I wonder what the consequences are of forgiveness, in your framework? Are there any? Or is this more of a Buddhist exercise -- as individuals, we will function with more equanimity and mental health if we let go of rancor and resentment.
I am all for forgiveness and restorative justice, over punishment. But to the extent that wrongdoers show no remorse, imposing consequences on wrongdoing seems like the only way to prevent the selfish from running roughshod over the rest of us. We should always mete out punishment "more in sorrow than in anger", but sometimes it's the only path.
This reminds me of the Just War theory in Catholicism, first elaborated upon by Augustine. "Just war theorists, however, find a middle ground between pacifists and realists. Just war theorists argue that it is possible to both declare war and wage it in a just way. To build this theory, they break the doctrine into two main parts, jus ad bellum — the moral evaluations behind declaring war — and jus in bello — the moral evaluation of conducting war. Within jus ad bellum, just war theory requires that states claim a just cause when declaring war. Justifications accepted under this criterion typically tend to revolve around either self-defense or correction of a wrong received. The former qualification is often explained using a domestic analogy: just as individuals are entitled to use force to defend themselves against violent aggressors, so too are states. The latter qualification expands upon the first. Philosopher Michael Walzer notes that international aggression is not merely a crime between two private parties but “a crime against society as a whole.” As a result, the qualification of just cause is expanded to include not only self defense, but the punishment of an aggressor by any state — not merely the one directly affected — so long as war is declared with the right intention. Here, just cause becomes an expansive qualifier aimed at correcting international wrongs and restoring geopolitical stability. If a nation adheres to this qualification — holding the right intention in declaring war, having exhausted all other political options before war is declared, and having sufficiently calculated the proportion of the war’s potential benefit to destruction — then that nation is deemed just within jus ad bellum. Yet, for a war to be fully just, it must also satisfy jus in bello, the proper conditions in which war is waged."
The classic example of this would be the Allies in WW2, preventing the Nazi's from killing every Jew in Europe, and freeing Europe from living under Nazi rule. At some point, whether we're speaking about individuals, or nations, moral values require fortitude in enforcing them, initially and hopefully by persuasion, but if that fails, then force is sometimes necessary. Otherwise we live in a world whereby malevolent actors, can do as they please, and might makes right.
Yep. δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν. The only way out of Thucydides' description of moral nihilism -- "the strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must" -- is for a coalition of the strong, across the world, to agree to act as a check on each others' abuses of the weak. As long as any local group of elites derives power from exploiting their local weak, and that power could be directed against the elites of other regions, this kind of equilibrium should hold.
The design becomes unstable, though, if the elites across regions come to see themselves as having more in common with each other, than they do with the plebeians of all regions -- if Donald Trump thinks he has more in common with Vladimir Putin, than with middle class America; or if Jeff Bezos thinks he has more in common with Jack Ma.
I wouldn't necessarily say that it's moral nihilism. It's a coherent worldview, albeit an extremely unsavory one that's casually cruel. It just seems extremely alien after 2,000 years of Christian influence in the West that treats everyone ideally as worthy of equal dignity, even if not always realized in practice. Trump fundamentally likes Putin, because he feels they share the same worldview-The world is zero-sum, dog-eat-dog, get revenge on people who have wronged you, don't trust anyone, honesty is for suckers, being rich, successful, and staying in power is all that matters. There are no lofty principles, like Reagan's Shining City Upon A Hill speech. What's left is a drive to stay in power, even if it impoverishes your own citizens. He acted that way throughout his entire career in NY in real estate. The recent movie The Apprentice, about his early relationship with Roy Cohn sums this up nicely.
I would distinguish between total nihilism (life has no meaning or purpose), and moral nihilism (the idea of "morality" is meaningless, there is no rule or guide to "right action" -- if you CAN do it, and you WANT to do it, there is no rule or authority that says you SHOULDN'T do it). Hence I would say that what you're describing _is_ moral nihilism.
I suppose you could instead characterize this as a kind of selfish utilitarianism, where the circle of whose Good is to be maximized is extremely limited, and harm / utility impairment to anyone outside that circle is irrelevant.
