Self-forgiveness and self-respect

Ethics

Volumn 112, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 53-83

  Dillon, Robin S ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039567475     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/339140     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. Margaret Holmgren, "Self-Forgiveness and Responsible Moral Agency," Journal of Value Inquiry 32 (1998): 75-91. Also relevant is her "Forgiveness and the Value of Persons," American Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1993): 341-52.
2. Margaret Holmgren, "Self-Forgiveness and Responsible Moral Agency," Journal of Value Inquiry 32 (1998): 75-91. Also relevant is her "Forgiveness and the Value of Persons," American Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1993): 341-52.
3. In Sermon VIII, "Upon Resentment," and Sermon IX, "Upon Forgiveness of Injuries," of Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel, 1722, in The Works of Joseph Butler, ed. W. E. Gladstone (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Macmillan, 1896), vol. 2, Sermons, Etc. Although she looks to Butler for the basic definition of forgiveness, Holmgren, like others, misinterprets his account. She takes Butler to define forgiveness as the forswearing or overcoming of resentment ("Self-Forgiveness," pp. 75, 76, and "Forgiveness," p. 341), and she takes this to mean relinquishing (or at least, working to eliminate) all negative emotions and judgments about the offender ("Forgiveness," pp. 342, 345, and "Self-Forgiveness," pp. 79, 86, 90). This reading takes resentment and similar emotions to be incompatible with the attitudes of goodwill and respect that forgiveness is supposed to yield, so that the former must be swept away to make room for the latter. But Butler does not define forgiveness as the elimination of resentment and he does not think that resentment is incompatible with an attitude of goodwill. Holmgren quotes this passage as explicating Butler's definition of forgiveness: to forgive another is "to be affected towards the injurious person in the same way any good men, uninterested in the case, would be; if they had the same just sense, which we have supposed the injured person to have, of the fault: after which there will yet remain real good-will toward the offender" (Sermon IX, pp. 160-61). Note that Butler doesn't say that an uninterested good man would feel no resentment on viewing the fault. Butler maintains that the Biblical precepts to forgive and to love our enemies (his text for both sermons is Matt. 5:43-44) do not enjoin the elimination of resentment; rather, they "forbid only the excess and abuse of this natural feeling, in cases of personal and private injury" (Sermon IX, p. 152). For resentment - both hasty and sudden anger (passion) and settled and deliberate anger (resentment proper) occasioned by having been wrongly injured by another person (Sermon VIII, pp. 138-44) - is, Butler argues in Sermon VIII, given to us by God to prevent and remedy the evil and pain of injury by others, and so it is both ineliminable from our nature and conditionally good. What is bad and to be eliminated are the abuses and excesses of resentment: when the injury is only imagined or is exaggerated, when the anger is mistakenly directed at an innocent person or is disproportionate to the injury, or when it is malicious or prompts revenge. But "resentment is not inconsistent with good-will; we very often see both together in very high degrees; not only in parents toward children, but in cases of friendship and dependence. . . . These contrary passions, though they may lessen, do not necessarily destroy each other. We may therefore love our enemy, and yet have resentment toward him for his injurious behaviour towards us. But when this resentment entirely destroys our natural benevolence towards him, it is excessive, and becomes malice or revenge. The command to prevent its having this effect, i.e., to forgive injuries, is the same as to love our enemies" (Sermon IX, p. 158). Forgiveness is thus not the elimination of resentment but the control of it, preventing it from becoming excessive, unjustified, or malicious. It is worth noting that "overcome" can mean either to eliminate something altogether (as in the Civil Rights Movement determination that "We Shall Overcome" racial prejudice and discrimination) or to not let it cripple one (as a person might overcome a physical handicap). Holmgren takes Butler's account in the former way when he intends the latter. This point will become important later in this article.
