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FORGIVING THE DEAD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2019

Macalester Bell
Macalester Bell*
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Bryn Mawr College
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Abstract:

Resentment and other hard feelings may outlive their targets, and people often express a desire to overcome these feelings through forgiveness. While some see forgiving the dead as an important moral accomplishment, others deny that genuine forgiveness of the dead is coherent, let alone desirable or valuable. According to one line of thought, forgiveness is something we do for certain reasons, such as the offender’s expressed contrition. Given that the dead cannot express remorse, forgiveness of the dead is impossible. Others see the apparent coherence and moral importance of forgiving the dead as a reason to give up on the idea that forgiveness is conditional upon the offender’s remorse. According to these philosophers, forgiveness of the dead poses no special problems; forgiveness of the dead, like forgiveness of the living, is not contingent upon the offender’s contrition. I steer a path between these two positions in such a way as to bring out an important aspect of forgiveness that is not adequately addressed in the literature: I argue that forgiving the dead may be perfectly coherent and morally valuable even though the dead cannot ask for forgiveness or engage in reparative activities. A full appreciation of the relational character of forgiveness allows us to make sense of forgiving the dead.

Keywords

forgivenessresentmentdeathrelationshipsinterpretations
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Summer 2019 , pp. 27 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2019 

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Footnotes

*

I’d like to thank Michael McKenna and my fellow contributors to this volume. I’m grateful to Michael for his trenchant, yet kindly expressed, comments. I would also like to thank the anonymous referee who read the essay with keen attention and raised a number of challenging objections that helped me improve the essay. Earlier versions of the essay were presented at philosophy departments at Queens, MIT, the University of Illinois, and the Institute of Philosophy at Bern, and I’m grateful to those audiences for their feedback.

References

1 CBSNEWS 2009 “Julian Lennon: I Finally Forgive Dad,” December 15 http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500187_162-5981807.html. Lucy was Julian’s childhood friend and inspired the song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The comments posted in response to the story highlight the disagreement in this culture regarding forgiveness of the dead. One poster scoffs, “Little late Julian, hate to tell you, your father is dead, so forgiving him means nothing now.” Another responds, “Actually, forgiving someone who’s dead is MUCH more significant than forgiving someone who’s alive—the living still have an opportunity to balance the scales. A dead person’s lost that opportunity forever. In any case, the function of forgiveness isn’t to absolve the person who wronged you. Some wrongs you can’t make right. Forgiveness is about letting go, making peace with the situation as it stands.” Yet another declares: “Oh give me a break!!! Julian finally forgives his dad . . . AFTER HE’S DEAD!!!! Sorry, but he had plenty of time to forgive him while he was alive! Julian Lennon is only talking to himself . . . .”

2 To simplify what is already a complex topic, I will focus on cases of overcoming resentment through forgiveness; of course, forgiveness also involves overcoming emotions like disappointment, sadness, bitterness, and so on.

3 Some defenders of the Conditional View will argue that such a response is not forgiveness at all, while others will argue that it isn’t a praiseworthy form of forgiveness. I will not take a stand on this debate. I seek to show that forgiveness of the dead can be a full, meritorious form of forgiveness, even if we accept the Conditional View.

4 Griswold, Charles, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar distinguishes between perfect and imperfect forgiveness: perfect forgiveness is the ideal form of forgiveness and it is conditional upon the wrongdoer’s experience and expression of regret, whereas imperfect forgiveness is unconditional. Perfect forgiveness is, in all circumstances, preferable to imperfect forgiveness, and it is always rational to wish that the conditions for perfect forgiveness were satisfied. Forgiveness of the dead is imperfect and therefore is a kind of second-best alternative to perfect forgiveness. Moreover, Griswold maintains that imperfect forgiveness is only possible if the victim gains knowledge of grounds that support forgiveness’ characteristic reinterpretation of the offender. If, for example, the would-be forgiver discovers a never-delivered letter that reveals the wrongdoer’s remorse, this would provide grounds for imperfect forgiveness. Only under circumstances of this kind is genuine—though still imperfect—forgiveness of the dead possible (see p. 115). I will argue that forgiveness of the dead is not always imperfect in Griswold’s sense; that is, forgiveness of the dead is not always a second-best alternative to perfect forgiveness. I hope to show that forgiveness of the dead is coherent and apt even in the absence of the special circumstances that Griswold describes.

