate amends, (...) thus penalizing them for their failure to contribute to the restoration process. This backlash effect was due to decreased liking of the victim and the perceived failure to repair the offender-victim relationship. These findings demonstrate that peers expect both offenders and victims to do their part to achieve reconciliation following transgression, and both may suffer the consequences of failing to meet peer expectations. Implications for reintegration within organizations are discussed. (shrink)

Based on an empirical study regarding ethical challenges within intercultural health care, the focus of this article is upon autonomy and disclosure, discussed in light of philosophy and anthropology. What are the consequences for patients if the patients’ right to be autonomous and to participate in treatment and care decisions by health care workers is interpreted as an obligation to participate? To force a person to make independent choices who is socio-culturally unprepared to do so, may violate his/her integrity. This (...) may in turn jeopardise the respect, integrity and human worth the principle of autonomy was meant to ensure, and if so, may damage any relationship of trust that may exist between patient and health care worker. There is necessarily a link between autonomy and disclosure. Western disclosure practices may make the relationship between patients and health care workers difficult -- even distrustful. To confront a patient with a very serious diagnosis may be seen not only as a tactless action, but also an unforgivable one. Hence, among many ethnic groups it is a family member’s duty to shield patients from bad or disquieting news, e.g., a cancer diagnosis. If a family member is used to interpret in such situations, will the information given equal the information communicated by that interpreter? Even though respect for a person’s autonomy is part of the respect for a person, one’s respect for the person in question should not depend on his/her ability or aptitude to act autonomously. (shrink)

Jean-Marc Coicaud's article begins by stressing the contemporary importance and the current trend of political apology. Recent political apologies offered in Australia and Canada to their indigenous populations form a significant part of this story. He then analyzes a number of intriguing paradoxes at the core of the dynamics of apology. These paradoxes give meaning to apology but also make the very idea of apology extremely challenging. They have to do with the relationships of apology with time, law and the (...) unforgivable. The most intriguing of these paradoxes concerns apology and the unforgivable. Indeed, the greater the wrong, the more valuable the apology. But, then, the more difficult it becomes to issue and to accept an apology. This latter paradox is namely examined in the context of mass crimes, taken from Europe, Africa and Asia. As a whole these paradoxes are all the more intriguing considering what apology in a political context aims to accomplish, for the actor who issues the apology, for the one who receives it, for their relationship, and for the social environment in which this takes place. Jean-Marc Coicaud concludes his article by outlining what the rise of apology means for contemporary political culture. (shrink)

After decades of armed conflict in Colombia, how do those most affected by that conflict understand forgiveness? While others have researched Colombians’ views of forgiveness, this study is the first to do so through discussion of a narrative of forgiveness. Readings of the biblical narrative chosen for this study, the Parable of the Unforgiving Debtor, can enable North Atlantic scholars to discover dimensions of the parable revealed by those who live lives that mirror the realities of the parable, unlike such (...) scholars. The study aims to understand how conflict survivors, especially internally displaced persons, understand forgiveness and its relation to politics. The study also aims to identify how these women and men read Matthew 18:21–35 differently from academics. Groups in eight locations around Colombia discussed Matthew 18:21–35. Researchers led lectura popular de la Biblia [people’s readings of the Bible], inviting participants to say how the parable related to their lives and to discuss the political consequences that would come from imitating characters in the parable. Conflict survivors said that forgiving was essential if their communities were going to be communities at all, especially communities at peace, offering freedom and economic opportunity. Unlike commentators, they read Matthew 18:21–35 as enjoining forgiveness towards those beyond their local church and for wrongs involving money and violence. As Colombian churches seek to counter resentment with forgiveness, they should be aware of the power of lectura popular, especially of this parable, to create a safe environment where conflict survivors can speak candidly. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to clash the problem of forgiveness as formulated in contemporary secular and Christian ethics with Kierkegaard’s considerations concerning this issue. Kierkegaard’s thought is increasingly used in the modern debate on forgiveness. It is therefore worth investigating whether Kierkegaard’s considerations are really able to overcome in any way contemporary disputes concerning this problem or enrich our thinking in this area. The main thesis of this paper states that there is a fundamental, ontological difference between Kierkegaard’s understanding (...) of forgiveness and that of modern thinkers. While the Danish philosopher refers to the transcendent reality of spirit, where the act of forgiveness is always performed by God, in contemporary ethical and Christian thought, forgiveness is first and foremost formulated from an immanent point of view that appeals to the world of human values. This difference is demonstrated by analyzing the four main themes corresponding to the most important issues taken up in the contemporary debate on forgiveness. These are: the victim-offender relation, the conditionality and unconditionality of forgiveness, the issue of condonation, and the problem of the unforgivable. As a result of the analyses presented herein, the impossibility of directly applying Kierkegaard’s transcendent theses to ethical thought of the immanent variety will be shown. (shrink)