I think that's a sufficient definition. Morality becomes subjective, and the Good becomes the gratification of w.e whims the individual has. Collateral damage isn't anything to be worried about. Aristotle's ideas of telos or the golden mean of courage for instance, so not being overly fearful and showing cowardice, or not being free of any fear and being rash, aren't relevant anymore. Even, Kant's later idea of the categorical imperative dosen't work if the Good, on an abstract level isn't out there somewhere. The earliest precursor is probably then Nietzsche's ubermensch, and Rand's ethical egoism.
I think you're selectively applying this idea of "contrapositive summation" solely to the wrongdoer. You're certainly correct, at least to some degree, that, but for luck, some morally upstanding people would be... less so. But the same should apply to the forgiver! But for luck, I may be more or less forgiving. If I'm called to forgive everyone for everything they might have done, why is everyone not already the recipient of all the forgiveness I might have given?
In that context, much of the "available" forgiveness has already been given or denied. I have control over only a tiny sliver of what's left, and my decision is unlikely to make much of a substantial difference to the total amount of forgiveness applied.
It seems to me that when the contrapositives of both sides are summed, the arguments from justice and hypocrisy fall away, and the personal, practical benefits come to the forefront. Holding grudges takes effort, and keeps the worst people and experiences at the front of the grudge-holder's mind. Forgiveness allows those things to fade away, freeing the (now former) grudge-holder to focus on filling the void with excellent new people and positive experiences.
Justice need not be abandoned - if we insist, punishments can still be administered via a dispassionate, mechanistic system, and/or with an sense of regret (i.e. "this hurts me more than it hurts you").
I cannot forgive a sin by someone against another. I believe that is a nonsensical idea.
If this sin is also a crime, the state intervenes and decides to forgive or to punish. I can only forgive sins against myself. It is in my interests to forgive simply because resentment and rancor hurt me more than the person who did me wrong. But I don't always follow that.
To think that I can forgive everyone, or even someone who has sinned against another person, is to pretend to be God. That kind of arrogance is going to bite you some day.
I don't believe in karma. I believe in the natural consequences of a world that sometimes dishes them out and sometimes does not. So be it.
I also think it is an important part of the human experience to feel anger, frustration, unforgiveness, and all the other negative emotions. When you have felt those things deeply, you can understand other people who feel them - you can understand why they *can't* forgive; *won't* forgive. Maybe that will hurt them, but maybe that will hurt them less than the wrong done to them, and maybe it is part of how they process that wrong.
I've always believed in the "there but for the grace of God go I" sentiment regarding many people I encounter, either closely or just when out in public. Tragedy, sadness, and incapacity surround us. But I also believe in free will. And many people who have tragic, sad lives still manage to live with decency and respect. At the end of the day, I think being realistic is important.
But the wrong done to me often includes others.....and sometimes you cannot forgive because, although they hurt you, their intent or their unintended consequences, hurt others. And often the victimizer doesn't care about any of that. What is the purpose of forgiveness to someone who doesn't care. It really is intended to be a bi-lateral experience. "I wronged you. I am sorry." 'You did, and it was painful but I forgive you.' Both people experience something as a result. It's complicated.
Some people have more general, available, comprehensive compassion than others. You have more than I do.
This is a thought experiment I would never engage in on my own because it makes little sense to me, but I understand a more compassionate person might feel inclined, or morally obligated to entertain it.
I have a request for a reading comprehension check. *Constitutive luck* would apply to the different outcomes for the various people who celebrate 4 July by firing handguns randomly in the air, but only one poor wretch fires a gun who hits and kills someone with a bullet. Many people are performing the same reckless behavior, but only one of them causes a harmful outcome. (This is tricky to express.)
I think this is what he briefly calls “resultant luck” - two people do the same action with the same chances of bad outcomes, but one of them actually has the bad result and the other doesn’t.
“Circumstantial luck” is where two people both would have done the reckless shooting if guns had been around but one of them had the “luck” not to have guns around. “Constitutive luck” is where two people both had guns around but one of them had the “luck” to have been brought up in a household where they learned not to shoot guns recklessly, but still would have done it if they hadn’t been brought up well.
I wonder what the consequences are of forgiveness, in your framework? Are there any? Or is this more of a Buddhist exercise -- as individuals, we will function with more equanimity and mental health if we let go of rancor and resentment.