4. Holmgren, "Self-Forgiveness," p. 76.
5. Ibid., p. 79.
6. Ibid., p. 76.
7. The first line is taken, e.g., by Lin Bauer et al., "Exploring Self-Forgiveness," Journal of Religion and Health 31 (1992): 149-60; and by Barbara Flanagan, Forgiving Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Peace with Your Mistakes and Getting on with Your Life (New York: Macmillan, 1996); the second line is taken by Nancy Snow, "Self-Forgiveness," Journal of Value Inquiry 27 (1993): 75-80.
8. The first line is taken, e.g., by Lin Bauer et al., "Exploring Self-Forgiveness," Journal of Religion and Health 31 (1992): 149-60; and by Barbara Flanagan, Forgiving Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Peace with Your Mistakes and Getting on with Your Life (New York: Macmillan, 1996); the second line is taken by Nancy Snow, "Self-Forgiveness," Journal of Value Inquiry 27 (1993): 75-80.
9. The first line is taken, e.g., by Lin Bauer et al., "Exploring Self-Forgiveness," Journal of Religion and Health 31 (1992): 149-60; and by Barbara Flanagan, Forgiving Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Peace with Your Mistakes and Getting on with Your Life (New York: Macmillan, 1996); the second line is taken by Nancy Snow, "Self-Forgiveness," Journal of Value Inquiry 27 (1993): 75-80.
10. This possibility is suggested by Cheshire Calhoun's discussion of aspirational forgiveness in "Changing One's Heart," Ethics 103 (1992): 76-96. Others who hold that repentance does not make hard feelings unwarranted include Norvin Richards, "Forgiveness," Ethics 99 (1988): 77-97; Joanna North, "Wrongdoing and Forgiveness," Philosophy 62 (1987): 499-508; Robert Enright, "Counseling within the Forgiveness Triad: On Forgiving, Receiving Forgiveness, and Self-Forgiveness," Counseling and Values 40 (1996): 107-26.
11. This possibility is suggested by Cheshire Calhoun's discussion of aspirational forgiveness in "Changing One's Heart," Ethics 103 (1992): 76-96. Others who hold that repentance does not make hard feelings unwarranted include Norvin Richards, "Forgiveness," Ethics 99 (1988): 77-97; Joanna North, "Wrongdoing and Forgiveness," Philosophy 62 (1987): 499-508; Robert Enright, "Counseling within the Forgiveness Triad: On Forgiving, Receiving Forgiveness, and Self-Forgiveness," Counseling and Values 40 (1996): 107-26.
12. This possibility is suggested by Cheshire Calhoun's discussion of aspirational forgiveness in "Changing One's Heart," Ethics 103 (1992): 76-96. Others who hold that repentance does not make hard feelings unwarranted include Norvin Richards, "Forgiveness," Ethics 99 (1988): 77-97; Joanna North, "Wrongdoing and Forgiveness," Philosophy 62 (1987): 499-508; Robert Enright, "Counseling within the Forgiveness Triad: On Forgiving, Receiving Forgiveness, and Self-Forgiveness," Counseling and Values 40 (1996): 107-26.
13. This possibility is suggested by Cheshire Calhoun's discussion of aspirational forgiveness in "Changing One's Heart," Ethics 103 (1992): 76-96. Others who hold that repentance does not make hard feelings unwarranted include Norvin Richards, "Forgiveness," Ethics 99 (1988): 77-97; Joanna North, "Wrongdoing and Forgiveness," Philosophy 62 (1987): 499-508; Robert Enright, "Counseling within the Forgiveness Triad: On Forgiving, Receiving Forgiveness, and Self-Forgiveness," Counseling and Values 40 (1996): 107-26.
14. Oddly, this fact seems to be missed in many discussions. For example, Snow says explicitly and Holmgren ("Self-Forgiveness") implies that self-forgiveness is required whenever one does (serious) wrong, while Flanagan presents numerous cases of people who have done wrong but whose own responses to their wrongs we do not see and says of them that they will have to forgive themselves. It is true that wrongdoers are morally required to take responsibility for their wrong, but, as I argue below, it is not true that they need, morally or psychologically, to forgive themselves. It is also interesting to note a difference in how "wrongdoing" is treated in the literature on forgiveness of self and others. Some writers, e.g., Snow, Holmgren, and Flanagan, treat it as a matter of error, carelessness, or human finitude and limitations. Others, e.g., Calhoun and jeffrie Murphy, focus on evil, nastiness, dreadful character, distorted values, shameful lapses of personal integrity (Jeffrie Murphy, "Jean Hampton on Immorality, Self-Hatred, and Self-Forgiveness," Philosophical Studies 89 [1998]: 215-36).