Philosophers have turned their attention to gaslighting only recently, and have made considerable progress in analysing its characteristic aims and harms. I am less convinced, however, that we have fully understood its nature. I will argue in this paper that philosophers and others interested in the phenomenon have largely overlooked a phenomenon I call moral gaslighting, in which someone is made to feel morally defective—for example, cruelly unforgiving or overly suspicious—for harbouring some mental state to which she is entitled. If (...) I am right about this possibility, and that it deserves to be called gaslighting, then gaslighting is a far more prevalent and everyday phenomenon than has previously been credited. And it can also be a purely structural phenomenon, as well as an interpersonal one, which remains a controversial possibility in the current literature. (shrink)

Forgiveness and mercy are both generous responses to wrongdoing. Forgiveness is a personal reaction to wrongful harm. It can be expressed in emotional, verbal, or relational terms, and it can potentially express a number of important moral values. Controversial topics with regard to forgiveness include the possibility of unforgivable actions and of third-party, self, and group forgiveness. Recent political developments have invited philosophical reflection on public forgiveness. Mercy is usually theorized in relation to punishment, and it is understood to (...) provide the basis for more lenient treatment than that demanded by justice, interpreted strictly. It remains controversial as to whether mercy should be understood apart from justice or incorporated within it. (shrink)

On the traditional view, Butler maintains that forgiveness involves a kind of “conversion experience” in which we must forswear or let go of our resentment against wrongdoers. Against this reading, I argue that Butler never demands that we forswear resentment but only that we be resentful in the right kind of way. That is, he insists that we should be virtuously resentful, avoiding both too much resentment exhibited by the vices of malice and revenge and too little resentment where we (...) merely condone the wrongdoer and leave ourselves open to future injury. I argue that this Butlerian approach offers us a more attractive account of forgiveness as a “virtue” than many recent discussions. In the final section, I address Butler’s challenging thesis that forgiveness is an unconditional moral duty. I argue against those who claim that forgiveness is supererogatory (Kolnai/Calhoun) or else merely morally conditional and even morally blameworthy in some cases (Murphy/Hampton/Novitz/Richards). By contrast, I defend a context-sensitive account of forgiveness which recognizes that it takes place on many different levels. I conclude by taking up the difficult issue of whether anybody can be ultimately “unforgivable”, offering some Butlerian and Strawsonian reflections that might help mitigate our judgments about such matters. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will offer a strategic new interpretation of Hannah Arendt's conception of forgiveness. In brief, I propose understanding Arendt as suggesting—not that evil is objectively banal, or a mere failure of imagination—but instead that it is maximally forgiveness-facilitating to understand the seemingly unforgivable as merely a failure of imagination. In other words, we must so expand our imaginative powers (what Arendt terms “enlarged mentality”) by creatively imagining others as merely insufficiently unimaginative, all in order to reimagine (...) them as beings whom we are willing and able to forgive. It is in this sense that I understand forgiveness for Arendt as a kind of “magic.” That is, forgiveness involves the imaginatively-funded creation of a new reality by merely naming it, like the phenomenon of “magic thinking,” wherein one believes one’s thoughts or speech are immediately realized in the world. The magic of forgiveness, in other words, is an incantation or performative speech act, based on the forgiver’s choice to “make believe,” or pretend-into-being, that the forgiven person is forgivable qua thoughtless. (shrink)

