Abstract
What, if anything, gives us the right to ask the victim of our wrongdoing for forgiveness? After some conceptual clarifications, I attempt to lay open a paradoxical structure in apologies. Apologies are made in a spirit of humility: if the offender recognizes his guilt, he will see the victim᾽s negative emotions towards him as proper and justified. Nevertheless, by begging for forgiveness, he tries to change the victim᾽s negative feelings towards him. Thus, by apologizing, the offender tries to bring about a state of affairs which, if genuinely repentant and remorseful, he has no reason to want to bring about. In what follows, I examine various attempts to dissolve this paradox. These include offering reasons for apologies that are independent of our wish to alter the victim᾽s feeling of resentment and construing apologies as expressive or as mixed speech acts. All of these attempts, or so I argue, fail. Some of them fail to provide justificatory reasons for asking for forgiveness, others fall short of explaining why apologies can be accepted or rejected, still others cannot give a convincing account of the relation between remorse and asking for forgiveness or fail to distinguish between redressing a harm and redressing a moral wrong. The upshot of the argument is that an offender who recognizes his own guilt has no rational reason for asking for forgiveness. In many cases, not offering one᾽s apologies is a sign of taking guilt seriously.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
As a matter of convention, I use the masculine pronoun to refer to the offender and the feminine to refer to the victim.
References
Allais, L. (2008). Wiping the slate clean: the heart of forgiveness. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 36, 33–68.
Blustein, J. (2008). The moral demands of memory. Cambridge: CUP.
Blustein, J. (2014). Forgiveness and Rememberance. Remembering Wrongdoing in Personal and Public Life. Oxford: OUP.
Bovens, L. (2008). Apologies. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 108, 219–239.
Bovens, L. (2009). Must I be forgiven? Analysis, 69(2), 227–233.
Davis, P. (2002). On apologies. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 19(2), 169–173.
Griswold, C. L. (2007). Forgiveness – a Philosophical Exploration. Cambridge: CUP.
Kekes, J. (2009). Blame versus forgiveness. The Monist, 92, 488–506.
Kolnai, A. (1973). Forgiveness. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 74, 91–106.
Murphy, J. G. (2003). Getting even. Forgiveness and its limits. Oxford: OUP.
Ohly, F. (1976). The damned and the elect. Guilt in western culture. Cambridge: CUP.
Radzik, L. (2009). Making amends. In Atonement in Morality, Law, and Politics. Oxford: OUP.
Searle, J. (1979a). A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In His Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (pp. 1–29). Cambridge: CUP.
Searle, J. (1979b). Indirect speech acts. In His Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (pp. 30–57). Cambridge: CUP.
Smith, N. (2008). I was wrong. The meanings of apologies. Cambridge: CUP.
Walker, M. U. (2006). Moral repair. Reconstructing moral relations after wrongdoing. Cambridge: CUP.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hallich, O. A Plea against Apologies. Philosophia 44, 1007–1020 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9730-y
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9730-y