We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The Paradox of Forgiveness: Forgiving the Unforgivable.
- Authors
Shiloh, Ilana
- Abstract
Forgiveness is a paradox. Slight misdeeds or wrongdoings do not necessitate forgiveness. If I forgive because the offensive deed is forgivable, because it is easily excusable, then I am not forgiving. I can only forgive when there is something unforgivable. Forgiveness thus predicates on its opposite and is both an impossibility and a necessity. Philosophers have tried to solve the paradox of forgiveness in several ways. One approach attempts to separate the offender from the offense. According to this perspective, the deed is indeed unforgivable, but the doer is not. He is a rational individual who committed an ethical mistake, but is nevertheless capable of changing and therefore deserving of understanding. Another characteristic approach emphasizes forgiveness' therapeutic value for the victim. According to this perspective, resentment is poisonous and only the acceptance of the inflicted wound will enable its sufferer to get on with his life. Still another approach emphasizes humanity's universal culpability. According to this view, we are all guilty and we all need to be absolved; extending forgiveness is thus the flipside of our own need to be forgiven. But all these approaches are rooted in logical fallacies. The first view posits a distinction between who we are and what we do. It implies that terrible crimes may still be committed by inherently good people, who may be granted forgiveness. The second approach sees forgiveness as beneficial for the victim's well-being and thereby advocates the foregoing of moral judgment for the sake of practicality. The third perspective blurs fundamental ethical distinctions and in this way voids of meaning the very concepts of innocence and culpability. Forgiveness thus still remains in the realm of apparent impossibility. This impossibility is creatively explored in Paolo Sorrentino's 2011 film This Must Be the Place, whose ethical implications are considered in this chapter.
- Subjects
FORGIVENESS; PARDON; HUMANITY; PHILOSOPHERS; STOICS
- Publication
At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries, 2018, Vol 95, p23
- ISSN
1570-7113
- Publication type
Article