Lewis was not, and is not, very popular in the academy. I think there are three reasons.First, he did not stick to his subject, which was medieval and Renaissance literature. He wrote highly successful children's books, theological works, and articles accessible to nonspecialists, and was an acclaimed broadcaster. All this allowed his critics to suggest that he was not a proper academic, because proper academics do not throw their nets so wide.Second, he was good at everything he did (except perhaps (...) some areas of philosophy: he was famously bested by Elizabeth Anscombe when he ventured onto her home ground). This was perhaps the most infuriating thing about him. The justification for academic superspecialization is that one cannot do more than one thing really well. But Lewis did. He was a better Renaissance scholar than those who criticized him, moaned about him in the Oxford cloisters, and blackballed him for appointments. He is relentlessly readable; therefore (said his detractors) his scholarship must be shoddy.Lewis infuriates me too. Often, when I think I have had an original thought in some domain a million miles from Renaissance literature, I discover not only that Lewis had had that thought already, but had explicated it, seeing angles I never noticed, and more often than not he had exploded it, using a tenth of the words I used, and all in devastatingly simple prose that would entertain and illuminate the most uninterested plumber.And third, of course, he was a Christian, which was then becoming an unforgivable sin, as it remains now in the humanities (though not the physical sciences or mathematics). The usual (stated) objection to academic Christians is that their theological commitment precludes objectivity, but Lewis's academic writing (notably his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama [1954]) was so good that that indictment could not stick, and his opponents descended into incoherent fulmination about superannuated paradigms.These reasons help to explain the chilly reception (or, more often, nonreception) by self-billed “serious thinkers” of Lewis's “space trilogy”: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength (hereafter THS). In relation to THS there is another reason: the novel is about them. No, about us. Lewis's view of us is just too keen, his diagnosis too alarming.The main concerns of THS are dehumanization, the role of institutions in that dehumanization, and the desire of individuals to be part of an esoteric circle. More broadly, it concerns the nature of evil. Its debt to the Divine Comedy and to Charles Williams, Lewis's fellow Inkling, are clear.The central character is a young academic, Mark Studdock. We all know him. His education had been “neither scientific nor classical—merely ‘Modern.’ That left him pathetically manipulable. The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour.” Studdock was “a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge.” He stood for nothing; he weighed nothing.Humans are not supposed to be weightless. We will do anything to convince ourselves that we have mass. Many of our strategies are counterproductive. Some are disastrous and lead to dissolution. Studdock's strategy is one of the commonest and most catastrophic: he tries to get to the center of things—to the “Inner Ring” whose geography is described by Lewis in his 1944 lecture (and later essay) of that name. At some level, at least occasionally, Studdock knows the stupidity of this ambition, but he closes his eyes and his mind. And he begins to be used by forces far greater than any he had dreamed of.The book opens with a merciless (and horribly entertaining) account of academic politics. Read it and cringe in recognition: the mechanics of toadyism; the devices for getting your own way with a committee (put the real business in coded form at the end of an agenda, to be dealt with on a hot day after lunch); infuse everything with an appeal to self-interest, but never put it quite like that, for fear of awakening long-dormant altruism. Obfuscate: do not call the sale of an ancient woodland in which Merlin's body lies “the sale of Bragdon Wood” but the sale of “the area coloured pink on the plan.” Learn to talk like the bursar of Studdock's college, for each of his sentences was “a model of lucidity: and if his hearers found the gist of his whole statement less clear than the parts, that may have been their fault.” As a manual for getting your own way in institutions, The Prince is artless and benign beside THS.Studdock becomes a pawn in a big and diabolical game. A vast organization, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments, known, of course, as “NICE” (never underestimate the importance of an acronym), which turns out to be the instrument of dark supernatural forces, is becoming a state within a state. It is unaccountable. That is its tagline, indeed: it will be free of the red tape that inhibits the research of more conventional institutions. And who can define with sufficient exactitude the difference in principle between tedious administrative red tape and moral stricture? If you are in with the NICE, anything goes.The NICE's project is the unmaking of everything that is quintessentially human and, eventually, everything that is biological. Life itself is just too unhygienic. Beauty is a joke. Sentiment a delusion. Love merely a result of chemical interactions