Writing

Abstract: It is widely held that it is good to conceive of one's life narratively, but why this is the case has not been well established. I argue that conceiving of one's life narratively can contribute to one's flourishing by mediating to oneself a second-person experience of oneself, furnishing one with valuable second-personal productive distance from oneself and as a result self-understanding. Drawing on Eleonore Stump's theory that narratives re-present to their audiences the second-person experiences they depict, I argue that conceiving of one's life narratively facilitates taking on the second-person experience that an audience would have in hearing one's life narrative, mediating how someone from a second-person perspective might perceive oneself and as a result yielding valuable self-understanding. I conclude with some practical implications. 

Abstract: In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ teaches that God will only forgive [aphiemi] us if we forgive [aphiemi] others; however, it’s hard to understand why God would only forgive us conditionally and yet expect us to forgive unconditionally. I argue that understanding aphiemi as "not counting a person’s sin against their relational standing” makes sense of Christ's teaching.

Abstract: Traditional forms of Christianity often portray the saints as examples of what we should try to become. However, it is not clear how we should engage with the examples of saints whose spirituality is bound up with practices that are inappropriate for most people. If we copy a saint’s exact behavior, then we will likely end up imitating traits that are inappropriate for us. Alternatively, if we don’t try to replicate any particular features of a saint, then it’s hard to explain what purpose the saint’s particular example is serving. To solve this puzzle, I sketch a triadic model of how engaging with the lives of the saints can help us become like them. On this model, a penitent becomes like a saint in an indirect way by engaging in a certain kind of three-way relationship with God and the saint. This model preserves the relevance of a saint’s particular way of being a saint to the process of becoming like the saint, but it does so without requiring one to directly imitate the saint’s specific features. 

Abstract: This positive account of forgiveness maintains that forgiveness consists in responding to an offense in a way that is loving to the offender. One advantage of this view is that it explains why forgiveness might in some circumstances require no more than overcoming one’s resentment, but in other circumstances might require something more robust. For example, suppose a colleague plagiarized you. According to resentment-forbearance accounts of forgiveness, in order to forgive them, you would need to overcome hostile attitudes towards them, such as resentment; you might do so, however, while still treating them as culpable. In contrast, according to debt-cancellation accounts, in order to forgive them, you would need to give them a “fresh start” by treating them to some extent as though they had never plagiarized you. On my view, if an offender has truly repented, then, depending on the circumstances, it might be loving to give them something like a fresh start. On the other hand, if they have not repented, then it might be loving to overcome one’s resentment towards them, but to do so without letting them “off the hook,” so to speak. So, understanding forgiveness as a loving response to wrongdoing explains why, in the right circumstances, both resentment-forbearance responses and debt-cancellation responses can be forms of forgiveness. 

Abstract: What is forgiveness? According to Strabbing (2020), it is a certain kind of openness to reconciliation. I argue that Strabbing's account ties forgiveness to reconciliation too closely in some cases and not closely enough in others. I then propose a way of adjusting her account to avoid my counterexamples.

 Abstract: It’s commonly thought that in order to make amends wrongdoers sometimes need to perform penance in addition to apologizing or making reparation or accepting punishment. But why is this the case? Different notions of penance yield different explanations. According to one prominent view, penance is first and foremost a communicative act. According to these demonstrative accounts of penance, wrongdoers sometimes need to perform penance because sometimes other parts of the process of making amends do not sufficiently demonstrate the wrongdoer’s penitential attitudes. I, however, disagree. I, argue that acts of penance are not constitutively communicative. Rather, acts of penance are acts undertaken in order to achieve a goal that intrinsically contributes to one’s repentance, which in some cases might include publicly demonstrating one's contrition but in other cases would not (e.g., if doing so would be virtue-signaling.) 

Abstract: Some in the literature claim that one reason to forgive wrongdoers is that we are all wrongdoers ourselves. After all, if you carelessly spilled a cup of coffee on someone, it would be pretty strange if ten minutes later you resented them for doing the same thing to you. I, however, argue that one’s own wrongdoing is not a reason to forgive others. I observe that in a case like the coffee-spiller, if the right thing to do was to resent people when they did wrong, then one’s own wrongdoing would actually be a reason to resent oneself when one did wrong (if that's even possible), not a reason to overcome one’s resentment towards others. I infer that one’s own wrongdoing is not itself a reason to forgive. Rather, it is a moral fact that makes salient to us our true reasons to forgive. I suspect it has this kind of effect in part because most people usually have an easier time recognizing why others should forgive them than they do recognizing why they should forgive others. 

Abstract: If someone cannot identify anything they actually think they've  done wrong, it can be frustrating to hear them say “I’m terribly sorry. Please forgive me.” In such a case, saying that you forgive them could be morally problematic ina  variety of ways. One might infer that one should not offer or accept vague apologies. I, however, disagree. I argue that there is a certain kind of vague apology (and certain kind of corresponding vague forgiveness) which is not only morally permissible but likely indispensable to living a morally good life. 

Abstract: Medical consent forms disclose possible risks to patients. And yet, it seems that a patient could read and perfectly understand all of the disclosures made to them in a standard consent form without thereby learning anything new which they had good reason to regard as relevant to their decision to consent. I use the concept of silencing to explain how this is possible. I argue that practices surrounding consent forms have the potential to silence them from informing not only typical patients, but even ideally rational ones.

Abstract: Some Eastern Christian liturgies suggest that the resurrection plays a central role in explaining why Christians ought to forgive. But how could that be the case? I argue that on Margaret Urban Walker's understanding of resentment and moral repair, the resurrection performs the same kinds of moral functions as an offender’s repentance and so justifies giving up resentment for the same kinds of reasons that it does. I then argue that the promise of the resurrection justifies Christians in giving up resentment before the resurrection has occurred in anticipation of it. I conclude by discussing the extent to which my argument generalizes to other kinds of forgiveness besides resentment-forbearance.