15. I will use the term 'self-reproach' to characterize the central attitude in the negative stance most generally, recognizing that there is in fact a continuum of stances that might arise from recognizing that one is responsible for something terrible, wrong, or awry, ranging from mildly self-critical to ragingly self-condemning, for a short time to a lifetime. I think we talk about forgiving or not forgiving ourselves when the attitudes and other dimensions of the stance are more strongly negative and persistent, but I don't rule out the relevance of transformative self-forgiveness to milder cases.
16. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), p. 465. We might think that multiple denial is significant, but not (yet?) for self-forgiveness.
17. One might object that (transformational) forgiveness is distinctively tied to wrongdoing: as we don't forgive other people for being bad or for having done something that reveals badness of character but only for the wrong they've done us, so we can't forgive ourselves for being bad, only for doing wrong. That objection is mistaken on both counts. It makes perfect sense, for example, for someone to decide to forgive her parent for having been too self-centered to really love her as she was growing up, which is not a matter just of action or even pattern of action. The real complaint is about the parent's character, values, priorities, motivations, etc. Nor is overcoming reproach in cases like these a matter of acceptance rather than forgiveness, for the former is compatible with condonation, while forgiveness requires clear-sighted acknowledgment of the wrong or bad. Jean Hampton convincingly analyzes (transformational) forgiveness as essentially involving a "change of heart," which is a matter of overcoming what she calls moral hatred," which, unlike resentment and indignation, which, she argues, are directed at the action, is directed at the person who harmed one and involves the belief that the person is bad. As she says, "The forgiver who previously saw the wrongdoer as someone bad or rotten or morally indecent to some degree has a change of heart when he 'washes away' or disregards the wrongdoer's immoral actions or character traits in his ultimate moral judgment of her, and comes to see her as still decent, not rotten as a person" ("Forgiveness, Resentment, and Hatred," in Forgiveness and Mercy, by Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988], p. 83; author's emphasis). Though wrongdoing may sometimes, maybe even typically, be the source of the negative stance that forgiveness overcomes, its object is the person as the kind of person who could do that. When we forgive others, we forgive them for being that kind of person, and that's part of why forgiveness is hard. So, too, for self-forgiveness. I return to this point below.
18. Kingsolver, p. 89.
19. Ibid., p. 493.
20. Letter to "Dear Abby," "Woman's Death Consumes Friend Whose Words Fail," Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call (June 28, 2000). "I am still consumed with guilt for having concealed the truth from my friend. I am nervous all the time and have trouble concentrating and sleeping . . . the depression overwhelms me." Abby unhelpfully reassures "Grieving in L.A." that she should not blame herself since she did what the family said she must do.
21. Letter to "Dear Abby," "Toddler's Accidental Death Ends Someone Else's Life as Well," Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call (July 18, 2000). "My best friend accidentally backed her car over my [two-year-old] sister, killing her instantly. . . . My family recovered from my sister's death, but my friend never did. The accident ruined her life. She had been at the top of her class and everyone expected a bright future for her. Instead, she lived through failed counseling, broken marriages, and her career crashed - all because of a tragic accident that wasn't her fault. She couldn't forgive herself."
22. "Nowhere Is Safe in Kosovo," Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call (August 13, 1998). When Serbs attacked the Albanian village of Rezala, Yugoslavia, Zequir Zabeli, his wife and four children had to make a painful choice. They could carry his 85-year-old mother Hana, who was speechless and paralyzed from a stroke, "through a rain of artillery and mortar fire, risking death for all in a slow escape. Or they could leave her behind, run away unburdened and pray for her survival." They chose to run, and Hana died alone. "The Serbs attacked so fast we had no time to think how to evacuate my mother to safety. . . . I got my wife and children out. . . . We ran. It is a choice I will have to live with."