in the brain. Nothing signifies.The NICE has a handful of opponents—a raggedy bunch (including a bear) under the direction of Ransom, who has traveled outside planet Earth in the previous two books in the trilogy. The company, it turns out, is the remnant of the old Arthurian kingdom of Logres, which has always been in tension, if not war, with the modern kingdom of Britain: “Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell: a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers: the home of Sidney—and of Cecil Rhodes.” They recruit Studdock's wife, Jane, who can spy clairvoyantly on the NICE, and then a revived Merlin comes from his tomb to their aid.THS is strong meat. Many will balk at its supernaturalism, and perhaps in particular its complementarian view of the relationship between the sexes. But hear Lewis out: you might not agree with him, but he is always interesting. When I read THS thirty years ago, I thought it a ripping yarn. It still is. But now I see it as prescient, prophetic, and profoundly important. It should be on every university reading list, for every subject, and no one should be allowed to hold any kind of public office until they have shown that they have assimilated its lessons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Men Becoming Gods in "Style"Gioia and Girard on Divinized DesireJoshua Hren (bio)In our secular age we hear seekers of the sacred and religious devotees alike decry the soul-deadening, spirit-dumbing consequences of materialism. René Girard contends that—on the contrary—in the "leveled," horizontal world of a purportedly materialistic modernity this transcendent authority is deviated and distorted but it does not disappear. In his first major work, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, (...) he argues that "the passion that drives men to seize or gain more possessions is not materialistic; it is the triumph of the mediator, the god with the human face."1 In a materialistic age, the gods are "pulled down from the heaven, the sacred flows over the earth" and men become "gods for each other."2Dana Gioia, former businessman and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, is no stranger to the economy of divinized desire. The stakes of our passions—whether we are wrecked by dubious wants or able to shed our infernal imitations—pierce his poetry. Gioia cites Girard as a significant influence alongside St. Augustine and Kierkegaard, though he does not indicate whether his own poetic investigations of mimesis are a direct yield of [End Page 149] his encounter with Girard or the independent discovery of attentive artistic intuition.3The refuge of lies so central to Girard is particularly palpable in Gioia's long narrative poem "Style."4 Charlie, the self-deprecating narrator, divinizes his college friend Tom, a business mogul who "prospered like one chosen by the gods."5 Tom uses his easy money to purchase gaudy metamorphoses, hosting magnificent events with his "flawless" wife Eden. An antihero of the unremarkable variety, Charlie attends all Tom's parties until he stops receiving invitations. When he discovers his deity's disappearance is tied to a terminal illness, he descends into the infernal "slums" of Tom's new hideout, and he finds his former hero hell-bent, ready to commit an arson that will erase his own existence in style. Charlie is confronted with a difficult decision that any coward would waver before. He has the chance to become an atheist—at least with respect to his dying god. After painting a portrait of man-made gods, the poem probes the question of whether and how we can cut short our penchant for great deceits.Charlie opens this narrative poem with an invective directed against himself.Just look at me. Isn't it obvious?I have no style. I'm just a human blur.On me expensive clothes look second-hand.They droop or sag. The color's never right.I wear the wrong apparel to the party.I pick the dullest item on the menu.Each haircut brings some new humiliation.6Crucially, we never receive an audit of this dour self-consciousness. By poem's end, no one has corrected or confirmed Charlie's condemnations. He may be right; his might be the antinomy of Midas's modus operandi. His hyperbolic portrait of Tom's greatness suggests that he is less than just to himself. His preoccupation with something as small as a menu item betrays a brutal obsessiveness. He employs the ascetical word "humiliation" in conjunction with a "haircut"—further revealing his unforgiving inner harshness. Charlie "always loved to visit Tom" precisely because he himself is Pathetic, Inc.7Were René Girard Charlie's older brother, he might sit the sad sap down on a comfortable couch and spell out the difficult truth as follows: The anti-hero "dreams of absorbing and assimilating his mediator's being."8 This highfalutin description of "the Other implies an insuperable revulsion for one's own substance."9 We ought not to take seriously the excuses these types give for their [End Page 150] failings and their fawning, for they "hate themselves on a more essential level than that of 'qualities.'"10 When Charlie disparages his badly cut bangs or his mismatched outfits, he's really incriminating his very being."The desire," Girard argues, "is aimed at the mediator's being."11 Charlie evinces this dynamic when he insists that Tom's "success was existential: / It wasn't what... (shrink)