I am all for forgiveness and restorative justice, over punishment. But to the extent that wrongdoers show no remorse, imposing consequences on wrongdoing seems like the only way to prevent the selfish from running roughshod over the rest of us. We should always mete out punishment "more in sorrow than in anger", but sometimes it's the only path.
This reminds me of the Just War theory in Catholicism, first elaborated upon by Augustine. "Just war theorists, however, find a middle ground between pacifists and realists. Just war theorists argue that it is possible to both declare war and wage it in a just way. To build this theory, they break the doctrine into two main parts, jus ad bellum — the moral evaluations behind declaring war — and jus in bello — the moral evaluation of conducting war. Within jus ad bellum, just war theory requires that states claim a just cause when declaring war. Justifications accepted under this criterion typically tend to revolve around either self-defense or correction of a wrong received. The former qualification is often explained using a domestic analogy: just as individuals are entitled to use force to defend themselves against violent aggressors, so too are states. The latter qualification expands upon the first. Philosopher Michael Walzer notes that international aggression is not merely a crime between two private parties but “a crime against society as a whole.” As a result, the qualification of just cause is expanded to include not only self defense, but the punishment of an aggressor by any state — not merely the one directly affected — so long as war is declared with the right intention. Here, just cause becomes an expansive qualifier aimed at correcting international wrongs and restoring geopolitical stability. If a nation adheres to this qualification — holding the right intention in declaring war, having exhausted all other political options before war is declared, and having sufficiently calculated the proportion of the war’s potential benefit to destruction — then that nation is deemed just within jus ad bellum. Yet, for a war to be fully just, it must also satisfy jus in bello, the proper conditions in which war is waged."
The classic example of this would be the Allies in WW2, preventing the Nazi's from killing every Jew in Europe, and freeing Europe from living under Nazi rule. At some point, whether we're speaking about individuals, or nations, moral values require fortitude in enforcing them, initially and hopefully by persuasion, but if that fails, then force is sometimes necessary. Otherwise we live in a world whereby malevolent actors, can do as they please, and might makes right.
https://web.sas.upenn.edu/discentes/2024/10/13/practical-just-war-st-augustine-his-framing-of-just-war-theory/#:~:text=Just%20war%20theorists%2C%20however%2C%20find,declared%20with%20the%20right%20intention.
Yep. δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν. The only way out of Thucydides' description of moral nihilism -- "the strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must" -- is for a coalition of the strong, across the world, to agree to act as a check on each others' abuses of the weak. As long as any local group of elites derives power from exploiting their local weak, and that power could be directed against the elites of other regions, this kind of equilibrium should hold.
The design becomes unstable, though, if the elites across regions come to see themselves as having more in common with each other, than they do with the plebeians of all regions -- if Donald Trump thinks he has more in common with Vladimir Putin, than with middle class America; or if Jeff Bezos thinks he has more in common with Jack Ma.
I wouldn't necessarily say that it's moral nihilism. It's a coherent worldview, albeit an extremely unsavory one that's casually cruel. It just seems extremely alien after 2,000 years of Christian influence in the West that treats everyone ideally as worthy of equal dignity, even if not always realized in practice. Trump fundamentally likes Putin, because he feels they share the same worldview-The world is zero-sum, dog-eat-dog, get revenge on people who have wronged you, don't trust anyone, honesty is for suckers, being rich, successful, and staying in power is all that matters. There are no lofty principles, like Reagan's Shining City Upon A Hill speech. What's left is a drive to stay in power, even if it impoverishes your own citizens. He acted that way throughout his entire career in NY in real estate. The recent movie The Apprentice, about his early relationship with Roy Cohn sums this up nicely.
https://youtu.be/qNhjUuwxsvo?feature=shared
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/farewell-address-nation
I would distinguish between total nihilism (life has no meaning or purpose), and moral nihilism (the idea of "morality" is meaningless, there is no rule or guide to "right action" -- if you CAN do it, and you WANT to do it, there is no rule or authority that says you SHOULDN'T do it). Hence I would say that what you're describing _is_ moral nihilism.
I suppose you could instead characterize this as a kind of selfish utilitarianism, where the circle of whose Good is to be maximized is extremely limited, and harm / utility impairment to anyone outside that circle is irrelevant.