23. One might object that where there is no wrong, the self-reproachful feelings are unfounded and "the process of removing them is different from the process of attaining genuine self-forgiveness" (Holmgren, "Self-Forgiveness," p. 76). But in fact we do speak of not being able to forgive ourselves in cases like these, and I follow Herbert Morris and Jeffrie Murphy in, as Morris says, "being skeptical about any claim of widespread misuse of terms for emotional states" and, as Murphy says, "resist(ing) regarding the feeling [selfhatred even when one has done nothing wrong] as merely inappropriate or irrational or neurotic." Both explain the moral appropriateness of such feelings in terms of the "feelings of human solidarity" they express. I explain them below in terms of the structure of one's normative self-conception. See Herbert Morris, "Nonmoral Guilt," in Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions, ed. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 221; and Murphy, "Jean Hampton," p. 229. The cases in the previous two paragraphs underscore a general point about forgiveness and reproach. If one's paradigm for forgiveness is the legal model, then one will think forgiveness applies only in cases of wrongdoing. But everyday talk about forgiving and not forgiving ourselves and others makes it clear that it is not so restricted, and thus that the legal model is not an appropriate paradigm. Wrong/doing is not the only grounds for the reproach that forgiveness addresses.
24. One might object that where there is no wrong, the self-reproachful feelings are unfounded and "the process of removing them is different from the process of attaining genuine self-forgiveness" (Holmgren, "Self-Forgiveness," p. 76). But in fact we do speak of not being able to forgive ourselves in cases like these, and I follow Herbert Morris and Jeffrie Murphy in, as Morris says, "being skeptical about any claim of widespread misuse of terms for emotional states" and, as Murphy says, "resist(ing) regarding the feeling [selfhatred even when one has done nothing wrong] as merely inappropriate or irrational or neurotic." Both explain the moral appropriateness of such feelings in terms of the "feelings of human solidarity" they express. I explain them below in terms of the structure of one's normative self-conception. See Herbert Morris, "Nonmoral Guilt," in Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions, ed. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 221; and Murphy, "Jean Hampton," p. 229. The cases in the previous two paragraphs underscore a general point about forgiveness and reproach. If one's paradigm for forgiveness is the legal model, then one will think forgiveness applies only in cases of wrongdoing. But everyday talk about forgiving and not forgiving ourselves and others makes it clear that it is not so restricted, and thus that the legal model is not an appropriate paradigm. Wrong/doing is not the only grounds for the reproach that forgiveness addresses.
25. One might object that where there is no wrong, the self-reproachful feelings are unfounded and "the process of removing them is different from the process of attaining genuine self-forgiveness" (Holmgren, "Self-Forgiveness," p. 76). But in fact we do speak of not being able to forgive ourselves in cases like these, and I follow Herbert Morris and Jeffrie Murphy in, as Morris says, "being skeptical about any claim of widespread misuse of terms for emotional states" and, as Murphy says, "resist(ing) regarding the feeling [selfhatred even when one has done nothing wrong] as merely inappropriate or irrational or neurotic." Both explain the moral appropriateness of such feelings in terms of the "feelings of human solidarity" they express. I explain them below in terms of the structure of one's normative self-conception. See Herbert Morris, "Nonmoral Guilt," in Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions, ed. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 221; and Murphy, "Jean Hampton," p. 229. The cases in the previous two paragraphs underscore a general point about forgiveness and reproach. If one's paradigm for forgiveness is the legal model, then one will think forgiveness applies only in cases of wrongdoing. But everyday talk about forgiving and not forgiving ourselves and others makes it clear that it is not so restricted, and thus that the legal model is not an appropriate paradigm. Wrong/doing is not the only grounds for the reproach that forgiveness addresses.