Hypocrisy is generally treated as particularly repugnant, perhaps the “only unforgivable sin.” I argue that this attitude is misplaced. Hypocrisy—especially quotidian hypocrisy by the average citizen—plays an essential role in maintaining and promoting a good society. Hypocrisy facilitates the establishment and maintenance of beneficial social norms, and can secure better social outcomes when full compliance with a norm is suboptimal. The hypocrite then, is sometimes playing a crucial role in society, and in such cases doesn’t deserve the full measure (...) of the reprobation we usually reserve for them. Instead of focusing our reactions on their hypocrisy, we should instead target our attitudes on the misbehavior itself. (shrink)

Alaska s Aleutian Island chain, barren and windswept, arcs for over a thousand miles toward Asia from the Alaska Peninsula. In this remote and hostile archipelago is Kiska, an uninhabited sub-arctic speck in the tempestuous Bering Sea. Few have the opportunity even to visit this island, but in June of 1942 Japanese troops seized Kiska and neighboring Attu in the only occupation of North American territory since the War of 1812. The bastion of Japan s possessions in Alaska, Kiska was (...) soon fortified with 7,500 enemy troops, a seaplane base, naval anchorage and submarine base, heavy guns and a labyrinth of tunnels. For thirteen months Japanese troops held a tenuous hold on the island under constant bombardment from American forces, but finally and successfully abandoning the island. So hurried was the evacuation that equipment and personal effects were left behind. The Japanese occupiers of Kiska have remained shadowy figures. Brendan Coyle spent 51 days on Kiska searching out the tunnels, equipment and personal effects frozen in time. Those objects are brought back to life in the over three hundred images Coyle has assembled from his own visit and from archives. His writing puts the images in historical and contemporary perspective, opening a new window on a remote battlefield and unforgiving landscape.". (shrink)

The aim of this article is to develop a novel interpretation of the significance of trauma and substitution in Levinas’s ethical thinking in light of the problem of temporality, language, and the question of what it means to be a created being. With an emphasis on Levinas’s style of writing, the intersections of Derrida, Husserl, and Freud in his thinking, and the “two-times” of traumatic temporality, the argument of this article seeks to understand how responsibility for the other is crystallized (...) through the trauma of the Goodness and expiation for the impossibility of enduring its unforgiving demand. (shrink)

