The Role of Character in Forgiveness
My Master Thesis Project.
Introduction
Some people do bad things, they hurt each-other, they break their promises, they humiliate, disrespect, and abuse others. Therefore, they are bad people, and they deserve to be blamed. Some people do good things, they are good to each-other, they do good, they empathise, console, and help others. These people are good, they deserve to be praised. Of course, the world is not that easy, most people do both good and bad things. What are they and what do they deserve? Does a good person who did a bad thing deserve to be forgiven, or is every bad action permanently stuck to them whatever else they do? On what basis should forgiveness be granted?
On the one hand, it seems that forgiveness can only be granted by the victims of mistreatment, and that it is up to them to decide whether and when the wrongdoer deserves to be forgiven. It is they who have suffered the harm, so only they can decide when it is appropriate to forgive, and nobody else has the right to tell them otherwise. It is nobody’s place to tell the victims of abuse and violence that they are unreasonable to not forgive their tormentors.
On the other hand, there seem to be many cases where it is perfectly adequate to tell a person to stop being resentful. When someone while enthusiastically hugging a long absent friend accidentally steps on their foot, it would be highly inappropriate to hold that against them for any length of time. In such a case a third person would be well within their rights to point out the tremendous over-reaction of bearing a grudge for the banality of stepping on one’s foot.
There seems to be a spectrum of situations between these two extremes, in which it is adequate to reason with people about whether or not they should forgive a past wrong. On the one end of this spectrum, the harm suffered by the victim is so severe that it seems to overrule any other considerations. On the other end, the harm seems trivial, and the unwillingness to forgive creates a new injustice towards the clumsy but well-meaning friend. In either case, the appropriateness of blame or forgiveness relies on what reasons the victims have. If there are good reasons to forgive, then the victim is not the only person who can decide over the appropriateness of forgiveness and arguments can be made for or against it. It is possible for other people to point out reasons to them why they should or should not forgive a wrongdoer.
In my thesis, I take a look at one line of reasoning that can produce good reasons to forgive a person who has done a wrong. Some people do bad things even though they are not bad people. The fact that they are not, seems to me, is relevant for whether they deserve to be forgiven. I want to examine this connection between a person’s character and whether they should be forgiven for their actions — how their character influences and informs the reasoning behind whether they should be forgiven.