Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-2h6rp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-18T00:21:59.074Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Charitable Perspective: Forgiveness and Toleration as Supererogatory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Hagit Benbaji  and
David Heyd
Hagit Benbaji
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel91905
David Heyd
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel91905
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

'May one be pardon’ d and retain the offence?’ asks King Claudius in his tormented monologue in Hamlet. Forgiveness appears incompatible with the retention of the offence, both in the sense of enjoying its consequences (Claudius's arrogation of the Queen and the Kingdom of Denmark) and in the sense of the subsistence of the attitude which underlay the offensive act (his cold-heartedness and ambition). There are, however, views which allow for, even admire, an attitude of forgiveness towards people who have ‘retained’ their offense in some way. This idea of forgiveness is harder to justify, since no change (like repentance) has taken place in the agent. We suggest that the concept of toleration can serve as an illuminating clue in such an analysis. The tolerant attitude involves a certain kind of reconciliation with people who not only have done something wrong in the past, but insist on sticking to their objectionable conduct in the present and the future. Tolerance, in other words, is not conditioned by repentance or by commitment to behavioral transformation; it is a kind of unconditional ‘forgiveness’ in advance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 2001 , pp. 567 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Strawson, P.F. Skepticism and Naturalism (London: Methuen 1985), 37 n.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Williams, Bernard ‘Toleration: An Impossible Virtue?’ Heyd, D. ed., Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996), 18–27Google Scholar

3 Margalit, Avishai ‘Vergeben und Vergessen,’ Edelstein, W. and Nunner-Winkler, G. eds., Moral im Sozialen Kontext (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 2000), 489Google Scholar. F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II, 3

4 Smith, Tara ‘Tolerance & Forgiveness: Virtues or Vices?’ Journal of Applied Philosophy 14 (1997), 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Strawson, P.F. ‘Freedom and Resentment,’ Strawson, P.F. ed., Freedom and Resentment (London: Methuen 1974)Google Scholar

6 Horton, John ‘Toleration as Virtue,’ Heyd, D. ed., Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1996), 33Google Scholar

7 Govier, Trudy ‘Forgiveness and the Unforgivable,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1999), 65Google Scholar

8 Haber, Joram Graf Forgiveness (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 1991), 104Google Scholar

9 Murphy, Jeffrie and Hampton, Jean Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), ch. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 This idea was first suggested by David Heyd in his introduction to Heyd, D. ed., Toleration: An Elusive Virtue, 10-17Google Scholar.

11 McDowell, John ‘Virtue and Reason,’ Monist 62 (1979), 335CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 See Govier for a comprehensive discussion of unforgivability, referring to Martin Golding and to Jean Hampton.

13 We fully adopt Trudy Govier's formulation of this inseparability condition of the unforgivable in Govier, 69.

14 Heyd, David Supererogation: Its Status in Ethical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982), ch. 7Google Scholar

15 An important exception, to which we shall refer shortly, is Newey, Glen Virtue, Reason and Toleration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 1999), ch. 2.Google Scholar

16 Joram Graf Haber, ch. 4

17 Ritphael, D.O. ‘The Intolerable,’ Mendus, S. ed., Justifying Toleration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988), 146–7Google Scholar. Raphael himself admits that the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is not easy to draw and rests on moral intuition.

18 Cf. Heyd, Supererogation, 5 & 163.

19 Newey, 54

20 Evnine, Simon Donald Davidson (Cambridge: Polity Press 1991), 110Google Scholar. Davidson himself declares that ‘the aim of interpretation is not agreement but understanding’ and that this amounts to recognizing ‘what constitutes a good reason for holding a particular belief.’ Davidson, D. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984)Google Scholar, xvii.

21 Evnine, 109