26. Cases of survivor guilt pose a special problem. In correspondence, Daniel Brudney, noting the shame that a survivor of the Nazi deal h camps might feel on not having been among those who heroically resisted and died, objected that while it might be difficult to overcome self-reproach for being the sort of person who did not actively (and suicidally) resist and to accept oneself as morally "okay," it seems not to be a matter of forgiving oneself. However, if the survivor thinks of himself as having been cowardly or in some other way morally wanting in not resisting, then forgiveness would be appropriate. But it is difficult to know what to say about cases in which a person feels guilty simply for having survived when others died (e.g., in a bombing or earthquake), where it does not make sense to think of oneself as in any way responsible for the outcome or deficient as a person. The Murphy-Morris move in n. 18 makes the guilt feelings rational, but it is not clear that it would bring such cases into the range of forgiveness. Having raised the case, though, let me leave it for another day.
27. Jane Austen, Emma (1816), vol. 3, chaps. 7-8.
28. Bauer et al., pp. 54-55.
29. Flanagan, p. 57.
30. Norman Care, Living with One's Past: Personal Fates and Moral Pains (Boston: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. x, 5, 7.
31. Murphy, "Jean Hampton," p. 218; Murphy's emphasis.
32. Ibid., p. 226.
33. It is worth noting again that not everyone for whom self-forgiveness would be appropriate is consumed by what troubles them, their lives virtually destroyed by selfcondemnation. Alison is one less dramatic case: haunted by her past but not obsessed with it. The negative stance admits of fairly wide degree.
34. See, e.g., John Deigh, "Guilt and Shame," in Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker (New York: Garland, 1992); and Paul Gilbert, "What Is Shame? Some Core Issues and Controversies," in Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Pathology, and Culture, ed. Paul Gilbert and Bernice Andrews (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Note that self-forgiveness is not appropriately directed at all forms of shame. Shame felt over physical deformity, for example, is not within the scope of forgiveness.
35. See, e.g., John Deigh, "Guilt and Shame," in Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker (New York: Garland, 1992); and Paul Gilbert, "What Is Shame? Some Core Issues and Controversies," in Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Pathology, and Culture, ed. Paul Gilbert and Bernice Andrews (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Note that self-forgiveness is not appropriately directed at all forms of shame. Shame felt over physical deformity, for example, is not within the scope of forgiveness.
36. As Helen Lewis argues, guilt involves blaming one's behavior for a bad event, but shame involves blaming one's character. Helen B. Lewis, Shame: The Exposed Self(New York: Free Press, 1992).
37. Thus, wrongs one can regard as "out of character" are less damaging to one's self-conception.
38. Flanagan, pp. xix, xii.
39. It is common in discussions of (self-)forgiveness to make the Augustinian move of arguing that although the act may be morally wrong, the agent can be separated from the act and seen as untainted by it and thereby forgiven (though repentance might be required for the separation and so for forgiveness). However, the self-reproachful stance rejects this move, for it is not the act that it focuses on but the inescapable defective self that is not supposed to be defective.
40. H. J. N. Horsbrugh, "Forgiveness," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 4 (1974): 269-82, p. 276.
41. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900), chap. 7.
42. Ibid., chap. 33.
43. Ibid., chap. 34. The ellipsis is Conrad's.
44. Ibid., chap. 32.
45. See my "Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political," Ethics 107 (1997): 226-49, "Introduction," Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect ed. Robin Dillon (New York: Routledge 1995), "How to Lose Your Self-Respect," American Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1992): 125-39, and "Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect," Hypatia 7 (1992): 52-69 (reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect).
46. See my "Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political," Ethics 107 (1997): 226-49, "Introduction," Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect ed. Robin Dillon (New York: Routledge 1995), "How to Lose Your Self-Respect," American Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1992): 125-39, and "Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect," Hypatia 7 (1992): 52-69 (reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect).
47. See my "Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political," Ethics 107 (1997): 226-49, "Introduction," Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect ed. Robin Dillon (New York: Routledge 1995), "How to Lose Your Self-Respect," American Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1992): 125-39, and "Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect," Hypatia 7 (1992): 52-69 (reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect).