5 I take the phrase “interpretive generosity” from Westlund, Andrea, “Anger, Faith, and Forgiveness,” The Monist 92, no. 4 (2009): 507–536.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Westlund does not consider the issue of forgiveness of the dead, but she defends a version of what I call the Unconditional View. As she sees it, in forgiving we express a kind of moral faith in the grounds for goodwill toward wrongdoers (p. 509). On Cheshire Calhoun’s version of the Unconditional View (“Changing One’s Heart,” Ethics 103, no. 1 [1992]: 76–96), we should understand forgiveness as a process of interpreting the wrongdoer as someone who did what made the best sense to him, given his particular history, when he did wrong. Lucy Allais, “Wiping the Slate Clean: The Heart of Forgiveness,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 36, no. 1 (2008): 33–68, characterizes forgiveness as giving up retributive reactive attitudes while simultaneously maintaining one’s belief that the offender did wrong. She argues that because our affective attitudes aren’t epistemically mandated, we can forgive—even in the absence of any evidence that the offender has changed his ways—without opening ourselves up to the charge of irrationality.

6 Defenders of the Conditional View include Bell, Macalester, “Forgiveness, Inspiration, and the Powers of Reparation,” American Philosophical Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2012): 205–221;Google Scholar Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration; Murphy, Jeffrie and Hampton, Jean, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Richards, Norvin, “Forgiveness,” Ethics 99, no. 1 (1988): 77–97; andCrossRefGoogle Scholar Wilson, John, “Why Forgiveness Requires Repentance,” Philosophy 63, no. 246 (1988); 534–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Those who defend the Unconditional View include Allais, “Wiping the Slate Clean: The Heart of Forgiveness,” Calhoun, “Changing One’s Heart,” Garrard, Eve and McNaughton, David, “In Defense of Unconditional Forgiveness,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (2003): 39–60;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Holmgren, Margaret R., “Forgiveness and the Intrinsic Value of Persons,” American Philosophical Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1993): 341–52;Google Scholar Pettigrove, Glen, “Unapologetic Forgiveness” American Philosophical Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2004): 187–204; andGoogle Scholar Westlund, “Anger, Faith, and Forgivenes.” Michele Moody-Adams (“Reply to Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration,” Philosophia 38, no. 3 [2010], 429–37) criticizes Griswold’s version of the Conditional View (in part, because it doesn’t allow for perfect forgiveness of the dead), but she stops short of defending an Unconditional View. Pamela Hieronymi (“Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52, no. 3 [2001]: 529–55) wishes to remain neutral on the question of whether the offender’s remorse is a necessary condition of genuine forgiveness, but insofar as she insists that forgiveness is always “articulate,” her view is incompatible with versions of the Unconditional View that characterize forgiveness as a leap of faith, rather than a response to reasons.

7 Even this seemingly innocuous claim may be controversial: first, there is debate about whether forgiveness involves the complete elimination of the hard feelings that were justified by the offense or only their moderation. For an endorsement of the former view, see Hieronymi, “Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness”; for a defense of the latter view, see Westlund, “Anger, Faith, and Forgiveness.” Second, there is a debate about whether we always forgive for some wrong done or if we may also coherently forgive someone for who he or she is as a person. For more on this issue, see Bell, Macalester, “Forgiving Someone for Who They Are (and Not Just What They’ve Done),” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77, no. 3 (2008): 625–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Finally, there is some debate about whether the distinction between “negative” and “positive” emotions is coherent. See, for example, Kristjánsson, Kristjáan, “On the Very Idea of ‘Negative Emotions,’” Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 33, no. 4, (2003): 351–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the purposes of this essay, I will remain neutral on these issues. When I refer to “overcoming” hard feelings in what follows, this should be read as “overcoming or moderating” these emotions. Although I believe we may coherently forgive persons for their character as well as for their actions, in this essay I will primarily focus on cases of forgiving persons for their past acts. Finally, “negative emotions” refers to emotions that are negatively valenced.

8 For example, Murphy, in Murphy and Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy argues that forgiveness is always done for moral reasons; Hampton, in Murphy and Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy, argues that forgiveness involves coming to see the wrongdoer as a fundamentally decent person; Calhoun, “Changing One’s Heart,” claims that forgiveness involves seeing the wrongdoing as making biographical sense to the wrongdoer. In what follows, I will offer my own account of what makes overcoming a justified hard feeling forgiveness: I will argue that forgiveness is overcoming justified hard feelings for the sake of one’s relationship with the offender.

9 For Murphy (Murphy and Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy), reparative activities justify us in seeing the wrong act as separable from the offender, and only under those conditions can we forgive without condoning the wrong done. Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration, argues that contrition shows that the offender is not “simply the ‘same person’ who did the wrong” (p. 50). Such a person cannot be characterized as a moral monster (p. 53) or reduced to the person who did wrong (p. 54); under these conditions, we can rationally revise our judgments and change our sentiments toward the offender.

10 Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration, defends something approaching the view I sketch below insofar as he insists that forgiveness is dyadic. But despite his emphasis on the relational aspect of forgiveness, he does not draw what I see as the right conclusions about forgiving the dead. For Griswold assumes that forgiveness is always an interpersonal process, and this assumption is precisely what I seek to challenge.