I think that's a sufficient definition. Morality becomes subjective, and the Good becomes the gratification of w.e whims the individual has. Collateral damage isn't anything to be worried about. Aristotle's ideas of telos or the golden mean of courage for instance, so not being overly fearful and showing cowardice, or not being free of any fear and being rash, aren't relevant anymore. Even, Kant's later idea of the categorical imperative dosen't work if the Good, on an abstract level isn't out there somewhere. The earliest precursor is probably then Nietzsche's ubermensch, and Rand's ethical egoism.
Yes, I specifically had Nietzsche in mind.
top notch article, by the way.
I think you're selectively applying this idea of "contrapositive summation" solely to the wrongdoer. You're certainly correct, at least to some degree, that, but for luck, some morally upstanding people would be... less so. But the same should apply to the forgiver! But for luck, I may be more or less forgiving. If I'm called to forgive everyone for everything they might have done, why is everyone not already the recipient of all the forgiveness I might have given?
In that context, much of the "available" forgiveness has already been given or denied. I have control over only a tiny sliver of what's left, and my decision is unlikely to make much of a substantial difference to the total amount of forgiveness applied.
It seems to me that when the contrapositives of both sides are summed, the arguments from justice and hypocrisy fall away, and the personal, practical benefits come to the forefront. Holding grudges takes effort, and keeps the worst people and experiences at the front of the grudge-holder's mind. Forgiveness allows those things to fade away, freeing the (now former) grudge-holder to focus on filling the void with excellent new people and positive experiences.
Justice need not be abandoned - if we insist, punishments can still be administered via a dispassionate, mechanistic system, and/or with an sense of regret (i.e. "this hurts me more than it hurts you").
I cannot forgive a sin by someone against another. I believe that is a nonsensical idea.
If this sin is also a crime, the state intervenes and decides to forgive or to punish. I can only forgive sins against myself. It is in my interests to forgive simply because resentment and rancor hurt me more than the person who did me wrong. But I don't always follow that.
To think that I can forgive everyone, or even someone who has sinned against another person, is to pretend to be God. That kind of arrogance is going to bite you some day.
I don't believe in karma. I believe in the natural consequences of a world that sometimes dishes them out and sometimes does not. So be it.
The article is strictly speaking about forgiving everything that has been and might have been done wrong to you- the title is a little misleading.
I also think it is an important part of the human experience to feel anger, frustration, unforgiveness, and all the other negative emotions. When you have felt those things deeply, you can understand other people who feel them - you can understand why they *can't* forgive; *won't* forgive. Maybe that will hurt them, but maybe that will hurt them less than the wrong done to them, and maybe it is part of how they process that wrong.
I've always believed in the "there but for the grace of God go I" sentiment regarding many people I encounter, either closely or just when out in public. Tragedy, sadness, and incapacity surround us. But I also believe in free will. And many people who have tragic, sad lives still manage to live with decency and respect. At the end of the day, I think being realistic is important.
But the wrong done to me often includes others.....and sometimes you cannot forgive because, although they hurt you, their intent or their unintended consequences, hurt others. And often the victimizer doesn't care about any of that. What is the purpose of forgiveness to someone who doesn't care. It really is intended to be a bi-lateral experience. "I wronged you. I am sorry." 'You did, and it was painful but I forgive you.' Both people experience something as a result. It's complicated.
Some people have more general, available, comprehensive compassion than others. You have more than I do.
This is a thought experiment I would never engage in on my own because it makes little sense to me, but I understand a more compassionate person might feel inclined, or morally obligated to entertain it.
I have a request for a reading comprehension check. *Constitutive luck* would apply to the different outcomes for the various people who celebrate 4 July by firing handguns randomly in the air, but only one poor wretch fires a gun who hits and kills someone with a bullet. Many people are performing the same reckless behavior, but only one of them causes a harmful outcome. (This is tricky to express.)
I think this is what he briefly calls “resultant luck” - two people do the same action with the same chances of bad outcomes, but one of them actually has the bad result and the other doesn’t.
“Circumstantial luck” is where two people both would have done the reckless shooting if guns had been around but one of them had the “luck” not to have guns around. “Constitutive luck” is where two people both had guns around but one of them had the “luck” to have been brought up in a household where they learned not to shoot guns recklessly, but still would have done it if they hadn’t been brought up well.