In the United States, people are deeply divided along lines of race, class, political party, gender, sexuality, and religion. Many believe that historical grievances must eventually be left behind in the interest of progress toward a more just and unified society. But too much in American history is unforgivable and cannot be forgotten. How then can we imagine a way to live together that does not expect people to let go of their entrenched resentments? Living with Hate in American (...) Politics and Religion offers an innovative argument for the power of playfulness in popular culture to make our capacity for coexistence imaginable. Jeffrey Israel explores how people from different backgrounds can pursue justice together, even as they play with their divisive grudges, prejudices, and desires in their cultural lives. Israel calls on us to distinguish between what belongs in a raucous “domain of play” and what belongs in the domain of the political. He builds on the thought of John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum to defend the liberal tradition against challenges posed by Frantz Fanon from the left and Leo Strauss from the right. In provocative readings of Lenny Bruce’s stand-up comedy, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, and Norman Lear’s All in the Family, Israel argues that postwar Jewish American popular culture offers potent and fruitful examples of playing with fraught emotions. Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion is a powerful vision of what it means to live with others without forgiving or forgetting. (shrink)

On her seventy-fifth birthday, the author’s mother confessed to an affair more than three decades past. His father’s response was unforgiving. Her need to confess met his limitless rage. She acted out of love; he sought revenge. Their battle consumed everything and everyone around them. In the middle of this struggle, she was diagnosed with cancer. Two years later, she died. Testimony is a son’s memoir of this struggle. Paul Kahn finds here a story of the twentieth century, beginning with (...) poverty in the Depression and immigration from Hitler’s Germany. He follows his father’s experience of the war and his return with PTSD. He traces his parents’ movement through the turbulent 60s. More than a study of twentieth-century culture, Testimony is a philosophical inquiry into the possibility of faith in a secular age. History, philosophy, and theology flow together as Kahn finds in his parents’ lives the resources for a series of essays on the nature of truth, memory, death, and faith. Testimony is most of all a meditation on love in a time in which the very possibility of faith is constantly put to the test. (shrink)

This paper seeks to apply some of the tools of analytic philosophy to a text written by a 'continental' philosopher, in order to evaluate the quality of its arguments. In 'On Forgiveness', Jacques Derrida seems to be making two different claims about forgiveness. First, he claims that an act of forgiveness is only truly meaningful as forgiveness when one is forgiving the unforgivable. Second, he is also recommending that we change our understanding of the concept of forgiveness for ethical (...) reasons. I examine three lines of argument used in the essay to support the first claim. I find each of these lines of argument problematic. Since these arguments are unconvincing, I argue that this leaves only the second claim for Derrida to defend. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article's first paragraph: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has remained in print ever since it was published two hundred years ago this year, and has been the basis for innumerable adaptations. While most novels from so long ago have been forgotten, Shelley’s lives on. Why has it remained so popular? Perhaps, at least in part, it’s due to the philosophical themes it addresses: tampering with nature, the dereliction of duties, and the importance of taking (...) responsibility for one’s actions. The tale of a being born without a mother, written by a young woman whose own mother died a few days after giving birth to her, it is perhaps most of all an examination of the need for love in order to survive in a harsh and unforgiving world. It is also a cautionary tale of a man who achieves what he sought to do, only to have his creation turn on him and all he loves. (shrink)

It seems to me that unforgiveably little attention has been paid in the program of our round table and in the discussion as it has developed to questions of socialization and, particularly, moral training.

Can we still talk today about a therapeutically dimension of philosophy? To what extent does Heidegger's philosophy exhibit such a dimension? And how can we reconcile this aspect of Heidegger's thought with his political involvement in 1933? These are some of the questions starting from which I will try to show that Heidegger's philosophical thought presupposes indeed a therapeutic that the thinker assumed even in his own life, a life that is not reducible to his 'unforgivable failure' in 1933. (...) I will begin with an account of Being and Time's existential analytic, the main thread of which is the distinction between Dasein's authenticity and inauthenticity. Next I will try to grasp some of the importance of Heidegger's investigation regarding Dasein's determination as a 'thinker and speaker of being (Sein)', that is, regarding ec-sistence. I will then try to account for the meaning of the 'question regarding technology' and implicitly Heidegger's solution regarding overcoming the condition of a 'gregarious slave of Ge-stell' through cultivation of the so-called 'poetic theology.' I will conclude by signaling some life-file elements of the 'faithless monk from the Black Forest' (as Heidegger is sometimes called), elements that signal a certain correspondence between the philosopher's life and the therapeutic aspect present implicitly in his philosophy. (shrink)

