What's Forgiveness Anyway?

Folks throw the word “forgive” around a lot. In some contexts I know what that could mean. To forgive a debt, for example. I get that: “to no longer maintain a legal expectation of someone forking money over”. But then folks use it in a moral or emotional sense and I’m less certain what we’re talking about.

If someone meant by “forgive” something like “to cease being angry about something done to you"”, I would understand what that meant. But that’s not exactly something that’s necessarily in someone’s control, anymore than “feeling pain’ is in someone’s control when accidentally touching a hot stove. It might be somewhat in someone’s control in the long-term I suppose, but you could never guarantee that this would be possible.

If someone meant by “forgive” something like “letting go of something someone did to you, not thinking about it anymore, not ruminating on it, moving past it”, then I might know what they meant by that. But, as above, that’s not 100 percent within someone’s control.

If someone meant by “forgive” something like “to not seek retaliation, to not seek revenge”, I might know what that would mean. It’s important to parse the difference between this and “to seek for the harm-causer to be stopped (for example by legal means), to seek for the harm-causer to be reformed”. Notably someone might seek these goals while also desiring retaliation. In a legal context, they might want the criminal justice system to stop this person out of consideration for other potential victims while also getting emotional satisfaction from seeing the perpetrator locked up.

If someone meant by “forgive” something like “to come to a place where the victim cares about the harm-causer, to come to a place where the victim loves the harm-causer” I might know what that would mean. Although, as above, this is not necessarily entirely within the control of the victim.

Beyond this I don’t really understand in what other manner the word “forgiveness” is used.

Now, turning to what is perhaps the more important question: what are the effects of each of these and is is something that I want or you want or we want?

With respect to my first suggestion: anger typically stops or inhibits someone from experiencing positive emotions such as happiness, peace, joy, excitement, pleasure, etc. It also tends to dull the reasoning faculties. If someone has the choice, less angry is usually the better choice, especially over the long term. But, again, this isn’t entirely up to the victim. If someone wronged can stop being angry over the wrong done to them then I would recommend that, but I think it’s not great to demand that they do this.

My response to the idea of “letting go of something someone did to you, not thinking about it anymore, not ruminating on it, moving past it” then my response is pretty similar: probably optimal if you can pull it off, but there’s no guarantees that can happen.

My response to the idea of “to not seek retaliation, to not seek revenge” , yeah that’s probably for the best, both individually and socially. When it comes to crimes it’s not an optimal society if everyone is individually seeking revenge for crimes committed against them: humane character reformation through the state apparatus is a much more socially healthy way to deal with that. And for not-crimes it’s still probably a better world without folks seeking revenge for wrongs done to them. Wisdom will be needed to separate examples of revenge from examples of self-defense, and I won’t pretend it will always be easy to parse that.

My response to “seeking to prevent the harm-causer from harming others, seeking character reformation for the harm-causer” yeah, that’s pretty much always going to be socially helpful, and criminals undergoing behavioral reformation is, at least in the context of a criminal justice system that embraces restorative justice, probably a good thing. Some people I want locked up, and I bet that’s the case with you as well. In a non-criminal sense it’s also desirable that steps be taken to prevent someone in the habit of harming people from doing that, and it’s also desirable to pursue avenues that encourage folks with harmful behavioral patterns to amend their behavior.

My response to the idea of “to come to a place where the victim cares about the harm-causer, to come to a place where the victim loves the harm-causer” is: the effect of a victim loving/caring about the harm-causer can often be bad for the victim because their love/caring can be exploited by the harm-causer, allowing for further abuse (this will depend somewhat on how one is using the word “love”). Sometimes people can have it within themselves to care about someone deeply while also maintaining an ironclad insistence on not being poorly treated and insisting that the beloved doesn’t treat others poorly, which is socially and personally helpful. More compassion and love is socially helpful, and often personally helpful, potentially at least, but this compassion and love cannot detract from the social need for behavioral reformation In short: if loving or caring about the harm-causer can be accomplished without sacrificing other, more immediately necessary, goods, then it’s likely helpful both individually and socially. However, the manner in which I tend to use the word “love” would include the notion that “to love someone means to want them to behave in non-harmful ways”, which suggests to me that a lot of how this all plays out depends on how one is using the term “love”.