Thinking about Forgiveness: A Philosophical Preamble to Its Cultivation in Schooling

In this article I explore and clarify issues fundamental to an understanding of forgiveness and its justification. I do so as a necessary preliminary to a related project falling beyond the scope of the present study, one that will examine the idea of nurturing a culture or spirit of forgiveness in public (state) schooling from a wider and more inclusive perspective than what has been typically advanced in the educational literature, (2) what this might entail, and why those directly concerned with schooling should take the cultivation of forgiving attitudes or dispositions seriously. This present work is divided into three sections. The first identifies what I take to be the central features or characteristics of "forgiveness" insofar as its morally relevant uses are concerned. (3) Some of these features are formal in nature, others substantive. Most are presented with relatively moderate analysis and argument, and none are exactly new in the sense of not having been discussed in the philosophical literature on forgiveness before, though my selection and treatment may vary at times from that of others. The second section examines the reasons or grounds on which the act of extending forgiveness might be defended, as well the conditions under which forgiveness might be limited, inappropriate, or objectionable. The final section briefly identifies some issues and questions for further study that my analysis raises with respect to the practice of nurturing a culture or spirit of forgiveness in schooling. Forgiveness is a complex and contestable notion, one easily given to popular misconception, e.g., that it returns a situation between two parties back to normal, that it lets culprits "off the hook" or condones what they do, as well as to much derision, e.g., that it is only for the weak, the sentimental, or the religious, or that it smacks of new-age "mushiness," and so on. Yet forgiveness is an extremely powerful idea, one critical to an understanding of the human condition, of our vulnerabilities, fallibilities, and capacities for doing both good and ill. How should we see and respond to others whose words and deeds hurt or wrong us in some way? How should we respond to ourselves when our own thoughts and attitudes are self-damaging or self-deceiving, and when we say or do things we regret? What role should forgiveness play in our flourishing as human beings, in our becoming persons more fully and, consequently, in schooling insofar as its basic purpose is (or ought to be) the preparation of students to lead as flourishing lives as possible? (4) In this work I focus primarily on interpersonal forgiveness rather than self-forgiveness or social-political forgiveness. (5) Interpersonal forgiveness seems particularly relevant to the contexts of schooling I have in mind, not withstanding the importance and value of the other two. My approach to interpersonal forgiveness is from a secular-philosophical perspective rather than a religious or theological one. Hannah Arendt once opined that modern societies tend to overlook or under-estimate the importance of forgiveness because it was "presumed to be a purely theological matter" (in Govier, 2002, pp. 42-43). In taking a secular-philosophical approach I acknowledge the multicultural character of our liberal and democratic society, the separation of church and state reflected in the practice of public (as distinct from faith-based) schooling, and the rational belief that in order to forgive or seek forgiveness one need not be religious or a person of faith any more than to be moral is it necessary that one be religious or a person of faith. A transcendent reality, in other words, is not a necessary presupposition of forgiveness and forgiving, though much of the history of forgiveness at least in the context of Western civilization has been closely associated with such a reality. (6) I follow the lead of those (e.g., Holmgren,1993; 2002; Govier, 2002; Roberts-Cady, 2003; Wolfendale, 2005) generally sympathetic to a Kantian ethic of respect and its ability to provide a secular-philosophical underpinning for forgiveness, (7) though I acknowledge this is not the only such secular basis to be advanced. …