I argue that we should emancipate the problem of evil and suffering from theodicist assumptions that lead to a chronic non-acknowledgment of the sufferers’ experiential point of view. This also entails emancipating the problem of evil and suffering from the need to consider the so-called argument from evil. In the argument ‘from’ evil, evil and suffering are seen as pieces of empirical evidence against theism. This presupposes understanding theism as a hypothesis to be tested in an evidentialist game of argumentation. (...) Such a presupposition already fails to acknowledge the depth and variety of both religious and nonreligious approaches to living with evil and suffering. One way of cashing out what moral antitheodicism amounts to is to analyze theodicism as a failure of recognizing others’ suffering. Furthermore, one way of cashing out what this mis- or nonrecognition amounts to is to analyze the unforgivability of evil. Focusing on recognition and forgiveness here can be understood as an attempt to show that there is something seriously wrong with mainstream analytic philosophers’ of religion preoccupation with the argument from evil. In contrast, an ethically proper response to evil and suffering emerges from a serious consideration of recognition, forgiveness, and the unforgivable. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida has suggested that forgiveness be understood as the unforgivable: in order for forgiveness to be pure, its object must be the unforgivable. Furthermore, he states that no conditions should be imposed on granting forgiveness. The article seeks to show that this purity has to be forgone since the offender has to repent and ask for forgiveness, in order for a victim to forgive. The article also examines the monstrous as the object of forgiveness, using the case (...) of Jean Améry as an example. (shrink)

Mental illness affects every aspect of life and society, from relationships between individuals and within families, to small communities and entire polities. People with serious mental illness die decades before those without. Mentally ill people suffer daily as they struggle to function in societies that are unforgiving and uninterested in their pain. Those with serious mental illness may be incarcerated because of their sickness, they may be passed over or fired from jobs, subjected to ridicule and mockery, given little treatment (...) or safe shelter, and violently victimized. As a result, persons with mental illness are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. And while the world is focused on the COVID-19... (shrink)

This essay opens with a discussion of the Black commons and the possibility it offers for visioning coherence between Black land relationality and Indigenous sovereignty. Two sites of history – Black slavery and Black migration prior to the twentieth century – present illuminations and challenges to Black and Indigenous relations on Turtle Island, as they expose the “antagonisms history has left us”, and the ways antiblackness is produced as a return to what is deemed impossible, unimaginable, or unforgivable about (...) Black life.While the full histories are well beyond the scope of this paper, I highlight the violent impossibilities and afterlives produced and sustained by both – those that deserve care and attention within a “new relationality,” as Tiffany King has named, between Black and Indigenous peoples. At the end of the essay, I return briefly to Anna Tsing’s spiritual science of foraging wild mushrooms. Her allegory about the human condition offers a bridge, I conclude, between the emancipatory dreams of Black freedom and Indigenous sovereignty. (shrink)

