Abstract
What does it take to forgive oneself? I argue that reflection on Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement can help us understand two key aspects of self-forgiveness. First, she illustrates an unorthodox conception of humility that, I argue, aids the process of responsible self-forgiveness. Second, she fleshes out a self-forgiveness that includes continued self-reproach. While Briony illustrates elements of the self-absorption about which critics of continued self-reproach (such as Margaret Holmgren) are rightly concerned, she also shows a way of getting beyond this, such that the delicate balance between self-forgiveness and self-condemnation is upheld. Atonement also shows the significance for the task of self-forgiveness of a particular kind of narrative continuity.
An earlier version of this chapter was published in Philosophy and Literature, 2019, 43: 121–138, Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Notes
- 1.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 237, 243.
- 2.
Charles Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 122–30; hereafter abbreviated F. On morally problematic cases of requesting forgiveness, see Peter Goldie, The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 104–5; hereafter abbreviated TMI.
- 3.
Robin S. Dillon, “Self-Forgiveness and Self-Respect,” Ethics 112 (2001): 53–83 (83); hereafter abbreviated “S&S.”
- 4.
Garry L. Hagberg extends this point by noting that in doing so, we become “able to feel warranted resentment” against the perpetrator of the injury—ourselves—and “in so transcending ourselves, we arrive at the doubled state in which we are able to look back on who we are and what we have done as if we were seeing another,” a process parallel to the experience of “vicariously” entering another’s life narrative that takes place in our engagement with literature. See Garry L. Hagberg, “The Self Rewritten: The Case of Self-Forgiveness,” in The Ethics of Forgiveness, ed. Christel Fricke (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 69–80 (73).
- 5.
To my knowledge , the only other philosophical article to discuss self-forgiveness in Atonement is Byron Williston, “The Importance of Self-Forgiveness,” American Philosophical Quarterly 49 (2012): 67–80. But Williston’s concerns are different from my own, most obviously in that his focus is on shame, whereas mine is on humility.
- 6.
Ian McEwan, Atonement (London: QPD, 2001), p. 11; hereafter cited by page number.
- 7.
Julia Driver has been the most prominent proponent of the underestimation view: see especially “The Virtues of Ignorance,” Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989): 373–84, and Uneasy Virtue (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). I do not accept the distinction made in some of this literature between humility and modesty, instead taking the terms to be interchangeable. But I shall not argue that case here.
- 8.
See, for instance, Owen Flanagan, “Virtue and Ignorance,” Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990): 420–28; and Norvin Richards, Humility (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), p. 8.
- 9.
The same is ultimately true of more recent discussions such as Dennis Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, and Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Intellectual Humility: Owning Our Limitations,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2017): 509–39. Talk of owning one’s limitations still tacitly requires a greater degree of comparison of oneself with others than is prevalent in the view I shall develop here.
- 10.
Joseph Kupfer, “The Moral Perspective of Humility,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2003): 249–69; hereafter abbreviated “MPH.”
- 11.
Robert C. Roberts, “The Vice of Pride,” Faith and Philosophy 26 (2009): 119–33 (129).
- 12.
Elsewhere, I have connected these four aspects of the moral perspective of humility with Kierkegaard’s category of “jest.” See John Lippitt, “Jest as Humility: Kierkegaard and the Limits of Earnestness,” in All Too Human: Laughter, Humor, and Comedy in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, ed. Lydia L. Moland (New York: Springer, 2018), pp. 137–51. The above two paragraphs overlap with that discussion.
- 13.
In their discussion of intellectual humility, Whitcomb et al. offer two objections to the “low concern for status” view, both of which I find unconvincing. Their claim is that a low concern for status is neither necessary nor sufficient for (intellectual) humility. In support of the latter claim, we are to imagine a philosophy professor who is highly talented and knows it: but his motivation is for epistemic goods, rather than status or entitlement (so—Whitcomb et al. insist—he has a low concern for status). However, we are told, his default response when confronted with his intellectual errors and imperfections is to cover them up or explain them away: he is extremely bad at admitting his mistakes or to weaknesses in his arguments. This picture is psychologically unconvincing: if he has little or no concern for his status, we are left completely lacking an explanation of why he responds to criticism in this way.
In support of the first claim (about necessity), we are to imagine a female professional who does not have a low concern for her status because her profession is male-dominated and tends to marginalize those without status. So a lack of concern about her status would result in negative consequences for her and her family. Such a person, Whitcomb et al. claim, can still possess intellectual humility. Again, this claim seems dubious: I submit that the humble person would typically find the obligation to “represent” their gender or some other group in this way unwelcome. Even if they overcame this unease in the interest of a perceived higher good, it seems plausible that the genuinely humble person would feel some cognitive dissonance at being pressured to care more about their status than they would ordinarily wish.
- 14.
Robert C. Roberts, Spiritual Emotions: A Psychology of Christian Virtues (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), p. 90.
- 15.
Roberts, Spiritual Emotions, p. 88.
- 16.
John Stuart Mill, The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (Auckland: The Floating Press, 2009), p. 142.
- 17.
This list is derived from the account given in F, but has much in common with other accounts.
- 18.
Margaret R. Holmgren, Forgiveness and Retribution: Responding to Wrongdoing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 124; hereafter abbreviated F&R.
- 19.
Glen Pettigrove, Forgiveness and Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 43.
- 20.
Jeffrie G. Murphy, “Jean Hampton on Immorality, Self-Hatred, and Self-Forgiveness,” Philosophical Studies 89 (1998): 215–36 (226). Perhaps no single term perfectly captures Briony’s character flaw. It is a conceited, self-centered, and judgmental attitude , one manifestation of which is to tend to presume that one occupies the moral high ground. If we settle for “conceited” as our term, then we could say that her “crime ” was committed “with the motives and aims that are characteristic of the [conceited] person” (see Pettigrove, Forgiveness and Love, p. 42). In this sense, the “crime ” was not just an isolated action but expressed and revealed something of her underlying character—and it is this character flaw, not just the action , that needs to be forgiven.
- 21.
I believe that the same is true of forgiveness in general, but I do not have space to make that case here.
- 22.
I have no room to do this full justice here, but shall focus on just one key feature.
- 23.
Compare Holmgren : “There seems to be no reason to focus our attention on our past moral track record. It is much more responsible from a moral point of view to focus on ways in which we can enhance our moral growth in the future , make genuine contributions to others, and engage in constructive activities” (F&R, p. 125).
- 24.
This runs into Dillon’s objection that if self-forgiveness is to be self-respecting, one cannot forget the past or overturn judgments about its significance for one’s character. What one can do is recognize that the past need not determine the future , so self-forgiveness can alter the power the past has over us (see “S&S,” pp. 79–80).
- 25.
In a point that he mentions but does not develop, Griswold suggests that narrative can help to explain “the sense in which self-now can both identify with self-past and benefit from the perspective of distance in a way that makes self-forgiveness possible” (F, pp. 126–27). Holmgren’s account risks severing this important continuity.
- 26.
Goldie’s way of putting this risks making it sound as if my continued negative emotions when I recall my misdeed are a regrettable remnant of reflection on the past that I haven’t—yet—quite been able to shake off (TMI, p. 147). But in fact, I am arguing, such a reaction—of self-forgiveness that contains self-reproach —is a crucial part of what distinguishes responsible from irresponsible self-forgiveness.
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Lippitt, J. (2019). Self-forgiveness and the Moral Perspective of Humility: Ian McEwan’s Atonement . In: Hagberg, G. (eds) Narrative and Self-Understanding. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28289-9_10
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