What it is not: the hope that the trickling of time, drop by drop, will wear out or efface the fault or offense, as if it were sand and not very consistent. Would that forgetfulness would erode the fault with the memory of it! “Time heals”? or, “after all, this is how history works…” Id est, violence, injustice, etc., lose their capacity to hurt and be recognized as something that may happen to oneself and become part of the machinery or unfolding of history. Perhaps, as in a misunderstood concept developed by Adam Smith, history too, or the somnolence of time, like the market, would correct things magically, with the wave of an invisible hand. No anamnesis here, or painful effort to recognize something or someone and at least mark a possible ground for forgiveness. No, rather forgetfulness and a naturalizing of history.
What it is not, to continue with Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Le pardon (1967): an effort to understand all the dimensions and causality of an act, however wicked or offensive, because “tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner”. It was a question of knowledge or lack thereof, after all, ignorance. Proper knowledge would have set things right.
Not a resetting of accounts either, or an attempt to set the counter back to zero, in a seemingly magnanimous gesture of “letting go”. No consignment to silence of this kind.
What is it then? the opposite of this weak hope of “wearing things out”. A confrontation done with some urgency, and a painful remembering, with another person, not an image or reconstruction of it. It cannot excuse on “rational” grounds. It is irrational to forgive, or must feel so. The gratuity or grace of the act, surely this is a waste, when rationality is about balance, measure, reciprocity, calculations of one’s due. One’s due: no forgiveness without a strong sense of justice, and even without the capacity to inflict punishment, at least on the horizon. No forgiveness if one cannot hurt the other party. On the other side of forgiveness, the recognition that the transformed landscape is as it should be, a new rationality.
Forgiveness must indeed be irrational, otherwise it doesn’t work. If the person who has been offended must calculate a precise degree of vengeance in order for forgiveness to occur, then the perpetrator cannot really be forgiven. The offended person is simply dominating the offender to his content and leaving an awkward space between the two people.
Forgiveness must be undertaken with sincerity, by one or both parties in order for it to be effective. If the offender feels sincerely guilty for his crime then this is punishment enough; true betrayals will pain the heart of the betrayer forever, while the betrayed will hurt and then move on(if he can find forgiveness within himself).
Moving on is the critical factor in the more one-sided form of forgiveness. If the offender refuses to admit guilt and responsibility, then the offended must take forgiveness upon himself in order to rid himself of the poison of hatred. Forgiveness need not be mutual. This again is part of the irrationality of forgiveness which is indeed required.
Forgiveness need not be mutual, you say, meaning it would have zero reciprocity at times. The word itself indicates a “thorough giving” (for- = per, or thorough), that is, something more than the usual giving, which invites a counter-giving. It is hard to believe that complete forgiveness, without any calculation whatsoever, or expectation of at least a token payment or penalty, could exist.
In terms of forgiveness that requires no direct payback, I’m speaking first of all in terms of personal forgiveness. This doesn’t work in a public setting if someone has broken a civil law. Then yes, there must be reciprocity in order for civilized law to be justified and maintained.
In a setting of personal betrayal however, meaning between family members or friends, then one-sided forgiveness can become a necessity for the person who has been betrayed. If the offender refuses to take responsibility for their actions, again they are not being forced by the hand of civil law, then the offended person must take it upon themselves to be rid of the stain of the crime.
It could be argued that this is not complete forgiveness because the offender has not taken responsibility and thus cannot acknowledge being forgiven. However, I maintain that for the peace of mind of the offended person, unconditional forgiveness is necessary.
If, in a personal setting, vengeance is enacted in one way or another, then the two people run the risk of being in a situation of reccurring punishment and satisfaction. In order for personal relationships to survive, faith must be put in the offending person that they learned their lesson and can be trusted to the degree that any fallible human can be trusted. If there is no faith in the relationship that can justify unconditional forgiveness, then the relationship is barren.
Again, if there is no sincerity, then this cannot work. If the offender doesn’t actually appreciate the forgiveness and will continue to do wrong, then the relationship is simply not worth continuing. What vengeance could change such a person? There is no room for faith, thus no room for unconditional mutual forgiveness, thus no room for a meaningful relationship. This then lends itself to the situation of the offender not taking responsibility. At this point the offended person must forgive the offender in a detached, non-mutual manner in order for the offended person to move on without being scarred.
I must say I agree with everything you say so far, at least at first read. Thanks for the thoughts!
Right, one-sided forgiveness does indeed seem to entail a certain degree of altruism. However, speaking in anthropological terms, there only exists two palpable forms of altruism: reciprocal and kinship-based. In kinship-based altruism, forgiveness within the family may be more realistic, since there generally exists a need to keep a balance within a family – one of the most common and continuing support systems. The problem would arise within the idea of reciprocal altruism; what does the forgiving party gain from this “one-sided” act. In theory, it would be nothing – “peace of mind” maybe, as mentioned above. I can, however, recall the notion of being “the bigger man” in an incident where a person is offended. Therefore, the “forgiver” does receive something from the second party without the second party even knowing it. The one acting on forgiveness receives a self-contrived elevated status, either for personal satisfaction or to flaunt (either case would merely be superficial “one-sided” forgiveness).
Then, there is the case of God. This guy forgives all kinds of shananigans! He’s always saying,”Okay, you’re all a bunch of depraved lunatic’s, but I forgive you, and I promise not to torture you (at least, not for a while).”
On kinship and family: the story of the Good Samaritan is very important in this regard, because it turns a potential enemy (the wounded Jewish man left for dead on the road–I assume the story-teller thinks “Jewish” for a Jewish audience) into a kin, what do I say, more than a kin: another self. The Samaritan, who belongs to people hated at that time by Jews, sees himself in the wounded man and treats him as if he were his brother. The reward for taking such a risk: the knowledge one is building a heaven on earth, and without?