Reconciling with Harm: An Alternative to Forgiveness and Revenge Nancy A. Stanlick, Associate Professor and Assistant Chair University of Central Florida Department of Philosophy
The article:
- RWH is a viable competitor in the moral realm to traditional reactions (TR) to harm and wrongdoing.
- TR put more emphasis on the perpetrator of harm than the victim or sufferer of harm while RWH puts the victim at the center of moral concern.
- This centering is an affirmation of the value of the harmed person and a virtue to be cultivated.
- TR's insufficiency as fully moral reactions
- Revenge
- The revenge of Hannie Caulder
- Jeffrey Murphy, sending messages, and defensive existences
- Jean Hampton, lowering perpetrators, restoring equality, and acts of mastery.
- Forgiveness
- Garrard and McNaughton, the frailty of humanity, and moral luck
- Jean Hampton, rotten individuals, and being freed from harmful effects
- Trudy Govier, regaining value, and experiencing joy.
- Traditional Reconciliation
- Cooperating with perpetrators
- Understanding perpetrators
- Establishing civil relationships/strangers in the moral community
- The alternative
- The perpetrator may become irrelevant. The point is the harmed person.
- Revenge is not effective in building trust, and lost capacities are not beneficial
- Forgiveness MAY be effective, but it may also put undue burden on the harmed person.
- Traditional reconciliation includes the perpetrator; and the harmed person may still lack trust, feel violated, and suffer continuing harms.
- RWH
- Rebuild a shattered life, regain confidence and self-regard, trust in oneself and others, overcome limitations.
- The harmed person cannot move on as though no harm was ever done.
- Analogy to physical limitations and the need for support
- RWH is a process. It is performed with others -- others to whom the harmed person may speak the unspeakable, describe the indescribable, and borrow strength of a community of others in trust.
- The realizations in RWH
- There is trust, and one is no longer a stranger to the moral community
- RWH is the best alternative in some cases.
- It does not remove harm, does not guarantee no further effects.
- It offers benefits not available necessarily in TR.
- References (shortened format): Dorothy Alison, Bastard Out of Carolina (New York: Plume, 1992); Jeffrie G. Murphy, Getting Even: Forgiveness and its Limits (New York: Oxford UP, 2003); Peter French, The Virtues of Vengeance (Lawrence, KS; UP of Kansas, 2001); Jean Hampton and Jeffrie G. Murphy, Forgiveness and Mercy (New York: Cambridge UP, 1988); Trudy Govier, Forgiveness and Revenge (London: Routledge, 2002); Eve Garrard and David McNaughton, "In Defense of Unconditional Forgiveness," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2002; Solomon Schimmel, Wounds Not Healed by Time (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002); Trudy Govier, "Forgiveness and the Unforgivable," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1, Jan 1999; Nancy Potter, "Is Refusing to Forgive a Vice?" ed. Peggy DeSautels and Joanne Waugh, Feminists Doing Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001); Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005); Adam Morton, On Evil (New York: Routledge, 2004).
The Book
- RWH as a moral process
- Considerations in traditional moral theories
- Aristotle's ethics and conception of justice as distributive and rectificatory
- Contractarian notions of justice and moral participation
- Utilitarian calculations, social utility, and equal consideration of interests
- Kantian ideals of universality and respect for persons
- Egoism and atomistic individualism
- The supererogatory and its relationship to RWH
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ĉ ď Nancy Stanlick, May 10, 2010 8:13 PM ď Nancy Stanlick, May 10, 2010 9:29 PM
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