In the last blog, Amery’s “virtue of resentment” was discussed, however summarily—the idea that anger and resentment has a proper role in the process toward reconciliation and justice, and in addressing this, he raises the interesting notion of the role of emotion in ethics.
Henriksen, in his essay on Brudholm’s critique of Amery, offers four scenarios, to wit:
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Justified forgiveness: by anyone ready to freely forgive, for whatever motives might have (or not, cf. the last option), the situation where one is notcoerced to forgive, but basically forgives out of grace.
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Justified unforgiveness: by anyone not ready to forgive because the adversary shows no remorse or regret, and no willingness to rectify the mistakes or violations done. I take Améry’s position to be close to this one.
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Unjustified forgiveness: the hastily offered forgiveness that is an immature attempt to get beyond the problematic situation without really mending its cause or effects.
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Unjustified unforgiveness: this is actually no option, as long as forgiveness is a free and unmerited gift. One can only forgive the unforgiveable (that which cannot be reasonably seen as worthy of forgiveness), and accordingly, one can forgive only without justifying and giving good reasons. Unjustified unforgiveness should be seen as the natural, and morally valid, initial point of standing for anyone who relates morally and psychologically sound to a violation against herself or others.
Here again Henriksen talks about being able to only forgive the unforgiveable, so I obviously need to take up a more careful reading of what he, Brudholm and Amery are saying, because, right now, it’s not clear.
Henriksen goes on to say that “Forgiveness cannot be justified from the past. It has to emerge from a (often shared) vision of the future, one in which one realizes that freedom from the conditions of the past may emerge out of a process of forgiveness. As such, itpresupposes a shared world. How to develop this situation is the task for justice, for reconciliation, and, sometimes, possibly then, also for forgiveness.
