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Reconciliation for Realists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Susan Dwyer
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Abstract

Reconciliation is being urged upon people who have been bitter and murderous enemies, upon victims and perpetrators of terrible human rights abuses, and upon groups of individuals whose very self-conceptions have been structured in terms of historical and often state-sanctioned relations of dominance and submission. The rhetoric of reconciliation is particularly common in situations where traditional judicial responses to past wrongdoing are unavailable because of corruption in the legal system, staggeringly large numbers of offenders, or anxiety about the political consequences of trials and punishment.

But what is reconciliation? How is reconciliation to be achieved? And under what conditions should it be sought? The notable lack of answers to these questions prompts the worry that talk of reconciliation is merely a ruse to disguise the fact that a “purer” type of justice cannot be realized–that, in being asked to focus on reconciliation rather than on punishment, victims of past wrongdoing are having to settle for the morally second best. By mining our pretheoretical understandings of reconciliation, the essay arrives at a core concept of reconciliation as narrative incorporation that at the same time suggests a way in which reconciliation might be pursued and grounds a response to moral qualms provoked by the use of an unanalyzed conception of reconciliation.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 13 , March 1999 , pp. 81 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1999

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References

1 Heller, Scott, “Emerging Field of Forgiveness Studies Explores How We Let Go of Grudges,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 17, 1998, pp. A18–A20Google Scholar.

2 For a powerful first-hand account of the operation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, see Krog, Antjie and Hunter-Gault, Charlayne, Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (New York: Times Books, 1999Google Scholar).

3 Kolnai, Aurel, “Forgiveness,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, (1973–74), pp. 91–106Google Scholar.

4 See Becker, Gay, Disrupted Lives: How People Create Meaning in a Chaotic World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997Google Scholar). Written from an anthropological perspective, the book contains a wealth of case studies that bear out the central point here: people experience trauma in terms of disruption and respond to it by telling new stories about themselves.

5 See, for example, Flanagan, Owen, Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993Google Scholar).

6 Wole Soyinka argues that the entire history of the African continent, including the spiritual resources of African traditional societies and the practices and enduring legacies of colonialism and slavery, condition the possibilities for reconciliation in South Africa and other African countries. I cannot do justice to that history here, but Soyinka is surely right to remind us that talk of truth and reconciliation never takes place in an historical vacuum. See Soyinka, Wole, The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999Google Scholar), chap. 1.

7 Oppelt, Phylicia, “Irreconcilable: The Healing Work of My Country's Truth Commission Has Opened Wounds for Me,” Washington Post, September 13, 1998, pp. C1, C4Google Scholar.

8 Candaele, Kelly, “Irish Ayes Are Smiling. Ireland Votes for Peace,” In These Times, 22 (1998), p. 11Google Scholar.

9 Similar considerations are advanced in the advocacy of racial reconciliation in the United States. Spencer Perkins, a prominent reconciliation activist, put it this way: “If white Christians… are not willing to back up their reconciliation talk with sacrificial acts, then the majority of blacks and Native Americans are going to continue in their skepticism about all the reconciliation talk.” Quoted in Gallegos, Aaron McCarroll, “Following the Path of Grace,” Sojourners, N1998, pp. 24–28Google Scholar.

10 McNeil, Donald J. Jr., “Marius Schoon, 61, Is Dead; Foe of Apartheid Lost Family,” New York Times, February 9, 1999, p. C31Google Scholar.

11 Duke, Lynne, “After Apartheid, a Need to Heal,” Washington Post, November 15, 1998, pp. A41, A45Google Scholar.

12 Minow, Martha, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998Google Scholar), hints at this line of thought.