48. See my "Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political," Ethics 107 (1997): 226-49, "Introduction," Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect ed. Robin Dillon (New York: Routledge 1995), "How to Lose Your Self-Respect," American Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1992): 125-39, and "Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect," Hypatia 7 (1992): 52-69 (reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect).
49. I take this term from Stephen Darwall, "Two Kinds of Respect," Ethics 88 (1977): 34-49.
50. I take this term from Stephen D. Hudson, "The Nature of Respect," Social Theory and Practice 6 (1980): 69-90. Darwall's term is 'appraisal self-respect'.
51. On "coming up to scratch," see Elizabeth Telfer, "Self-Respect," Philosophical Quarterly 18 (1968): 114-21.
52. I use this term, instead of Freud's "ego-ideal," because the latter term implies that the conception is composed of or dominated by ideas about excellence and a commitment to become excellent. But our normative self-conceptions also contain ideas and expectations of acceptability and decency, as well as ideas of inadequacy and defectiveness and a determination not to get too close, and these come into play in self-reproach.
53. The phrase comes from David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), p. 620.
54. In "Self-Respect, Excellences, and Shame," in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), sec. 67, John Rawls holds that shame arises from the perception that one has failed to live up to one's standards of excellence. But this is mistaken. We are not ashamed of ourselves for not being excellent; rather, we are ashamed of ourselves for being less than the least we expect ourselves to be. Of course, if one expects nothing less than excellence from oneself, one will then, but only then, be ashamed for falling short of excellence. Arguing that "it is not so much the distance from an ideal self but closeness to the 'undesired self that is crucial to shame," psychologist Paul Gilbert reports a study that found participants talking not about failing to live up to ideals but about being who they did not want to be (p. 19).
55. One's normative standards need not be moral in any narrow sense or reasonable to be powerful, nor need they allow for excused violation. If they include, for example, "good daughters always care for their mothers as their mothers cared for them," then putting one's aged mother in a nursing home, even when one cannot care for her any longer and she would get very good care in the home, could appropriately generate shame and self-reproach. Let me note here that I do not address an important issue, namely, that our self-conceptions are not wholly self-generated but are to a great extent socialized into us. An adequate account of self-reproach would have to take seriously the distortions of self-identity and self-reproach under oppression.
56. Whereas recognition self-respect expresses, "I matter because I am a person," and evaluative self-respect expresses, "I matter because I have merit," basal self-respect expresses simply, "I matter."
57. Murphy, "Jean Hampton," p. 218.
58. Ibid., p. 226.
59. Immanuel Kant, The Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), p. 132 (Akademie, p. 463).
60. I take this example from M. H. Bickhard, "The Nature of Psychopathology," in International Psychotherapy: Theories, Research, and Cross-Cultural Implications, ed. Lynn Simek-Downing (New York: Praeger, 1989).
61. Kant maintains that a feeling of "reverence for oneself" is one of the subjective conditions for the possibility of moral agency-did we not experience it, we "could not even conceive of duty" (Doctrine of Virtue, pp. 59, 63 [Akademie, pp. 399, 402-30]). Representing oneself to oneself as irredeemably bad and so forever unworthy would thus make it impossible to discharge the duties of self-respect, or indeed any moral duties.
62. I discuss this in "Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political." Whereas insecure basal valuing can be a source of the liability to unwarranted self-reproach, secure basal valuing can provide immunity to even warranted self-reproach: someone whose wrongs are fully in character can regard them instead as flukes or bad luck - again and again - if they have a strongly positive and secure basal sense of worth that underwrites this interpretation of the data.
63. This form of self-forgiveness corresponds to another common usage of the term "forgiving," as providing a margin for error or shortcoming (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed.). As a laminate kitchen countertop is forgiving, while granite is unforgiving - a dropped glass might bounce on the former but will shatter on the latter - so one can be a forgiving person, of oneself or of others: less likely to condemn in the first place and so less likely to need to overcome it.