11 See Hieronymi, “Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness”; Murphy and Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy; Gert, Heather J., Radzik, Linda, and Hand, Michael, “Hampton on the Expressive Power of Punishment,” Journal of Social Philosophy 35, no. 1 (2004) 79–90; andCrossRefGoogle Scholar Martin, Adrienne M., “Owning Up and Lowering Down: The Power of Apology,” Journal of Philosophy 107, no. 10 (2010): 534–53 are skeptical of this claim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Minas, Anne C., “God and Forgiveness,” Philosophical Quarterly 25, no. 99 (1975), 138–50;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Radzik, Linda, Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law, and Politics (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008);Google Scholar Scanlon, T. M., Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008); andCrossRefGoogle Scholar Stump, Eleonore, “Personal Relations and Moral Residue,” History of the Human Sciences 17, nos. 2/3 (2004): 33–56,CrossRefGoogle Scholar all argue that wrongdoing impairs our relationships with other persons. However, the view I defend here is unique insofar as it shows the connection between reciprocal relations, hard feelings, and the Conditional View.

13 Korsgaard, Christine, “Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations,” in Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar characterizes holding persons responsible in terms of taking a chance on reciprocal relationships, and she notes that many of the activities emblematic of our lives are predicated on reciprocity: “When you hold someone responsible, you are prepared to accept promises, offer confidences, exchange vows, cooperate on a project, enter a social contract, have a conversation, make love, be friends, or get married. You are willing to deal with her on the basis of the expectation that each of you will act from a certain view of the other: that you each have your reasons which are to be respected, and your ends which are to be valued” (p. 189).

14 My position here is similar to Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame, but I place greater emphasis on the role hard feelings play in relational impairment. Some might object that there are examples of serious wrongdoing that do not seem to undermine reciprocal relations between persons, for example, polluting the environment. In response, I would point out that many cases of pollution could be understood as damaging relations between persons. Moreover, I’m not attempting to provide an exhaustive account of wrongdoing here; instead, I aim to sketch an account of the damage wrought by wronging another person, for these cases of wrongdoing are the ones that may be forgiven.

15 Strawson, P. F., “Freedom and Resentment,” in Freedom and Resentment (London: Methuen, 1974), 1–25.Google Scholar

16 Cf. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame.

17 Some express skepticism about the coherence of these thin or formal kinds of relationships. See, for example, Scheffler, Samuel, “Morality and Reasonable Partiality” in Equality and Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Richards, “Forgiveness.”Google Scholar

18 Are there cases of justifiable wrongdoing that don’t involve the expression of malice or indifference? Perhaps. But a full discussion of this issue would take us too far away from the present topic. No matter what we want to say about the possibility of justifiable wrongdoing, it seems worse to have someone set back your interests out of malice or indifference; this will do greater damage to your relationship with the other person.

19 Murphy and Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy.

20 To be clear, withdrawing one’s goodwill from a person is not the same as responding with ill will. I don’t think resentment should be identified with ill will, but it does involve a withdrawal of the goodwill at the heart of our normative expectations.

21 Murphy and Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy and Hieronymi, “Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness.”

22 Murphy and Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy.

23 Ibid. Some defenders of the Conditional View might say that this attempt at relational repair isn’t forgiveness at all, others will say it isn’t a meritorious form of forgiveness, and I won’t attempt to settle this dispute here. Of course, defenders of the Unconditional View will disagree with either interpretation, but I am not attempting to fully defend this claim against their objections here. Instead, in this section and the next I aim to outline what I see as the most compelling interpretation of the Conditional View and sketch how genuine forgiveness of the dead can be rendered coherent according to this position. I will return to the debate between partisans of the Conditional View and the Unconditional View in Section IV.

24 This holds in the vast majority of cases. As I concede below, there may be cases in which our relationships with persons are similar to our relationships with the dead; death is not the only circumstance that robs one of normative powers.

25 For more on standing in an interpersonal relation and having an interpersonal relationship, see Kolodney, Niko, “Love as Valuing a Relationship,” Philosophical Review 112, no. 2 (2003): 135–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 When Rees, Dewi, “The Hallucinations of Widowhood,” British Medical Journal 4 (1971): 37–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar first wrote about the experiences of the bereaved in the early 1970s, he noted that almost half of his widowed subjects reported perceptions of their dead spouse. Although he refers to the experiences of the bereaved as “hallucinations,” he stresses that they are adaptive and are not a sign of an underlying psychological disorder. Rees’ results have been subsequently reproduced in cross-cultural studies (see Klass, Dennis, Silverman, Phylis R., Nickman, Steven, Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1996).Google Scholar According to this literature, persons’ ongoing relationships with the dead are characterized by three main features: a sense of the deceased person’s presence, a disposition to talk to or communicate in some other way with the deceased, and a tendency for subjects to interpret themselves through their dead relations. These interpretations take a variety of forms: the living may see the dead as role models, ask the dead for guidance, use the dead to help clarify their values and form a coherent narrative about the past, and so on. This interpretive activity is, I think, a crucial aspect of our relationships with the dead and a central component of their normative significance. I will say more about this in what follows.