The article examines the political challenge and significance of forgiveness as an indispensable response to the inherently imperfect and tragic nature of political life through the lens of the existential, narrative-inspired judging sensibility. While the political significance of forgiveness has been broadly recognized in transitional justice and reconciliation contexts, the question of its importance and appropriateness in the wake of grave injustice and suffering has commonly been approached through constructing a self-centred, rule-based framework, defining forgiveness in terms of a moral (...) duty or virtue. Reliant on a set of prefabricated moral standards, however, this approach risks abstracting from the historical, situated condition of human political existence and thus arguably stands at a remove from the very quandaries and imperfections of the political world, which it purports to address. Against this background, this article draws on Albert Camus’s and Hannah Arendt’s aesthetic, worldly judging sensibility and its ability to kindle the process of coming to terms with the absurd, and perhaps unforgivable character of reality after evil. As an aptitude to engage the world in its particularity, plurality and contingency rather than seeking to subdue and tame it under prefabricated standards of thought, namely, worldly judgement is able to reveal how past tragedies have arisen from the ambiguity of human engagement in the world and thereby also elicit the distinctly human capacities of beginning anew and resisting such actions in the future. As such, I suggest, it is well-suited to bring into clearer focus and confront the main political challenge and significance of forgiveness: how to acknowledge the seriousness of the wrongs committed, yet also enable the possibility of a new beginning and restore among former enemies the sense of responsibility for the shared world. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the act of forgiveness understood as an act which involves the recognition of injustice. Its goal is to answer to Arendt, who equates the realm of forgiveness with the possibility of punishment, to Derrida, who limits forgiveness to the unforgivable actions in order to highlight its unconditionality, and to Jankélévitch, who insists that the culprit’s repentance is an indispensable condition to forgiveness. By contrasting forgiveness, retaliation, and resignation, I emphasize that forgiveness implies attributing blame for (...) injustice, but I distinguish this from the sphere of punishment. Secondly, by showing how self-esteem is necessary for the victim and the offender, I underline the significance of the culprit’s avowal. These two elements lead to the distinction between inner forgiveness, which entails a superabundant act and an element of unconditionality, and integral forgiveness, which requires the culprit’s repentance in order to be exchanged by two people. (shrink)

In the modern world, about 1 billion people in Asian and African, partly European and American countries, who in their thinking and daily practice turn to the sacred texts about the Prophet Muhammad, his Sunnah, to find acceptable answers not only to questions of a domestic nature, but also to solve problems related to the sphere of socio-political development, as well as international relations. The purpose of this article is to study rare types of hadith by studying the works of (...) modern and classical theologians of Islam. The novelty of this study is that it attempts a contextual and comparative analysis of rare types of hadith. Aliy is the Hadith in which the number of transmitters in the chain is smaller, and unfortunately it is its antonym. Maukuf is a hadith whose chain reaches the companions, but whether it is speech or action, it does not reach the Prophet. A hadith mursal is a hadith in which the name of a companion is omitted. The hadith of a mushroom is a hadith narrated by one transmitter. The hadith of munkati is a hadith in which there is no transmitter in the chain. Two transmitters are missed in the chain of hadith modal. There are two types of hadith maklub: replacing the location of one transmitter instead of another, and replacing the chain of one hadith with the circuit of another. Other rare types of hadiths have also been studied. The importance of a correct understanding of these catches is emphasized, so as not to get lost in the system of the hadith hierarchy as a whole. Ignorance of the subtleties of hadith studies can lead to unforgivable errors in the interpretation of hadiths. And, unfortunately, extremist sects have become widespread in our age, which misinterpret and mislead hadiths, illustrating the above-mentioned ignorance. (shrink)

In the article, I examine Hélène Cixous's play La Ville parjure ou le Réveil des Erinyes as a political contribution to the debate over memory and justice. The focus is on the question of how the telling of a story of atrocities may be therapeutic to both the victim and to society. I stress Cixous's alternative way of addressing justice: through forgiveness instead of criminal prosecution or other forms of retribution or reconciliation. Referring to Jacques Derrida's work, the main argument (...) revolves around the question of whether forgiveness for unspeakable crimes should be unconditional or conditional. Instead of seeing Cixous's play as an unequivocal stance on restorative justice in general, and on conditional forgiveness in particular, I stress that the main protagonist, the Mother, is not willing to forgive the crime itself because of its unforgivable nature. (shrink)