64. The phrase is Paul Hughes's in "On Forgiving Oneself: A Reply to Snow," Journal of Value Inquiry 28 (1994): 557-60.
65. Reflecting on the wide and deep damage wrought by her missionary father's raging condemnation of himself, his family, and the African villagers he meant to save from hell-a condemnation rooted in "a suspicion of his own cowardice" that formed when he stumbled from the jungle just before the rest of his company died to a man on the Bataan Death March ("Fate sentenced Our Father to pay for those lives with the remainder of his, and he has spent it posturing desperately beneath the eyes of a God who will not forgive a debt"), Orleanna's daughter Leah says, "If I could reach back somehow to give Father just one gift, it would be the simple human relief of knowing you've done wrong, and living through it" (Kingsolver, pp. 197, 413, 525).
66. I discuss such a form of self-respect in "Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect," though I did not there make the connection with self-forgiveness.
67. See, e.g., Bauer et al.; Flanagan; and Enright.
68. Holmgren raises something like this objection in "Self-Forgiveness," pp. 75-76.
69. It is worth noting again that Butler maintained that the function of forgiveness of others was to overcome only the unwarranted dimensions of resentment, i.e., hatred, malice, and vengefulness (see n. 2).
70. An example of this is in Nevada Barr's Endangered Species (New York: Putnam, 1997). Frederick has become infatuated with Molly, the sister of his lover, Anna. But "along with titillating excitement was a rising tide of self-contempt. . . . He was ashamed. On some level he was aware of that. . . . Soon, he knew, the process of his exoneration would begin. Bit by bit he would change what needed changing. Each time he told himself the story he would come out looking a little cleaner. Frederick's judgments were cruel, damning. Years before, he'd learned how to keep them from turning and cutting him. After the process was complete and he was once again whole, there would be only a scar. . . . When self-analysis came close to unpleasant truth, Frederick turned his mind to his work. It was what he was good at" (pp. 153-55).
71. This is Holmgren's position in "Self-Forgiveness."
72. Jeffrie Murphy suggested this to me.
73. "Suffering is not for the evil, / for it would be wasted on them. / Suffering is for the enlightened, / so they may remember what they already know" (Rory Block, "Faithless World," on Ain't I a Woman, Rounder CD 3120 [Cambridge, Mass.: Rounder Records, 1992]).
74. Joseph Beatty, "Forgiveness," American Philosophical Quarterly (1970): 246-52.
75. See Enright on "refraining" (p. 125); and Robert C. Roberts on "refocusing" ("Forgiveness," American Philosophical Quarterly 32 [1995]: 289-306, p. 297).
76. See Enright on "refraining" (p. 125); and Robert C. Roberts on "refocusing" ("Forgiveness," American Philosophical Quarterly 32 [1995]: 289-306, p. 297).
77. This is Holmgren's metaphor.
78. I take the idea of a personal point of no return from Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1960), p. 157. See also my "How to Lose Your Self-Respect," pp. 129-30.
79. I take the idea of a personal point of no return from Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass Age (Glencoe, III.: Free Press, 1960), p. 157. See also my "How to Lose Your Self-Respect," pp. 129-30.
80. Quoted in Jeffrie Murphy, "Hatred: A Qualified Defense," in Murphy and Hampton, p. 91.
81. It is here that the forgiveness of others can be useful, even necessary for self-forgiveness. One may need to look through their perspective to see oneself differently. Thus the importance to Conrad's Jim of becoming so admired by the Patusan natives, and the doom entailed in losing their admiration. Thus, too, Leah Price, "cradled into forgiveness" by her husband's love (Kingsolver, p. 530).
82. Orleanna's daughter Adah takes this view: "If chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear the marks of the shackles. What you have to lose is your story, your own slant. You'll look at the scars on your arms and see mere ugliness, or you'll take care to look away from them and see nothing. Either way, you have no words for the story of where you came from. . . . [But I] am trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes" (Kingsolver, p. 495-96).
83. Poisonwood Bible ends with this view: "If you feel a gnawing at your bones, that is yourself, hungry. . . . The teeth at your bones are your own, the hunger is yours, the forgiveness is yours. . . . Slide the weight off your shoulders" (pp. 537, 543).
84. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), p. 126.