27 Compare to Connolly, Niall, “How the Dead Live,” Philosophia 39, no. 1 (2011): 83–103:CrossRefGoogle Scholar “We love Socrates for what he was rather than for what he is. Is it possible to love a bare particular? It is true that, as Socrates is now, he doesn’t have the qualities that made him loveable; and he cannot be affected by our love. But that in no way contradicts the truth that he is loved. The world is full of instances of individuals loving individuals that no longer have the qualities that sparked this emotion, and who are now oblivious to the feelings of their lovers” (p. 102).

28 I borrow the term “person-directed attitudes” from Mason, Michelle, “Contempt as a Moral Attitude,” Ethics 113, no. 1 (2003): 234–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 For an influential discussion of fittingness, see D’Arms, Justin and Jacobson, Daniel, “The Moralistic Fallacy: On the ‘Appropriateness’ of Emotions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61, no. 1 (2000): 65–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 These metaphysical issues include the ontological status of dead persons, whether the dead exist or are non-existent objects, whether we should accept Presentism or Eternalism, and so on. For a discussion of these issues see Yourgrau, Palle, “The Dead,” Journal of Philosophy 84, no. 2 (1987): 84–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Connolly, “How the Dead Live.” Eternalism is the metaphysical position that is most friendly to my characterization of these relationships as contemporaneous relations between a living person and a dead person. But if Presentism is the correct view, I think my claims could be recast as an intertemporal relation between a living person and a person who lived at another time. I am grateful to Carolina Sartorio and Don Hubin for pressing me on this point.

31 However, we can imaginatively engage in versions of these activities; this type of imaginative engagement is characteristic of the interpretive activities I discuss below.

32 While I think the interpretive activity I describe is necessary and sufficient for having a robust relationship with a dead person, I do not deny that our relationships with the dead have other features as well. For example, we often take ourselves to owe things to dead relations (for instance, a well-maintained grave) with whom we have robust relations.

33 Cocking, Dean and Kennett, Jeannette, “Friendship and the Self,” Ethics 106, no. 3 (1998): 502–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar According to their analysis, friendship is best understood as a relationship in which persons reciprocally attempt to influence one another and open themselves up to the influence of the other: friendship is, in their words, is an exercise in direction and interpretation.

34 Wrongdoing may also lead offenders to interpret themselves in ways that they have reason to reject, but my focus here will be on victims’ impaired self-interpretations.

35 For more on what is involved in providing reasons to forgive, see Bell, “Forgiveness, Inspiration, and the Powers of Reparation.”

36 Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration, insists that we ought to distinguish forgiveness on the one hand, and overcoming hard feelings through therapy on the other. Of course, one may be prompted to forgive a dead relation in therapy; my point is that forgiveness (wherever it occurs) is distinct from other forms of affect management, such as the kind of affective regulation one typically undertakes in therapy.

37 I’m not suggesting that he will or should necessarily take himself to be obligated to do precisely these things. Instead, I simply mean to stress that insofar as one is willing to do things for the sake of one’s relationship one must value the relationship to some degree. Part of what it is to value a relationship is to see it as a source of reasons to do certain things or take up certain attitudes.

38 Ibid.

39 I am not aiming to defend this claim here; rather, I’m simply stating a common claim made by defenders of the Conditional View.

40 I am grateful to Kay Mathiesen for pressing this point.

41 Sartre, Jean Paul, Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes, Hazel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956).Google Scholar

42 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for asking this question.

43 This American Life, “Go Ask Your Father,” episode 289, May 13, 2005.

44 Calhoun, “Changing One’s Heart.”

45 Ibid., 96.

46 Admittedly, Calhoun does not explicitly say this, so perhaps she’d want to distinguish between disengagement and writing someone off. But, as I argue below, she does not seem to think forgiveness involves accepting the offender as a potential relation.

47 See Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment.”

48 Defenders of the Unconditional View may also raise further objections to the Conditional View that I have not considered in this essay.

49 I acknowledge that the case is open to other, competing, interpretations. Julian says that his forgiveness was prompted by the death of his childhood friend, Lucy. Perhaps he overcame his hard feelings for his father simply because Lucy’s death served as a reminder that life is short and we should minimize the suffering we voluntarily take on. If this were his reason, then he wouldn’t be overcoming his hard feelings for the sake of his relationship with his dead father, and this would not count as a case of full and genuine forgiveness as I have described it in this essay.